Celebrating women who got, and still get, things done - International Women’s Day.

Today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day. I have to confess to knowing little about International Women’s Day, indeed to being quite unaware if its existence until I came across a small demonstration, a march of women, in the centre of Vigo in 2009, when we were living in that city. Maybe the various groups I was involved with in my working days had too many other things going on, too many other causes to work on, and International Women’s Day just went unnoticed.

Anyway, its origins can be dated back to the universal female suffrage movement and workers’ organisations in Europe and North America during the early 20th century. 

On the 28th of February 1909 a “Women’s Day” was organised in New York City by the Socialist Party of America. (I wonder how that would go down in modern USA.) There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on 8 March 1857, but researchers have said that this was a myth. In solidarity with the 1909 “Women’s Day” in New York, Clara Zeltkin, communist activist and politician, proposed the celebration of a “Working Women’s Day at the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen. It was approved but with no set date.

Here are Clara Zeltkin (left) and Rosa Luxemburg (right) in January 1910.

On the 8th of March 1917 women textile workers in Saint Petersburg, then known as Petrograd, staged a demonstration demanding “Bread and Peace”, an end to World War I, an end to food shortages, and an end to Tsarism. Their movement spread and thus women had an important role in starting the Russian Revolution.  In 1922 Lenin declared 8 March as International Women's Day in 1922 to honour the women's role in the Russian Revolution. After that it was celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. And then in 1977 International Women’s Day was promoted by the United Nations. And here we are in the 21st century, remembering and, we hope, celebrating women and women’s rights but still fighting full equality and freedom from aggression and oppression of one kind and another. 

There’s been quite a lot of stuff on social media celebrating the women of Greenham Common - women opposing nuclear weapons and war. The men in charge of things seem to have lost touch with that opposition to war but even claim to be fighting “with God on their side”. 

Good grief!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!