March 8: history and traditions of the holiday

International Women’s Day in Russia is considered a holiday of spring and women. Traditionally, women are given a bouquet of tulips on this holiday. How they began to celebrate March 8th and who was at the origins of the creation of the holiday – in the material of Kommersant.

How did International Women’s Day come about and who invented it?

The holiday on March 8th began February 28, 1908, when over 15 thousand working women of New York marched with demands for improved working conditions, higher wages, shorter working hours and the right to vote. A year later, on the anniversary of the march, the Socialist Party of the USA held a rally, and declared the last Sunday of February National Women’s Daythe holiday lasted until 1913.

In 1910, an international conference of socialist women was held in Copenhagen, at which activist Clara Zetkin proposed establishing International Women’s Day, to help achieve women’s suffrage. The following year, the holiday was celebrated in Denmark, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland. There was no single date for Women’s Day: it was celebrated either on the last Sunday of February, or on certain dates in March or even in May.

Holiday in pre-revolutionary Russia and the USSR

Women’s Day in Tsarist Russia established on March 2, 1913 in St. Petersburg at a meeting in the building of the Kalashnikov Bread Exchange, where the topic of equality between men and women was discussed. The date moved to March 8 in connection with the rally on February 23, 1917 (or March 8 according to the new style), when in Petrograd workers of weaving factories on the Vyborg side began a strike under the slogan “Bread and Peace!” Some historians recognize this strike as the beginning of the revolution. As a result, Russian women achieved suffrage – this happened a year earlier than in Great Britain and three years earlier than in the United States. The holiday was officially approved in 1921.

In the USSR, the holiday was accompanied by the glorification of the image of the Soviet woman – a worker, mother and communist. In 1963, the World Congress of Women was held in the USSR, and in 1965, March 8 became a day off. During the Cold War, the slogans of the holiday included calls to fight for world peace, and the day itself began to be presented as a day of international solidarity for women. The USSR became the first (and for a long time remained the only) European country where March 8 was celebrated at the state level. The Soviet Union played an important role in popularizing the holiday throughout the world.

When did March 8 become International Women’s Day?

The UN officially established International Women’s Day in 1975 On the eve of the so-called Women’s Decade – the period from 1976 to 1985, during which two international conferences on gender issues were held, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was also signed.

During this period, the United Nations Women’s Fund (UNIFEM) appeared in the organization, financing programs to promote gender equality and women’s rights. The structure existed until 2010, when a new one was established in its place – UN Women. She organizes events annually on March 8, dedicated to some issue, such as combating violence or access to education. Also Every year the UN announces the theme of International Women’s Day, for example in 2024 it is “Invest in women, accelerate progress.”

March 8 is a day off in the countries of the former USSR (with the exception of the Baltic states), as well as in the DPRK, Cuba, Mongolia, Angola, Zambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya, Eritrea, and Nepal. In China and Madagascar the day off on this day is only for women, in Germany this day is considered a holiday only in Berlin.

How do people feel about celebrating March 8th in Russia now?

Since the mid-1980s in the USSR, the political agenda of Women’s Day began to fade away, and in the 1990s in Russia the fight for women’s equality and the feminist message disappeared from it. International Women’s Day has come to be thought of more as a holiday of spring, beauty and all women.

In 2022, Mail.ru conducted a survey where only 7% of Russians called March 8 a holiday dedicated to the fight for women’s rights, and only 5% called it a day in support of women. More than half of Russians (57%) perceive March 8 as International Women’s Day, and 30% as a day of spring. At the same time, 58% of respondents say that gender equality has been achieved in Russia, and only a quarter believe that women have fewer rights compared to men. Women themselves perceive the holiday primarily as an opportunity to relax (53%), another third of women hope to receive gifts from loved ones.

Other women’s holidays

International Women’s Day is not the only holiday related to gender issues. November 24 is Mother’s Day. With the support of the UN, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11), the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25), the International Widows Day (June 23), the International Day of Rural Women (October 15), the International Day of with sexual violence in conflict (19 June), International Day of the Girl Child (11 October).