International Women’s Day, originally called International Working Women’s Day, is celebrated on March 8 every year. In 1908 in New York, 15,000 women, mainly from the garment industry, demonstrated for better working conditions, higher pay, and the right to vote. Intense opposition to women’s suffrage and the refusal of the male-dominated trade unions to include women in their struggle impeded the development of International Women’s Day. But the campaign for women’s suffrage and political equality in the UK was revived, with a particular emphasis on women’s war work, which finally achieved success in 1918. Emily Pankhurst and her followers, suffragettes, joined by working-class women, suffragists, had been at the forefront of that struggle for over half a century. In 1921, his wife founds the Zhenotdel (the women’s department), which became the center for mobilizing women workers and peasants behind the Communist project of achieving full equality for women, which included free and universal access to contraception and abortion prior to 12 weeks. Prosecution of women by the Tsarist regime was stepped up, and many were exiled to Siberia. On the last Sunday in February 1908, the American National Union of Socialists adopted the following resolution, proposed by the well-known German socialist Luise Zeitz: “women socialist members of the Legislature in France submitted a bill, providing for the appointment of a parliamentary commission. The tribune of the Russian Duma, M. Herzenstrem, has signed a resolution providing for the extension of the franchise to women in Russia. The object of the resolution is, he explains, to make women capable of serving as nurses, teachers, etc. In the Norwegian Parliament, Miss Honn Moller has just made an eloquent protest against the exclusion of women. She pointed out that men have woefully mismanaged the world and have left it to women to put things right”. The message was to spread to the entire world. In August 1910, an International Women’s Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Over 100 women, among them Clare Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, and Nadezda Krupskaya, Mimi Frane, and Inessa Armand as well as Keir Hardie, an early advocate of women’s suffrage, and Betty Webb, attended the conference from 17 countries, including the United States. They approved the suggestion of the American Sylvia Pankhurst to officially designate International Women’s Day, initially with the date of March 19. http://www.pilz.com