About IWD

Also known as IWM, The Official Guide to International Women's Month Magazine was launched in London in 2003, and is largely made up of features and inspirational profiles. It raises awareness of women's issues and achievements across all sectors and cultures and has a huge listings of events throughout the month of March.

Producing International Women's Month Magazine every year gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to women in all areas of life. From careers, business and finance to innovation and from wellbeing, to fashion, sports, media and entertainment these are women who are changing the world for the better.

Whose Day is it Anyway!

International Women's Day (IWD) is a globally acknowledged day (8th March) connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential.

Created to recognise the political, economic and social advancement of women who have made significant strides in their field, broken new ground and positively impacted on their community and society as a whole, the day celebrates the achievements of women across the UK.

IWD Increasingly, women have been taking control of their own destiny, helping to shape local, national and international institutions - and doing it with style.

Every one has their own ideas of how International Women’s Day began and who started it. Whether it was Klara Zetkin a German communist leader, feminist and teacher, Aleksandra Kollontai, a Russian revolutionary, diplomat and novelist, or an American factory worker who downed tools in exasperation, it must be said that International Women’s Day unified women worldwide.

For centuries women all over the world had been subjected to subordinate positions in their homeland. Their jobs were sex-segregated, mainly in textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were pitiful and wages worse than depressed.

On 28 February 1909, women socialists in the United States organised huge demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding political rights for working women. Reportedly, this was the first ‘Women’s Day’ in America. The promising movement was given an enormous boost of confidence by a determined and courageous four-month strike by New York City’s 20,000 shirtwaist (a woman’s blouse styled like a man’s shirt) workers, three-quarters of whom were women.

The quietly growing International Ladies Garment Workers Union, formed in 1900 by the amalgamation of seven unions, had a mere 1,000 members before the strike, but in five days after it, 19,000 workers inundated the union’s offices with requests to join.

Striking women, many in their teens, formed picket lines outside their work places, trying to convince the scabs to join them. The female strikers were beaten and bruised by police and hired thugs. Suddenly public opinion swung strongly in the favour of the strikers.

The daily papers devoted whole columns to news of the workers’ struggle, magazines commented on it; meetings were held in women’s colleges and in clubs; money was contributed in aid of the strikers. Thousands of socialist women gave their support to the strike, acting as clerks, organisers, speakers, pickets, watchers and solicitors for relief funds.

The strikers demanded improvements in their miserable conditions, and, most importantly, recognition of their union. It was this last demand that the women’s employers were most reluctant to concede to, but which was eventually met.

The beginning of IWD was closely entwined with the swelling movement of working- class struggle for the socialist transformation of society. In fact, the idea for an ‘International’ day of women’s rallies and marches – inspired by the previous year’s Woman’s Day in the USA - was proposed by Ketzin at the second International Conference of Working Women in 1910.

As a result of this on 19 March 1911, the first German International Women’s Day was held. The date was chosen because on this same date in 1848, a day after the outbreak of revolution in Berlin, the Prussian King had promised votes for women, a promise he failed to uphold.

Socialists from Germany, Austria, Denmark and other European countries held strikes and marches for the same purpose. Feminist Kollontai, who helped organize the event, described it as “One seething, trembling sea of women”.

Kollontai, who became a minister in the first Soviet government in 1917, persuaded Lenin to make March 8 an official communist holiday. During the Soviet period, the holiday celebrated ‘The Heroic Woman Worker’. Today it remains a Russian holiday in which men show their appreciation of the women in their lives.

By Kemi Osoliki