Sixty six years ago, European socialists set aside March 8 for an international Working Women's Day--a tradition that will again be honoured this year with marches, demonstrating and presentations around the world.

The forerunner of International Women's Day was organized two years earlier in 1908 by militant socialist women in New York City. Most of them were textile workers who had waged bitter strikes for decent working conditions and union representation.

On March 8, 1908, working women in New York marched under banners demanding equal pay, child care centres, the right to vote, and the end to sweatshop working conditions. More than 50 years earlier, On March 8, 1857, a similar demonstration on Manhattan's lower east side had taken place.

"These obscure are anxious women of the poor," wrote labour organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "with shawls and kerchiefs over their heads, with worn clothes and shabby shoes, did not know they were making history . . . This day became known around the world."

International Women's Day - March 8th

International Women's Day commemorates a march by women garment workers in New York City on March 8th, 1857. The women stopped work to protest bad working conditions, a twelve hour day and low pay. As the marchers moved from their poor neighbourhood into the more affluent section of the city, the march was violently broken up by police. Seventy women were arrested.

Three years later, women garment and textile workers formed their first union. On March 8, 1908, after the death of 128 women trapped in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, 15,000 women workers from the garment and textile industry marched echoing the demands of their sisters 50 years earlier: shorter working hours, an end to child labour; safe working conditions, and equal pay. Their slogan- " Bread and Roses" sang through the streets: "Bread", the symbol of economic security, and " Roses", the symbol for a better life.

International Women's Day is celebrated in countries around the world, but it has only recently been revived in North America with the rise of the women's movement in the Sixties. Each year thousands of women across Canada join their sisters in marches, meetings, celebrations and re-dedication to the continuing fight for " Bread and Roses".