International Women's Day 2024: how to celebrate in Wales

International Women’s Day (Fri 8 Mar) is once again upon us in Wales and around the world. A time to remember women’s achievements and consider what is still left to be done, here are five events happening around the date in question you can take part in to commemorate it.

Y Stiwdio Hermon & Hermon Community Hall, Pembrokeshire, Fri 8 Mar

Centred around women artists in west Wales and funded by the Arts Council, eight artists will share presentations, run workshops and share ideas across two venues in Hermon for this unique artistic event in honour of International Women’s Day.

Admission: FREE. Info: here

Rachel Dawson’s Neon Roses explores themes of identity, activism, and family dynamics amidst the backdrop of the miners’ strike in 1980s Wales, uncovering strength in unity and the power of community.

Cuban Women In The Revolution

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Fri 8 Mar

A special screening for International Women’s Day of Maria Torrellas’ award-winning documentary film, charting the contributions of women to past and present Cuba. This is its first screening in Wales, thanks to UNITE Community Cymru.

Tickets: pay what you want. Info: here

Petitioning For Peace

National Museum Of History, St Fagans, Sat 9 Mar-Sun 15 Sept

On display until September 2025, this exhibition includes the titular petition signed by almost half a million Welsh women in response to WWI, as well as banners from the Greenham Common peace camp. Alleged to be a seven-mile-long document, the petition was placed in a chest and presented to women in America by a Welsh women’s delegation over 100 years ago. It’s been housed by Washington DC’s National Museum Of American History until last year, when a campaign begun in 2019 to have it returned to Wales was successful in temporarily transferring the chest to the National Library Of Wales.

Admission: FREE. Info: here

Ann Cleeves

Penarth Pier Pavilion / Borough Theatre, Abergavenny, Mon 18 Mar

To promote her latest book The Raging Storm, the latest entry in her Two Rivers series, bestselling crime writer Ann Cleeves invites you to drink, eat and gab about murder in Penarth before hotfooting it to Abergavenny for an evening show.

Tickets: £1-£15 (Penarth sold out, waiting list available).Info: Penarth / Abergavenny

Sophie McCartney

New Theatre, Cardiff, Sat 24 Mar

Author and comedian Sophie McCartney is known as “Instagram’s funniest mum”, an accolade she’s taking offline and on tour – including to Cardiff – with a show, Tired And Tested, on the highs and lows of modern motherhood. Much later in the month but still a worthy International Women’s Day addendum.

Tickets: £24.25-£34.75. Info: here

KEEP READING:

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson, authors of Women And The Miners’ Strike 1984–1985, suggest the strike’s political, social and cultural impact has been overstated, especially concerning women.