International Working Women’s Day Originated in the US

Was what International Women's Day was originally called. It originated, as did May Day, in the United States. It was a union and socialist holiday recognizing women workers rights to organize unions, a struggle that still is with us today as the battle in Wisconsin shows.

American Socialists organised a mass meeting on the suffrage in New York on Sunday 8 March 1908. The first National Woman’s Day (woman’s in the singular) was held on 23 Feb 1909 in the USA, and American women kept the custom of gathering on the last Sunday of February. Sundays were preferred so that people would not miss a day of work.

Rosalind Rosenberg, a professor of history at New York's Barnard College, says the holiday was created as the country's workers, including large numbers of women, were losing patience with poor labor conditions.

Early American women's activist Rose Schneiderman speaks at a union rally around 1910.

"I would date it back to 1908 and the strike of some 15,000 women in the garment industry on the Lower East Side who were suffering low pay and terrible working conditions, and who walked off the job and protested," Rosenberg says.

Among their complaints was the fact that employers refused to recognize workers' unions.

"Unionization is such an enormous issue in the United States today," Rosenberg says. "It's poignant to think about this 100th anniversary in that context."

It was the International proletariat organizations in Europe that responded to the call from workers organizations in the United States to celebrate both events.
And both are based on tragedy, May Day the Haymarket Massacre and IWD the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Indeed the struggle of women workers in America would continue with the great Patterson Mill Strike of 1913.

And while American workers, both women and men, have made great leaps forward as has American Capitalism, class war has been declared once again on workers rights to organize.

The International Ladies' Garment Workers Union organized workers in the women's clothing trade. Many of the garment workers before 1911 were unorganized, partly because they were young immigrant women intimidated by the alien surroundings. Others were more daring, though. All were ripe for action against the poor working conditions. In 1909, an incident at the Triangle Factory sparked a spontaneous walkout of its 400 employees. The Women's Trade Union League, a progressive association of middle class white women, helped the young women workers picket and fence off thugs and police provocation. At a historic meeting at Cooper Union, thousands of garment workers from all over the city followed young Clara Lemlich's call for a general strike.

Women's labour unrest continued in the U.S. through 1909, with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union staging a short-lived strike in September in New York City. On Nov. 22, a general strike was called, dubbed the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand, which lasted 13 weeks and eventually led to a fairer contract for 15,000 labourers.

In Europe, women's issues were also top of mind. In 1907, the first meeting of Finnish parliament included 19 women. In 1910, an International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen, featuring representation from 17 countries, including union leaders and the Finnish parliamentarians.

Clara Zetkin, the founder of International Women's Day, is seen at left with friend Rosa Luxemburg. Zetkin came up with the idea during a womens' labour conference in 1910. WikiMedia Commons

Clara Zetkin, head of the women's office for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, first raised the idea of an annual women's day when women all over the world would be able to air their grievances about labour conditions, suffrage and the need for women in parliament.

The first International Women's Day was held on March 19, 1911, (moved to March 8 in 1913), with rallies in Germany, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. More than one million women and men attended.

One week later, a devastating fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City drew further attention to the horrible working conditions female workers, mostly immigrants, were forced to endure.

275 girls started to collect their belongings as they were leaving work at 4:45 PM on Saturday. Within twenty minutes some of girls' charred bodies were lined up along the East Side of Greene Street. Those girls who flung themselves from the ninth floor were merely covered with tarpaulins where they hit the concrete. The Bellevue morgue was overrun with bodies and a makeshift morgue was set up on the adjoining pier on the East River. Hundred's of parents and family members came to identify their lost loved ones. 146 employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were dead the night of March 25, 1911. The horror of their deaths led to numerous changes in occupational safety standards that currently ensure the safety of workers today.

