International Women's Day Launched in Copenhagen
Clara Zetkin didn't wait for permission. The German socialist stood before 17 countries' delegates in Copenhagen and declared a single day when women everywhere would demand the vote simultaneously. March 19, 1911 became the first International Women's Day—over a million women in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland flooded the streets. Factory workers walked off assembly lines. Housewives abandoned their kitchens. The date later shifted to March 8 after Russian women strikers helped topple the Tsar in 1917, but Zetkin's original insight held: women wielded more power coordinating across borders than begging within them. She'd turned fragmented national movements into a global strike force.
March 8, 1911
115 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on March 8
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They entered through the latrine chute. That's how Philip II's soldiers finally breached Richard the Lionheart's supposedly impregnable fortress after six month…
The butchers and bakers won. On the frozen fields of Hausbergen, Strasbourg's shopkeepers and guild members—armed with pikes they'd forged themselves—faced down…
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