Not like Valentine's Day, which is about love and chocolate, or Mother's Day, which is about sentimentality and breakfast in bed, International Women's Day is about equality and autonomy.
The first commemoration occurred on March 19, 1911, a time when most governments in the world, including the U.S. and Canada, barred women from voting and most employers refused to hire women, ghettoizing them in sweatshops.
Six days after that first international call to action for women, flames engulfed such a sweatshop, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 workers, the vast majority of them young women aged 16 to 25, some of whom jumped to their deaths from the 9th floor rather than burn.
Women can vote now. They can hold most jobs, though not all, including combat positions in the U.S. military. And their pay is only 75 percent of men's. So the struggle for equality and autonomy is not over. Yet the GOP is intent on setting women back. If Republican governors across the country succeed in confiscating collective bargaining rights from public sector workers, women will be hurt most.
The grotesque working conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, including locked and blocked exit doors, a failed fire escape, and fire hazards such as oily floors and wicker baskets of scraps, will be invoked on this centennial commemoration of International Women's Day, as they were during observances in the early years after the tragedy. These conditions epitomized the very kind of oppression that International Women's Day had been created to eradicate.
Labor organizations, such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Women's Trade Union League aided the fire victims' families and pressured for legislation to improve working conditions and protect exploited workers from the hazardous effects of employer greed. Since that time, labor unions have contributed significantly to the goal of women's equality by, among other things, ensuring with contract language that their pay is equal to that of men performing the same tasks.
Some unions give special attention to the needs of women members. The United Steelworkers, for example, established Women of Steel (WOS), which trains and promotes women for leadership in a predominately male industrial union. WOS, in turn, aids sisters internationally, including the widows of 65 miners killed at Grupo Mexico's Pasta de Conchos mine and Liberian women at the Firestone rubber plantation where USW and AFL-CIO training enabled workers to wrest control of their union from the corporation. Like the goal of the first International Women's Day a century ago, this is women working to improve the lives of women worldwide.
Now, however, right wingers have launched broad attacks on unions, attempting to both crush their ability to protect workers and to elect progressive lawmakers who will do the same. This includes GOP efforts to pass Right to Freeload legislation that would permit workers who benefit from unions to shirk paying dues. And it includes attempts by GOP governors to strip public sector unions of the right to bargain over working conditions and benefits.
This is an attack on women. In the state and local public sector unions that these governors are trying to enfeeble, members are more likely to be women -- teachers, librarians, nurses, and public health workers. On the state level, 52 percent of workers are women; on the local level, it's 61 percent.
Public sector workers -- the majority women -- already earn less than their private sector counterparts. Two studies, one by the Economic Policy Institute and one by the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, show that when education, experience and benefits are factored into the calculations, government workers -- the people who perform critical societal functions like protecting the elderly from abuse and teaching our children -- earn 4 to 11 percent less than comparable private sector workers.
Despite the already-lower pay, public sector workers have agreed to wage cuts. But they refuse to accept GOP attempts to strip them of their right to bargain for safe working conditions and benefits.
GOP governors from Ohio to Indiana to Wisconsin have claimed last November's elections gave them a mandate to decimate worker rights. But numerous polls, from those sponsored by the New York Times to USA Today/Gallup, have shown that these Republicans are wrong, that the public is not with them. Consistently, 60 percent in the polls say they oppose legislation terminating worker rights.
They don't want corporations and they don't want governments to return to the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, when young women, without a union and without an effective collective voice, labored in a fire trap that eventually killed them. They don't want government to give itself or corporations the unfettered ability to exploit workers again.
Tuesday is the centennial commemoration of International Women's Day. It is a day for women to stand up to the Republican men trying to turn back time. It is a day for women to demand equality and autonomy, both of which are best achieved collectively.
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
Why on earth do families-- especially those headed by single mothers---need
a living wage and healthcare benefits? Sheesh...it's like you honestly expect to
feed, clothe, shelter, and medically care for those fetuses we demand be born.
Love,
The Koch Brothers, the Tea Party, and the GOP
What about Mike Pence and Smith's proposals to defund Title X Funding for poor women that use Planned Parenthood? Or use the IRS code to take away a valid medical expense for a legal medical procedure?
Or those congressmen and women who vote agains SCHIPS insurance for poor children?
Or the GOP"s attack on social programs that help needy families.
How about NONE of the GOP women talking out loud against the attack on women's health care?
As a woman who had 3 miscarriages, I find this outrageous! Men should not be allowed to make laws about women's bodies.
You're not fooling anyone. In fact you're just the sort of person whose part of the problem. Do you have any idea how painful and difficult a miscarraige can be? Do you know what a period feel like? Do you know anything at all about what you're talking about?