To an entire generation of urban reformers, activist clergy, progressives,
feminists, and trade-unionists, the Triangle fire instantly became an emotion charged
symbol, a kind of menetekel, representing all the evils that they had
combated for so long; it became the impetus of a moral crusade to prevent things
like this from ever happening again. Many of the people who made modern America
2
- political leaders like Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Smith, Fiorello
Laguardia, and Robert Wagner; social activists like Frances Perkins; and tradeunionists
like Rose Schneiderman and Dave Dubinsky, were all directly or indirectly
inspired by the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. A direct genealogical line can be drawn
from the fire, to a host of New York City and New York State progressive reforms,
to the New Deal of the 1930s. No wonder that almost every American history
textbook lists the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire as one of the key events of
Progressive era America. “In the end,” write Ric Burns and James Sanders, in their
history of New York City, “the carnage of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire would
prove to have been one of the most transforming events in American political
history.”2 It seems obvious that the Triangle Fire would assume the meaning that it
did. And yet, when one interrogates the obvious, one encounters the problematic.
“This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city,” trade
unionist Rose Schneiderman bitterly remarked to mourners just after the fire,3 and
in fact this was not the worst fire in New York City history, nor was it the only
industrial accident of this kind. Why then did the Triangle Fire become such an
incandescent icon for so many?


Striking laborers rallied against unfair labor practices with two of the most publicized strikes occuring in 1910: The garment workers in New York City and the strike that took place at the Los Angeles Times. However, one labor union strike would significantly define the labor movement: the Patterson Strike of 1913. To understand the pros and cons of striking unions, it's necessary to recall that few federal or state laws had been enacted at that time to protect workers from unsafe working conditions or from exploitation through which laborers earned unimaginably low wages while working fourteen or fifteen hours a day.

When IWW organizers began to arrive at textile mills to proclaim the doctrine of industrial democracy, a substantial number of workers were interested. By 1908, after leading a number of minor strikes, the IWW could claim 5,000 members for its National Industrial Union of Textile Workers headed by James P, Thompson. The biggest textile challenge came four years later when pay cuts led to a groundswell of strike sentiment in Lawrence, Massachusetts. IWW Local 20 had been on the scene for more than four years, and its members had an excellent grasp of the conditions of the 60,000 Lawrence residents dependent on the mills for their livelihood. Prompted by local IWWs, the strikers sent for seasoned organizer Joe Ettor, an IWW orator who had already been in Lawrence, and Arturo Giovannitti, Secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation and editor of its organ, Il Proletario.

Faced with having to organize workers from twenty-four major national groups speaking twenty-two different languages, the Lawrence leadership devised an organizational structure that became the standard IWW mode of operation. Each language group was given representatives on the strike committee, which numbered from 250 to 300 members. All decisions regarding tactics and settlements were democratically voted on by the committee, with the IWW organizers acting strictly as advisors.

The Lawrence strikers realized that their battle went beyond wages and work conditions to address the question of the quality and purpose of life. Female strikers expressed their needs in an unforgettable phrase when they appeared on the picket line with a homemade placard declaring, "We Want Bread and Roses Too," a demand which became a fixture in the labor and ferninist movements. But neither roses nor bread were possible without the most militant kind of strike and innovative worker tactics. Women would show the way on both scores. More female pickets than males were to be arrested for intimidating strikebreakers, and rank and file women provided decisive leadership at key moments in the strike.

Prohibited from massing before individual mills by law, the male and female strikers formed a moving picket line around the entire mill district! This human chain involving thousands of spirited workers moved twenty-four hours a day for the entire duration of the ten-week strike. Augmenting the awesome picket lines were frequent parades through town of from 3,000 to 6,000 strikers marching to militant labor songs. When a city ordinance was passed forbidding parades and mass meetings, the strikers improvised sidewalk parades in which twenty to fifty individuals locked arms and swept through the streets. They passed through department stores disrupting normal business and otherwise succeeded in bringing commerce to a halt. At night strikers serenaded the homes of scabs trying to get a good night's sleep, and in some cases the names of scabs were sent back to their native lands to shame their entire clan.

