Women's Day, the long history of March 8

On March 8, all over the world, what is commonly called Women's Day occurs, but which should more properly be celebrated as International women's rights day. A symbolic date, often disputed in its value and in its actual usefulness, but fundamental in remembering the discrimination and violence that women have suffered over the millennia and which they still suffer today, in many parts of the world. This important day also serves to enhance the numerous but still absolutely insufficient social, economic and political achievements that women have achieved throughout history and that have only been recognized for a few decades.

However, this symbolic recurrence underwent a long and tortuous ordeal before being institutionalized worldwide: the reconstruction of how it came about is still a matter of debate among historians, and especially few know that the date, March 8, it has been the result of many changes over time. In Italy, Women's Day has been celebrated precisely on March 8 only since 1945 in the free zones and only in 1946 in the whole country, but it was only on December 16th 1977, with resolution 32/142, which the UN proposed to each country, in respect of historical traditions and local customs, to declare March 8 as "United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace ” (“United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace”).

The very first Women's Day was officially celebrated in the United States on February 23, 1909, following the initiative of the American Socialist Party, who recommended to all local sections to reserve the last Sunday of February 1909 for the organization of a demonstration in favor of women's right to vote. The experiment was repeated the following year as well, on the long wave of an event that began as early as November 22, 1909: a great strike of twenty thousand shirtmakers began in New York, which lasted until February 15, 1910. The following Sunday, February 27 , at Carnegie Hall, three thousand women still celebrated what to all intents and purposes was now Woman's Day.

But the choice of February was short-lived, outside the USA: while in fact in the United States continued to be held on the last Sunday of February, in the first European countries to join (Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark) Women's Day it was held for the first time on Sunday 19 March 1911, curiously on the date that today in Italy is considered Father's Day (San Giuseppe is celebrated). According to the testimony of Aleksandra Kollontaj, that date was chosen because, in Germany, "on March 19, 1848, during the revolution, the king of Prussia had to recognize for the first time the power of an armed people and give in to the threat of a revolt proletarian. Among the many promises he made then and which he later forgot, included the recognition of the right to vote for women ”.

France instead brought forward to March 18, the date on which the fortieth anniversary of the Paris Commune fell, while Sweden even merged the newborn anniversary with that of Labor Day, celebrating both on May 1st. In Russia it was held only in 1913 and on an even different day: March 3rd. The "debut" of March 8 as the chosen date, even if not institutionalized internationally, was in Germany in 1914, as concomitant with the beginning of a "red week" of unrest proclaimed by the German socialists. In Italy, International Women's Day was held for the first time only in 1922, on the initiative of the Communist Party of Italy, which celebrated it - guess what - on a still different day: March 12, the first Sunday following the now fateful March 8th.

In those days the fortnightly periodical was founded Mate, which on March 1, 1925 reported an article by Lenin, who had disappeared the previous year, which remembered March 8 as International Women's Day, who had played an active part in social struggles and in the overthrow of tsarism. In fact, that is the most ascertained origin of March 8 as Women's Day: in St. Petersburg, March 1917, 23 (February XNUMX according to the Julian calendar then in force in Russia) it was women who led the great demonstration calling for the end of the war: the sluggish reaction of the Cossacks sent to repress the protest encouraged subsequent demonstrations that led to the collapse of the now completely discredited tsarism and also lacking the support of the armed forces, so that March 8, 1917 has remained in history to indicate the beginning of the February Russian Revolution.

For this reason, and in order to establish a common day for all countries, the Second International Conference of Communist Women, held in Moscow a week before the opening of the III Congress of the Communist International, on June 14, 1921, set 8 March as "International Worker's Day". In the post-war period however, in wanting to find another crucial date, some fake news circulated, such as the death of hundreds of workers in the fire of a non-existent shirt factory Cotton o Cottons occurred in New York in 1908, or the violent police repression of an alleged trade union demonstration of textile workers held in New York in 1857. Pace of Westerners, if it is true that the first Woman's Day was celebrated in the USA, it also seems indisputable that the Soviet contribution was decisive in the choice of 8 March.

And what is Women's Day today? In Italy it is customary to give the famous mimosa, a popular flower at the end of winter, but above all for a few decades the anniversary has also given life, all over the world, to an increasingly organized feminist movement. from thatunforgettable March 8, 1972, with Jane Fonda in Campo de' Fiori to claim abortion, divorce and homosexuality, at the Me Too of now, women never stop fighting.