Time and Tides:

Joanne’s Blog

Women’s Voices Rising
One hundred and nine years ago on February 28, 1909 the first National Woman’s Day was observed in New York where women protested against working conditions in the garment industry. The following year a conference of women from 17 countries met in Copenhagen and established Women’s Day, called for March 8 to promote equal rights, including suffrage for women. The next year on March 8, 1911 International Women’s Day brought over a million people to the streets in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, France and elsewhere to advocate for equal employment and wages and for the right to vote. In 1917 women in St Petersburg went on strike for “Bread and Peace,” demanding the end of World War I and the end to food shortages and the Czar. Four days later the Czar abdicated. Leon Trotsky wrote, “We did not imagine that this ‘Women’s Day’ would inaugurate the [Russian] revolution.” The gathering of women around the globe has continued over the last century with an abiding message that envisions each woman and girl being able to exercise her choices and participate without discrimination and fear in her society on an equal basis as men. .… READ FULL POST