ON MARCH 8 1908 women garment workers marched through New York City's Lower East Side protesting against sweatshop conditions and demanding the right to vote. Two years later Copenhagen hosted a Congress of Socialist Women. A delegation of women socialists from the US inspired by the battles attended. It was agreed that March 8 should become international women's day.
Clara Zetkin, the militant socialist leader from Germany, moved the proposal.
Two of the most significant March 8 celebrations occurred in the next few years.
In 1914 Clara Zetkin organised thousands of women in Germany to protest against Rosa Luxemburg 's arrest and convictions for speeches opposing the coming impenalist war.
In March 8 1917, striking women textile workers from the Vyborg district in Petrograd held an International Women's day demonstration which sparked the Russian Revolution.
That revolution brought enormous gains to working women, including the opening of child care facilities and the introduction of civil marriage.
But when Stalin came to power these gains were rolled back. Instead a cult of motherhood was developed. Women were imprisoned in low paid With the growth of the women's liberation movement from the late 1960s, International Women's Day was again widely celebrated. Women began to re-examine our history including the struggles of working women internationally.
But the legacy of stalinism and the failure of many sections of the non-stalinist left to support the demands of the women's liberation movement weakened the influence of revolutionary socialist feminists.
The autonomous women's move-