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It’s Time to Reclaim the Socialist Roots of International Women’s Day

Written by Seyi Falodun-Liburd and Jade Hammond

Does it feel strange to celebrate International Working Women’s Day? It probably should, IWWD was never about celebration. The day was established in 1911 after 146 migrant and working-class women died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. In their anger and grief, women rallied against their exploitation and poor working conditions. They demanded protections and social support for women’s domestic labour. However, over time, a day rooted in solidarity and organising has been stripped of its socialist origins and co-opted by corporations that profit from our exploitation. 

Right now, wealthy perpetrators of systemic sexual abuse are protecting themselves while bombing children in schools; people in Sudan, Palestine, and the Congo are experiencing the violence of ongoing genocides; and the national maternity and neonatal investigation has just found that the NHS regularly covers up the harm and racism endured by mothers and children in their care.

A global shift to the far-right is making these things harder to fight. What was once a steady creep has now become an all-out sprint. In Italy, Argentina, the US, and beyond, far-right movements have assumed control of governments or significantly increased their power. 

The people leading these movements haven’t done anything fancy to get to this point; it’s the same old playbook: divide and conquer. They split working people along lines of race, gender, migration status, and disability to prevent us from uniting against the systems that exploit us all. 

Unfortunately, it’s been too easy for us to sleepwalk into the divisive traps they’ve laid.

In the UK, we’re seeing how exploiting the divisions amongst women impacts all of us. In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on biological sex, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes unwillingly banned trans women from obtaining membership. Trans women have always been a part of the Women’s Institute, so, in an act of solidarity, thousands of cis women cancelled their memberships, which has led to 12 WI branches either closing or seriously considering closure.

For over 100 years, women have found community, education, and social support through WI branches across the country. The people who ultimately benefit from these closures are the anti-rights movement, a well-funded global network of organisations who are cosying up to the far-right to roll back our hard-won freedoms. Fracturing women’s spaces serves their goal perfectly.

We’re also watching it play out with politicians like N*gel F*rage, leader of Reform UK, who’s working hard to sow public and media narratives that widen the chasms between us, keeping us siloed and vulnerable. Over the last year, party mouthpieces have talked endlessly about “protecting” women and girls from a lurking violent “threat” posed by migrant and refugee men. 

It’s divide and conquer in action: spread racist misinformation that fuels hate and distracts people from the things that really make our lives harder. Meanwhile, two women are killed each week by a partner or ex-partner in the UK and funding cuts are pushing domestic and sexual violence services to the brink. 

These are the kind of real issues that International Working Women’s Day first challenged. When we replace  collective action with individual empowerment  – like panel talks on representation in corporate leadership while factory workers are being timed using the toilet – we remain atomised and distracted. 

Gender-based violence, reproductive healthcare rollbacks and poor working conditions all get buried under the weight of individualistic “uplifting” wins.  It’s a deliberate tactic. Which is why, at this moment, it feels urgent that we re-ground ourselves in the same kind of intersectional, anti-capitalist politics that International Working Women’s Day once centred. One that doesn’t leave anyone behind.

Solidarity and movement-building work when they’re rooted in the material conditions that we all share. That’s the salve for division and hatred. Level Up doesn’t support or advocate for any political parties, but Green candidate Hannah Spencer’s win last week in Gorton and Denton is a good example of what we’re talking about. 

Rather than widening the ruptures between us, Hannah, a plumber by trade, brought people together around the cost of living crisis. In her victory speech, she said “instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires.”  She remained outspoken against the genocide in Gaza and Islamophobia running rampant across the country. And she won 41% of the vote, marking the party’s first win in a by-election, beating Reform UK and Labour in what had long been a safe Labour seat. 

Amidst the global rollback of access to reproductive healthcare, the recent win by My Voice, My Choice is another encouraging example. After years of campaigning for safe abortion access and a petition signed by 1.2 million people, last week the European Commission voted in favour of member states using existing EU funds to provide safe abortions to women in areas where there is little to no access. It’s a direct win against the anti-rights movement. And it happened because My Voice, My Choice built people power around a concrete issue: the fact that in Europe, over 20 million women don’t have access to abortion.

Victories like these take time, grit, and consistency. They happen when we keep our attention fixed on the issues that International Working Women’s Day was always supposed to be about. 

Collective action that fights for our domestic labour to be recognised and paid; for safe working conditions and fair pay; for an end to state and gender-based violence; for access to reproductive healthcare. We’re the ones with the power to make this happen. Here are some actions that we can all take today to make a start: