Cold Open

It’s March 19th, 1911, in Vienna, the capital of Austria.

A young man is out for a morning drive in his Ford Model T. He turns onto the Ringstrasse – a 3-mile circular boulevard that wraps around the heart of the city. He’s expecting a pleasant, leisurely drive, but in the distance, he sees what looks like a large crowd marching along the road, blocking cars and carriages from making any progress.

As he gets nearer and is forced to slow down, the man can see that the crowd is made up of hundreds of women. They’re chanting, waving bright red flags, and carrying banners.

Curious, the man leans over his steering wheel to read what the signs say. Some call for women to be given the right to vote and hold public office. Others demand the end of sex discrimination in the workplace. Some signs even honor the members of the Paris Commune, a radical socialist government that briefly seized control of the French capital in 1871. The Paris Commune championed progressive, feminist, and anarchist ideas, and now, years later, it’s serving as an inspiration for these women here in Vienna.

But even after reading the signs and banners, the man in the Model T can’t work out what’s brought on this protest. As far as he knows, today isn’t a major holiday, and he hasn’t heard of any labor disputes in the city. There are no political elections or anything that might prompt to protest, except for the first ever International Women’s Day. And it won’t be the last.

On this day, all across Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, more than a million women are participating in similar demonstrations. They may be marching in different cities, and their placards may be written in different languages, but they are all speaking with one voice, trying to make the world hear their demands for women’s rights by taking to the streets at the same time on March 19th, 1911.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is March 19th, 1911: The First International Women’s Day. 

Act One

It’s February 28th, 1909, in New York City, just over two years before the women’s protest in Vienna. On a brisk Sunday morning, two thousand people march through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A cold wind blasts the dense crowd, but not even a blizzard could stop them today. The marchers are mostly women, and they hold signs high above their heads, chanting for better working conditions and better pay. At the front of the pack, shouting louder than all the rest, is Theresa Malkiel.

Theresa is an activist in her mid-thirties. She comes from a Jewish family that fled persecution in Russia when Theresa was a teenager. Like thousands of other migrants to the United States, they settled in New York, and Theresa soon started work in a garment factory. There, she quickly became involved in politics, and, in her mid-twenties, she joined the Socialist Party of America.

She became a leading member of the Woman’s National Committee of the party and spent years heading up suffrage clubs, writing pamphlets, and trying to recruit more working women to the socialist cause. But it was an uphill battle. Suffragist and socialist groups didn’t always see eye to eye. The suffragists didn’t all share the same political beliefs—some were left-wing, but many weren't, and that made the Socialist Party cautious about cooperating with them.

But Theresa realized that wasn’t the only reason for the gulf between the two groups. Male socialist leaders claimed to believe in equality, but from bitter experience, Theresa came to the conclusion that most of them were concerned solely with the rights of other working men. At best, they neglected the struggle for female liberation. And at worst, they didn’t believe in it at all.

Theresa, on the other hand, believed that society could only be fully liberated if women were embraced by the socialist party – and if women embraced socialism in return. Her frustration with the way the two groups were siloed led Theresa to take it upon herself to be the leader who bridged the gap.

Four years ago, she created a branch of the Socialist Women’s Society of New York. Having a separate group for women was frowned upon by others in the local socialist party, saying it contradicted their core principle of equality for all. But Theresa was convinced that more women would be willing to join the socialist cause if they had a space just for them. In time, these new recruits could become more involved in the wider party if they wanted to—but the most important thing was to get them interested in the first place and start breaking down the barriers between socialists and suffragists.

It hasn’t always been easy. But Theresa hasn’t given up, and recently, she’s felt like the tide has been shifting in her favor. Perhaps inspired by similar movements in Europe, increasing numbers of women from all walks of life in America are starting to speak out. They have had enough of feeling like second-class citizens —and they’re demanding that things must change.

Theresa has organized today’s march to keep up the momentum. She’s calling it National Woman’s Day, and it’s the first-ever protest of its kind in the United States.

So, when they reach 34th Street, the crowd of 2,000 stops and gathers at the Murray Hill Lyceum. Outside this theater, various feminist and socialist speakers take turns climbing on top of milk crates and addressing the crowd on the importance of women’s equality. There are labor organizers, writers, and radical activists like Theresa, who urges the crowd to consider women’s rights as human rights. It’s a refrain Theresa's been repeating for years: the emancipation of a woman really means the emancipation of the human being within her.

The crowd roars their appreciation, taking in Theresa’s every word. She smiles and looks out over the sea of women, trying to commit the scene to memory. She doesn’t know how, exactly, but she feels like this moment might just change everything.

Theresa Malkiel has always believed that she could make a difference. But even for her, the first National Woman’s Day in America is a greater success than she ever imagined. And its legacy will continue long after the marchers return home. Instead, Theresa’s work will inspire others to push for women’s liberation even harder, and National Woman’s Day will spread from the streets of Manhattan to the rest of the world.

Act Two

It’s August 26th, 1910, in Copenhagen, Denmark, 18 months after Theresa Malkiel’s march for National Woman’s Day.

