Feminists will take to the streets around the world on Saturday 8th March to mark International Women’s Day 2025, which takes place amid escalating attacks on women’s rights, led by the international far-right, and continued patriarchal violence against women.
Heckle is delighted to share the details of a number of events and demonstrations which are taking place in Scotland – all of them organised by grassroots activists and campaigners, rather than NGOs and charities, and taking place on a genuinely inclusive basis. Some of these events are taking place in the run-up to IWD, though most are taking place on IWD itself.
We invite organisers of similar events not already included below to share details with us on contact@heckle.scot. Check back frequently for updates!
Last updated: 5 March 2025
Edinburgh
On Tuesday 4th March 2025, 7pm, Lighthouse Books is welcoming writer Sophie Lewis to Leith for a discussion about her new book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation – “an unflinching tour of two hundred years of enemy feminisms, making the case instead for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we need”.
On Saturday 8th March 2025, 1pm, the International Women’s Day Edinburgh committee is once again organising an annual march through the Scottish capital.
The committee told Heckle: “We will gather at High Street by Mercat Cross at 1pm and start marching at 1.15pm, ending at the Scottish Parliament for speakers including from women’s organisations and unions, and a performance by the Catalan Human Towers.
“We are marching for women’s bodily autonomy, true gender equality, trans people’s rights, and social justice all around the world.”
A steward training and placard making session is taking place on Sunday 2nd March, 2pm-4pm. For more information about this, contact the committee via Instagram.
Glasgow
On Saturday 8th March, 12 noon to 3pm, Protest in Harmony Glasgow will celebrate International Women’s Day with an outdoor sing-out, starting at the statue to La Pasionaria and moving to the Mary Barbour statue at Govan station. Find more information on Facebook.
On Saturday 8th March 2025, 1pm, ROSA Scotland, part of ROSA International Socialist Feminists, is hosting a rally in conjunction with other groups.
The Radical International Women’s Day rally for “intersectional feminism to resist genocide, exploitation and gender oppression” will assemble at Buchanan Steps from 12.30pm for a 1pm start.
ROSA told Heckle: “2025 sees the women in the front line of genocide in the Middle East, mounting attacks on bodily autonomy and gender rights ranging from the implementation of the Cass report by the Scottish and UK governments, the inauguration of Donald Trump hell-bent on attacking the rights of women, the queer and trans community, migrants and people of colour.
“Increasingly, IWD, which has roots in a militant struggle of New York migrant garment workers in 1908, is in danger of being co-opted as a corporate ‘girlboss’ event focussed on ‘breaking the glass ceiling in management’, or an opportunity for politicians to pay lip service to equality whilst resisting equal pay demands and cutting essential services.
“ROSA Scotland, part of an international socialist feminist movement, wants to help take IWD back to its radical roots.
“We participated in and were inspired by the massive radical blocs at Edinburgh and Glasgow Pride last year and want to organise a Radical IWD in Glasgow this year.”
Dundee
On Saturday 8th March, 2pm, the local branch of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign will hold a rally in Dundee city centre to “recognise and honour Palestinian women who live in the midst of a genocide and cruel occupation”.
“We honour those who continue to resist and those who have been murdered by the apartheid regime,” the organisers said.
On Saturday 8th March 2025, 6pm, the Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association (DNTA) is collaborating with Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) to mark International Women’s Day with a screening of Leila and the Wolves.
Leila and the Wolves is a film that reveals a nearly forgotten past of women’s struggle in Palestine and Lebanon attempting to retell these regional narratives from a feminist perspective. As John Akomfrah has written, Leila and the Wolves “weaves a rich tableau of history, folklore, myth and archival material.”
The female protagonist (Nabila Zeitoni) is a Lebanese student living in London in the 1980s, where she is staging a photography exhibition in which women are the unsung heroines of political conflict. Through time-travelling sequences spanning from the 1900s to the 1980s, she traverses both real and imaginary landscapes of Lebanon and Palestine.
In an interview from 2020, the filmmaker says: “Nowadays, Leila and the Wolves is travelling the world again, more relevant than ever; my unconscious and the collective unconscious of the women of the Middle East spoke together throughout the extreme conditions of making this film.”
DNTA will be collecting funds towards equipping a clinic in Askar Refugee Camp in Nablus.
More information can be found on the DNTA website. Tickets can be reserved on the DCA website.
Aberdeen
On Saturday 8th March 2025, 1pm-3pm, a broad range of left-wing, feminist and anti-fascist groups will stage a counter-protest in Aberdeen city centre against an expected visit from ‘Posie Parker’, a notorious English anti-trans campaigner with links to the far right.
Disability activist Fiona Robertson said: “‘Posie Parker’ is bringing her circus to Aberdeen on International Women’s Day. She’s selling ‘Make Aberdeen Great Again’ merch in advance, to give you an idea of who’ll be supporting her. Fascist and neo-Nazi groups often show up to help her, so we have to expect their presence.
“LWS is the patriarchy in action – it’s everything International Women’s Day is meant to oppose. It makes my skin crawl that there’ll be people in our city supporting them.”
The exact location of the counter-protest is to be confirmed. Check Aberdeen Social Centre on Facebook for updates.
Elsewhere
We don’t yet know of any grassroots International Women’s Day events taking place elsewhere in Scotland or online. If you do, drop us a line on contact@heckle.scot.
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