Why is March 8 commemorated?

Commemorate the International Women’s Day, formalized by the United Nations in 1975.

This special day, in the words of the UN, “refers to ordinary women as architects of history and has its roots in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal basis with women. men”.

Although it has become a global journey for equality, many people still wonder Which one is His origin and what led March 8 to obtain this international recognition.

To explain it, we have to look back: to the protests which led to a whole revolution. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

International Women’s Day has its roots in the labor movement in the middle of the 19th century, at a time of great expansion and upheaval in the industrialized world, when women began to raise their voices more and more.

The life of women in the West at this time was a continuous story. limitations: neither the right to vote, nor to manage their own account, nor of training and with a life expectancy much lower than that of men due to childbirth and mistreatment.

An example of this growing concern and debate is found among women in 1848, when the Americans Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott bring together hundreds of people in the first national convention for women’s rights in the United States.

Both argued that “all men and women are created equal” and demanded civil, social, political and religious rights for the group.

Then they were ridiculed, especially when it came to women’s suffrage, but they sowed a seed that grew in the following years, the UN said in a special on women’s activism over the years.

In this context, historians agree to emphasize as a direct prelude to International Women’s Day the women’s march which took place in New York in 1908, when some 15,000 people demonstrated to demand less working hours, better wages and the right to vote.

A year after that, the American Socialist Party declares National Women’s Day, first celebrated in the United States on February 28.

In this context, a woman who would go down in history as a promoter of International Women’s Day burst onto the scene: German Communist Clara Zetkin.

Zetkin suggested the idea of ​​commemorating a World Women’s Day in 1910 at the International Conference of Women Workers in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Her proposal was heard by a hundred women from 17 countries and unanimously approved, but without agreeing on a precise date.

A year later, the first International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 19, 1911, bringing together more than a million people in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland.

In addition to the right to vote and to exercise public functions, the right to work for women, to vocational training and to non-discrimination in employment was then claimed.

However, in its early days, “commemoration (too) serves as a protest against WWI“recalls the UN.

And there is one of the reasons why the date of March 8 was chosen.

The On March 8, 1857, thousands of textile workers took to the streets of New York with the slogan “Bread and roses” to protest against the miserable working conditions and demand a reduction of hours and the end of child labor.

It was one of the first demonstrations to fight for their rights. Different movements, events and mobilizations took place from this episode which served as a reference to set the date for International Women’s Day on March 8.

Years later, the February 28, 1909, in New York and Chicago, an act took place which they named after Women’s day, organized by prominent socialist women such as Corinne Brown and Gertrude Breslau-Hunt.

Two years after this event and one after the International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York. This March 25, 1911 146 women died and 71 others were injured. The severity of the disaster led to a change in labor laws in the United States.

There are different versions of why he was specifically chosen on March 8.

But the UN underlines the importance of the events which took place in Russia, in the midst of the protests against the Great War.

“As part of the movements in for peace on the eve of World War I, Russian women celebrated their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Across the rest of Europe, women held rallies around March 8 of the year next to demonstrate for the war or to show solidarity with other women, ”recalls the organization.

In 1917, and in reaction to the millions of Russian soldiers killed, the women of this country took to the streets on the last Sunday in February, under the slogan “bread and peace”.

It is a strike that lasts several days and ends up forcing the Tsar to leave.

“The steelworkers joined in their protest (of the women) even though the Bolsheviks considered the mobilization of women to be hasty. On February 25, two days after the start of the women’s uprising on International Women’s Day, the Tsar ordered (…) to shoot if necessary to end the women’s revolution, ”explains the American historian Temma Kaplan, in “The Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day” (“The Socialist Origins International Women’s Day”).

In 1945, the United Nations was created to promote international cooperation after the devastation of World War II, and the Charter of this multilateral organization became the first international agreement to enshrine gender equality.

Three decades later, in 1975, the UN established and celebrated International Women’s Day for the first time on March 8 coinciding with International Women’s Year.

The Tsar’s decision failed and in its place began “the February Revolution”, says Kaplan, which ended with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March.

The success of Russian women was consecrated soon after: the provisional government formed after the withdrawal of the Tsar the recognized the right to vote.

The date on which this Russian women’s strike began on the Julian calendar, then a reference in Russia, was Sunday, February 23. That same day in the Gregorian calendar was March 8, and this is the date it is celebrated now.