Why is International Women’s Day commemorated on March 8?

The origin of the date is closely linked to the labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

BY NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EDITORIAL STAFF

PUBLISHED MARCH 7, 2023, 17:31 GMT-3

Members of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) of New York pose with a banner in favor of the 8-hour workday.

PHOTOGRAPH BY KHEEL CENTER CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

March 8, International Women's Day, is a day that, for many, means honoring and giving gifts to women. However, this date, celebrated for over a century, has its origins far from festivities and gifts, and is marked by struggle, strong political and labor movements, strikes, marches, and persecutions.

This is explained in the article March 8: Conquests and Controversies (2001), written by sociologist Eva Alterman Blay and published in the journal Estudos Feministas. According to the author, an emeritus professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP), the proposal for International Women's Day originated from a German communist leader in 1910, which consolidated a struggle that began with labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, the date represents a global demand for equality of rights between women and men.

The relationship between labor movements and Women's DayAccording to Blay's article, who also created the first undergraduate and graduate courses on women at USP, the origin of the Women's Day dates back to the labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, primarily in the United States and Europe.

In a context of early industrialization of factories, workers (who were mostly women and children) held successive demonstrations to demand better working conditions and wages, shorter workdays, and the prohibition of child labor.

In the United States, for example, the labor movement was led by sectors of mining, railroads, weaving, and garment production, in an unstable industrial economy marked by crises. Many factories would close their doors during work hours, cover the clocks, and control trips to the bathrooms to demobilize the appeal of organizations and monitor the presence of workers.

In 1903, in this context, the Women's Trade Union League emerged, an organization of wage-earning women structured by socialist women, suffragists, and professional women in the United States. On the last Sunday of February 1908, the women of this union held a demonstration called "Women's Day", demanding the right to vote and better working conditions. The event was repeated the following year in Manhattan, where 2000 people gathered.

Women Scientists: Standing: Miss Nellie A. Brown; From left to right: Miss Lucia McCollock, Miss Mary K. Bryan, Miss Florence HedgesPHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON

March 8: Russian Revolution and International Women's Day

In the early 20th century, alongside American protests, women workers organized movements in various parts of the world, such as Berlin (Germany), Vienna (Austria), and St. Petersburg (Russia).

As reported by Blay's publication, a highlight was the participation of German Clara Zetkin, a member of the German Communist Party, in the Second International Socialist Women's Congress, which took place in 1910 in Copenhagen, Denmark. On that occasion, Zetkin proposed the creation of an International Women's Day without defining a specific date.

Subsequently, the date was celebrated for the first time on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. However, Blay points out other events that ultimately solidified the current date for International Women's Day.

One of these was the fire that devastated the Triangle Blouse Company in New York on March 25, 1911. At that time, the company employed 600 workers, mostly Jewish women and Italian immigrants, aged between 13 and 23 years.

On the day of the fire, some doors of the factory, which occupied the top three floors of a ten-story building, were closed to prevent workers from leaving to join the strike. 146 people died, of which 125 were women and 21 were men.

But the most significant moment, as considered by the specialist in her article, was a strike organized by Russian female workers in the textile industry, held with the support of metalworkers.

On March 8, 1917 (February 23 on the Julian calendar, still adopted by Russia at that time), about 90,000 women workers protested against poor working conditions, hunger, Russia's participation in World War I, and Tsar Nicholas II. The protest was known as "Bread and Peace" and was considered one of the early moments of the Bolshevik Revolution.

After these events, the article indicates, March 8 was consistently chosen as a commemorative day for women and became established in the following decades. However, International Women's Day was only officially born in 1975, when the United Nations (UN) declared the date and launched a "new stage of feminism."

Source and original article at: https://www.nationalgeographicla.com/historia/2023/03/por-que-se-conmemora-el-8-de-marzo-el-dia-de-la-mujer