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International Women's Day
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International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by
women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a
national holiday.When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic
and political ifferences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to
a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality,
justice, peace and development. But its history actually goes back more than a century before
that day. In 1857, women garment workers in New York staged a massive street protest about the 12-hour work days, poverty
wages and sexual harassment that were common in their jobs. Fifty-one years later, they held the same massive demonstration
in New York, adding the problems of the lack of women's suffrage and continuing child labor to list of women's burdens.Born at a
time of great social turbulence and crisis, IWD inherited a tradition of protest and political activism. In the years before
1910, from the turn of the 20th century, women in industrially developing countries were entering paid work in some numbers.Their jobs were sex segregated, mainly in
textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were wretched and wages worse than depressed. Trade unions were developing and industrial disputes broke out, including among sections of non-unionised women workers. In Europe, the flames of revolution were being kindled.Many of the changes taking place in women's lives pushed against the political restrictions surrounding them. Throughout Europe, Britain, America and, to a lesser extent, Australia, women from all social strata began to campaign for the right to vote. Some socialists saw the demand for the women's vote as being unnecessarily divisive in the working class movement, while others such as German Clara Zetkin and Russian Alexandra Kollontai successfully fought for it to be accepted as a necessary part of a socialist program. Other socialists argued that it was more important to do away with property rights in respect to the vote than it was to campaign for the women's vote which, if successful in England, would by implication mean votes for women of property.There were other divisions within the English suffragette movement about the way the movement was autocratically run from the top and about the sort of radical tactics adopted. Sylvia Pankhurst split with her more famous mother and sister over such issues, arguing that the main emphasis should be on onnecting with and involving the mass of women, which meant also taking up the concerns of the sorely exploited working class women. She also argued that the suffragette movement should link itself with all other oppressed groups.In the United States in 1903, women trade unionists and liberal professional women who were also campaigning for women's voting rights set up the Women's Trade Union League to help organise women in paid work around their political and economic welfare. These were dismal and bitter years for many women with terrible working conditions and home lives riven by poverty and often violence.With Pressure mounting to support women's rights, socialist parties began to respond affirmatively. On March 8, 1908, Branch No. 3 of the New York City Social Democratic Women's Society sponsored a mass meeting on women's rights. Then, In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913. 1910 The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance. in 1911 as a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job. Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish
immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day. 1913-1914 as part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters. 1917,with 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere. Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. After 1917, and in honor of women's role in the Russian Revolution, International Women’s Day secured its place on March 8 on socialist calendars. The date became official in 1921, when Bulgarian women attending the International Women's Secretariat of the Communist International made a motion that the day be uniformly celebrated around the world on March 8.In the early days if its observance, International Women’s Day was celebrated as a socialist holiday honoring working women With the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s came a renewed interest in International Women’s Day. Feminists found it ready-made holiday for the celebration of women's lives and work and began promoting March 8 as such. These efforts resulted in revitalized holiday in countries where it had been traditionally celebrated and inspired new interest in a number of countries where the holiday had previously not been observed.In 1981, the National Women's History Project, in Santa Rosa, California spearheaded the drive for a National Women’s History Week, choosing the week of March 8 to show the
international connections among women. That year the U.S. Congress passed a resolution declaring National Women’s History Week. Due to popular demand, In 1987 the week was expanded to the entire month of March, National Women’s History Month.
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