International Women’s Day: A Global Movement with Roots in St. Petersburg

International Women’s Day is celebrated each year on March 8, recognizing the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women while continuing the call for equality. The observance grew out of early twentieth century labor and suffrage movements in North America and Europe.

In 1908, about 15,000 women marched in New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay, and the right to vote. The following year, the Socialist Party of America organized the first National Woman’s Day in the United States.

The idea soon spread internationally. In 1910, German activist Clara Zetkin proposed an annual international observance at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. The first large scale celebration followed in 1911, when more than a million people across Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland gathered in support of women’s rights.

The date March 8 became firmly associated with the movement after women workers in Petrograd launched the 1917 “Bread and Peace” strike during the Russian Revolution.

In 1975, the United Nations formally recognized March 8 as International Women’s Day. In St. Petersburg, women had already been organizing for civic change decades earlier through groups such as the Women’s Town Improvement Association (W.T.I.A.) (pictured) and the Pinellas Federation of Women’s Clubs, whose members helped secure municipal voting rights for women in several Pinellas communities before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.