March is National Women’s History Month, and people everywhere are celebrating the 2025 theme “Moving Forward Together”! But before there was a month, there was Women’s Day, a Socialist holiday meant to bring together advocates for women’s suffrage and labor rights like the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage. In fact, the first Women’s Day was held in New York City on February 28, 1909 and organized by the Socialist Party of America.

The New York Times covered the 1910 event the following year in their article, “SOCIALISTS HAVE A WOMAN'S DAY: Speakers at Carnegie Hall All Women Except One, and He Denounces Man.” Within the article they expand, “Meta L. Stern presided at the meeting, and all the other speakers were women except Franklin H. Wentworth, a Socialist of Salem, Mass., who said more cruel things about the brain and heart of man than any of the women speakers.”

At that point in time, the main focus of the women’s movement (also called first-wave feminism by academics) was women’s suffrage, or voting rights for women. Many socialists and moderates at the time supported unity of the sexes in politics including voting a political leadership. Writer and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman said, “It is true that a woman’s duty is centered in her home and motherhood…[but] home should mean the whole country, and not be confined to three or four rooms or a city or a state.”

Union members march on International Women's Day in Sydney, Australia, 1975

In 1910, Women’s Day was adopted at the International Socialist Women's Conference and spread throughout the world. It remained a predominantly Socialist holiday until the women’s liberation movement, or second-wave feminists, of the 1960s and 70s. It was then that activist Laura X revitalized the much-forgotten holiday after being inspired by watching a video of a 1917 Soviet women workers' International Women’s Day (IWD) demonstration. Laura X was passionate about women’s history and founded a Women’s History Library. She organized an IWD march in Berkeley, California in 1969 where the marchers dressed as historical characters to bring attention to the women so often left out of history books.

Laura X thought that Women’s Day should be expanded to a month-long celebration. By 1981, there was a bipartisan push to enshrine National Women’s Week as nationally recognized. In 1987, it was finally expanded to a Women’s History Month, and every year since the presidents have put forth presidential proclamations to celebrate it!

Women's History Month reception at the White House with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, March 18, 2013

Photo of International Women's Strike 2019 in the city of Paraná, Entre Ríos in Argentina, part of International Women’s Day

How will you be celebrating Women’s History Month? If you participated in the 1969 parade, what historical woman would you dress up as? Need an idea check out our previous Women’s History Month digital magazines:

Women’s History Month Unboxed: Healers & Hope, 2022

Women’s History Month Unboxed: Storytellers, 2023

Women’s History Month Teatime