‘Women Hold Up Half the Sky’

‘Women’s Day’ is a link in the long, solid chain of the women’s proletarian movement.’ Alexndra Kollontai, ‘Women’s Day’, 1913.

International Working Women’s Day is a recognition of collective global activism and celebration that belongs to all who champion the cause of women’s equality through ages. Celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political advancement of women, the day also marks a call to action for accelerating the continued fight for equality.

Marked annually on March 8, the day was originally known as International Working Women’s Day. It remains a call for change that was rooted in the struggle for social, political, and economic rights of working class women.

It began in New York City on March 8, 1857, when female textile workers marched in protest against unfair working conditions and unequal rights for women. It was one of the first organized strikes by working women, during which they called for a shorter work-day and decent wages.

There were great unrest and critical debate among women. Women’s oppression and inequality were spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women workers in the needle trades marched through New York City’s Lower East Side to protest child labour and working conditions. They demanded women’s suffrage, shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

The first Woman’s Day in New York was observed on February 28, 1909 in the wake of the Uprising of 20,000 strike of mostly young, immigrant women garment workers. ‘The Uprising of 20,000’ strike by New York women’s shirtwaist makers lasted 14 weeks comprised of 20,000 workers. Represented by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the impact of this strike led to better wages, shorter hours, and the right to collectively bargain. Thousands flocked to meetings throughout the city to hear featured addresses by prominent suffragists. Many speakers touched on the sexual, industrial, and political exploitation faced by working women, and their desire for equal compensation to that of men. In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United States. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

The success of the first Women’s Day inspired delegates of the second International Conference of Working Women to adopt it at their 1910 meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. Clara Zetkin, Leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, proposed an International Women’s Day, to be held on the same day across the world, to fight for their demands. That day was eventually determined to be March 8. Consisting of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, and working women’s clubs, the conference body unanimously agreed, and thus International Working Women’s Day was born.

It was celebrated in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in 1911, and became an important day for pacifist protests during World War I.

On March 25, 1911 a tragedy struck in New York City, when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire caused the deaths of over 100 immigrant women. This disaster, which was the result of corporate greed, brought attention to unsafe working conditions and led to significant labour legislation to improved safety standards in the U.S.

“Bread & Roses” strike took place between January and March 1912 in Lawrence. Immigrant textile workers fought against a cut in work hours and wages. The collective action saw 23,000 women, men, and children of various nationalities come together for a common cause.

The article ‘Women’s Day’ by Alexandra Kollontai was published in the newspaper Pravda one week before the first-ever celebration in Russia of the Day of International Solidarity among the Female Proletariat on 23 February (8 March, Gregorian calendar), 1913. In St. Petersburg, this day was marked by a call for a campaign against women workers’ lack of economic and political rights, for the unity of the working class, and for the awakening of self-consciousness among women workers.

On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on February 23, the last Sunday in February.

In 1914, further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women’s solidarity. For example, in London in the United Kingdom there was a march from Bow to Trafalgar Square in support of women’s suffrage on March 8, 1914. Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested in front of Charing Cross station on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square.

On the last Sunday of February 1917, Russian women began a strike for ‘Bread and Peace’ in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers in World War 1. The women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate. The striking women workers sparked the February Revolution on International Women’s Day in 1917. Bolshevik leaders wanted to wait until Workers’ Day on May 1 to launch the revolution, but women took to the street to demand bread and an end to the war, and their protests forced the abdication of the czar. The provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The women’s strike commenced on Sunday February 23 on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.

Following discussions, International Women’s Day was agreed to be marked annually on March 8 that translated in the widely adopted Gregorian calendar from February 23 – and this day has remained the global date for International Women’s Day ever since.

Lenin declared Women’s Day an official Soviet holiday after the October revolution, at the urging of his commissar of social welfare, Alexandra Kollontai. Later, it spread throughout the socialist world, to places like China and Cuba, as an important day to recognize the contributions women have made to both family and the economy.

The 19th amendment to the U.S Constitution, which granted women the right to vote, was ratified on August 18, 1920. The Cold War anti-communism sentiments against celebration of anything associated with a socialist past in USA explains why America has been late to embrace International Women’s Day. Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, tried to introduce legislation in 1994 to make International Women’s Day a holiday, but it never made it out of committee.

International Women’s Day was marked for the first time by the United Nations in 1975.

The long history of women’s struggle for equality is integrally and intricately connected with the class struggle. Yet, the movement for women’s rights cuts across different echelons of society, thus going beyond the binary of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. Irrespective of class, caste, creed and religion, the subordination of women is universal. Although the gender exploitation is intertwined with the class exploitation, gender hierarchy has an independent and parallel existence in a class society. Friedrich Engels discussed in ‘The origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ how women were subjugated and how the institution of family controlled the female sexuality since the advent of private property leading to the formation of the state. Hence, it is essential to fight against the class society in order to fight against the exploitation of women but it is equally important to carry on the struggle for women’s emancipation side by side with the class struggle. The abolition of class society will not naturally or automatically lead to the abolition of gender exploitation because gender hierarchy cuts across different classes. Alexandra Kollontai wrote “The workers did not immediately appreciate that in this world of lack of rights and exploitation, the woman is oppressed not only as a seller of her labour, but also as a mother, as a woman…” . Women bear the brunt of both production and reproduction.

The thought on women’s emancipation began long before Marx and Engels presented the insightful analysis of the subjugation of women. A few years after the famous ‘Declaration of the rights of Man and Citizen’ in 1789, which is considered the preamble to the new constitution of the revolutionary France, Mary Wollstonecraft, a British enlightenment thinker, published a powerful treatise in 1792- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She argued, with both passion and wit, that the education women received was designed to make them merely glittering ornaments in the lives of men—an undignified way to spend one’s life and not conducive to developing critical thinking skills. According to Wollstonecraft, this inadequate education impeded women’s intellectual development, trapped them in limited societal roles.

Following Rousseau’s famous quote ’Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains’, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949 – ‘One is not born but becomes a woman’, in ‘The Second Sex’, often considered as the bible of the feminist historiography. Simone De Beauvoir’s primary hypothesis is that men fundamentally oppress women by characterizing them, on every level, as the ‘Other’, defined exclusively in opposition to men. Man occupies the role of the self, or subject; woman is the object, the other. Man is essential, absolute, and transcendent. Woman is inessential, incomplete, and mutilated. This distinction is the basis of gender relations in the society.

Sheila Rowbotham showed in her works (‘Threads through time: Writings on History and Autobiography, and Politics’, ‘Women, Resistance, Revolution : A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World’) how the question of women’s emancipation always problemtised any social movement.

Both Marxist and feminist historiography challenge the hegemonic power structure, which establishes the socioeconomic hierarchy through domination of upper classes and the patriarchal control over women. Focussing on the process of reproduction the feminist historiography questions the dominant power structure of heterosexuality. The liberating idea of relationship and love without conforming to the dominant structure of heterosexuality negates the essentialisation of reproduction, the key factor, which marks women as ‘weaker sex’. The feminist scholarship has transformed the whole idea of Women’s Day. The International Working Women’s Day acknowledges the struggle against the bastion of patriarchy, which perpetuates the class society.

Today is a clarion call to all to fight against hierarchy and exploitation of patriarchal class-society.

Break the chains, unleash the fury of women and trans queer as a mighty force for the revolution.