The Knockanrawley Resource centre in Tipperary Town celebrated IWD in style and grace with the launch of a CD, composed and performed by a group of parenting alone women. The SHE group wrote and recorded five songs through a community music process facilitated by local singer/songwriter Fran Murnane. One song is written about the frustration some of the women have felt when they come up against the court process or other official structures. Another is from a very personal point of view about losing a friend through cancer. Tipp FM's Classic Cafe broadcast live from Knockanrawley in celebration of IWD and the SHE groups CD.

The CD can be purchased for €5 with proceeds going to Cuan Saor Women's Refuge in Clonmel.

The idea of having an International Women's Day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialisation and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions. The first IWD was observed on 28th February 1909, in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. In 1910 the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen and in the following year, 1911, IWD was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, on 19th March. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across Europe held peace rallies on 8 March 1913. In the West, International Women's Day was commemorated during the 1910s and 1920s, but dwindled. It was revived by the rise of feminism in the 1960s. Demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

But what is the relevance of IWD on a grass roots level here in Tipperary? What changes have taken place in Irish Law that have changed the lives of women and standard of living that is now taken for granted in the year 2010? Well it's all about historical steps that were taken by groups of women, on local levels who fought to change Irish Common Laws that were brutal and detrimental to the freedom of Irish women.

For example under the old Common Laws, a woman when she married became for all practical purposes the property of her husband. All her personal property became his property, her Leasehold property was vested in him and he could dispose of it without her consent and was entitled to her Freehold property for as long as she lived. The children of the marriage were the husband's physical possessions and he could legally part his children from their mother permanently and she had no law or redress.