Now it is being decided whether this day will remain a day off in Ukraine, and it’s time to find out why this holiday appeared and what Clara Zetkin has to do with it.
Since the days of the USSR, International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, has been a day off and has no historical background. On this day, it is customary to give gifts and bouquets to women and girls, and themed parties and promotions are held in shops and entertainment establishments. In a word, March 8 has turned into another holiday that has completely lost its meaning.
However, for a Soviet woman, an extraordinary day off was a nice bonus that could be spent on herself. And it was also a kind of “response” to the Soviet holiday on February 23, which turned from Defender of the Fatherland Day into an unspoken men’s day, when even those who did not serve in the army received gifts, but at the same time they forgot about women who are also defenders of the Fatherland. By the way, February 23 was not a day off.
But the roots of the March 8 holiday go much deeper than in the Soviet Union, and many more people were involved in its origin than the revolutionary Clara Zetkin, who is considered the founder of International Women’s Day. He also has many symbols that were never heard of in the USSR.
Focus tried to find out everything that is known about International Women’s Day.
History of creation
It should be noted that the emergence of International Women’s Day was facilitated by numerous protests by women workers. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the life of working women was terrible and unbearably hard. They worked in factories, often in very hazardous industries, received far fewer men, while enduring humiliating harassment, and after an exhausting work shift, they also had to take care of their families and children. There were no vacations after the birth of a child, their rights were not protected in any way, and moreover, they did not even have the right to vote. It is logical that numerous protest movements began to emerge.
For example, during the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist garment factory in New York, 123 women and 23 men died. They simply could not get out of the building engulfed in fire, because the doors were locked during the work shift. And this was just one of those cases.
Fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factories
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According to a common version, the holiday was established in 1907 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the brutally suppressed protest of New York clothing and textile workers, which in world history was nicknamed the “march of pans” because the protesters thrashed pans with ladles, attracting attention. But there is a problem with this story: neither the protest of 1857 nor the celebration of the 50th anniversary may have actually happened. In fact, research done in the 1980s found that the origin myth was invented in the 1950s as part of a Cold War-era effort to separate International Women’s Day from its socialist roots.
But there were protests. So, in 1908, women marched through the streets of New York, advocating equal rights with men and against unbearable working conditions. They demanded a shorter working day, higher wages, a ban on child labor and the right to vote.
March of the Suffragettes on Broadway in 1908
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Photo: Getty Images
The march was organized by Maud Malone, a radical suffragist, president of the Harlem Equality League and founder of the Progressive Women’s Union. The march took place on February 16 because it was Sunday, the only day off of the week when working women could come out to protest. It passed peacefully, no one was even arrested, although they were threatened.
A year later, on the anniversary of the March on Broadway, the Socialist Party of America proclaimed National Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February.
And suffragette Rosa Schneiderman became the author of one of the slogans of the protest movement, which sounded like “bread and roses.” Bearing in mind that women have the right not only to a piece of bread, but also a decent standard of living.
“The worker must have bread, but she must also have roses. Help, you privileged women, give her the right to vote for the struggle!” Rose said.
And here is Clara Zetkin
Protest movements took place all over the world and Clara Josephine Eisner was one of the ideologists. Clara was the daughter of a German organist and a Frenchwoman, the eldest of three children. She grew up in Leipzig and became interested in the social democratic movement while studying at a teacher training college. However, due to the ban imposed by Bismarck on socialist activities in Germany in 1878, Zetkin left for Paris, where she met the Marxist Osip Zetkin, who had left Russia. She gave birth to two sons from him: Maxim and Kostya, and when Osip soon died of tuberculosis, she never changed her last name, even marrying a second time to the artist Georg Friedrich Zundel, who was eighteen years younger than her.
Clara Zetkin with sons
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Photo: TASS
Interestingly, Rosa Luxembourg, with whom Clara was friends for 20 years, and who became her comrade-in-arms, was at first indifferent to the women’s movement. And they both disliked the suffragettes, considering their movement “bourgeois”.
