International Women's Day

[littlemissmartypants]

St Petersburg International Women's Day
Date
8 March 1917

Russian women demonstrate in Saint Petersburg, March 8, 1917.
Credit: State Museum of Political History of Russia/Wikimedia Commons

On 8 March 1917, thousands of housewives and women workers in St Petersburg, Russia defied union leaders' appeals for calm and took to the streets against high prices and hunger, thus igniting the February revolution (so-called because of the different calendar in use at the time). Before the protest took place even the Bolsheviks regarded it as ill-advised.
Women in Russia had marked International Women's Day in late February each year since 1913 (in old style dates), following women in the US who began holding annual events on the last Sunday of February in 1909.
On March 9, 200,000 workers joined the women by striking, shouting slogans against the tsar and the war. Some military units began to join the workers, and by 15 March, tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate.
On the first anniversary of this event, women in Austria took to the streets for the first time celebrating International Women's Day on this date.
In 1922, Chinese communists began to celebrate International Women's Day, and with assistance from Clara Zetkin, March 8 was declared a national holiday in the Soviet Union. It subsequently spread to many other countries, mostly in the old Soviet bloc until the 1960s.
Around 1967, it began to be recognised in other countries as well. The reason behind its resurrection in the United States is unclear, but one theory was that a women's group at the University of Illinois, including daughters of communists, was responsible.
Snip...
https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10826/st-petersburg-international-women's-day

❤️pants