You know the story of the factory that burned down? know that it has nothing to do with Women's Day. but just 0, she was inserted " of arrogance "In the 70s / 80s for political reasons.
I tell you (for the umpteenth time) some date, so as to draw a chronological line.
The first women's day (in the usa) dates back to 1905, an isolated event for the few American citizens, on the initiative of the socialist movement and promoted by some activists of women's rights organizations.
Women's day in the early twentieth century
In 1909 , again in the USA, again on a socialist initiative (and promoted by various communist circles) there is the first "national" women's day (in the USA).
In 1911 the day becomes “international” following the internationalist vocation of the socialist movement and the communist party, at that time, in open opposition to American politics still linked to the Monroe doctrine and to American culture founded on the cult of the white man, and in which women and men of other ethnicities were "naturally" subordinates.
The first International Women's Day is celebrated on 19 March , and more than a day of celebration it resembled a strike, in which there were women in the street with signs, flags, banners, demanding wage increases, greater protection at work, greater civil rights and, in some cases, even the right to vote, all things that at the time were a prerogative of the white man.
Six days after this demonstration, March 25, 1911 , there was the famous fire in the New York factory, which cost the lives of 123 women, several men, who never gave a damn about anyone and, perhaps this is the most serious thing, an unknown number of children who at the at the time of the fire they were in the building, and that, even today, we pretend not to know exactly why they were in that industrial plant.
In the following years, Women's Day is celebrated in fits and starts, especially due to the First World War and in the years of the Great War Women's Day underwent some transformations, taking on the connotations of a women's demonstration against the war. These demonstrations reiterated and were re-proposed every year for all the years of the war, but involving an ever smaller number of demonstrators and cities, almost coming to the point of disappearing and falling into oblivion.
Women's day after the great war
In 1917 there was a last, extreme attempt, to put an end to the war, and in Russia a series of " coordinated "On the occasion of 8 March, the symbolic date that had characterized the anti-war demonstrations in recent years. These demonstrations saw the mobilization of the women of the people, practically, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the soldiers engaged at the front, and numerous workers, peasants, and other people who, for various other reasons, would not she had gone to war but had loved ones in war, to demonstrate against the war that was impoverishing the country and to loudly demand Russia's withdrawal from the great war.
This manifestation would later evolve into the famous February Revolution and finally, after various passages and other mobilizations of different nature, Russia withdrew from the great war, but from 1918 onwards, International Women's Day appears as a distant memory, at least until 1921.
In 1921 , in the general context of the communist international , it was decided to revive this day to celebrate at the same time, both the women who on 8 March 1917 had made their voices heard in Russia, and to celebrate, in a broader sense, women and resume the struggles outside the Soviet Union originals for women's emancipation. And since it was superfluous to have two different days, they decided to combine everything on the most symbolic date, that of March 8.
From 1921 onwards, International Women's Day would be celebrated (in the Soviet world ) no longer on March 19 but on March 8, in the rest of the world instead ... well, the rest of the world hated the Communists, so Women's Day was no longer celebrated, except in the original form of demonstrations and strikes, of very small size, sponsored by the Communists, which very often led to the arrest of the demonstrators, but that's another story.
Women's Day during the Cold War
In 1975 , the international year of women , the United Nations would have officially recognized International Women's Day, which would therefore have definitively gone out of the socialist / communist / Soviet orbit and it became Women's Day as we know it… more or less.
In that period, we are between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, we are in the midst of the cold war and in the USA there is no little discontent with regard to this day, because its history ennobled the communist world, and the USA, could not accept the Communists' merit for having celebrated women for more than half a century, while in the USA the image of the woman was built as a creature subordinate to man, in fact segregated in the kitchen and in the kitchen, intent ironing, washing, cooking and taking care of the family, while the Soviet women went into space.
Women's Day between the West and the Soviet world
In the United States, the gap between “ American women “, Generally portrayed as housewives, and“ Soviet women “, Which went into space, was unacceptable and to prevent the American feminist movement , which in those years acquired ever greater strength, consensus and influence, which in those years was actively engaged in the struggle for the emancipation of the American woman as the female counterpart of man and not as a subordinate model to it, as I said, to avoid the American feminist movement could move too far to the “ left ”And end up in the“ Communist sphere of influence “, It was in the USA that the false history of the day of the woman born as“ anniversary began to circulate "Of a fire in the factory that took place on a hypothetical March 8 of no one knows which year before the First World War.
After all, that fire was well documented and known, especially in the Big Apple, and given the solid foundations and the veracity of the episode, the story literally spread like wildfire, overwriting for a long time, the real story that exists. is behind the International Women's Day, a day that already in 1911 referred to political ideas of emancipation of women and had its roots on the one hand in the socialist movement and on the other, in the suffragette movement. And even if the fire is real, and what happened is dramatic and that story should not be forgotten, it is important to emphasize that that fire does not and has never had a real connection with the International Women's Day, whose history, is strongly linked to the struggles for the emancipation of women, the demonstrations for greater protection at work and countless battles for civil rights, promoted by associations and organizations, of various kinds and more or less close to the socialist / communist world.
Conclusions
Women's day, we can say that it was born as a day, a strike, a demonstration for the emancipation of women and which ends up being indissolubly linked to the Soviet tradition. It represents a meeting point between two worlds, between two realities that in the midst of the Cold War were considered incompatible and it is precisely in that climate of great tension that characterized the Cold War that the pro-American West felt the need, almost visceral, to find a “ alternate history “, To tell the origins of that anniversary recognized as extremely important and necessary all over the world. With the "story" of the factory, the Western world therefore tries to "appropriate" or rather, to "re-appropriate" more than half a century later, of that concept of emancipation, freedom and equality, intrinsic to the day, conceived in the Western world and celebrated for the first time in 1905 in the USA, and postponed (by political will) in the communist orbit.
UN source:http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml