International Women’s Day: How and where the struggle started

From the basic right to vote to right to equality, women have been fighting for various causes. March 8 is International Women’s Day and ET Magazine takes a peek into the past and where the struggle started:

The Past...

International Women’s Day emerged from labour movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and Europe:

1909: The first National Woman’s Day was observed in the US on February 28 by the Socialist Party of America after garment workers’ strike

1910: The Socialist International, in Copenhagen, established an International Women’s Day

1911: International Women’s Day was marked for the first time (March 19) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to demand right to work

1913-1914: The Day marked to protest WWI. Russian women observed it on the last Sunday in February and in Europe on or around March 8

1917: Women in Russia strike for "Bread and Peace" on last Sunday in February — March 8 on the Gregorian calendar. Four days later, women were granted the right to vote

Poster Girls

A German poster in 1914: "Give Us Women’s Suffrage. Women’s Day, March 8, 1914. Until now, prejudice and reactionary attitudes have denied full civic rights to women…"

1932 Soviet poster: "8th of March is the day of rebellion of the working women against kitchen slavery"

In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J Howard Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of posters for the war effort. One of these became the famous " We Can Do It!"

...and the Present

Only 21.9% of national parliamentarians were female as of December 1, 2014, a slow increase from 11.3% in 1995

Rwanda had the highest percentage — 63.8% — of women parliamentarians worldwide

Globally, women are paid less than men. Women in most countries on an average earn only 60-75% of men’s wages

Women comprise an average of 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, but less than 20% are landholders