Women’s Independent Press

International Women’s Day (IWD) is the global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential.

International Women’s Day, observed on March 8th, was forged by women with a common cause to shatter the barriers to women’s full and equal participation in labor politics and within their own homes. Today it passes relatively unnoticed both in this country and elsewhere diluted by time and a complacency that obscures its extraordinary history. First observed in the United States as National Women’s Day on February 28, 1908, the idea of a special observance for women was proclaimed by the Socialist Party of America. Women, usually poor, had been working for decades, (centuries) in industries that exploited their labor and ruined their health while simultaneously denying them the right to vote. Women in the U.S. began uniting to claim their rights.

Similar oppressive conditions throughout Europe gave rise to the same sort of fervor. In 1911 the International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen initiated International Women’s Day. Six years later in St.Petersburg Russia, a victorious women’s strike for bread and peace contributed to Russia’s revolution and the Tsar’s abduction. It also won the right to vote for Russian women. The
date was March 8, 1917.

Since then, International Women’s Day has shown the struggles of women to earn basic rights and privileges throughout the world; the right to own property; the right to an eight hour workday for shop girls; the right to birth control; fair hiring, equal pay and maternity leave. The benefits of the ongoing struggle have paid off for some and eluded others. Success varies according to class, culture and country, but the struggle is as constant as sunrise. Today, war, terrorism, homelessness, AIDS, domestic violence, rape, and poverty disturb women’s peace of mind, but those issues do not always impel us to act in unison. It is not easy to find common cause in the face of such overwhelming, often conflicting crises. But, it is possible to resolve to recognize a day that embodies an extraordinary legacy of rights now shared by and long forged by ordinary women.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day today, please pause to remember all who have gone before and paved the way for rights that we now take for granted