The history of International Woman’s Day.

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On March 8, 1857, women working in clothing and textile factories (called "ladies' tailors") in New York City, USA, took part in a protest They fought against inhuman working conditions and low wages The police attacked the protesters and dispersed them Two years later, again in March, these women formed their first union to try to protect themselves and secure certain basic rights in the workplace

In 1908, 15,000 women in New York demonstrated for shorter hours, higher wages, and the right to vote The following year, the American Socialist Party proposed that the last Sunday in February be Labor Women's Day

Rumors about this quickly spread around the world and reached Clara Zetkin One of the most famous activists of the German and international socialist and women's movement, who entered the history of the 20th century not only as an active communist, but also as a woman reformer who played an important role in the development of the European movement for women's rights The main merit of Zetkin was the establishment, at her suggestion, of International Women's Day at a conference in Copenhagen.

Clara Zetkin was born in 1857 in the small Saxon town of Wiederau in the family of a rural teacher. While still a student at the Leipzig Pedagogical Gymnasium, a prestigious educational institution, she began to attend secret meetings of the Social Democrats, and in 1878 she joined the Socialist Workers' Party, later renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDPG)

In 1882, the Zetkins moved to Paris, where she continued to engage in party activities

Living in France, Clara Zetkin actively participated in the preparation and work of the Founding Congress of the 2nd International in Paris in 1889, where she gave a speech on the role of women in the revolutionary struggle And after the persecution of the Social Democrats was stopped in Germany, Klara returned to her homeland, where, since 1892, in Stuttgart she began to publish the SDPG newspaper for women - “Equality” At the International Conference of Women Socialists in Copenhagen in 1910, at the suggestion of Zetkin, it was decided to celebrate International Women's Day, later timed to coincide with the anniversary of the demonstration of New York textile workers on March 8, 1857

However, the date of the holiday was constantly changing and varied from country to country Somewhere women's day was celebrated in February, somewhere in March, it was associated either with the New York march, or with the March revolution of 1848 in PrussiaAbout a hundred participants from 17 countries supported the idea unanimously In 1911, it was first celebrated in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Denmark and Switzerland. The UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international treaty to proclaim equality between men and women as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has contributed to the creation of a historic set of internationally agreed policies, standards, programs and goals to improve the status of women throughout the world The official celebration of March 8 as International Women's Day was established by the UN only in 1975, on the eve of the UN Decade of Women - this was the name of the decade from1976 to 1985, during which two international conferences devoted to gender issues were held, and the Convention was adopted on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women

-Anastasia