The Working-Class Origins and Legacy of International Women’s Day | Portside

The Working-Class Origins and Legacy of International Women’s Day | Portside

March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), an annual tradition that
began over a hundred years ago. While celebrations continue worldwide,
few people remember that the holiday was first initiated by American
Socialists. As legend would have it, they were inspired to hold a
demonstration in order to mark the anniversary of an 1857 female garment
workers’ strike in New York. However, the more accurate account is that
in 1908, the Socialist Party of America established a National Woman’s
Committee to aid in the party’s recruitment efforts, and the committee’s
first action was to declare the last Sunday in February to be Woman’s
Day. 

Either way, IWD’s origin was both socialist and feminist in nature, specifically calling for the celebration of working
women and the mobilization of all workers to fight for women’s social,
economic, and political equality. Theresa Malkiel, a New York labor
activist and member of the National Woman’s Committee, declared the
Socialist Party to be acting as an “oracle, proclaiming the happiness of
the days to come” through the creation of the holiday, describing its
purposes “as a day of woman’s coming greatness, as a token of her just
demands, [and] as a protest against her present disqualification.”