Having scanned the International Women’s Day website to see just what is going on around the world today, it all seems to have a rather different perspective from what I remember.

The website is sponsored by HSBC bank and quite a few of the events have a corporate sort of bent with networking opportunities for business women up and down the UK as well as in other countries.

But with the notable exception of demonstrations and rallies in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as a couple of activities here in Britain, there is little focus on the central messages of the original International Women’s Day.

The day is very likely to be eclipsed by also being National No Smoking Day.

The first IWD on 19th March 1911 saw rallies attended by more than a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

Demands included the right of women to vote, to hold public office, to work, to education and training, to be free from discrimination on the job.

On the eve of World War 1 and as part of the international peace movement, Russian women came together for their first IWD. The following year in 1914 women elsewhere in Europe held rallies against the war in solidarity with their international sisters.

Then in 1917 Russian women textile workers in Petrograd went on strike for ‘bread and peace’ and issued a call for other women workers to join them. Two million Russian soldiers had been killed in the war and millions more were in abject poverty.
Only four days later the Tsar was forced to abdicate and the new provisional government granted women the right to vote. So it was women’s militancy that sparked the Russian Revolution!

It is this date – 8th March (23rd February in the Julian calender still in use in Russia at the time) – that has been honoured every year since to celebrate our struggle for our demands as women around the world.

Zooming forward to 2006 and International Women’s Day appears on the surface to have lost the fire in it’s belly. According to the website it’s all communication and leadership skills, creative workshops and alternative therapies, dance, comedy and other arts.

It’s a purple and green marketing opportunity for companies like Jaguar Cars “who focus on increasing awareness of issues and priorities that women have when buying or owning a Jaguar”
(http://www.internationalwomensday.com/organisations.asp)

It’s true that women seek their liberation in many different ways. For many it’s a very personal journey and there is a need for healing and recovery along the way when we’ve been traumatised or harmed by our experiences as women and girls.

In this increasingly brutal patriarchal capitalist world, with wars, poverty, violent repression and exploitation, the most marginalised and oppressed women are hit hardest. We support women everywhere who struggle against their oppressors.

With this in mind it is a tragic shame that there is not more of a focus on some of the biggest issues that women are mobilising around.

The single biggest international issue that is hiding in the small print of the supporting organisations is that of the occupation of Iraq and the Women Say No To War Campaign aims to get 100,000 signatures before 8 March for its Women’s Call for Peace: An Urgent Appeal.

Parallel to this is the massive groundswell of support for campaigns around violence against women.

The V-Day: Until the Violence Stops campaign was born out of Eve Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues. Based on intimate interviews with over 200 women of all ages and backgrounds, Monologues transforms the shame and secrecy surrounding the female anatomy into a funny, sexy and moving experience.

“As the play toured hundreds of women told her their stories of violence and abuse. The experience had unlocked their voices. Something had to be done.”
(www.vdayuk.org/about/history.htm)

V-Day was born in 1998 and since then performances have celebrated and empowered women while raising more than $14 million for voluntary sector organizations who work to end violence against women.

In January 2006 actress Nicole Kidman became UNIFEM’s new Goodwill Ambassador to raise the visibility for women’s rights and put the spotlight in particular on the ‘pandemic of violence against women’.

This year she plans to visit women in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Afghanistan and Cambodia – all countries where women have been devastated by war, genocide or violence of a most extreme and brutal nature.

But what about equal rights? How about equal pay? Trade union leaders in the UK have not exactly been jumping with enthusiasm to push the issue forward with New Labour, preferring to brush the historic £300 million pay-out for equality for women health workers in Cumbria last year under the proverbial carpet for fear of provoking a crisis should other workers follow suit and win big backdated claims.

In 2011, International Women’s Day will be 100 years old. We should aim now to bring together many more women in united action around the world and make IWD’s centenary year one where we mobilize, in all its diversity, a global sisterhood around some key demands.

Until then we will continue to support women’s groups and projects that raise these and other demands around the world.

Respect and other labour movement organizations need to show their full and consistent support for International Women’s Day activities and events, now and in the future, for us to reclaim IWD as a celebration of how ordinary working women have the power and potential for extraordinary personal and social transformation when we work together towards common goals for survival and for liberation.

“Women are born to be creative and innovative fighters; we do everything possible to achieve our place in society, despite the absence of democracy, equity and justice. Solidarity, my sisters, solidarity forever, because in unity is strength.”

(Tunisian contributor to World March of Women newsletter Nov-Dec 2005, Volume 8, Number 6). http://www.marchemondiale.org/en/bulletin/06_2005.html#art7)