International Working Women’s Day: A Revolutionary History, A Liberated Future!
By the Women’s Commission of the American Party of Labor–
“Our International Women’s 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.”
Clara Zetkin, The International Communist Women’s Day (1922).
Socialist Roots vs. Neoliberal Doctrine
International Working Women’s 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’s Day.
The official “theme” of the UN for this year’s IWWD is titled, “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,” 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 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. It is clear that the UN’s priorities currently and historically lie with multinational corporations, enabling ongoing exploitation and oppression of the masses worldwide.
On this International Working Women’s Day, the American Party of Labor honors the socialist roots of the holiday while continuing to fight against forces oppressing today’s women worldwide. We reject the bourgeois “theme” 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’ rights are women’s rights! National liberation struggles are women’s struggles!
Overview: Historical Beginnings
A “National Women’s Day” was first proposed in 1909 by members of the Women’s 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.
The following year, the International Women’s 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’s Day as an official holiday.
Proletarian Women
A common narrative from liberals and conservatives is that women only entered the workforce en masse 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.
The New York Shirtwaist Strike of 1909 is one of the most influential events in the founding of International Working Women’s Day. The strike was led by Clara Lemlich and Local 25 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. The participating workers were predominantly Jewish women under the age of 20.
“Thus 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.
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.”
Theresa Malkiel, “Woman’s Day,” New York Call, Dec. 28, 1909.
Noteworthy Women in the Founding of IWWD
Clara Zetkin
Zetkin was a German feminist and communist leader who, along with Lenin, co-founded International Working Women’s Day as an official holiday in 1922. Between 1892–1917 she edited the Social Democratic Party’s 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.
“The 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’s Day must not remain only a women’s 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’s Day with all its physical and moral strength.”
Clara Zetkin, The International Communist Women’s Day, February 1922.
Paula Thiede
Paula Thiede was a founder of the Union of Auxiliary Book Printing Workers of Germany 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’s Conferences in Europe, where she proposed the creation of IWWD with Clara Zetkin.
Käte Duncker
Käte 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. 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’s Conference, where she was involved in the founding of IWWD. She lived in the Soviet Union from 1924–1926 before returning to Germany, where she lectured at the Marxist Workers School in Berlin. The subjects of her lectures included women’s 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.
A Militant Celebration
“Our comrades put a lot of effort into the preparation of [1914] “Women Workers Day.” Because of police intervention, they didn’t manage to organize a demonstration. Those involved in the planning of “Women Workers Day” found themselves in the Tsarist prisons, and many were later sent to the cold north. For the slogan ‘for the working women’s vote’ had naturally become in Russia an open call for the overthrow of Tsarist autocracy.”
Alexandra Kollontai, International Women’s Day, 1920.
Petrograd Strike: February Revolution of 1917
In Russia on March 4, 1917 (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.
“The 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.”
Alexandra Kollontai, “Women’s Day,” 1920.
IWWD march as part of the Petrograd strike leading to the February Revolution in Russia, 1917.
Socialist Celebration
Before the UN established “International Women’s Day” in 1977, the holiday with its class nature in-tact – as International Working Women’s Day – had already been commemorated and celebrated in revolutionary states. IWWD was adopted:
by the Soviet Union in 1922, jointly signed by Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir Lenin;
by revolutionary China in 1948 (one year before the People’s Republic was founded);
by the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania at its founding in 1945;
by Cuba following the revolution of 1959.
“The Party and the working class should measure the advance toward the complete construction of socialist society with the deepening and progress of the women’s revolution within our proletarian revolution. If the rights of women lag behind, then the revolution marks time.”
Enver Hoxha.
Garment Workers in Bangladesh
The American garment workers’ struggles – whose labor organizing inspired International Working Women’s Day – are still reflected today in the working conditions of women all over the world. In November 2022, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist) reported on the alarming frequency of fires in garment factories. This industry primarily employs women and has the second-lowest wages nationwide, in a country where violence against women is rampant. These workers do not have trade union rights, and their labor rights in general are extremely limited. They do not have appointment letters, regular eight-hour work days, weekly holidays, overtime pay, or provident funds. There is no provision for medical assistance or education for their children, or even proper and sanitary restroom facilities in the workplaces.
“If there was a healthy political situation in the country, if there was a government in the interest of the people, such a situation would not have arisen. The movement to stop violence against women in Bangladesh today is inextricably related to the movement for the emancipation of the people and the establishment of a democratic Bangladesh… The ruling class is completely enmeshed with the imperialist system. Domestic fascist rule and imperialism are tied in the same knot – the resistance movement against one and not the other is meaningless. Simultaneous and united movement against this double enemy of the people will pave the way for the liberation of the people of Bangladesh.”
–Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist), Unity & Struggle #45, Nov. 2022.
Corporate Celebration
Large corporations run publicity campaigns to pacify us just enough to feel “represented” while they attempt to distract us from their everyday evil activities. The keyword “working” has been effectively removed from International Working Women’s Day in media and popular consciousness in recent decades. The United Nations’ focus on “empowering” women in leadership roles in imperialist countries and powerful corporations is a tactic to tell the oppressed masses that exploitation is acceptable as long as the exploiters are diverse and “inclusive.” Such liberal institutions serve only the bourgeoisie by refusing to address the intentional and systemic oppression of women that is inherent in the structure of capitalism.
“Palestine is a Feminist Struggle”
The most glaring atrocity faced by women at this moment is the plight of Palestinians as they struggle to survive Israel’s current genocidal campaign. Our hearts bleed for the thousands of women who have lost their lives already, and for the countless others who have faced innumerable losses of their loved ones, their children, their homes, their health, and any sense of security or autonomy. There is no excuse for the United States’ continued support of Israel, supplying the occupational forces monetarily and materially with their instruments of death and destruction provided by taxpayers and by the surplus value of workers’ labor, defying the International Court of Justice and abusing its veto power within the UN Security Council, ignoring the will of the overwhelming masses domestically and abroad who are demanding an immediate and permanent end to this genocide.
“In Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, approximately 572,000 are women and girls of reproductive age, all of whom require access to vital reproductive health services. Among them, 50,000 pregnant women are caught in this conflict, with thousands facing imminent childbirth under dire circumstances.”
Palestinian Feminist Collective, “Palestine is a Feminist Struggle.”
The people of the United States have been fighting against reactionary attacks against reproductive rights, both legally and physically, since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and with the continued passage of increasingly regressive legislation further restricting access to vital healthcare, not only for women but for people of all marginalized genders. Instead of protecting reproductive rights and providing federal funding for healthcare, the ruling parties in this country are funding a genocide that disproportionately affects women and children. Bourgeois politicians invoke accusations of sexism and oppression of women in Palestine to “justify” the complete obliteration of their nation, but their actions make it clear that the ruling class does not care about Palestinian women. The American ruling class does not even care to protect American women’s basic rights. As Americans, our connections to the feminist struggle in Palestine must be understood, and the severity of the conditions for Palestinian women cannot be understated.
On this International Working Women’s Day, it is the duty of all people of all nations to continue fighting relentlessly for an end to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. The only acceptable way to celebrate this occasion is to stay in the streets, demanding a free Palestine and the liberation of women everywhere.
Women march in support of Palestine in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Wikimedia/Jos van Zetten)