International Women’s Day (IWD) is commemorated on March 8 every year, as it has been since 1910, when Clara Zetkin, a German politician, suggested the annual date as a global observance of the American National Women’s Day inaugurated the year before.
The day was hardly considered a ‘celebration’ however. It was designed to concentrate demands by women for better working and social conditions. Better pay, shorter hours and the right to vote were the three tenets of the movement that attracted more than one million people to march through cities in Europe, America and Britain in 1911.
The issue of working conditions was brought tragically to the attention of the world just a week later, when the horrendous ‘Triangle Fire’ in New York City claimed the lives of 123 women working in cramped, unsafe conditions in the Manhattan shirt factory. The stairwells and fire exits had been blocked, to make sure the women didn’t take unauthorised breaks.
The ‘great war’ assured the continuance of IWD, albeit in the pursuit of peace, but the movement grew and eventually conditions were improved, and the equality gap began to narrow.
