A Day For the Little Ladies (Updated 3/28/18)

Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst in action circa 1914.
(All images: click to enlarge.)

"After the Socialist Party of America organised a Women's Day on February 28, 1909 in New York, the 1910 International Socialist Woman's Conference suggested a Women's Day be held annually. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8 became a national holiday there. The day was then predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted in 1975 by the United Nations.

In August 1910, an International Socialist Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz proposed the establishment of an annual Women's Day and was seconded by fellow socialist and later communist leader Clara Zetkin, supported by Käte Duncker, although no date was specified at that conference. Delegates (100 women from 17 countries) agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women. The following year on March 19, 1911, IWD was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire alone, there were 300 demonstrations. In Vienna, women paraded on the Ringstrasse and carried banners honouring the martyrs of the Paris Commune."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for International Women's Day. Images: uppermost, Sylvia Pankhurst, activist and artist, and one of three daughters belonging to British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst (her portrait - inset left - was painted by daughter Sylvia. Another example of S.P.'s artwork appears later in the post.) For more information about the Paris Commune,* see the foot-note section.

Regarding the German poster (inset right, above, and found in the Wiki article) - which, by the way, was banned in Germany at the time - reads: "Give Us Women's Suffrage. Women's Day, March 8, 1914. Until now, prejudice and reactionary attitudes have denied full civic rights to women, who as, mothers, and citizens wholly fulfill their duty, who must pay their taxes to the state as well as the municipality. Fighting for this natural human right must be the firm, unwavering intention of every woman, every female worker. In this, no pause for rest, no respite is allowed. Come all, you women and girls, to the 9th public women's assembly on Sunday, March 8, 1914, at 3 pm."

"The most dramatic celebration of International Woman's Day was in 1917 in Russia. Led by feminist Alexandra Kollontai. Central to their protest in 1917 were complaints over deteriorating living conditions. Rents had more than doubled in St. Petersburg, renamed Petrograd, between 1905 and 1915. Food prices, particularly the cost of fIour and bread, rose between 80 and 120 percent in most European cities. The price per pound of rye bread, the staple of working-class diets in Petrograd, rose from three kopeks in 1913 to eighteen kopeks in 1916. Even soap rose 245 percent in 1917 Petrograd. Merchants speculated in grain, fuel, and meat, while factories closed for lack of energy to run the plants. Female and male wage earners who faced layoffs often went on strike. Between January and February 1917, more than half a million Russian workers, mostly in Petrograd, went out. Taking the occasion of International Woman's Day March 8th in the West, but February 23d on the Gregorian calendar), women led a demonstration from the factories and the breadlines."

Soviet Women's Day poster.

- An excerpt from On the Socialist Origins of International Woman's Day (.pdf) by Temma Kaplan (1985). Inset right (above) is a photo of Russian feminist Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952). It was the demonstrations and protests which occurred on and around March 8th, 1917, that signaled the beginning of the Russian Revolution! In the Wiki entry for the February Revolution we find:

"Women, in particular, were passionate in showing their dissatisfaction with the implemented rationing system, and the female workers marched to nearby factories to recruit over 50,000 workers for strike. Both men and women flooded the streets of Petrograd, demanding an end to Russian food shortages, the end of World War I  and the end of autocracy. By the following day 24 February O.S. (March 9 N.S), nearly 200,000 protesters filled the streets, demanding the replacement of the Tsar with a more progressive political leader."

"Fast forward to March 8, 1908: 15,000 women marched in New York City for shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to child labor. The slogan “Bread and Roses” emerged, with bread symbolizing economic security and roses for better living standards.

Many of those who protested for working rights were young immigrants from Europe who came to the United States seeking better opportunities, says Carol Rosenblatt of the Coalition of Labor Union Women... “They had a much different expectation than when they got here. They were exploited.”

That May 1908, the Socialist Party of America declared that the last Sunday in February would be National Women’s Day." 

- Photo (inset right) and text borrowed from the 2013 article: Where Did International Women’s Day Come From? by Stephanie Solis. The photograph depicts workers at the Reliance Waist Company and is credited to the Kheel Center, Cornell University.

"Due to its ties with socialism and communism, perhaps it’s not surprising that International Women’s Day didn’t catch on here in the United States the way it did in other countries. Recently, however, international digital marketing campaigns have brought the holiday (in its less-political form) further into American culture, complete with corporate support from PepsiCo and other brands. In 2017, the official theme for International Women’s Day is #BeBoldforChange, a campaign that calls on its supporters “to help forge a better working world—a more gender inclusive world.”

- From the 2017 article The Surprising History of International Women’s Day via the History channel site. Regarding Women's Day 2018, well, the hashtag is: How will you continue to #PressforProgress? Inset left: McDonald's gives on a nod to IWD.

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(Yes, it's finally Spring! And, yes, I'm finally back... after a weird, chaotic, confusing month. The operative question is: will I be spared a fourth "saison en enfer"? We shall see.

Meanwhile, as we know, International Women's Day fell on March 8th... which, of course, was weeks ago. But, believe it or not, I  began (diligently) constructing this post on that day. Alas, it had a lot of competition... I was already working on three others!

So, an entire month went by with utter silence on my part. Sorry, comrades. But, if it means anything, this post - for what it's worth - is finally presentable and, fingers crossed, 2 more should follow it fairly closely.)

Honestly, I generally ignored International Woman's Day in the past, figuring it was mostly a superficial, patronizing token of a holiday (as in, "here's a day for the little ladies" kind of thing). But, as it turns out, I was wrong. The day has a rich political history, and as we can see by the German poster from 1932 (inset right) - and the other posters featured above and below the jump - often a militant one!