With so much pressure on my time from work (and a little play) I’ve decided to take a little breathing spell, a coffee break from these updates.

Thanks for calling by, and I’ll be back before Spring.

P.S. Downunder, Spring is in September

When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Womens’ Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men.

The idea of IWD first arose at the start of 20th century — in the industrialised world a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies.

Here’s a brief chronology of the most important events

• 1910 The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women’s Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women’s rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament
• 1911 - IWD was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. They wanted the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job and SAFE conditions. Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 young women workers, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants.
• 1917 - With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for “bread and peace”. Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.
• Although women textile workers had been urged by the communists to refrain from striking on IWD - they payed no attention to the boys

Alexandra Kollontai

“When workers were locked out of the Putilov armaments plant on March 7, the women of Petrograd began to storm the streets. The wives, daughters and mothers of soldiers, previously as downtrodden and oppressed as prostitutes, demanded an end to their humiliation and angrily denounced all the hungry suffering of the past three years. Gathering strength and passion as they swept through the city over the next few days in food riots, political strikes and demonstrations, these women launched the first revolution in 1917.”

Since that time, IWD has experienced many ebbs and flows as a day that helps to push women’s issues onto the political agenda. International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women’s rights

For the women of the world, the Day is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development.

You might think that womens’ equality benefits mostly women, but every one-percentile growth in female secondary schooling results in a 0.3 percent growth in the economy. Yet girls are often kept from receiving education in the poorest countries that would best benefit from the economic growth. Until men and women work together to secure the rights and full potential of women, lasting solutions to the world’s most serious social, economic and political problems won’t be found.

Some progress has been made. On a worldwide level, women’s access to education and proper health care has increased; their participation in the paid labour force has grown; and legislation that promises equal opportunities for women and respect for their human rights has been adopted in many countries. The world now has an ever- growing number of women participating in society as policy-makers. However, nowhere in the world can women claim to have all the same rights and opportunities as men

The majority of the world’s 1.3 billion absolute poor are women.

On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work

And everywhere, women continue to be victims of violence. Domestic violence is listed as one of the highest causes of disability and death among women of reproductive age — worldwide.

Introduction to women in work and IWD

In the years before 1910, from the turn of the 20th century, women in industrially developing countries were entering paid work in some numbers. Their jobs were sex segregated, mainly in textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were wretched and wages worse than depressed. Trade unions were developing and industrial disputes broke out, including among sections of non-unionised women workers.

In Europe, the flames of revolution were being kindled.When did we start in Australia ?

The first Australian IWD rally took place in the Sydney Domain on March 25, 1928. It was organised by the Militant Women’s Movement and called for equal pay for equal work; an 8 hour day for shop girls; no piece work; the basic wage for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay.

1931 saw the first IWD marches in Sydney and Melbourne.

In Sydney about 60 women headed a march of 3-400 people with many slogans and banners demanding equal pay for equal work and other special women’s demands, as well as more general issues such as resistance to wage cuts, opposition to the Arbitration courts.

In Melbourne, 150 women marched from the corner of Victoria and Russell Streets, to the Yarra Bank, with a banner declaring “Fight or Starve”

1936 was a major turning point for IWD and in Sydney the first IWD Committee embracing a number of women’s groups was formed on the initiative of Florence Lahiff of the women’s committee of the Unemployed and Relief Workers Council.

The United Associations of non-political groups also played an important role in IWD in Sydney from this time until the ’60s. The United Associations had been formed in 1929 by Jessie Street and involved the Women’s League, Women’s Services Club, Women Voters’ Association and ex-members of the Feminist Club. This association set out to work more vigorously around the stated aims of previous feminist alliances. It was strictly non-party political and had little contact, in its early days, with union or socialist women.

Depression experiences, alarm about fascism and the dangers of war helped to draw these women closer together. During the depression, Jessie Street had developed a sympathy for labour movement and socialist concerns.