Why is it that people who don't have female parts and know nothing about how they work, feel they should legislate from a place of ignorance?
Oh, and thanks to the republican year of the 'mama grizzly', there are now fewer women in congress than in the last two decades, because when it boils down to it, republican voters really don't believe women have any place making law, or in fact, mking anything but babies and dinner.
Sad but VERY TRUE ehorth. There are FAR TOO MANY Democratic lawmakers afraid to take a bold step because unlike FDR in the 1930s, they are ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY SCARED TO DEATH that they'll get INSTANTLY LABELED as a "commie-pinko-socialist" by the Republicans and their pals in the corporate run mainstream media.
'Nuff said.
Typical Democrat "reasoning." For example, if the GOP critizes illegal immigration (illegal behavior) the Dems call them anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic, etc. If the GOP disagrees with the position of a black politician (like Obama) they get called racist.
The America people are tired of liberal and Dem "card playing."
If you can't win on the merits of you arguments, don't anger people by screaming sexism, racism, etc.
And yes, the GOP is attacking women, not just through trying to destroy unions, but also through trying to destroy Healthcare, Planned Parenthood, making contraception and abortion harder to obtain, and cutting any program that benefited families and children. The GOP's agenda is to take America back to a mythical past that never-was but somehow pervades the minds of conservatives; back to a time before income taxes or any tax, before public works, before FDR and SSI, back to the "good ol' days" of tenements, ignorance and lack of education, workhouses for the poor, sweatshops, 6-day work-weeks, no retirement, no overtime, no vacation, etc.
That is why groups like NOW have been marginalized and no one really pays attention to them anymore. All you have to do is watch the news channels (both network and cable) and you won't find them. That radical message does not resonate so well in fly over country.
Finally, why is it that liberals can't understand that someone can say that unions back in the 30s did a good job of being beneficial, but now are increasingly irrelevant?
Isn't it interesting that Sarah Palin would boast that her husband, the '1st Dude' as she referred to him, was a "card carrying member of the Steelworkers Union", working in the Alaska oil fields?
Todd Palin is better known as a former oil company management person and secessionist.
We don't hear much from either of them about being supporters of labor unions. Do we?
The specifics of this debate-the unsustainable costs of public service unions that were rewarded with overly generous compensation packages by the Democrat party in return for receiving huge campaign contributions from these unions, i.e., the symbiotic relationship between the Dems and the unions. This is bankrupting the states. Wanting to end this unfairness is not "anti-union." It is necessary and a reflection of reality.
Saying this is "anti-union" and an attack on women, etc. is incorrect, an oversimplification, and just unfair. Also-it isn't working.
The employees pay 100% of their pensions - it is the states who are using the money to fund other things that were paid for by taxes that their GOP governors and legislators cut. This is NOT the workers' fault. That it is relevant to women and particularly hard on women is that many of the workers are women, and as such, are still receiving lower wages then men. Getting campaign contributions by the unions is the same kind of "symbiotic relationship" that the GOP and corporations have: getting millions from oil companies, Koch Bros., Pharma, etc. Union contributions are ultimately for the benefit of working people; who are the corporate contributions benefiting? Not the average American. This is the reality, this is the unfairness.
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/25/the-wisconsin-lie-exposed-taxpayers-actually-contribute-nothing-to-public-employee-pensions/comment-page-3/
It's the liberal way, and it is just ONE of the many reasons that millions of people really dislike liberals.
You libs have made lots of enemies over the years with your outrageous "reasoning" and rhetoric. Now you are losing everywhere. You deserve it.
Equality means you cannot hide behind your gender. If you are part of a union that is contributing to the financial problems of the state, you must be part of the solution-givebacks.
Cutting corporate taxes which reduce state tax incomes are what created the deficit in Wisconsin, not middle-class pay rates for teachers with masters degrees.
I haven't heard you play the race card yet, but I'm sure you're working on that angle.
First we have the right wing Bush appointed Corporate court's decision in the Citizen's United Case, (see John Roberts) that corporations and unions have the same rights as human beings and can give unlimited funds to influence the outcome of elections.
Then the same rightwingers are using their legislative positions to nullify and therefore defund the unions so that now ONLY CORPORATIONS will have unlimited money to influence elections, therefore stifling any voice of the lowly working stiffs.
According to you and the liberal white ilk ,its o.k to attack conservative women that dont agree with thge lucid dreams of American socialism and the liberal agenda. Your so funny
BTW...it's better to have 'lucid dreams' than an actual living nightmare, which is what the right, and the sadly confused women supportive of its ideals, are offering us.