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   International Women’s Day has retained much of the political focus and vitality that marked its inception over eighty years ago. The official holiday had its modest beginnings in 1908. That year in the U.S., the Socialist Party appointed a Women's National Committee to Campaign for the Suffrage. After meeting, this Committee recommended that the Socialist Party set aside a day every year to campaign to women's right to vote, a big step for socialists and one welcomed by women working for suffrage. (Socialists in the U.S. were not as rare in the early 1900s as they are today.)

     With pressure mounting to support women's rights, socialist parties began to respond affirmatively. On March 8, 1908, Branch No. 3 of the New York City Social Democratic Women's Society sponsored a mass meeting on women's rights. Then, in 1909, American socialist agreed to designate the last Sunday in February as National Women's Day; that year and the next, socialist women throughout the U.S. held mass meetings.

     In May 1910, at the national Congress of the Socialist Party, the Women's National Commission recommended that the Last Sunday in February be recognized as International Women’s Day. In Copenhagen, at the Conference of Socialist Women that August, Luise Zietz proposed internationalizing the American Woman's Day. The dynamic German socialist leader and fighter for women's rights, Clara Zetkin, seconded the proposal, and it passed unanimously among the women as it did a few days later in the general International Socialist Congress. As so International Women’s Day was born.

     The day had been named, but a date was never specified. Consequently, until 1917, International Women’s Day was celebrated on different days throughout the world. In the U.S., International Women’s Day continued to be celebrated in February. Internationally, the day provided an opportunity to highlight the movements for woman suffrage and peace.

     The International Women’s Day protest that changed the world occurred in Russia in 1917 (March 8 by Western reckoning, February 23 on the Gregorian calendar). Coming on the rise of long struggle and many strikes, International Women’s Day 1917 inspired thousands of Russian women to leave their homes and factories to protest the terrible shortages of food, the high prices, the world war, and the increased suffering they had a bitterly endured. The protest inspired the last push of a revolution. A general strike spread through Petrograd, and, within a week, Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.

     After 1917, and in honor of women's role in the Russian Revolution, International Women’s Day secured its place on March 8 on socialist calendars. The date became official in 1921, when Bulgarian women attending the International Women's Secretariat of the Communist International made a motion that the day be uniformly celebrated around the world ion March 8.

     In the early days if its observance, International Women’s Day was celebrated as a socialist holiday honoring working women With the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s came a renewed interest in International Women’s Day. Feminists found it ready-made holiday for the celebration of women's lives and work and began promoting March 8 as such. These efforts resulted in revitalized holiday in countries where it had been traditionally celebrated and inspired new interest in a number of countries where the holiday had previously not been observed.

     In 1981, the National Women's History Project, in Santa Rosa, California spearheaded the drive for a National Women’s History Week, choosing the week of March 8 to show the international connections among women. That year the U.S. Congress passed a resolution declaring National Women’s History Week. Due to popular demand, In 1987 the week was expanded to the entire month of March, National Women’s History Month. *

Credits & Links to IWD Sites:

Thanks toNational Women’s History Projectfor supplying the historical information on IWD.www.nwhp.org

*The above information was adapted from, “This River of Courage: Generations of Women's Resistance and Action”, by Pam McAllister (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991)

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