When striker Annie Lo Pezzo was killed during one of the demonstrations, Ettor and Giovannitti were arrested on murder charges; they were said to have provoked workers to illegal acts which in turn resulted in the death. Their places were promptly taken by Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Trautman, and Carlo Resca. Haywood's arrival in Lawrence was tumultuous. Fifteen thousand strikers greeted him at the railroad station and 25,000 listened to him speak on the Lawrence Commons. During the course of the strike, there were dynamite schemes by employers, a proclamation of martial law, the death of a Syrian teenage boy from a militiaman's bayonet, and repeated physical confrontations between strikers and law enforcement groups. Women again played a critical role when it was decided to have the children of the strikers cared for by sympathizers in other cities. After some groups of children had left Lawrence, the army resolved to block further removals. In the ensuing physical confrontation, many women were beaten and two pregnant women miscarried, The brutal incident led to the national publicity and governmental hearings that resulted in victory for the strikers.

In the wake of the Lawrence triumph came strikes in other textile centers under IWW leadership and a successful campaign to free Ettor and Giovannitti. Prominent women such as socialist humanitarian Helen Keller, birth control activist Margaret Sanger and AFL organizer Mary Kenney O'Sullivan enthusiastically supported various IWW initiatives. Textile owners not yet faced with strikes began to grant wage increases unilaterally in hopes of averting unionization. The Detroit News estimated that 438,000 textile workers received nearly fifteen million dollars in raises as an indirect consequence of the Lawrence strike, with the biggest gains scored by the 275,000 workers in New England.

In 1913, John Reed (later famous for his firsthand account of the Russian Revolution) met Bill Haywood, a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies). Reed ventured to Paterson, New Jersey, to learn about the Wobbly-led silk workers’ strike then in progress and decided to mount a massive public pageant to publicize the strike and raise money for the strikers. He won financial backing from art patron Mabel Dodge and enlisted artists such as John Sloan, who painted a ninety-foot backdrop depicting the Paterson silk mills. The pageant opened on June 7 in Madison Square Garden and ended with the workers and the audience triumphantly singing the “Internationale,” the anthem of international socialism. Unfortunately, neither the pageant nor the strike ended on a triumphant note. The pageant lost money while the strike ended in defeat after five months. Nonetheless, the pageant represented an important moment in the alliance between modern art and labor radicalism.

New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant

Martin Burgess Green Scribner Book Company $0 (325p) ISBN 978-0-684-18993-2

The celebrated New York Armory Show in early 1913 introduced Picasso, Matisse, Cubism and Dada to the American scene. Three months later, 1,200 striking textile workers from Paterson, N.J. staged a pageant in Madison Square Garden to dramatize their demands. Green, who is fond of cultural juxtapositions ( Children of the Sun, etc.), links these two events with the lame argument that modern art and revolutionary politics share a spiritual, transcendental goal. He takes us inside the salon of Mabel Dodge, the wealthy art patron and labor pageant organizer, who was ensconced in respectability yet actively subverted it. He also takes us into the Wobblies' union halls where people of any race or nationality were welcome and workers' poems were composed on the spot. The pageant saw hostilities flare up between leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; Green believes the event marked the beginning of the International Workers of the World's slow decline. His atmospheric study limns a brief moment when art and politics came together. Photos. (Nov.)

Also See:

Lucy Parsons Redux

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons

IWD: Raya Dunayevskaya

Whose Family Values?
Women and the Social Reproduction of Capitalism
"proletarii, propertyless citizens whose service to the State was to raise children (proles).”
Classical Antiquity; Rome, Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Verso Press 1974

100 Years Of Bread and Roses

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day one of two Internationalist Workers Holidays begun in the United States. And it is one that recognized women as workers, that as workers women's needs and rights are key to all our struggles hence the term Bread and Roses.