These changes were reflected in the first meeting of the 1937 IWD committee with the participation of Viv Newson and Laura Gapp from the United Associations; Mary Lamm (Wright), an earlier Militant Woman and communsit (who is still an active member of the Union of Australian Women and has an unbroken association with IWD organisation); and Clare Herbert, a clothing trades worker. This committee initiated an IWD conference attended by 300 women who represented most of the women’s organisations in Sydney. The conference expressed concern about the dangers of war and the effects of dangerously low living standards on women and children. Mary Wright recently recalled this IWD and the years preceding it:

Although the thirties was a time of misery, doing without and making do, it was also a time of life and activity and involvement for me. Working for the 1929 timber workers when they were locked out and participating in mass picketing was particularly inspiring. I’d put my daughter in a pram at 7 o’clock and go to the picket. The Militant Women also set up relief committees and canvassed door to door

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At another IWD meeting in 1936 at Sydney’s Transport House, the speaker was Jean Devanny, socialist, feminist and author who, in her writing, speaking and personal practices, stirred up outrage and a small measure of support by linking reproductive control and sexuality to the more general political issues of the day. Responses to her speech at Transport House were indicative of the prevailing attitudes on such questions.

Phyllis Johnson who, in recent years, has been involved with Women in the Community and a women’s shelter in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown listened to Jean Devanny as a young woman and recalls her reaction.

Jean dealt with women’s sexuality and shocked all of us there. We all felt that she was very politically advanced but to talk from the platform about women’s sexuality was entirely out of place. It was a taboo subject.

She said that women had the right to enjoy sex as much as men did, but this was not so because sex was a man’s prerogative and that men generally had more pleasant experiences and more sexual excitement than women. We were like stunned mullets really. We never talked about such subjects. It’s a damn pity that we didn’t and it’s a great pity that we didn’t understand what Jean was saying to us then. The womens’ movement might have advanced much more quickly than it did if we had, but we thought that it was right not to talk about such questions, It wasn’t until the explosion of womens’ liberation that we began to think differently about such questions

However, IWD was blossoming out and in 1937 the spacious lounge of the Sydney Progressive Housewives was filled to capacity and in Melbourne a rally in support of the women and children of war-torn Spain received good support.

There were a lot of active women around then we don’t know all of the names of all the “housewives”. We know the feminists and labour movement activists including: Jessie Street (United Associations of Women), Ruby Rich (Federation of Women Voters), Kate Dwyer (labour movement activist), Muriel Heagney (founder of the Council of Action for Equal Pay in 1937), Eileen Powell (first woman industrial advocate), Nerida Cohen (at the time NSW’s only woman barrister),

Australia in the 1950s : Women who had been metalworkers and ironworkers in aircraft and munitions factories found that their man’s jobs and man’s pays disappeared. “Rosie the Riveters” went back to waiting on tables at pre-war levels of pay. “Equal pay” was reduced to 75% of the male rate.

Many of the comprehensive full-day nurseries and other child care centres which had appeared during the war disappeared along with federal government funding for such projects. Some women found themselves widowed on inadequate pensions or the companions of severely war-shocked men, with little community understanding of or support for their problems.

The full import of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to dawn and many women gave birth to the first atomic generation. These children, faced with the fragility of life, on a massive scale, produced a revolt against traditional values. This bewildered parents and placed extra pressures on women, as Experts debated the extent to which working mothers might be blamed for social problems.

As the suburban dream grew out of the post-war housing shortages and a rapidly expanding consumerism, too many women found themselves prisoners of their new homes and captives to the growth industry of valium and drug therapy for suburban neurosis.

During the 1950s, politics of all kinds were played out against the background of extreme bigotry and a dwindling democratic practice. Attempts were made not only to ban the Communist Party, but to give the government powers to declare who was or was not a communist, with the onus of proof on the accused. It was a time which has been described by radicals and conservatives alike as one of hysterical witch-hunting during which anti-communism was used to smother political dissent or to blacken opponents, whatever their real persuasion.

One off-shoot of this was that left and radical groups, including IWD, were refused the use of many public halls. These, and other more long-standing personal and political tensions, also disrupted the co-operation established between womens’ groups during the war.