Clara Zetkin made her contribution to International Women’s Day (IWD) in August 1910 at the International Women’s Conference. She and the other members suggested that a “special women’s day” be organized annually, but did not specify a date. The goal was good: in this way the delegates wanted to continue to promote the idea of equality. International Women’s Day in its modern sense was first celebrated the following year, March 19, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
Later, Zetkin opposed the First World War, for which she was arrested, but released, went to Moscow, where the Second International Conference of Communist Women was held in June 1921. Then they decided on the date – the celebration of March 8th. Zetkin opposed Stalin, opposed fascism and Adolf Hitler, but after he and his Nazi party came to power in 1933, Zetkin left for the USSR, where she died in Arkhangelsk. Her ashes were buried in the Necropolis near the Kremlin wall. By the way, her sons were also forced to leave the USSR, Kostya – after he had problems with the inheritance. He died in Canada, and his brother in Berlin, where he worked as a doctor.
The trace of the Russian Empire
Since at the beginning of the 20th century, women’s protest movements took place all over the world, and especially in countries where the industry was rapidly developing and centuries-old traditions were breaking down, the Russian Empire was no exception. The woman was no longer the “keeper of the hearth”, she had to combine motherhood and women’s duties, from which no one relieved her with 16-hour shifts in factories. In 1913, textile workers protested, demanding “bread and peace” – an end to the First World War and food supplies. And the mass strike on February 23, 1917 – or March 8 according to the Gregorian calendar (according to the “new style”) eventually served as the beginning of the revolution and contributed to the fall of the monarchy.
As a result, in the Russian Empire, women won the right to vote a year earlier than in Great Britain, and three years earlier than in the United States. But the global women’s movement failed. The activities of Soviet women were regulated by the party and the state, and not by themselves. As a result, equality went sideways: having received rights, Soviet women did not get rid of their duties either, with the difference that it was no longer possible to protest in the USSR and fight for their rights.
March 8 in the USSR
As a result, the March 8 holiday became part of Soviet politics. And this day became a day off only in 1965. The Soviet ideology created the image of a woman “worker, mother and communist”, there was no independent movement, and women were encouraged to work hard. Even after giving birth, until 1956, women were allowed not to work for 8 weeks before giving birth and 8 weeks after. But after returning to the machine, they could go to the nursery to feed the baby. This was given no more than 30 minutes every three hours. At the same time, women collective farmers had even less maternity leave: 30 days before childbirth and 30 after.
And the received suffrage in the USSR had no meaning, since the concept of democratic elections did not exist, and protests were harshly suppressed.
Over time, March 8 turned into a day of solidarity for all women officially, and unofficially simply became Women’s Day. Women from Soviet postcards called for world peace, spoke of solidarity, but, judging by the pictures, only with ideologically close women from friendly countries, they were congratulated by children, and men were ironically asked to release their ladies that day from their duties like cleaning and cooking.
No wonder the official establishment of March 8 by the United Nations as International Women’s Day in 1975 went unnoticed. Since there was no talk of any elimination of all forms of discrimination in the USSR.
March 8 – modernity
Now in the post-Soviet countries, March 8 has become simply “Women’s Day”, an analogue of Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day, when women are given flowers and cute gifts. Few people remember that the history of the holiday also includes the struggle for equality.
On March 8, it is customary to give gifts to women
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Photo: Getty Images
This day remains a day off in most countries of the former USSR, except for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Now whether he has a day off is also decided in Ukraine by voting through Diyu. In China, this day is working, but shortened for women, and even then not everywhere. Also, this day is non-working, or shortened in Berlin, as in the homeland of the holiday.
Symbols of March 8
Mimosa, which so often appears on postcards and is given in bouquets, first became a symbol of March 8 in Italy back in 1946, thanks to the communist Teresa Mattei. Popular at that time, violets and lilies of the valley were supplied from France and many simply could not afford them. Therefore, Teresa suggested giving women more affordable and cheaper mimosa.
Yellow mimosa started to give in Italy
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Photo: Social networks
March 8 has official colors: purple, white and green. Purple signifies justice and dignity. Green symbolizes hope. White represents purity. The flowers were chosen by the Women’s Public Political Union (WSPU) in Great Britain in 1908. But the white color has recently lost its relevance. But it became clear why Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States, came to Joe Biden’s annuguration in a purple ensemble.
Kamala Harris purple outfit
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The world celebrates International Men’s Day on November 19th. It is not recognized by the UN, is not a holiday, but is very popular, for example, in the UK. The day celebrates “the positive value that men bring to the world, their families and communities” and aims to highlight positive role models.
Recall that voting continues until March 6 in the “Diya” application. Ukrainians are offered to jointly decide whether to leave the holiday on March 8 as a day off.