Women have led all revolutions through out modern history beginning as far back as the 14th Century with bread riots. Bread riots would become a revolutionary phenomena through out the next several hundred years in England and Europe.

It would be bread riots of women who would lead the French Revolution and again the Paris Commune, led by the anarchist Louise Michel.

Bread riots occurred in America during the Civil War.

It would be the mass womens protest and bread riots in Russia in 1917 that led to the Revolution there. The World Socialist Revolution had begun and two of its outstanding leaders were Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, both who opposed Lenin's concept of a party of professional revolutionaries leading the revolution and called for mass organizations of the working class. Their feminist Marxism was embraced by another great woman leader of the Russian Revolution; Alexandra Kollontai.

Women began the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 by shutting down the phone exchange.

Women began the Winnipeg general sympathetic strike. At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, May 15, 1919, five hundred telephone operators punched out at the end of their shifts. No other workers came in to replace them. Ninety percent of these operators were women, so women represented the vast majority of the first group of workers to begin the city-wide sympathetic strike in support of the already striking metal and building trades workers. At 11:00 a.m., the official starting point of the strike, workers began to pour out from shops, factories and offices to meet at Portage and Main. Streetcars dropped off their passengers and by noon all cars were in their barns. Workers left rail yards, restaurants and theatres. Firemen left their stations. Ninety-four of ninety-six unions answered the strike call. Only the police and typographers stayed on their jobs. Within the first twenty-four hours of the strike call, more than 25,000 workers had walked away from their positions. One-half of them were not members of any trade union. By the end of May 15, Winnipeg was virtually shut down.

Again it would be mass demonstrations of women against the Shah of Iran that would lead to the ill fated Iranian revolution.

Today with a food crisis due to globalization bread riots are returning.

When women mobilize enmass history is made.

March is Women's History Month, March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD), and March 5 is the birthday of the revolutionary Polish theorist and leader of the 1919 German Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg. It was Rosa Luxemburg's close friend and comrade, Clara Zetkin, who proposed an International Women's Day (IWD) to the Second International, first celebrated in 1911.

Clara Zetkin, secretary of the International Socialist Women's Organization (ISWO), proposed this date during a conference in Copenhagen because it was the anniversary of a 1908 women workers' demonstration at Rutgers Square on Manhattan's Lower East Side that demanded the right to vote and the creation of a needle trades union.

The demonstration was so successful that the ISWO decided to emulate it and March 8 became the day that millions of women and men around the world celebrated the struggle for women's equality.

Actually, International Women's Day is one of two working class holidays "born in the USA." The other is May Day, which commemorates Chicago's Haymarket martyrs in the struggle for an eight-hour day.

Clara Zetkin

From My Memorandum Book

“Agitation and propaganda work among women, their awakening and revolutionisation, is regarded as an incidental matter, as an affair which only concerns women comrades. They alone are reproached because work in that direction does not proceed more quickly and more vigorously. That is wrong, quite wrong! Real separatism and as the French say, feminism à la rebours, feminism upside down! What is at the basis of the incorrect attitude of our national sections? In the final analysis it is nothing but an under-estimation of woman and her work. Yes, indeed! Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades, ‘scratch a communist and find a philistine’. 0f course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women. Could there be a more damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn out In petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened! Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove on to servants the responsibility for all household work, including the care of children. What I am saying applies to the overwhelming majority of women, to the wives of workers and to those who stand all day in a factory.

“So few men – even among the proletariat – realise how much effort and trouble they could save women, even quite do away with, if they were to lend a hand in ‘women’s work’. But no, that is contrary to the ‘rights and dignity of a man’. They want their peace and comfort. The home life of the woman is a daily sacrifice to a thousand unimportant trivialities. The old master right of the man still lives in secret. His slave takes her revenge, also secretly. The backwardness of women, their lack of understanding for the revolutionary ideals of the man decrease his joy and determination in fighting. They are like little worms which, unseen, slowly but surely, rot and corrode. I know the life of the worker, and not only from books. Our communist work among the women, our political work, embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old ‘master’ idea to its last and smallest root, in the Party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, just as is the urgently necessary task of forming a staff of men and women comrades, well trained in theory and practice, to carry on Party activity among working women.”

