International Women’s Day 2023: What does the color purple represent and why is it used?

This March 8th, the United States, as well as various countries worldwide, commemorate International Women’s Day; also known by its acronym IWD.

This date recognizes the achievements and rights achieved by and for women over the years. However, it is also a day that serves to remind us that we are still far from true equality in various areas. That is why, year after year, millions of women go out to march and raise their voice.

One of the main characteristics of women’s marches, as well as feminist movements globally, is the color purple; but do you know why this color is used and what it represents in the movement? Let us explain it to you.

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International Women's Day 2023: What does the color purple represent and why is it used?

Throughout the feminist struggle, the protest colors have been white, green and purple; in fact, these shades were worn by suffragettes in 1908. According to the National Woman’s Party in the United States, the color purple represents “loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause”.

For her part, the English activist Emmeline Pethick points out that “purple as everyone knows is the royal colour, it stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity”; while the rest of the colors - white and green - represent purity in private and political life, and hope for a new beginning ; respectively.

However, there are a couple more theories that purple is used because it represents gender equality by mixing the colors pink and blue, related to feminine and masculine gender.

The other theory suggests that it represents the 123 women who lost their lives in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist textile factory in New York due to deplorable working conditions. It is said that they were making lilac garments at the time of death.

Whatever the true origin, purple has already been adopted as the color of feminism, “the same color as the glasses with which one should look at the world,” in the words of the writer Gemma Lienas.