willkommen-in-germany: Today is Internationaler Frauentag (8. März) - International Women&

willkommen-in-germany:

Today is Internationaler Frauentag (8. März) - International Women’s Day. Although this “Frauenpower” observance has its roots in the USA, it is little known there, probably because of its socialist/communist associations. Inspired by an American commemoration of working women in 1909, and following a meeting of the Socialist International in Denmark, the German socialist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) organized the first Internationaler Frauentag in 1911, when socialists from Austria, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and the USA held strikes and marches. Russian revolutionary and feminist Aleksandra Kollontai, who helped organize the event, described it as “one seething trembling sea of women.” As the annual event developed, it took on the cause of peace as well as women’s rights. In 1915, Zetkin organized a demonstration in Switzerland to urge the end of WW1. Women on both sides of the war turned out. With the advent of the United Nations in 1945, the UN used the day to further the cause of women’s rights around the world, particularly in developing nations. The day is now observed in many countries from Australia to Canada, focusing on gender equality. Today’s date for IWD probably goes back to a strike by Russian women textile workers in St. Petersburg in 1917. Although it was observed in the GDR/East Germany until German Reunification, the celebration in West Germany (by the SPD party) never caught on, and the date goes largely unnoticed by most Germans. Overall, March 8 is an official holiday in less than 20 countries today.