Bread and Roses

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses

SEE:

IWD: Raya Dunayevskaya

IWD Economic Freedom for Women

Water War

Feminizing the Proletariat

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Womens, Liberation, International, Womens, Day, feminism, microcredit, Africa, India, poverty, March8

IWD BREAD & ROSES

Bread and Roses

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses

Saturday, March 08, 2008

100 Years Of Bread and Roses

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day one of two Internationalist Workers Holidays begun in the United States. And it is one that recognized women as workers, that as workers women's needs and rights are key to all our struggles hence the term Bread and Roses.

Women have led all revolutions through out modern history beginning as far back as the 14th Century with bread riots. Bread riots would become a revolutionary phenomena through out the next several hundred years in England and Europe.

It would be bread riots of women who would lead the French Revolution and again the Paris Commune, led by the anarchist Louise Michel.

Bread riots occurred in America during the Civil War.

It would be the mass womens protest and bread riots in Russia in 1917 that led to the Revolution there. The World Socialist Revolution had begun and two of its outstanding leaders were Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, both who opposed Lenin's concept of a party of professional revolutionaries leading the revolution and called for mass organizations of the working class. Their feminist Marxism was embraced by another great woman leader of the Russian Revolution; Alexandra Kollontai.

Women began the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 by shutting down the phone exchange.

Women began the Winnipeg general sympathetic strike. At 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, May 15, 1919, five hundred telephone operators punched out at the end of their shifts. No other workers came in to replace them. Ninety percent of these operators were women, so women represented the vast majority of the first group of workers to begin the city-wide sympathetic strike in support of the already striking metal and building trades workers. At 11:00 a.m., the official starting point of the strike, workers began to pour out from shops, factories and offices to meet at Portage and Main. Streetcars dropped off their passengers and by noon all cars were in their barns. Workers left rail yards, restaurants and theatres. Firemen left their stations. Ninety-four of ninety-six unions answered the strike call. Only the police and typographers stayed on their jobs. Within the first twenty-four hours of the strike call, more than 25,000 workers had walked away from their positions. One-half of them were not members of any trade union. By the end of May 15, Winnipeg was virtually shut down.

Again it would be mass demonstrations of women against the Shah of Iran that would lead to the ill fated Iranian revolution.

Today with a food crisis due to globalization bread riots are returning.

When women mobilize enmass history is made.

March is Women's History Month, March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD), and March 5 is the birthday of the revolutionary Polish theorist and leader of the 1919 German Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg. It was Rosa Luxemburg's close friend and comrade, Clara Zetkin, who proposed an International Women's Day (IWD) to the Second International, first celebrated in 1911.

Clara Zetkin, secretary of the International Socialist Women's Organization (ISWO), proposed this date during a conference in Copenhagen because it was the anniversary of a 1908 women workers' demonstration at Rutgers Square on Manhattan's Lower East Side that demanded the right to vote and the creation of a needle trades union.

The demonstration was so successful that the ISWO decided to emulate it and March 8 became the day that millions of women and men around the world celebrated the struggle for women's equality.

Actually, International Women's Day is one of two working class holidays "born in the USA." The other is May Day, which commemorates Chicago's Haymarket martyrs in the struggle for an eight-hour day.

