It was early March when an electronic greeting
card dropped into my mailbox. The cover featured
a colorful depiction of a young female figure
playfully applying lipstick, surrounded by
flowers and butterflies, along with the text,
“Happy Women’s Day.” To be honest, I
was a bit baffled.
The following day another e-card arrived,
this one featuring a photo of a hot-pink box
filled with matching tulips. This second card
also wished me “Happy Women’s Day,”
helpfully adding the date March 8th.
Only then did I realize that International
Women’s Day, celebrated worldwide on March
8th, seemed  to be emerging as an occasion for
private rituals involving greetings, gifts,
and flowers much like Mother’s Day. If that
is indeed the case, it will be yet another
transformation of a holiday that since its
inception in the early 20th century, has
undergone vast changes.
The first “Woman’s Day” celebration
took place in Chicago on May 3rd, 1908. Organized
by the U.S. Socialist Party, it brought together
an audience of 1,500 women who demanded economic
and political equality, on a day officially
dedicated to “the female workers’ cause.”
The following year, women gathered in New
York for a similar celebration. Inspired by
these American initiatives, European socialists
soon followed suit.
At the International Women’s Conference,
which preceded the general meeting of the
Socialist Second International in Copenhagen
in August 1910, leading German socialists
Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin proposed the
establishment of an annual International Woman’s
Day as a strategy to promote equal rights,
including suffrage, for women. More than 100
female delegates from 17 countries unanimously
endorsed the proposal.
What would seem a fairly innocuous gesture
marked a significant break with socialist
tradition. Though ideologically committed
to human equality, socialists had long argued
that women’s liberation would only materialize
under socialism, and the only way for working-class
women to improve their lot in life was to
join working-class men in their struggle.
Feminism was seen as a cause for middle- and
upper-class women with their own class interests
in mind. Yet fearful that the feminist demand
for female suffrage might attract too many
working-class women, socialist leaders decided
to embrace it. Still, they insisted that the
vote was a means to an end, not an end in
itself. 
On March 18, 1911, on the fortieth anniversary
of the Paris Commune, International Women’s
Day was marked for the first time. More than
a million Austrian, German, Swiss, Polish,
Dutch, and Danish women took part in marches
and meetings. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire
alone witnessed more than 300 demonstrations.
In the following years, similar events spread
across the European continent. Generally spearheaded
by socialist women, demonstrations called
for women’s rights and female suffrage,
and many feminists readily joined their socialist
sisters.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914
halted much of the international collaboration
that had underpinned International Women’s
Day, and sowed deep divisions among socialist
women. Some supported nationalist sentiments
while others protested the war and called
for working-class unity across national divides.
Eventually many of these women, including
Clara Zetkin, would abandon socialist parties
who rallied around the war effort and instead
embrace Communist parties and organizations. 
Yet, if International Women’s Day generally
floundered during the war years, it was an
International Women’s Day celebration that
ultimately triggered the Russian Revolution. 
Russian women had first celebrated International
Women’s Day on March 8 in 1913. Four years
later, on March 8, 1917 (February 23 on the
Gregorian calendar then used in Russia), working-class
women in Saint Petersburg, exasperated by
rising food prices and rapidly deteriorating
living conditions, led a demonstration calling
for an end to war and political autocracy.
Once unleashed, their cries for “Bread and
Peace’” could not be quelled. By March
12, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.
The events of 1917 in Russia ended up setting
the date for the celebration of International
Women’s Day, not only in Russia but across
the rest of Europe.
In 1922, Lenin established International
Women’s Day as a communist holiday in the
new Soviet Union. The same year, Chinese
communists began to celebrate it, and after
the founding of the People’s Republic of
China in 1949, it was proclaimed an official
holiday. Spanish communists used March 8,
1936 as the occasion to stage a huge demonstration
in Madrid, demanding protection of the Spanish
Republic against a growing fascist threat.
International Women’s Day would remain a
communist holiday until the end of the 20th century,
marked by carefully orchestrated, state-sponsored
celebrations of women’s contributions to
the state.   
As women in the United States and across much
of Europe gained suffrage in the wake of
the First World War, much of the momentum
for International Women’s Day celebrations
waned. During the interwar years, some European
socialists and social democrats continued
to mark “Women’s Day,” carefully omitting
the term “international” to distinguish
it from its communist sister celebration,
but events rarely drew substantial crowds.
It was only with the emergence of second-wave
feminism in the late 1960s, that International
Women’s Day reemerged as a significant day
of activism. Though the day never (re)captured
much attention among American feminists, European
feminists embraced March 8 under the updated
name, Women’s International Day of Struggle
(“Frauenkampftag” in German or “Kvindenes
international kampdag” in Danish).
The new name signaled political radicalism
and a resolute distance from organized party
politics, both of which were key features
of the women’s movement in the 1970s and
1980s. Nonetheless, March 8th celebrations
typically involved not only feminists, but
a broad assortment of left-wing activists,
women’s groups and labor organizations,
calling for such issues as equal pay, political
parity, reproductive rights and child care.
During the International Women’s Year in
1975, the United Nations first celebrated
International Women’s Day. Two years later,
in 1977, the United Nations General Assembly
adopted a resolution proclaiming a United
Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International
Peace.
Eager to disentangle this new holiday from
the socialist origins of International Women’s
Day, the assembly noted that it was to be
observed “on any day of the year by member
states, in accordance with their historical
and national traditions.”
Moreover, in contrast to contemporary feminist
practices of casting it as a day of protest,
the United Nations billed it as “a time
to reflect on progress made” and “celebrate
acts of courage and determination of ordinary
women.”
In the decades since the 1977 resolution,
The United Nations has in fact marked International
Women’s Day on March 8th with events and
activities centered around a particular theme
such as “Empower Rural Women—End Hunger
and Poverty” (2012) and “Empowering Women,
Empowering Humanity: Picture It!” (2015).
In spite of such institutionalization of International
Women’s Day, and in following with its long
history of competing traditions, March 8th
is now marked in a variety of ways around
the world.
In many (former) Communist regions, it is
a public holiday. In Western Europe it remains
an occasion for feminist demonstrations, and
in many developing countries women’s rights
activists take to the streets to voice their
calls for gender equality. In Italy, men allegedly
give yellow mimosas to women to celebrate
the day. And in the United States, some people
apparently send cards and flowers to honor
the women in their lives.