In the halls of the city’s Concert Palace, a choir performs a Dutch cantata, their voices soaring up to the ornate, vaulted ceiling high above. Sitting in the audience, 53-year-old Clara Zetkin listens intently to the beautiful and deeply moving music. Clara is an activist from Germany, a fervent socialist, and one of the leaders of the global women’s rights movement. Around her sit hundreds of other campaigners from 20 different countries around the world. Some of the women represent unions; others are from political parties or are leaders of working women’s clubs. They all have gathered here in Copenhagen for the Second International Conference of Socialist Women. As the choir’s performance comes to an end and the appreciative applause of the audience dies down, a delegate from Belgium stands and declares the meeting officially open.

Clara is among the first to speak. She has an idea she wants to put to the floor. The United States Women's Day march in February of last year was such a success that Clara thinks they should make it an annual, international event. If women all over the world were to join together on a single day of protest, they could speak together as one and amplify their shared demands for equality.

Even as Clara speaks, murmurs of agreement ripple through the crowd, and the conference soon unanimously approves the proposal. Clara is ecstatic. But she also knows that the work has only just begun. The first International Women’s Day has to be a success, otherwise there might not be another.

So, Clara leads the cross-country efforts to organize the protest. There are many inequalities facing women in 1910, but for this first march, the organizers decide to focus on one injustice in particular—voting rights. There are only a handful of countries in the entire world where women can vote. So, it’s the perfect common cause to mobilize as many people as possible.

And after months of organizing, on March 19th, 1911, more than a million women all over Europe mark the first ever International Women’s Day. There are demonstrations across Austria-Hungary, like the one on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. There are more protests in Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. It’s an international show of solidarity and sisterhood unlike any seen before, and Clara and the other organizers are thrilled with their impact. The following year, they return to the streets again—and this time, they’re joined by more women in France, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In 1913, the protests then spread to Russia. It seems nothing can stop their momentum, and Clara hopes the marches will eventually become so big that they will be impossible to ignore.

But by the time of the fourth annual march in early 1914, there are dark clouds on the horizon in Europe. Tensions are growing amid fears that the long decades of peace on the continent are about to come to a sudden and violent end. Sure enough, there are no mass international women’s marches in 1915. The outbreak of World War I seemingly banishes all hope of social reform in Europe, with many women’s groups in countries like Britain and Germany suspending their campaigns to focus on supporting the war effort.

For Clara Zetkin, it’s a bitter disappointment. Unlike Theresa Malkiel in the United States, Clara has always been suspicious of the broader suffrage movement, which she thinks is too dominated by middle and upper-class women. She believes that true emancipation for all can only come through socialism and that the leading suffragists are too loyal to their class to ever achieve victory in their struggle.

And now, those women have seemingly abandoned their fight to support the war, confirming everything Clara thought of them. But she’s not ready to give up on the cause. Throughout World War I, Clara continues to campaign for socialism and women’s rights. But it’s an increasingly lonely struggle. When she travels to neutral Switzerland for the Third International Socialist Women's Conference in the middle of the war, she’s joined by only two dozen other delegates. Even those who do show up quickly fall into bickering about the war, and Clara desperately misses the energy and sisterhood of Copenhagen—the spirit that created International Women's Day.

Given the fighting in Europe, a repeat of that successful demonstration seems impossible. But there is one place where International Women’s Day will be marked despite the ongoing war. In 1917, women in Russia will defy their ruler and take to the streets once again in a protest that will kick start a revolution and change the world forever. 

Act Three

It’s March 8th, 1917, in St. Petersburg, Russia, six years after the first International Women’s Day.

It’s a sunny winter morning after a string of miserably cold ones, and a Russian woman stands outside a textile factory waiting to start her shift. Her stomach growls with pangs of hunger. St. Petersburg is under strict rationing, and there’s not enough food to go around. But this woman is more than just hungry. She’s angry. Because if there’s no food to buy, she sees no point in working.

The Russian woman stares at the factory gates, debating whether to go inside or take a stand. After all, today is International Women’s Day. And if ever there was a time for the women of St. Petersburg to band together and make a statement, it’s today.

As her fellow workers begin to arrive, the woman stops them from going inside and tells them to wait. Once the majority of them are there, the woman musters all the strength she has left and bellows to her compatriots that they should all go on strike.

There are worried murmurs in the crowd. But the Russian woman presses on. The Emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, is at a military base more than 400 miles away, too focused on the war to care about his people at home. They need to make him see them and hear their demands.

Roused by her speech, the workers turn from the factory and begin a march through the city, shouting, “Down with high prices!”, “Down with hunger!” and “Bread for the workers!”. They call for every passing man and woman to join them. And many do. So that, by that evening, more than 100,000 workers have gone on strike.

Over the days that follow, more and more citizens join the protest, until finally, the entire city grinds to a halt. Tsar Nicholas II eventually has no choice but to return to St. Petersburg and abdicate his throne, ending more than 300 years of his family’s rule. It’s the first domino to fall in a line of events that leads to the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. And perhaps none of it would’ve happened if the workers of St. Petersburg had decided not to take to the streets in honor of International Women’s Day – six years after the first such protest took place on March 19th, 1911.

Outro

Next on History Daily. March 20th, 1934. Sportswoman Babe Didrikson stuns the men of the Brooklyn Dodgers by pitching a hitless inning against them.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Supervising Sound Designer Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Alex Burns.

Edited by Joel Callen.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.