Clara Zetkin

From My Memorandum Book

 

CLARA ZETKIN & ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI

“Agitation and propaganda work among women, their awakening and revolutionisation, is regarded as an incidental matter, as an affair which only concerns women comrades. They alone are reproached because work in that direction does not proceed more quickly and more vigorously. That is wrong, quite wrong! Real separatism and as the French say, feminism à la rebours, feminism upside down! What is at the basis of the incorrect attitude of our national sections? In the final analysis it is nothing but an under-estimation of woman and her work. Yes, indeed! Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades, ‘scratch a communist and find a philistine’. 0f course, you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women. Could there be a more damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn out In petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened! Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove on to servants the responsibility for all household work, including the care of children. What I am saying applies to the overwhelming majority of women, to the wives of workers and to those who stand all day in a factory.

“So few men – even among the proletariat – realise how much effort and trouble they could save women, even quite do away with, if they were to lend a hand in ‘women’s work’. But no, that is contrary to the ‘rights and dignity of a man’. They want their peace and comfort. The home life of the woman is a daily sacrifice to a thousand unimportant trivialities. The old master right of the man still lives in secret. His slave takes her revenge, also secretly. The backwardness of women, their lack of understanding for the revolutionary ideals of the man decrease his joy and determination in fighting. They are like little worms which, unseen, slowly but surely, rot and corrode. I know the life of the worker, and not only from books. Our communist work among the women, our political work, embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old ‘master’ idea to its last and smallest root, in the Party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, just as is the urgently necessary task of forming a staff of men and women comrades, well trained in theory and practice, to carry on Party activity among working women.”

SEE:

IWD: Raya Dunayevskaya

IWD Economic Freedom for Women

Feminizing the Proletariat

 LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for IWD 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY 

Staley wary equity strides for women’s tourney will continue

By PETE IACOBELLI

1 of 5

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley poses with a trophy after being named Naismith Women's College Coach of the Year, Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in Minneapolis. 

(Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune via AP)


MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Putting women on the same level with men when it comes to swag bags and logos is a starting point, and for Dawn Staley that’s all it is.

South Carolina women’s coach is not certain there will ever be true equity among the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments.

“I just don’t know,” Staley told The Associated Press. “I mean, the hotel is nice,” she added sitting at her downtown hotel two blocks from the Target Center, where the Gamecocks will play Louisville on Friday night in the women’s Final Four.

Staley has enjoyed the tournament experience this year — the Gamecocks played two games at home and two games in Greensboro, North Carolina — better than a year ago in the pandemic-caused bubble set up in San Antonio.

After a scathing report issued last summer about numerous inequities between how men’s teams are treated compared with the women, Staley is torn about whether the NCAA can make lasting strides.

“It’s good what we’re hearing,” she said. “But is it something that’s going to last four, five years down the road?”

She is not alone.

Two weeks ago, it was three members of Congress who said the NCAA had taken little more than “short-term steps” toward bridging the gap.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus; and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) sent a letter to the NCAA the week of the tournament’s start.

On Thursday, the trio introduced the Gender Equity in College Sports Commission act designed to create a 16-person bipartisan panel to study the issue across all NCAA sports.

Speier said in a release the NCAA had made “pathetic progress towards correcting the deeply misogynistic attitudes and treatment of the women’s teams compared to the men’s teams.”

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer has dealt with inequality issues for all of her 36 years with the program.

“I call it hot dogs for the girls and steak for the boys,” she said. “It will be a great time when you don’t need Title IX, but unfortunately in our world, there’s discrimination still against people, women and we need to keep battling.”

The longtime discussion garnered national attention the past year with critics taking NCAA leadership to task in 2021 after Oregon’s Sedona Prince posted a social media video about the inequities, particularly the weight rooms.

Louisville coach Jeff Walz believes that tournament organizers made mistakes, but too much was made of the differences in weight rooms.

Waltz said the disparity was “blown way out of proportion” and that he has “never been a big proponent of everything has to be the same” for men and women to have equally enjoyable experiences in their respective NCAA Tournaments.

UConn guard Paige Bueckers, whose team plays Stanford in the other national women’s semifinal here Friday night, believes more needs to be done before the tournaments are on equal footing.

