Over the years, International Women's Day (IWD) has taken
to the streets, sparked off a revolution, met cosily at
luncheons and concerts, rubbed shoulders with Premiers,
Prime Ministers and Mayors, demonstrated at the doors
of newspapers and welfare institutions, occupied empty
houses intent on gaining shelter for homeless women and
has ushered in reform legislation.
The
history of IWD dates back to 1910 internationally and,
in Australia, to 1928. But socialist women in the United
States organised the first national Women's Day in 1908
and helped to inspire the international event.
The
day has been variously seen as a time for asserting women's
political and social rights, for reviewing the progress
that women have made, or as a day for celebration. In
keeping with its early radical traditions, Lena Lewis,
U S. socialist, declared in 1910 that it was not a time
for celebrating anything, but rather a day for anticipating
all the struggles to come when" we may eventually
and forever stamp out the last vestige of male egotism
and his desire to dominate over women"
Origins
Born
at a time of great social turbulence and crisis, IWD inherited
a tradition of protest and political activism. In the
years before 1910, from the turn of the 20th century,
women in industrially developing countries were entering
paid work in some numbers. Their jobs were sex segregated,
mainly in textiles, manufacturing and domestic services
where conditions were wretched and wages worse than depressed.
Trade unions were developing and industrial disputes broke
out, including among sections of non-unionised women workers.
In Europe, the flames of revolution were being kindled.
Many
of the changes taking place in women's lives pushed against
the political restrictions surrounding them. Throughout
Europe, Britain, America and, to a lesser extent, Australia,
women from all social strata began to campaign for the
right to vote. There were many different perspective's
on why this issue was important and how to achieve it.
I mention here only a few of these differences.
Some
socialists saw the demand for the women's vote as being
unnecessarily divisive in the working class movement,
while others such as German Clara Zetkin and Russian Alexandra
Kollontai successfully fought for it to be accepted as
a necessary part of a socialist program. Other socialists
argued that it was more important to do away with property
rights in respect to the vote than it was to campaign
for the women's vote which, if successful in England,
would by implication mean votes for women of property.
There
were other divisions within the English suffragette movement
about the way the movement was autocratically run from
the top and about the sort of radical tactics adopted.
Sylvia Pankhurst split with her more famous mother and
sister over such issues, arguing that the main emphasis
should be on connecting with and involving the mass of
women, which meant also taking up the concerns of the
sorely exploited working class women. She also argued
that the suffragette movement should link itself with
all other oppressed groups.
In
the United States in 1903, women trade unionists and liberal
professional women who were also campaigning for women's
voting rights set up the Women's Trade Union League to
help organise women in paid work around their political
and economic welfare. These were dismal and bitter years
for many women with terrible working conditions and home
lives riven by poverty and often violence.
In
1908, on the last Sunday in February, socialist women
in the United States initiated the first Women's Day when
large demonstrations took place calling for the vote and
the political and economic rights of women. The following
year, 2,000 people attended a Women's Day rally in Manhattan.
In
that year, 1909, women garment workers staged a general
strike. 20-30,000 shirtwaist makers struck for 13 cold,
winter weeks for better pay and working conditions. The
Women's Trade Union League provided bail money for arrested
strikers and large sums for strike funds.
In
1910 Women's Day was taken up by socialists and feminists
throughout the country. Later that year delegates went
to the second International Conference of Socialist Women
in Copenhagen with the intention of proposing that Women's
Day become an international event. The notion of international
solidarity between the exploited workers of the world
had long been established as a socialist principle, though
largely an unrealised one. The idea of women organising
politically as women was much more controversial within
the socialist movement. At that time, however, the German
Socialist Party had a strong influence on the international
socialist movement and that party had many advocates for
the rights of women, including leaders such as Clara Zetkin
Inspired
by the actions of US women workers and their socialist
sisters, Clara Zetkin ;had already framed a proposal to
put to the conference of socialist women that women throughout
the world should focus on a particular day each year to
press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women
from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties,
working women's clubs, and including the first three women
elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion
with unanimous approval and International Women's Day
was the result.
That
conference also reasserted the importance of women's right
to vote, dissociated itself from voting systems based
on property rights and called for universal suffrage -
the right to vote for all adult women and men The voice
of dissent on this decision came from the English group
led by Mrs. Despard of the Women's Freedom League, a group
actively engaged in the suffragette movement.
Conference
also called for maternity benefits which, despite an intervention
by Alexandra Kollontai on behalf of unmarried mothers,
were to be for married women only. It also decided to
oppose night work as being detrimental to the health of
most working women, though Swedish and Danish working
women who were present asserted that night work was essential
to their livelihood.
First
International Womens Day
The
first IWD was held on March 19, 1911 in Germany, Austria,
Denmark and some other European countries. This date was
chosen by German women because, on that date in 1848,
the Prussian king, faced with an armed uprising, had promised
many reforms, including an unfulfilled one of votes for
women. A million leaflets calling for action on the right
to vote were distributed throughout Germany before IWD
in 1911.
Russian
revolutionary and feminist, Alexandra Kollontai,
in Germany at the time, helped to organise the day, and
wrote that it:
exceeded all expectations. Germany
and Austria .... was one seething trembling sea of women.
