Lindsey German
The origins of International Women’s Day lie over 100 years ago. Socialist women, meeting at a conference in Copenhagen in 1910, called for a special day to celebrate working women which would take place every year to raise awareness about women’s rights and particularly about the case for universal suffrage.
They took their inspiration from the US workers’ movement and especially from the garment workers’ strike in New York in 1909-10. This was known as the ‘Uprising of the 30,000’. Led by a young Jewish woman called Clara Lemlich, the strikers were immigrant women, often teenagers, two thirds Jewish immigrants who spoke Yiddish, and the rest mainly Italians. They battled long and hard through the winter facing arrest, hardship, sexual harassment and violence.
The garment workers were part of a growing wave of strikes in the US and in many parts of Europe. In Britain, the years 1910 to 1914 saw the biggest wave of strikes for decades as workers battled terrible conditions and tried to increase their share of income in a period of growing inequality. In Bermondsey, London, in the summer of 1911, women from jam, pickle and bottle factories formed a flying picket to bring others out on strike.
Women in most countries were denied the right to vote, as were some working class men. They demonstrated and protested in great numbers.
The coming together of these issues formed the basis for IWD. It was marked in 1911 in four countries and then spread. The date became fixed at March 8th.
As war threatened over Europe, the day became identified with peace campaigning. On or around 8 March 1914, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists.
War came however and with it the rupture in the socialist movement. But carnage at the front plus hardship and privation at home (with women bearing the brunt) fostered anti war opinion, which exploded in 1917. Women in Russia protested and struck for ‘Bread and Peace’ on the last Sunday in February (8 March on the Gregorian calendar). This turned out to be the first day of the Russian February Revolution. Four days later, the Tsar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.
By the time the women’s liberation movement rose in the late 1960s, the origins of IWD and those who inspired it had been largely forgotten. But the movements of the 60s and 70s began to recover their hidden history and once more it was celebrated through demonstrations and meetings. While women had political equality by then, in the sense that they could vote, they still lacked full legal, financial and social independence.
The demands of women’s liberation tried to address many of those wider aspects of oppression and, while they succeeded in raising awareness, they were not always able to overcome the structures of oppression.
Women have made major advances in the past century, since the first IWD was established. But women’s oppression is still structured into society at work and in the home. Women still have to fight for equal pay, equal work, free childcare, freedom from sexual violence and abuse.
This is why it is so important that women are much more a part of public life, much more likely to live independently, to be in unions and to take part in campaigns than they were 100 years ago. Whenever there are protests – from the gigantic Portuguese demos to the People’s Assembly – women are likely to be to the fore.
Subscribe in a reader