While much of the war-time co-operation had been the result of a strong national sentiment in support of the war, it, too, contained subterranean tensions which sometimes flared into open dispute. In one instance, in a Sydney factory where women from more privileged backgrounds had gone to work to aid the war effort, they came into conflict with working class women when they refused to concern themselves with industrial disputes over equal pay

Australia in the 1960s : many more women participated in the strictly sex-segregated paid workforce and many more of these were married (1947-22.4 percent of the workforce were women and 19.8 percent of them were married; in 1971, 31.7 percent were women and 56.8 percent were married);

Contraceptive pill became available on a wide scale;

People stayed at school longer; and

A higher percentage of the population went to universities and colleges.

In other important ways Australia hardly changed at all. The groups who benefited least from abundance were Aborigines and those on social welfare, particularly single women and children.

Womens’ share of prosperity was at the “female rate” for those in paid work, child care was a vastly under-supplied commodity; family violence and rape was barely acknowledged publicly; abortion was illegal and childbirth and contraception had become the tight preserve of a male-dominated medical profession which excluded home births and midwives, and virtually turned childbirth into an illness.

In 1965, the conservative Australian government decided to send Australian troops to back up the escalating United States armed intervention in Vietnam. Much of the fodder for this gesture was chosen by a form of Russian Roulette. Marbles went into a barrel for all the 20-year-old males, and if their numbers came out they had to go to war.

Around the world, young people, mostly on campuses and in colleges, many with privileged backgrounds, began to question the purposes of prosperity if wars, racism and alienation were the results. Alternative life-styles, long hair, dropping out, sitting in, and confrontation were some of the features of this revolt.

Many women took part, but slowly some began to realise that the liberation being talked about was largely in the interests of men. Women still produced and looked after the babies, had the worst jobs and lowest pay, did the cooking, made the morning tea and serviced the revolution. Small disgruntled groups of women met together to sort it all out.

Experiences of the newly-emerged women’s liberation groups in the United States and Britain influenced some Australian women and the first women’s liberation group formed in Sydney at the end of 1969, and the first public meeting to get the movement going was held early in 1970. Similar events were taking place in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Unlike the movements that had preceded it, the Womens’ Liberation Movement expanded the critique of the division of labour that kept women in segregated jobs and on low pay into a consideration of the division of labour in the family, of sexuality and the division between the public-political and the personal and private-political.

The movement has produced an unprecedented volume of written material, not only describing oppressive aspects of womens’ lives such as rape and violence, but also developed a body of theoretical work that redefined the whole arena of politics.

This includes a critique of traditional forms of hierarchical organisation, producing a strong emphasis on the collective, and sharing of skills. While this has had many positive effects, it sometimes reproduced old problems in new forms

Australian in the 1970s : cultural traditions matured and television brought the world, or a version of it, into the living room; The first of the large IWD marches took place in 1972. From then on, IWD marches generally took place on the Saturday morning nearest to March 8. The name March is really a misnomer for mostly they were more like a walk through the streets with a party atmosphere

I remember the 1972 march well.

As in the years to come, IWD was a time for women’s theatre, music and arts. Part of the activities that year was a presentation of the musical play The Match Girls by the New Theatre.

Sydney IWD made a profit and these funds were used to rent the first Womens’ Liberation House in Alberta Street on the edge of the city area.

Happy Womens’ day to all!

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has emphatically ruled out any change with a “simple, respectful, but straightforward no”.

MICK DODSON: Well, I think we should have a conversation about that. I understand how many, many Indigenous Australians feel about January the 26th and I share their concerns about that because that represents the day that in effect our world came crashing down. And many Indigenous Australians regard it as Invasion Day.

Prof Dodson, a tireless campaigner for indigenous rights, was presented the award by the prime minister a year after Kevin Rudd apologised to the stolen generations.

The Yawuru man, originally from the Broome area, was the nation’s first indigenous social justice commissioner after rising to prominence during a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody from 1988 to 1990. He has been a prominent advocate of land rights and the reform of laws that discriminate against the indigenous population.

He works and lives in Canberra as the Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University, and is also co-Chair of Reconciliation Australia, a not-for-profit organization.

The Australian of the Year award has been given annually since 1960 for people that have excelled in their field, made a significant contribution to Australia and been a role model.