“It’s definitely not where it needs to be,” the Huskies sophomore sensation said. “But change isn’t going to happen overnight and you can see the growth.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert, speaking the women’s Final Four on Wednesday and again in New Orleans Thursday at the men’s event, is happy with the progress that’s been made, although bigger issues like distributing tournament revenues to women’s programs are only in the early stages of discussion.

In Staley’s view, revenue — “The units,” as she calls them — is the largest divide between the men and women.

The men’s tournament has a deal that’s averaging $770 million a year that will jump to an average of $1.1 billion in 2025.

The women’s tournament is tied into other women’s NCAA championships for TV rights. ESPN’s current contract ends in 2024 and Staley believes those rights can go for much more than the NCAA is getting now.

“It’s the right time,” Staley said. “This is a good game that people like to watch.”

ESPN analyst and former UConn All-American Rebecca Lobo sees the rising interest in the game and believes that can lead to more exposure and ultimately better broadcast contracts.

One example she said was this year’s women’s selection show. The show is generally broadcast on the Monday, the day after the men’s highly anticipated Sunday night bracket reveal. But this year it aired after the men’s show and, “wow, we have the best ratings since 2006,” Lobo said.

“Let’s use this year and figure out, all right, did this keep us along the path that we’re trying to go toward,” Lobo said.

Two of the more tangible steps taken by the NCAA to elevate the women’s event has been to make the logo, “March Madness,” a part of the on-court branding and expand the field to 68. There was also an inaugural women’s “First Four,” an element of the men’s tournament since 2011.

Bueckers has seen increased attention in the women’s tournament this year.

“Change is going to come,” Bueckers said. “And it has to come now rather than later.”

___

More AP coverage of March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons

Forgotten in the pages of Black History is the unique voice of the 19th Century Afro-American, Immigrant, Native, Womens, Workers Struggle in the United States. I am speaking of the Anarchist and Wobbly Lucy Parsons, wife of the Haymarket Martyr Albert Parsons. An excellent article on her importance to modern day struggles for social justice is; Lucy was her name and a lifetime struggle was her game Nice to see someone else remembers Lucy.

I posted this at my bloglines site last year:

February is Black History Month and March is Womens History Month. While March 8 is International Womens Day.

To celebrate I give you one of the greatest overlooked African American Women: Lucy Parsons.

Wife of Haymarket Anarchist, Albert Parsons, Lucy went on to be a founding member of the IWW.

"Lucy Parsons was an African, Native and Mexican-American revolutionary anarchist labor activist from the late nineteenth and 20th century America. Emerging out of the Chicago Haymarket affair of 1886, in which eight anarchists were imprisoned or hung for their beliefs, Lucy Parsons led tens of thousands of workers into the streets in mass protests across the country. Defying both racial and gender discrimination, she was at the forefront of movements for social justice her entire life. She sparked rebellion and discontent among poor and exploited workers wherever she spoke, and her fiery, powerful orations invoked fear in authority nationwide."

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Lucy, Parsons, Feminist, Black, Activist, History, USA, Labor, IWW, Anarchist, Anarchism,

Turkey's long history of femicides

The recent murder of Turkish student Pinar Gültekin by her ex-boyfriend has sparked outrage in Turkey. Women's rights activists are calling for the government to tackle the widespread problem of femicide in the country.

    

 

Watch video02:40

Femicide case in Turkey

Violence against women is not uncommon in Turkey. The recent killing of 27-year-old student Pinar Gültekin at the hands of her former boyfriend, however, sent shock waves through the country. The woman from Turkey's southwestern Mugla province was beaten and strangled to death by the man. He then tried burning the corpse in a nearby forest. After failing to do so, he disposed of her corpse in a bin, which he then filled with concrete.

