Re: [Marxism] A History of International Women's Day

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 3/8/2009 1:39:51 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
absynthe@xxxxxxxxx writes:

The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United  States
following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America,  something
the article missed.

Reply

Thanks. 
 
WL. 
 
 
 
The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States  
following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Among other relevant 
 
historic events, it came to commemorate the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory  
fire. 
The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at  the 
turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic  
expansion that led to protests over working conditions. By urban legend,[1][2]  
women from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on 8 March  
1857 in New York City.[3] The garment workers were protesting against very poor 
 working conditions and low wages. The protesters were attacked and dispersed 
by  police. These women established their first labor union in the same month 
two  years later.
 
More protests followed on 8 March in subsequent years, most notably in 1908  
when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, 
better  pay and voting rights[citation needed]. In 1910 the first international 
women's  conference was held in Copenhagen (in the labour-movement building 
located at  Jagtvej 69, which until recently housed Ungdomshuset) by the Second 
 
International and an 'International Women's Day' was established, which was  
submitted by the important German Socialist Clara Zetkin, although no date was  
specified.[4] The following year, 1911, IWD was marked by over a million people 
 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, on March 19.[5] However, soon  
thereafter, on March 25, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York 
City  killed over 140 garment workers. A lack of safety measures was blamed for 
the  high death toll. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across 
Europe  held peace rallies on 8 March 1913. In the West, International Women's 
Day 
was  commemorated during the 1910s and 1920s, but dwindled. It was revived by 
the  rise of feminism in the 1960s.
 
Demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Russia proved to be the  
first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
 
Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra  Kollontai 
persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday in the Soviet Union,  and it 
was established, but was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965 by the  
decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day 
was  
declared as a non working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding  
merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their  
Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness 
at  the front and in the rear, and also marking the big contribution of women 
to  strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace. But 
still,  women's day must be celebrated as are other holidays."
 
full: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day) 
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