International Woman's Day

INTERNATIONAL WOMAN’S DAY. By an accident of history, the first Woman’s Day celebration, organized by Socialists to advance woman’s rights, was held in the United States on February 23, 1909. In Germany, under the leadership of school teacher Clara Zetkin, plans for an international celebration matured. She had taken part in the Bastille Day, July 14, 1889 meeting when the Second International Working Man’s Association, an assembly of socialist parties, trade unions, and political clubs, was formed. The group planned the first May Day to be held in Europe in 1890. Among the goals of the Socialist International and the demands of the first May Day were control of female and child labor and the ten-hour day for all workers. Although Zetkin was powerless to ensure that the women’s component remained a focus of May Day gatherings, she never gave up her own consciousness of the connection between women’s rights and working-class emancipation.

Many socialist women who shared this view caucused on August 17, 1907 in Stuttgart, Germany, before the annual meeting of the Second International. Under the leadership of Zetkin and Louise Zietz, these women pledged to fight for equality in every aspect of life. They suggested an annual demonstration similar to May Day to emphasize the needs of working women and to gain the support of all socialists behind winning women’s rights. But those demands got delayed.

It was not until 1911 that European socialists held their first International Woman’s Day but, building on socialist history, they adopted March 18, the fortieth anniversary of the Paris Commune, as the date to commemorate. The US socialists, recognizing a good idea, had already held their first demonstrations and had fixed the last Sunday in February as the holiday’s annual date. Following the American model, Russian socialists, led by socialist feminist Alexandra Kollontai, began their International Woman’s Day celebrations on the last Sunday in February, 1913.

The importance of International Woman’s Day became evident when socialist internationalism otherwise collapsed at the onset of the World War I. In Germany and Austria, most of Zetkin’s comrades among the socialist deputies voted with liberals and conservatives to finance the war. But many socialist women from both sides retained their commitments to internationalism at a meeting in neutral Bern, Switzerland where French socialist, Louise Saumoneau, delivered a manifesto calling on women as wives and mothers to end the war. On her return to France, she was punished by being thrown into prison for two months.

Despite other brave acts, the most dramatic commemoration of International Woman’s Day took place in Russia in 1917. Domestic conditions and massacres of Russian men at the front led Russian women in Petrograd (the wartime name of Saint Petersburg) to take the occasion of International Woman’s Day (March 8 in the West, but February 23 on the Julian calendar used in Russia) to demand bread and peace. Against the wishes of the Russian Socialist Party and trade union leaders, women led marches from the breadlines to the factories. Half a million Russian workers, mostly in Petrograd, were already out on strike, providing the powder keg the women ignited. They launched the February Revolution in Russia. By March 12(February 27 on the Julian calendar), Czar Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate. The provisional government formed to rule until the election of a constituent assembly granted women the right to vote.

At Zetkin’s instigation, in 1922 Lenin established International Woman’s Day as a holiday in Communist countries and among many members of Communist Parties in other nations. But, on March 8, 1969, unnamed students at the University of California, Berkeley, may have been the first group of women in the United States to publicly celebrate that day. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, International Women’s Day has been mostly severed from its Left origins and become mainstream, an occasion for feminists around the world to express their advocacy of sexual, political, and social justice. The United Nations recognized International Women’s Day in 1977.

Côté, Renée. Le Journée internationale des femmes ou les vrais faits et les varies dates des mystérieuses origines de 8 mars…. Montréal: Les éditions du remue-ménage, 1984.

Kandel, Liliane, and Françoise Picq. “Le mythe des origines à propos de la journée internationale des femmes.” Revue d’en face (fall 1982).

Kaplan, Temma. “Commentary on the Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day.” Feminist Studies 11 (spring 1985).

Kaplan, Temma. “The Political Uses of Debates over the Origins of International Women’s Day.” Sufragism I Sufragistes: Reinvindicant la Ciutadania Politica de les Dones, edited by Josep Lluís Martin I Berbois I Susana Tavera. Barcelona: Col-lecció “REFERENTS,” 10, Memorial Democràtic, Departament de Justicia, Generalitat de Catalunya, 2019.

Kaplan, Temma. “Women and Communal Strikes in the Crisis of 1917–1922.” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 2d ed., edited by Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Neunsinger, Silke. “International Women’s Day: A Prism for Women’s Political Work,” Labour Movement Archives and Library. Stockholm (ARAB). Working Paper 3. 2010.