International Women's Day, March 8

Subject: International Women's Day, March 8
From: gnu
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 10:10 AM

Today is International Women's Day according to the morning paper. Have a good day all you Mudcatettes.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 11:00 AM

Bully for the international women! And wouldn't that be mudqueens? Or mudcatters, while the men are really Mudtoms?

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: GUEST,MAG at work
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 11:10 AM

Hearts starve as well as bodies;
Give us bread, but give us roses!

We are the women, and we are marching,
Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao ...

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 02:09 PM

May I raise my glass to the women of the world too.

Can't live with them, can't live without them ....

Murray

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: SharonA
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 02:30 PM

Mrrzy: I guess that would be "MudQueen for a Day".

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: Gypsy
Date: 08 Mar 02 - 11:22 PM

Nay, nay, i prefer Queen Cat!

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: MAG
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 09:30 PM

This thread did not last long enough; it's Women's History Month all month.

I quoted a couple of my favorite women-in-the-struggle songs above; here are some more:

And like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Who never did give in,
We're gonna build a revolution
And you know we're gonna win.

I have not mastered the blue clicky, but my old women's organization, the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, has a herstory project going at cwlu.org where there is a sound clip of the Women's Union Rock Band.

Kat Eggleston's song "The decision is Mine" is a good topical song.

As is Ferron's "Testimony."

Any more uppity women faves?

Men supportive of our struggle are of course welcome to participate.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: MAG
Date: 16 Mar 02 - 09:43 AM

Nobody, NOBODY, adding to this thread? This is a celebration, people. Not a gender defender.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: Abby Sale
Date: 16 Mar 02 - 02:13 PM

OK, OK.  From the "Happy!" file for this day:

Happy International (Working) Women's Day!

An official holiday of the UN & a public holiday in China, Cuba, Mauritania, Mongolia, (& erstwhile USSR) but only a "Proclaimed" Day in the US.

It is said to commemorate a New York City women garment workers march of March 8, 1857.  Perhaps because of the ensuing economic & political turmoil of the era, however, it seems totally ignored in song and also by Americans in general.

From Chase's Annual Events: Believed to have been first proclaimed for this date at an international conference of women held in Helsinki, Finland in 1910.  The 50th anniversary observance, at Peking in March 1960, cited Clara Zetkin (Member of German Communist Party from its foundation in 1919... fiery orator, teacher, editor of Gleichkeit, the organ of the Social Democratic Party for women.) as initiator of Women's Day.  She proposed at the 1910, 2nd International Congress of Socialist women in Copenhagen that "that henceforth March 8 should be declared International Women's Day."  Little, if any, evidence exists there actually was an 1857 strike and I have noted Klara Zetkin was born June 5, 1857, Germany (d1933).  It may be the Day only celebrates her birthday.

There was considerable activity, however, among women's garment factory workers from the "Great Strike" of 1908 onwards into 1910.

There are sadly few labor songs about women's lot but Silber mentions some:

I am a Union woman
As brave as I can be,
I do not like the bosses
And the bosses don't like me.

When my husband asked the boss for a job,
This is the words he said:-
"Bill Jackson, I can't work you, sir,
Your wife's a Rooshian Red."

"I am A Union Woman" by Aunt Molly Jackson; Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (Oak Publications) and compiled by Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.  (Also see info re: Bread and Roses)
 

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: kidd
Date: 16 Mar 02 - 02:26 PM

My birthday is (was, by now) International Women's Day, and they don't come much more international than I.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: GUEST,MAG at work
Date: 16 Mar 02 - 05:32 PM

Thanks for adding, folks.

The best explanation I have ever seen for the date is:

With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.

Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: Abby Sale
Date: 20 Mar 02 - 09:28 AM

Hmmm. I have that Tsar Nicky abdicated on March 15, 1917 (NS). That would be (I think) March first, Old Style. Feb 23 OS/Mar 8 NS would have been a Thursday, not a Sunday. Oh well.

No, the actual origin of the holiday by Zetkin and proclaimed by her in Finland in 1910 is very well established. I had communicated with Mr Chase concerning the difference between his account and that of the typical story in "women's studies" texts. He declared that he had actually held in his hand and read a copy of her declaration. My communication with two authors & teachers of history, specializing in "women's studies" produced the admission that they didn't really know where it all came from and had never seen any real documentation. (That didn't stop them from printing the story as "history." This is one of the reasons I prefer folklore and the "history" contained in ballads over the "facts" contained in History.)

The only open question, I believe, is just what it commemorates in reality. (This is a minor point - it commorates working women - it's just the mythology & rationale I've researched.)

I searched pretty widely for Zetkin's cited 1857 strike and couldn't find any reference to it anywhere. There were some strikes that year but nothing related even vaguely to women garment workers in NYC. Of course there was considerable activity among women's garment factory workers from the "Great Strike" of 1908 onwards into 1910. (The "Bread & Roses" strike was different.) This would have been sufficient to encourage her, the other attendees and possibly the world to acknowledge the day. I suggest she invented the 1857 origin an a "legitimizing" origin myth and used her own birth year as a subtle joke.

Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
From: MAG
Date: 20 Mar 02 - 11:20 AM

Sounds good to me, Abby. Amazing how hard this relatively recent history can be to document.

Any more songs, anybody? It's still March ...

59cents, for every man's dollar;
59cents, it's a low down shame;
59 cents, makes a grown woman holler ...

(I'll have to look up the rest)