International Women’s Day 2026: Did You Notice?
Socialist women of all countries will hold, each year, a women’s day…
That was Clara Zetkin in 1910 at the Conference of the Second International in Copenhagan.
In 1922, Lenin declared that March 8th would mark the day for women everywhere to celebrate and to be celebrated, in recognition of their 1917 mass-strikes that had been the trigger for the Russian Revolution.
The earliest reported Women’s Day seems to have been in New York in 1909 - this day was to commemorate the earlier efforts of women garment workers protesting for fair wages, unionisation, and the right to vote.
In the UK, the Women’s Social and Political Union had brought together women of all classes, fighting for the right of British women to vote. That finally happened after WW1, in 1918, for some women (those over 30 and who owned property) and for all women in 1928.
In 1975 the United Nations officially recognised March 8th as International Women’s Day.
Did you see much coverage this weekend? Me neither. So here’s some!
This year’s theme is Give to Gain.
It’s a good push - giving time, mentoring, job opportunities, education, internships, better pay, flexible hours, childcare help, throwing money at the problem of inequality, and so on, but how does that sit with the Boys Own Administration in the White House that thinks D.E.I initiatives are ruining America?
And what about Gen Z? Only 32% of those males are supporters of feminism. The rest seem to prefer the ole- fashioned 1950s world they know nothing about, where women stayed home in an apron with the kids and the catalogue shopping and waited for Valium to be invented.
Of course, most women have always worked, because their families have needed the money, and the work women have had to do, fitting around around child-care, and household maintenance, has been low-paid and unprotected. Why would anyone want to go back to that?
1975 was more than the year that the UN enshrined International Women’s Day. It was the year, in the UK, when a woman could FINALLY open her own bank account, take out a loan, get a mortgage, without needing a MALE relative to sign the forms.
In the USA, banks might allow a woman an account, or to borrow money, but the law itself didn’t change until 1974. Unmarried women in the States and in Europe, were penalised by banking rules until the mid 1970s.
That is so recent in time! Only 2 generations. What’s the plan? Take all that away again because ‘feminism has gone too far?’
Across the world today, women enjoy only 64% of the legal protections available to men.
In many countries child marriage is normal. Do you want your daughter married at 9? 13? Do you want her clitoris cut off with a piece of glass?
Epstein Files anybody? Teenage girls are not rich men’s pussy.
According to the WHO ( Trump America doesn’t believe in that shit) 1 in 3 women in the world suffer some kind of physical violence at the hands of men.
Until 1967, in the UK, abortion was a criminal offence. How many states in the USA want this to be the new-normal? How many men want this to be the new-normal?
Until 1982 (I am not making this up) a woman going into a pub alone in the UK could be refused a drink. Would you like a man to tell you whether you can or can’t have a drink?
Until 1991 there was no such thing, in UK law, as rape in marriage.
In the UK, last year, 2.5 million women were paid below the living wage, and the gender pay gap is running at 7%. World-wide, more than 90% of company Board members are male. World-wide, only about 11-12% of CEOs are women. In the UK, of the FTSE 100 companies, only 7 have female leaders.
The populist perception on the right, especially from the right-wing media, and especially in the sludge-sphere of male online ranters and frothers, that women are claiming more than is ‘fair’ is just wrong. The facts don’t support the prejudice. Not even close.
So why this rage against women?
I would be up all night writing about that. Up all night about men who can afford all the wars they want but get upset about equal pay and equal education and equal rights.
Every bit of progressive law-making for women has come about through progressive politics. Not through some Golden-Age Back to Eden gender-role madness where women ‘obey’ men because ‘feminism has gone too far.’
Women are not dumped on Planet Earth by a male sky-god as handmaids to men with magic dicks. All human life is born of woman. Women have a right to live in peace and prosperity, as mothers, lovers, friends, wives, workers, educators, decision-makers, professionals, farmers, gardeners, writers and artists, bankers, law-makers, doctors and healers, visionaries and peace-makers. And women have a right not to be assaulted, raped, beaten up and murdered by men. Often by men they know.
And on that happy day, we won’t need feminism anymore, so let’s work together to make that dream come true!
But until then… Happy International Women’s Day
Jeannette Winterson: In 1985 I published my first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. it won a few prizes and later I adapted it for BBC TV where we won a BAFTA for best drama. 25years later I revisited some of that material - and told the story of my adoption - in the memoir Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?
I’ve written a lot over the years; novels, essays, short stories, kids’ books, screenplays. I am published in 23 countries and many languages so if you want to buy my books, it’s easy. I hope you will do so using your great local independent bookstore. I came into Substack initially at their request to be a guest writer for a month . That’s where the ghost stories appeared . After that time I gave it up because it felt like too much.
Then Trump got elected again and I thought I should jump back in the mix . To bring hope (I hope) and to write about things that matter in a world that says nothing matters except money and power. For me, all of life is connected. I’d like to connect some of that life to you here. I’m telling you stories. Trust me.