Meetings were organised everywhere…..in the small
towns and even in the villages, halls were packed so full
that they had to ask (male) workers to give up their places
for the women.
Men
stayed home with their children for a change and their
wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings. During
the largest street demonstrations, in which 30,000 were
taking part, the police decided to remove the demonstrators'
banners: the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle
that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help
of the socialist deputies in Parliament.
Undoubtedly,
the most memorable IWD was held in Petrograd (now Leningrad)
in March 1917. Although women textile workers had been
urged by the communists to refrain from striking on IWD
when
workers were locked out of the Putilov armaments plant
on March 7 the women of Petrograd began to storm the streets.
The wives, daughters and mothers of soldiers, previously
as downtrodden and oppressed as prostitutes, demanded
an end to their humiliation and angrily denounced all
the hungry suffering of the past three years. Gathering
strength and passion as they swept through the city over
the next few days in food riots, political strikes and
demonstrations, these women launched the first revolution
in 1917.
Since
that time, IWD has experienced many ebbs and flows as
a day that helps to push women's issues onto the political
agenda.
On
the 50th anniversary of IWD in 1960, 729 delegates from
73 countries, including Queenslander Doris Webb from the
Union of Australian Women, met in a conference in Copenhagen.
It adopted a general declaration of support for the political,
economic and social rights of women.
During
International Women's Year in 1975, IWD was given official
recognition by the United Nations and was taken up by
many governments who had not previously known of its existence.
In
Cuba, where IWD already had government recognition, IWD
1975 was chosen to announce a campaign against deeply
entrenched macho male attitudes and practices. A new marriage
code which made housework the responsibility of men and
women was part of this.
In
Australia, Prime Minister Whitlam chose IWD 1974 as the
time to announce that the government was preparing an
official program for International Women's Year Ten years
later, in 1984, the French Women's Rights Minister announced
a new anti sexist law aimed at the press and advertising
industries.
Over
the years, IWD has been host to conferences galore, and
alongside activity organised by the women's movement,
some government bodies sponsor of official IWD receptions
in the tradition of respectable public ceremonies. Such
events have helped both to popularise the day and obscure
its radical beginnings, a fact that sometimes gives rise
to conflict over how or whether to support IWD.
Yet
many women continue to see IWD as an important occasion
for reviewing restating and occasionally acting on the
political, economic and social rights of women. Though
much of the turbulence that surrounded its early days
is gone, in 1982 women in Iran did courageously discard
their veils on IWD and, as we will see a little later,
militancy has not entirely disappeared in Australia.
The
first Australian IWD rally took place in the Sydney Domain
on March 25, 1928. It was organised by the Militant Women's
Movement and called for equal pay for equal work; an 8
hour day for shop girls; no piece work; the basic wage
for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay.
Against
a background of increasing unemployment, which reached
a peak of over half a million in 1932, and a number of
intense industrial disputes sparked off by wage cuts and
reduced working conditions, the Militant Women saw their
IWD activity as part of the small but militant socialist
movement.
In
1929, in addition to a social and dance in Brisbane and
a Sydney Domain rally, the militant women also organised
an IWD rally in Sydney's Belmore Park in support of the
wives and families of striking timber workers, where men
were far more prominent than women in the audience.
Meeting organised in Belmore
Park, Sydney on IWD, 1929 in support of the wives of striking
timber workers. It was organised by the Militant Women's
Group whose activists included Jean Thompson (speaker),
Joy Higgins (who also spoke), Edna Ryan, Hetty Weitzel
(Ross), Mary Lamm (Wright), Edna Cavanagh and Alice McConville
1931
saw the first IWD marches in Sydney and Melbourne. In
Sydney about 60 women headed a march of 3-400 people with
many slogans and banners demanding equal pay for equal
work and other special women's demands, as well as more
general issues such as resistance to wage cuts, opposition
to the Arbitration courts and solidarity with the Soviet
Union.
In
Melbourne, 50 women led a march of 150 from the corner
of Victoria and Russell Streets, with a lead banner declaring
''Long Live International Women's Day'', and others similar
to the Sydney march.
Meetings
took place in Kurri, Broken Hill, Cessnock, Newcastle
in New South Wales, as well as the Sydney suburbs of Newtown
Rockdale Granville, Lidcombe and Pyrmont. Most of these
meetings were organised by women's groups or activists
within the Unemployed Workers Movement (UWM) and, in some
places, such as Collingwood in Victoria and Wollongong
in New South Wales, IWD was featured as part of other
meetings organised by the UWM.
The
above photo of the 1931 IWD march in Melbourne was taken
by Grace de La Lande using a small box camera. Grace,
along with Jean Young and Susan McComb were militant activists
in the developing unemployed movement and they organised
this first IWD march in Melbourne. The March went form
Russell Street to the Yarra Bank were Grace spoke from
the platform on the need to organise women politically
During
the following years, small IWD meetings or working women's
conferences were held in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne,
Newcastle, Sydney and Hobart where about 50 women and
children led a march of about 200 through the city to
the Hobart Domain in 1932. Banners at this march declared
"Fight or Starve" and "Demand More Dole".
Courtesy - ISIS
Aust
