International Women's Day Was First Observed
It began not on March 8 but in mid-March 1911, when over a million people rallied across four European nations.
The very first International Women’s Day unfolded in March 1911, after the German socialist Clara Zetkin proposed an annual day of action at the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen. Within months the idea became reality across Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, where more than one million people joined marches and meetings.
The demands were sweeping for the era: the right to vote, the right to hold public office, and an end to sex discrimination in the workplace. In Vienna, women paraded along the Ringstrasse carrying banners honouring the martyrs of the Paris Commune.
A holiday now tied to March 8 actually began in the third week of March 1911.
The familiar March 8 date came later. It hardened only after women in Petrograd struck on that day in 1917, helping ignite the Russian Revolution. Lenin declared it a Soviet holiday in 1922, and the United Nations finally embraced March 8 in the 1970s.
Sources & references
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