{"id":30143,"date":"2024-03-08T12:23:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T20:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redphoenixnews.com\/?p=30143"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:44:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T04:44:46","slug":"international-working-womens-day-a-revolutionary-history-a-liberated-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2024\/03\/international-working-womens-day-a-revolutionary-history-a-liberated-future\/","title":{"rendered":"D\u00eda Internacional de la Mujer Trabajadora: \u00a1Una historia revolucionaria, un futuro liberado!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By the Women\u2019s Commission of the American Party of Labor–<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cOur International Women\u2019s Day this year must become a giant recruiting of the broad masses to Communism and it must be an irresistible battle-cry against the bourgeois order and for the seizure of power by the proletariat. It must show that we Communists not only will but also can, can act.\u201d<\/p>\nClara Zetkin, The International Communist Women\u2019s Day (1922)<\/a>.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Socialist Roots vs. Neoliberal Doctrine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

International Working Women\u2019s Day was established as an explicitly revolutionary celebration in 1911, born from labor movements and guided by Marxist ideology to build toward socialism and communism. When the neoliberal United Nations commemorated the date in 1975 the class nature was intentionally removed, rebranding as simply International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official \u201ctheme\u201d of the UN<\/a> for this year\u2019s IWWD is titled, \u201cInvest in Women: Accelerate Progress,\u201d which is not only brazenly capitalistic but also shamefully ignores what is arguably the most pressing and immediate concern for women internationally at this time: the ongoing genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel and its imperialist allies. The UN itself has acknowledged<\/a> that two-thirds of the people killed in Palestine since Oct. 7 have been women and children. The most recent reported toll of the approximately 30,000 confirmed deaths includes at least 12,660 children and 8,570 women<\/a>. It is clear that the UN\u2019s priorities currently and historically lie with multinational corporations, enabling ongoing exploitation and oppression of the masses worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this International Working Women\u2019s Day, the American Party of Labor honors the socialist roots of the holiday while continuing to fight against forces oppressing today\u2019s women worldwide. We reject the bourgeois \u201ctheme\u201d of the United Nations for IWWD and the removal of class analysis that liberal feminism pushes.  We call on all progressive people to join us in building a world free of oppression, marginalization, and genocide. Workers\u2019 rights are women\u2019s rights! National liberation struggles are women\u2019s struggles!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overview: Historical Beginnings<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Theresa Malkiel.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cNational Women\u2019s Day\u201d was first proposed in 1909<\/a> by members of the Women\u2019s Committee of the Socialist Party of America, headed by Theresa Malkiel, a Jewish socialist and garment worker who wrote about labor activism from a socialist perspective, opposed the lack of class analysis within bourgeois feminism, and spoke out against the rampant white supremacy across the United States. Malkiel also worked to expunge racism from within the ranks of socialist organizations and parties in the US, when white Southern socialists often refused to work with their Black comrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following year, the International Women\u2019s Socialist Conference proposed commemorating this day annually. In 1911, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets across Europe, and in 1922 the Soviet Union became the first country to establish International Working Women\u2019s Day as an official holiday<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proletarian Women<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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USSR postage stamp, 50th anniversary of International Working Women’s Day, 1960.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A common narrative from liberals and conservatives is that women only entered the workforce en masse<\/em> during World War I and World War II, but women have been proletarianized since the beginning of societal transitions into capitalism. Garment factories have traditionally employed women and the industry has a long history of women-led labor activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909 is one of the most influential events in the founding of International Working Women\u2019s Day. The strike was led by Clara Lemlich and Local 25 of the International Ladies\u2019 Garment Workers Union. The participating workers were predominantly Jewish women under the age of 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThus it happens that the working class and its mouthpiece, the Socialist party, are the greatest champions of woman’s emancipation. Long before woman suffrage became a fad, long before the woman herself had come to realize the justice of her position, the Socialist party demanded the equality of sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woman’s Day, to be celebrated and observed through the length and breadth of our country as a day of woman’s coming greatness, as a token of her just demands, as a protest against her present disqualification.\u201d<\/p>\nTheresa Malkiel, \u201cWoman\u2019s Day<\/a>,\u201d New York Call<\/em>, Dec. 28, 1909.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Noteworthy Women in the Founding of IWWD<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Clara Zetkin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Zetkin was a German feminist and communist leader who, along with Lenin, co-founded International Working Women\u2019s Day<\/a> as an official holiday in 1922. Between 1892\u20131917 she edited the Social Democratic Party\u2019s newspaper, Equality (Die Gleichheit). She also co-founded the Spartacus League in 1914, and then the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919. When Hitler and the Nazi Party took power, Zetkin was exiled to the Soviet Union, where she died in 1933.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe liberation of the workers can only be the work of the working class itself, it can never accomplish this gigantic and terrible work of history, however, if it is torn in two halves by the sex distinction. As the men and women of the proletariat are united body and soul in their crushing life of misery, so must they also unite a burning hatred of capitalism with a more confident, more daring will to fight for the Revolution. The International Communist Women\u2019s Day must not remain only a women\u2019s demonstration in any country or town. It must everywhere be the expression of the will and the work of the entire Communist Party. The latter must support our Women\u2019s Day with all its physical and moral strength.\u201d<\/p>\nClara Zetkin, The International Communist Women\u2019s Day, February 1922<\/a>.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Zetkin photographed by Karl Pinkau, ca. 1890.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Zetkin bank note issued in the GDR.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Paula Thiede<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Paula Thiede was a founder of the Union of Auxiliary Book Printing Workers of Germany<\/a> and played an influential role in a series of strikes that led to a nine-hour work day and increased pay. She faced sexism from men in her own union, but was eventually accepted after winning concessions. In 1910, Thiede attended the International Socialist Women\u2019s Conferences in Europe, where she proposed the creation of IWWD with Clara Zetkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thiede, center back row, 1906. Congress of Book Printing Workers.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

K\u00e4te Duncker<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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K\u00e4te Duncker was a member of the German Social Democratic Party, one of the first members of the Spartacus League (along with Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin), and then a member of the Communist Party of Germany<\/a>. She worked as a teacher and had been fired several times for her political work as a socialist. Duncker had been a delegate to the International Socialist Women\u2019s Conference, where she was involved in the founding of IWWD. She lived in the Soviet Union from 1924\u20131926 before returning to Germany, where she lectured at the Marxist Workers School in Berlin. The subjects of her lectures included women\u2019s rights, child welfare, and education through chronic illness. Duncker migrated to the United States in 1936 after her husband had fled to Denmark and their two sons had been exiled, but she returned to live in the German Democratic Republic after the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Militant Celebration<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cOur comrades put a lot of effort into the preparation of [1914] \u201cWomen Workers Day.\u201d Because of police intervention, they didn’t manage to organize a demonstration. Those involved in the planning of \u201cWomen Workers Day\u201d found themselves in the Tsarist prisons, and many were later sent to the cold north. For the slogan \u2018for the working women’s vote\u2019 had naturally become in Russia an open call for the overthrow of Tsarist autocracy.\u201d<\/p>\nAlexandra Kollontai, International Women\u2019s Day, 1920.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Petrograd Strike: February Revolution of 1917<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In Russia on March 4, 1917<\/a> (Feb. 23 in Julian calendar), thousands of women took to the streets as part of a general strike, joining with the Petrograd metal workers whose strike began the day before. This was the prelude to the February Revolution, which overthrew Tsarist rule and established the Provisional Government. Women of the proletariat and peasantry united under slogans demanding land reform, bread, and an end to unjust war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe 1917 Working Women’s Day has become memorable in history. On this day the Russian women raised the torch of proletarian revolution and set the world on fire. The February revolution marks its beginning from this day.\u201d<\/p>\nAlexandra Kollontai, “Women’s Day<\/a>,” 1920.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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IWWD march as part of the Petrograd strike leading to the February Revolution in Russia, 1917.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Socialist Celebration<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Before the UN established \u201cInternational Women\u2019s Day\u201d in 1977, the holiday with its class nature in-tact \u2013 as International Working Women\u2019s Day \u2013 had already been commemorated and celebrated in revolutionary states. IWWD was adopted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n