International Women’s Day Marches. Wikipedia has a good article on the origins of this “global holiday celebrated annually on March 8 to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women” which focuses attention on such issues as “as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.“
So I won’t go into any great detail here. The earliest manifestation was a Woman’s Day organised by the Socialist Party of America in New York City on 28th February 1909, and the idea was taken up the following year by the International Socialist Women’s Conference. When women got the vote in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8th became a national holiday and the date became established in socialist movements and countries worldwide, being taken up by feminists in the 1960s. International Women’s Day was celebrated by the UN in 1975 and adopted by them in 1977.
Since around 2000 IWD has been ” criticized as heavily diluted and commercialized, particularly in the West, where it is sponsored by major corporations and used to promote general and vague notions of equality, rather than radical social reforms” and in 2009 was hi-jacked by a British PR firm, but other groups have continued a more radical observance of the day and attempted to reclaim it, and it has been largely those that I’ve photographed over the years.
Until 2002 I’d been teaching most years on March 8th and hadn’t been able to photograph daytime IWD events, so I think that year was the first time I did so. Since then I’ve photographed them most years, and here I’ll post a few pictures from some of them, with links.
IWD 2002 – Global Women’s Strike
I only wrote a short text – so here it is:
the 8 march is a world woman’s day and was celebrated by some as a global women’s strike. the march in london stopped outside key sites including the war office and world bank for speeches.
There are 4 pages of pictures, each with a handful of images beginning here
but the links are carefully hidden among the images (I got better at web design later.)
I think this was the first time I photographed Selma James, a leading anti-sexist and anti-racist campaigner and the originator in 1972 of Wages for Housework, “a demand and a political perspective that redefined the working class“. I was pleased to supply a picture for the cover of her recent book ‘Our Time Is Now‘, and recommend it to you.
2003 Global Womens Strike
Text and link to more pictures
2004 Global Women’s Strike – Bush and Blair on Trial
More on My London Diary
For various reasons I didn’t photograph IWD events in 2005, 2006 or 2007.
2008 Million Women Rise: International Women’s Day March
2009 Million Women Rise
2010 I photographed two events.
Million Women Rise
Support the Iranian Women’s Struggle
There are some links to later International Women’s Day events in a post I wrote here a year ago.
