International Women's Day

This year it is being said that March 8 was the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day and that is why many organisations are coming together in this month in an international effort to re-examine issues of women's oppression. This is what Susie Orbach had to say about the work that still needs to be done after the London summit of "Endangered Species": 
Girls don’t see themselves reflected and so they try to change themselves to mimic what they see. Last Friday in London, young women from all over the country came together to show us what they are doing to combat this tyranny and to create a new visual culture. There was joy in the room as they showed their fight back and dared to love their bodies. We all vowed to stop the trafficking of body hatred throughout the world. It is not an easy struggle. It can be written off as trivial. But it isn’t. We all know it eats away at us. That’s why we are campaigning. Join with us to get our bodies back.

What do women commemorate on March 8th?

Those of us who were involved in the Second Wave of feminism of the late 60's and early 70's in the USA and Western Europe, thought it was a garment workers strike on the Lower East side of Manhattan in NYC.

Women picketing during the Uprising of the 20,000

And there was one that started at the Triangle shirt factory, and spread along the east coast to 20.000 women workers by March 1911. Apparently, according to Wikipedia however, the history of this day is a lot cloudier and may involve some cross-appropriations. It seems it started among revolutionaries in Germany in1908 and by 1911, had spread throughout Europe when it was celebrated by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. We can acknowledge this history, but I am grateful that we in South Africa have our own Women's Day which reflects much more of our own struggle for liberation. With regard to women's bodies, it seems we have an even longer journey ahead than women in the UK- body hatred in our country is expressed in such violent ways that it not only eats away at us, it kills us.