International Women's Day

Women's demonstration for bread and peace – March 8, 1917, Petrograd, Russia

Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in January 1910

Soviet postage stamps

British poster for Women's Day March 1974

Poster for Women's Day March in London, 1975

The earliest Women's Day observance, called "National Woman's Day,"[9] was held on February 28, 1909, in New York City, organized by the Socialist Party of America[10] at the suggestion of activist Theresa Malkiel.[11] There have been claims that the day was commemorating a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, but researchers Kandel and Picq have described this as a myth created to "detach International Women's Day from its Soviet history in order to give it a more international origin".[12][13][14]

In August 1910, an International Socialist Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark.[15] Inspired in part by the American socialists, German delegates Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, Paula Thiede and others proposed the establishment of an annual "Women's Day", although no date was specified at that conference.[4][12][16] Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women.[17]

The following year on March 19, 1911, IWD (international women's day) was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.[10] In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations.[12] In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honoring the martyrs of the Paris Commune.[12] Women demanded that they be given the right to vote and to hold public office. They also protested against employment sex discrimination.[3]

The Americans continued to celebrate National Women's Day on the last Sunday in February.[12]

Female members of the Australian Builders Labourers Federation march on International Women's Day 1975 in Sydney.

In 1913 Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Saturday in February (by the Julian calendar then used in Russia).[18]

In 1914, International Women's Day was held on March 8 in Germany, possibly because that day was a Sunday, and now it is always held on March 8 in all countries.[18] The 1914 observance of the Day in Germany was dedicated to women's right to vote, which German women did not win until 1918.[18][19]

In London, there was a march from Bow to Trafalgar Square in support of women's suffrage on March 8, 1914. Activist Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.[20]

On March 8, 1917, on the Gregorian calendar, in the capital of the Russian Empire, Petrograd, women textile workers began a demonstration, covering the whole city. This marked the beginning of the February Revolution, which alongside the October Revolution made up the Russian Revolution.[3][21] Women in Saint Petersburg went on strike that day for "Bread and Peace" – demanding the end of World War I, an end to Russian food shortages, and the end of czarism.[18] Revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky wrote, "23 February (8th March) was International Woman's Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this 'Women's Day' would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without a date. But in the morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for the support of the strike… which led to mass strike... all went out into the streets."[18] Seven days later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.[10]

Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir Lenin made it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, but it was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965, by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day was declared a non-working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But still, women's day must be celebrated as are other holidays."

After its official adoption in Soviet Russia following the Revolution in 1917, the holiday was predominantly celebrated in communist countries and by the communist movement worldwide. Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri led a women's march in Madrid in 1936 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War.[12]

It was commemorated by the communists in China from 1922.[12] In 1927, in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, there was a march of 25,000 women and male supporters, including representatives of the Kuomintang, the YWCA, and labor organizations.[22] After the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the State Council proclaimed on December 23 that March 8 would be made an official holiday with women in China given a half-day off.[23]

The day remained predominantly a communist holiday until about 1967 when it was taken up by second-wave feminists.[12] The day re-emerged as a day of activism, and is sometimes known in Europe as the "Women's International Day of Struggle". In the 1970s and 1980s, women's groups were joined by leftists and labor organizations in calling for equal pay, equal economic opportunity, equal legal rights, reproductive rights, subsidized child care, and the prevention of violence against women.[24][25]

The United Nations began celebrating International Women's Day in the International Women's Year, 1975. In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for women's rights and world peace.[26]

International Women's Day sparked violence in Tehran, Iran on March 4, 2007, when police beat hundreds of men and women who were planning a rally. (A previous rally for the occasion was held in Tehran in 2003.)[27] Police arrested dozens of women and some were released after several days of solitary confinement and interrogation.[28] Shadi Sadr, Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh and several more community activists were released on March 19, 2007, ending a fifteen-day hunger strike.[29]

In the twenty–first century, in the West, the day was increasingly sponsored by major corporations and used to promote feel–good messages, rather than radical social reforms.[30] In 2009, the British marketing firm, Aurora Ventures, set up a "International Women's Day" website with corporate sponsorship.[31][32] The website began to promote hashtags as themes for the day, which became used internationally.[33] The day was commemorated by business breakfasts and social media communications that were reminiscent of Mother's Day greetings.[30][24]

  Official holiday

  Holiday for women

  Non-official holiday

Soviet poster: "8th of March is the day of rebellion of the working women against kitchen slavery. Down with the oppression and narrow-mindedness of household work!"

The day is an official holiday in Afghanistan,[55] Angola, Armenia,[56] Azerbaijan,[57][58] Belarus,[59] Burkina Faso,[60] Cambodia,[61] China (for women only),[62] Cuba,[63] Georgia,[64] Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan,[65] Kyrgyzstan,[66] Laos,[67] Madagascar (for women only),[68] Moldova,[69] Mongolia,[70] Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine,[71] Uzbekistan,[72] Vietnam,[73] and Zambia.[74]

In some countries, such as Cameroon,[75] Croatia,[76] Romania,[77] Bosnia and Herzegovina,[78] Bulgaria[79] and Chile,[80] the day is not a public holiday, but is widely observed nonetheless. On this day it is customary for men to give the women in their lives – friends, mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, colleagues, etc. – flowers and small gifts (although to many this seems cloyingly old-fashioned and rather to miss the point). In some countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) it is also observed as an equivalent of Mother's Day, where children also give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.[77] In Russia, the day has lost all political context through the time, becoming simply a day to honor women and feminine beauty.[81]

In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, huge Soviet-style celebrations were held annually. After the fall of Communism, the holiday, generally considered to be one of the major symbols of the old regime, fell into obscurity. International Women's Day was re-established as an official "important day" by the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2004[82] on the proposal of the Social Democrats and Communists. This has provoked some controversy as a large part of the public as well as the political right see the holiday as a relic of the nation's Communist past.[82]

Yellow mimosa is the symbol of IWD in Italy.

The day is widely celebrated in France, as Journée internationale des femmes. To celebrate the day in Italy, men give yellow mimosas to women.[83][84] Communist politician Teresa Mattei chose the mimosa in 1946 as the symbol of IWD in Italy because she felt that the French symbols of the day, violets and lily-of-the-valley, were too scarce and expensive to be used effectively in Italy.[85]

In the United States, actress and human rights activist Beata Pozniak worked with the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California to lobby members of the US Congress to propose official recognition of the holiday. In February 1994, by Beata Pozniak suggestion, the H. J. Res. 316 was introduced by Rep. Maxine Waters, along with 79 cosponsors, in an attempt to officially recognize March 8 of that year as International Women's Day. The bill was subsequently referred to, and remained in, the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. No vote of either house of Congress was achieved on this piece of legislation.[86]

As of 2019, International Women's Day will also be celebrated as a public holiday in the federal state of Berlin, Germany[87]

In Pakistan, the Aurat March has challenged misogyny since 2018.[88]

• "The socialist roots of International Women's Day". Al Jazeera America. March 7, 2015
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg (2012). "From West to East: International Women's Day, the First Decade". Aspasia. 6: 1–24. doi:10.3167/asp.2012.060102.

Wikispore has a related page: Event:International Women's Day 2020

• UN Women, International Women's Day page
• Uzbekistan, International Women's Day
• Record of the International Women's Day Celebration Rally in Yellow Springs, Ohio (1973) from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting