INTERNATIONAL Women's Day was born out of the struggle in Europe for votes for women. Following huge demonstrations organised by women in the United States on that day, the International Socialist Women's Congress of 1910 set March 8th as an international day of action in favour of women's suffrage.
The unifying theme was "The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism".
On the first women's day in 1911 meetings were organised in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland. Alexandra Kollontai déscribed how:
"Germany and Austria... were one seething trembling sea of women. Meetings were organised everywhere - in the small towns and even in the villages.. ...This was certainly the first show of militancy by the working women. Men stayed at home with the children for a change and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings." In Austria 30,000 women and men took part in the largest street demonstration.
The movements for votes for women were broadly composed. In England most of the suffrage movement demanded the vote for women on 'equal terms with men. Due to property restrictions this would disenfranchise most working class women.
Revolutionaries like Sylvia Pankhurst opposed this and demanded universal male and female suffrage. nothing less. This divison between 'bourgeois' feminists and revolutionaries was deepened by the now looming First World War. The strike by Asian women at Burnsalls continued the history of struggle In 1912, the year after it was established, International Women's Day was to be a focus for peace in the Balkans as well as for women's right to vote.
At an extraordinary congress of the Socialist International in Basle Clara Zetkin, the German revolutionary Marxist leader called for women's right to vote and for peace:
'Socialist women of all countries fight against the war. War is only the maddest form of mass exploitation through capitalism. It is the sons of the proletariat who kill each other. Women and mothers deplore such a crime. War threatens all that mothers have taught their children about solidarity and international community.
"Women are willing to make many sacrifices. They know it is necessary to fight and die in the struggle for freedom. Both fights, the fight against war, and the fight for freedom cannot be fought without women. Wage war on war."
Collapse
In 1914 World War One began, only days before the third international Socialist Conference should have taken place. The Second International collapsed as its reformist leaders sided with their own capitalists against workers of other countries.
In Britain the majority of the suffrage movement - the suffragettes led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst - sided with the British ruling class. They abandoned all mobilisations around women's right to vote and joined the war effort.
Sylvia Pankhurst and the marxist wing of the movement for votes for women threw themselves into the movement against the war.
In 1918, with tens of millions dead in the War, British women aged over 30 were given the vote in an amendment to an adult suffrage bill which extended the vote to all men.
In Russia in 1917, International Women's Day was chosen as the pretext for a mass protest of women workers, mainly from the textile factories in the Vyborg district.
Angered by the lack of basic food supplies, they went on strike and picketed out other workers, under the rallying call of read!
This new upsurge in struggle triggered the February Revolution, which subsequently laid the basis for the first successful workers' revolution in October.
For over 80 years women around the world have continued to celebrate International Women's Day as a focus for their various struggles against exploitation and oppression.
The colours of the British suffragettes were purple and green. These colours are used in this country as the colours of International Women's Day. Through them we remember the women who fought for the right to vote, and those who have fought other struggles of great importance to women around the world.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 79, March 11 1995, Page 11.