If you don’t know the history behind March 8th — International Women’s Day, sit down to read and learn the real importance of this day. It goes beyond flowers and chocolates and signifies a continuous pursuit of equal political rights and advancements in the workplace.
A Global Origin for the Date
The idea of creating International Women’s Day arose between the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States and Europe, in the context of feminist struggles for better living and working conditions, and for the right to vote. On August 26, 1910, during the Second International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, German socialist leader Clara Zetkin proposed the institution of an annual celebration of the struggles for women’s labor rights, though without specifying a particular date.
International Women’s Day celebrations began in 1909 on various days in February and March, depending on the country. The first celebration took place on February 28, 1909, in the United States, followed by demonstrations and marches in other European countries in the following years, usually during the week of Paris Commune celebrations at the end of March. The demonstrations united the socialist movement, which fought for equal economic, social, and labor rights, with the suffrage movement, which fought for equal political rights.
In early 1917, in Russia, there were demonstrations by female workers for better living and working conditions and against Tsarist Russia’s entry into World War I. The protests were brutally suppressed, precipitating the start of the 1917 Revolution. The date of the main demonstration, March 8, 1917 (February 23 in the Julian calendar), was established as International Women’s Day by the international socialist movement.
In the 1970s, the year 1975 was designated by the UN as International Women’s Year, and March 8 was adopted as International Women’s Day by the United Nations. The aim was to commemorate the social, political, and economic achievements of women, regardless of national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic, or political divisions.
There is no absolute agreement on the origin of International Women’s Day due to the numerous manifestations of women’s struggles worldwide. US socialist professor and philosopher Angela Davis cites an event that took place in 1908 in which“the socialist women of New York’s Lower East Side organized a mass demonstration in support of equal suffrage, the anniversary of which [do Dia da Mulher seria] was celebrated“. However, the goal of the demonstrations was still scattered struggles for various specific rights, and in this case, it was women’s right to vote in the United States.
One of the first celebrations of Women’s Day was on February 28, 1909 in the United States, on the initiative of the Socialist Party of America, in memory of a strike that had taken place the previous year, which mobilized women workers in the New York garment industry against poor working conditions.
In 1910, the first international women’s conference took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, led by the Socialist International, when the proposal put forward by the German socialist Clara Zetkin to establish an International Women’s Day was approved, although no date was specified. The following year, an International Women’s Day celebration was observed on March 19 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, where over a million men and women participated in demonstrations demanding the right to vote and be elected, to work, to receive vocational education, and also the end of discrimination in the workplace.
Controversies about the Origins
For many years, March 8 was associated with large factory fires in the early 20th century, in which dozens of female workers perished. The most well-known of these incidents is the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which indeed occurred on March 25, 1911, at 5 PM, killing 146 workers: 125 women and 21 men. The factory employed 600 people, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged between 13 and 23. One of the consequences of the tragedy was the strengthening of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). Academic Eva Blay considers it “very likely that the sacrifice of the Triangle workers has been incorporated into the collective imagination of the women’s struggle,” but emphasizes that “the process of establishing an International Women’s Day had already been developed by American and European socialists some time before and was ratified with Clara Zetkin’s proposal.”
Similarly, Spanish historian Ana Isabel Álvarez González explains in her book “The Origins and Celebration of International Women’s Day” (published in 2010 in Brazil by Expressão Popular) that the origin of the date simultaneously passes through the United States and Soviet Russia. The author, who sought primary sources in both American and Spanish historiography, confirms that the Triangle fire did indeed occur on March 25, 1911, not on the 8th, noting that March 8, 1911, was a Sunday, an unlikely date for a strike. Although such fires were not uncommon at the time, González highlights that the fire was very significant for the American labor movement and the feminist movement. But, by itself, the incident does not explain the origin of International Women’s Day.
In addition to the Triangle factory fire, which did happen, there is another similar story that seems to be a mere invention. In 1955, Liliane Kandel and Françoise Picq wrote in an article L’Humanitéabout the myth that the date originated from the celebration of the struggle and strike of textile workers in New York in 1857 — who were allegedly harshly repressed by the police or killed in an arson attack on the factory, according to different versions of the myth. There is no evidence that this happened and, according to the authors, such versions seem to have been created by the Union des Femmes Françaises,which aimed to convert the celebration of Women’s Day into a sort of Mother’s Day, entirely devoid of any sense of women’s struggle, as it had become in the USSR and Soviet bloc countries.
Recovery of the Date
In 2008, the UN launched the campaign “Women Make the News,” aimed at promoting gender equality in global media. Nowadays, however, it is considered that the celebration of International Women’s Day has had its original meaning partially diluted, often taking on a festive and commercial character, such as the habit of employers distributing red roses or small gifts among their female employees—an action that does not evoke the spirit of the Russian demonstrators of March 8, 1917.
Source: Wikipedia
