-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 27, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Women's history month--it started with Clara Zetkin
By Kathy Durkin
In March, Women's History Month is marked with many activities in this country. Many are even officially sponsored by government offices.
But very few of these events take note of the real origin of International Women's Day--March 8, which gave rise to the month of observances of women's history. That may be because the day originally commemorated a great working-class struggle. And it was initiated by the international communist movement.
On March 8, 1908, thousands of women took to the streets of New York's Lower East Side. They marched to demand a decent living and human rights. This march helped lead to the great 1909-1910 garment-workers' strike that went down in history as "the uprising of the 20,000."
At a 1910 International Socialist Conference, Clara Zetkin, a German socialist, proposed that March 8 be proclaimed International Women's Day. Zetkin, who lived from 1857 to 1933, dedicated her life to the revolutionary struggle and the worldwide emancipation of women.
Born to a family of scholars, Zetkin studied at a university, which was very rare for a woman at that time. There she was introduced to radical ideas.
She later became active in the socialist movement in Paris and married a revolutionary refugee from Russia. After he died, her daily struggle to feed herself and her children amid great poverty had an enormous impact on her thinking.
She remained a determined fighter for socialism and women's liberation throughout her lifetime.
Women start the Russian Revolution
Clara Zetkin was the first person to raise the question of equal rights for women at a gathering of Social Democrats at a conference of the Second International in 1889. Rosa Luxemburg of Germany and V.I. Lenin and Alexandra Kollontai of Russia supported her position.
From 1890 until 1917, Zetkin was the editor of "Gleichheit" (Equality), a bi-monthly journal put out by women in the German Social Democratic Party. It centered on the problems and demands of working women. She reached masses of working women through her eloquent articles.
In 1907 at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, Germany, Zetkin and other German women raised the demand for women's suffrage-the right to vote. The congress voted unanimously to support this demand of the government.
That same year Zetkin helped establish the Women's International Council of Socialist and Labor Organizations. As its international secretary for many years, she played an influential role in the worldwide socialist women's movement.
Finally, in 1910, after 21 years of agitation for a special day to mark the solidarity of working women all over the world, Clara Zetkin's proposal set March 8 as International Women's Day.
When World War I broke out in 1914, most of the German SPD supported the German war effort. But not Zetkin, Luxemburg and a few other members, who formed Spartacist, named after the famous slave rebellion in ancient Rome.
Opposing the imperialist war required enormous courage and dedication to the truly revolutionary position of internationalism. In March 1915 Zetkin convened a historic conference where women socialists from the warring countries came together to call for an end to the war.
In 1917 women textile workers in St. Petersburg, Russia, started a spontaneous strike to mark International Women's Day. They demanded peace, bread and land. Soon their numbers swelled to 90,000 as male workers joined their ranks.
The women's strike ignited the Russian Revolution.
Though the German socialist movement was split over supporting it, the Spartacists did, and Zetkin wrote a pamphlet defending it.
In January 1919 Zetkin helped found the German Communist Party. She immediately set up a women's newspaper and started organizing among women workers.
Zetkin knew the many problems facing women in postwar Germany. But she also knew that in the new Soviet Union the status of women was already vastly superior to that in any capitalist country. Equal before the law, Soviet women were encouraged to participate in every level of life. Housework and child care were being collectivized.
Zetkin visited Lenin in 1920 to ask his advice. She later wrote of their conversations in her famous "Recollections of Lenin." He stressed using concrete examples from the Soviet Union to show women that their total liberation could only occur through reconstructing society along socialist lines.
Lenin felt the women's struggle was so important that he suggested half the work of the German CP be concerned with it.
International Women's Day stands as one concrete result of Clara Zetkin's lifetime career. Her legacy also lives on everywhere women are struggling for equality and liberation.
[This article was excerpted from the March 1971 issue BattleActs, the magazine of Women of Youth Against War & Fascism, which was published from 1970 to 1974. The writer is a member of the Workers World Party National Committee.]
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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