While tackling their mid-semester workloads, students working on the second floor of Glenn G. Bartle Library can take a break to learn about a holiday celebrating the achievements of women around the world.

This semester, Bartle is hosting an exhibit showcasing female literary and artistic contributions to spread awareness of International Women’s Day.

The purpose of the exhibit is to raise awareness of the holiday, on March 8, which celebrates the accomplishments of women and calls for gender equality. It is a collaboration between Bartle and Binghamton University Globalistas (BUGs), a volunteer committee of students and faculty that works to educate peers about international issues.

The exhibit, named “Make It Happen at Binghamton University” after the United Nation’s “Make It Happen” campaign celebrating the holiday, is located on the second floor of Bartle and will be on display for the entire semester.

Wren Fritsky, co-chair of BUGs and a career consultant at the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development, said that the exhibit was a great way to showcase the global accomplishments of women.

“There is a long history of successful women and women’s struggle, but they’re triumphant and it’s just one way of showcasing it,” Fritsky said. “That’s kind of the beauty of written things; when it’s the digital era, this is concrete proof of wonderful talented women doing wonderful talented work.”

The exhibit is split up into two displays. One takes a look at art celebrating International Women’s Day in other countries, and the other showcases books on feminism written by BU faculty and local texts such as feminist periodicals printed at BU in the 1970s.

The texts that were written by BU faculty were all gathered from the Special Collections room of the library, according to Andrea Melione, chair of the Exhibit Committee. It also includes a timeline showcasing major events in the history of the holiday.

Featured artwork from Russia depicts women as astronauts, teachers and other occupations. Images from China, where the day is a national holiday, detailing women as artists, are on loan from Dartmouth College, according to Melione.

Julie Wang, a member of BUGs and the Asian and Asian American Studies librarian, said though the holiday originated in Russia, the importance of women’s rights was prevalent in all countries.

“International Women’s Day started from a former communist country, but is something valuable I think we all share regardless of political ideology or race,” Wang said. “It does not matter, everybody shares the same value. I think that’s what we’re trying to promote.”

Students like Amber Decker, a sophomore majoring in human development, said she found the exhibit empowering but wished the scale of the exhibit matched the importance of its focus.

“I think it’s great to showcase what Binghamton has to offer about this topic that most people forget about,” Decker said. “It’s a topic that goes really unnoticed here and this is such a small-scale thing that I think if it was bigger and made more of a deal that people would realize that it affects everybody.”