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“Let them be happy, healthy, lucky, let joyful and careless moments of the life accompany them, let them always stay beautiful and feminine embraced with smiling faces all around,” men are congratulating women on March 8, without forgetting to mention their own role in all of the above.

“A woman should be happy, as when her eyes are full of joy, smiling, the man feels good as well. Problems and difficulties are true to be everywhere, but the Armenian woman is still graceful, does her best to keep our Armenian traditions bringing up good children,” Khachatur Gasparyan, 40, a Yerevan resident told “Panorama.am” while he was choosing perfume for his wife.

Vardges, who was looking for a gift for his girlfriend, told he had wanted to marry for three years, but “was afraid of taking the risk,” and then explained: “ Aside from the fact, that feeding a family is quite hard, I want my wife not to work much. A Woman should always be well groomed and always meet her husband and children in good mood. However, today’s realities hamper that to come through. The woman works along with the man equally and sometimes goes out in the morning and returns only in the evening. After the tired work what good mood is left? However, let me laud their resilience with all that to manage all the housework, look after the children.”

Narine, 35 years old, received a present from her husband a day earlier. She also was searching for gifts for her mother and mother-in-law.

"It's a beautiful spring day, plus the festive mood. What can I wish to our women, our mothers? Perhaps what each woman would wish for herself. It is a bit hard today to realize all our dreams, yet I don't want to complain. When a person is healthy, everything else is surmountable,” said Narine.

March 8 is the International Women's Day. In 1908, New York International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union went on a strike demanding reduced working hours and better working conditions. Men had to make compromises and fulfilled the demands of women. Then in August 1910, an International Women's Conference was organized to precede the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annual 'International Woman's Day' and was seconded by fellow socialist and later communist leader Clara Zetkin. Since then March 8 has been celebrated as Women's International Day.

However, in Armenia the holiday has lost its initial meaning and is celebrated as a spring and women's holiday.