The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #45077   Message #670274
Posted By: Abby Sale
16-Mar-02 - 02:13 PM
Thread Name: International Women's Day, March 8
Subject: RE: International Women's Day, March 8
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)