Today is the International Women's Day. The first International Women's Day was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Among other relevant historic events, it came to commemorate the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions. By urban legend, women from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on 8 March 1857 in New York City. The garment workers were protesting against very poor working conditions and low wages. The protesters were attacked and dispersed by police. These women established their first labor union in the same month two years later.
More protests followed on 8 March in subsequent years, most notably in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In 1910 the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen (in the labour-movement building located at Jagtvej 69, which until recently housed Ungdomshuset) by the Second International and an 'International Women's Day' was established, which was submitted by the important German Socialist Clara Zetkin, although no date was specified. The following year, 1911, International Women's Day was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, on March 19. However, soon thereafter, on March 25, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed over 140 garment workers. A lack of safety measures was blamed for the high death toll. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across Europe held peace rallies on 8 March 1913.
On the last Sunday of February 1917, Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the women's strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March.
Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday in the Soviet Union, and it was established, but was a working day.
[Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp]
In contrast to bourgeois feminist idea, the equality between men and women is directly associated with the question of wage-slavery. The existence of women as second grade citizen in our society actually ensures extraction of women's labour by imperialist-capitalist-feudalist masters in a dam cheap rate. In other words, the very existence of women as oppressed gender helps the ongoing exploiting system to run and ensure huge surplus deposited in the pocket of class enemies. Therefore women cannot expect equality in the existing system. Equality of woman will be accomplished when she will be free from all kind of slavery and this will only be possible when the mankind will be able to abolish all form of exploitation. The working women, as "half the sky" fight the same struggle what their men counterparts do worldwide—struggle for total abolition of all exploitation. When the current crisis of imperialist-capitalist system once again prove that this system has no future, it cannot solve the basic problems of toiling masses, but only intensify the problems, it simultaneously prove that the future is for socialism-communism only—the socialist ownership of the production. On the occasion of International Women's Day, we publish one writing of Com. Lenin which he wrote for Pravda in 1920 for the same.
On International Women's Day
V I Lenin
Capitalism combines formal equality with economic and, consequently, social inequality. This is one of the principal distinguishing features of capitalism, one that is mendaciously screened by the supporters of the bourgeoisie, the liberals, and that is not understood by the petty-bourgeois democrats. Out of this distinguishing feature of capitalism, by the way, the necessity arises, while fighting resolutely for economic equality, openly to recognise capitalist inequality and, under certain conditions, even to include this open recognition of inequality as a basis for the proletarian state organisation (the Soviet Constitution).
But capitalism cannot be consistent even with regard to formal equality (equality before the law, "equality" between the well-fed and the hungry, between the property-owner and the property-less). And one of the most flagrant manifestations of this inconsistency is the inferior position of woman compared with man. Not a single bourgeois state, not even the most progressive, republican democratic state, has brought about complete equality of rights.
But the Soviet Republic of Russia promptly wiped out, without any exception, every trace of inequality in the legal status of women, and secured her complete equality in its laws.
It is said that the level of culture is best characterised by the legal status of woman. There is a grain of profound truth in this saying. From this point of view, only the dictatorship of the proletariat, only the socialist state, could achieve and did achieve a higher level of culture. Therefore, the foundation (and consolidation) of the first Soviet Republic--and alongside and in connection with this, the Communist International-inevitably lends a new, unparalleled, powerful impetus to the working women's movement.
For, when we speak of those who, under capitalism, were directly or indirectly, wholly or partially oppressed, it is precisely the Soviet system, and the Soviet system only, that secures democracy. This is clearly demonstrated by the position of the working class and the poor peasants. It is clearly demonstrated by the position of women.
But the Soviet system represents the final decisive conflict for the abolition of classes, for economic and social equality. For us, democracy, even democracy for those who were oppressed under capitalism, including democracy for the oppressed sex, is inadequate.
The working women s movement has for its objective the fight for the economic and social, and not merely formal, equality of woman. The main task is to draw the women into socially productive labour, extricate them from "domestic slavery", free them of their stultifying and humiliating resignation to the perpetual and exclusive atmosphere of the kitchen and nursery.
It is a long struggle, requiring a radical remaking both of social technique and of customs. But this struggle will end with the complete triumph of communism.
Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/04.htm
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