Several days after the murder, the man was apprehended thanks to CCTV footage captured at a gas station where he was loading a fuel canister into his vehicle. The police say the man acted out of jealousy. According to the We Will Stop Femicide online platform, this year alone, 27 women were murdered for similar motives; a further 23 suspected femicides were recorded as well.

Read more: Femicides in Turkey: A problem that is being ignored

Women in Turkey's cities, particularly in the country's west, have taken to the streets to express their anger at the state of affairs. At a recent protest march in the coastal metropolis of Izmir, however, Turkish police intervened, arresting several activists. Scuffles ensued. 

Police crackdown on protest

Arzu Sert, who attended the Izmir protest, told DW she was violently abused while in police custody. She recounts how she and others had gathered outside a cultural center in the city's Alsancak district to make a press statement. Then, as the march got underway, police officers attempted to block the route with barricades, Arzu Sert says "Then we were illegally detained, beaten and abused," she adds.

Lawyers and attorneys have expressed outrage over the violent crackdown. Zeynep Tepegoz, a lawyer, says Turkish citizens have a constitutional right to stage peaceful protests. Police acted illegally, she asserts: "The events in Izmir indicate that police deployed disproportionate force [ ... ] there is no justification for pinning protesters to the ground and beating them," she says. 

Many Turkish womens' right groups say the crackdown reflects a wider societal problem. They say many women who are being abused seek — but never receive — proper help. Melek Önder of the We Will Stop Femicide initiative told DW that Turkish police, the government and state officials must do much more to protect women at risk: "There were cases where women who were being violently abused asked for help, but nothing happened," she says.

 

Watch video05:53

Violence against women in Turkey

Disingenuous condolences?

One day after Pinar Gültekin's murder, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took to Twitter to express his condolences. He wrote: "Yesterday, we were overwhelmed with pain when we had to learn that Pinar Gültekin was murdered by a villain. I despise all crimes committed against women."

Many womens' right activists, however, say the president's words ring hollow. After all, the government has done little to implement the so-called Istanbul Convention, which aims to tackle violence again women and domestic abuse, as well as promoting gender equality. The initiative was launched by the Council of Europe in 2011, and Turkey was the first country the ratify the treaty a year later. It has since adopted legislation reflecting the treaty.

Women's rights activists regard the Istanbul Convention as a powerful tool to fight violence against women. But many criticize the treaty is not being properly implemented. Even though signatory countries have vowed to do so, in reality few are applying and enforcing the enshrined principles. There are also too few measures designed to help and protect endangered women. Turkish protesters have therefore called for the treaty to be fully implemented in the country.

Istanbul Convention

Deeply religious forces within Turkey regard the Istanbul Convention as a threat to country's traditions and have been undermining efforts to see it implemented. Ebru Asiltürk, the spokeswoman for womens' affairs for Turkey's Islamic conservative Saadet Party, is one such critic. In an opinion piece for Turkey's conservative daily Milli this May, she wrote the treaty would be like a "bomb" destroying Turkey's traditional family structure. She argued it would threaten the "financial and moral integrity of families." In her view, the convention breaches Article 41 of the Turkish Constitution which enshrines the protection and unity of the family. She therefore urges Turkey to abandon the treaty altogether. 

Many people on social media expressed support for Asiltürk's viewpoint, with some claiming on Twitter that the treaty is a simply means by the West to hurt Turkey.

Turkey's government, meanwhile, has not displayed any real determination in tackling the problem of femicides and has failed to side with those who decry it. Protest marches calling for women to be better protected are regularly dispersed. When 2,000 women gathered in Istanbul on November 25, for a demonstration marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, police disbanded the protest using tear gas and rubber bullets.

 

Watch video01:45

Women in Istanbul protest against violence and femicide

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Femicide case in Turkey   

• Date 24.07.2020
• Author Daniel Bellut
• Homepage DW News -
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• Related Subjects Women's rights, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey, International Women's Day
• Keywords Turkey, women, femicide, violence against women, women's rights, Recep Tayyip Erdogan
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