The theme of International Women’s Day (IWD) for March 8th, 2025 is “Accelerate Action for Gender Equality”. How can this be achieved? The IWD website highlights several key areas for action to accelerate gender equality. One important area is economic empowerment for women, and another is legal and policy reform. These areas are interconnected through labor rights, reproductive rights, and unpaid care work, among other issues. Looking back over a century ago, it was these same issues that prompted the need for an international day dedicated to women.

Key milestones in the history of the establishment of International Women’s Day (IWD) include the alleged all-women garment workers' strike in New York City on March 8th, 1857, which addressed demands for shorter working hours, better working conditions, and equal pay. Another significant event occurred on March 8th, 1908, when women workers in the needle trades marched through New York City. Although the historical validity of these two New York events in connection to IWD remains questionable, they continue to be cited in some narratives.

What can be validated is that in 1909, the Socialist Party of America organized the first National Women’s Day on February 28th. A year later, the idea of an International Women’s Day was proposed by Clara Zetkin at the Second International Socialist Women's Congress. Subsequently, the first IWD was observed on March 19th, 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1921, Zetkin proposed that March 8th be the official date of IWD to commemorate the Petrograd women workers' strike on that day in 1917, an event marking the beginning of the Russian Revolution.

Zetkin, a renowned German socialist of the 20th century—often referred to as the mother of International Women’s Day—was not only a staunch advocate for women’s labor rights, but also recognized that women’s oppression was deeply connected to motherhood and unpaid domestic labor. Zetkin argued that the sexual division of labor, including women’s reproductive roles and domestic responsibilities, is a key source of inequality in the home, which, in turn, limited women’s full labor participation and hindered their full emancipation.

Zetkin advocated for child-rearing practices that are free from gender roles, emphasizing the importance of teaching domestic responsibilities to both boys and girls. She believed that raising and educating children should be the shared responsibility of both parents, not solely the mother's role. To enable both parents to participate fully in public life, Zetkin called for state intervention in domestic life, such as the provision of state-supported daycare.

Throughout history, IWD celebrations have spotlighted critical issues, including labor protections (such as equal pay for equal work, labor protection laws, and minimum wage standards); women’s political rights (the right to vote); equal access to education; and women's reproductive rights and protections for mothers and children (e.g., maternity leave and healthcare). Today, according to IWD 2025, accelerating gender equality includes promoting women’s economic empowerment through paid maternity and paternity leave, improved access to financial services for women, and the recognition, redistribution, and reduction of women’s unpaid care work. This includes advocating for flexible work policies and childcare support.

So here we are today with many of the same issues as a century ago.

In terms of policy reforms, there have been successes; however, the outcomes remain insufficient.

For example, Sweden is a pioneer in parental leave, introducing state-mandatory paternity leave as early as 1974. Decades of government initiatives in Sweden have narrowed gender inequality in the workplace, increased gender equality in childcare at home, and established Sweden as one of the world’s most egalitarian countries. Nevertheless, statistics reveal that women still perform a larger proportion of unpaid care work. In Sweden, women spend about 3.7 hours on unpaid care work (including housework), while men spend around 2.9 hours (OECD Stats, 2023).

Furthermore, while these policy reforms have advanced gender equality, they have not adequately addressed protection against gender-based violence.

Iceland, for example, has closed more than 90% of its gender gap through significant reforms in health, education, political empowerment, economic participation, and other sectors, earning its reputation as one of the safest countries in the world. Ironically, women are not safe inside the home. Data from 2023 reveals a concerning rise in domestic violence in Iceland over recent years (Statista, 2024). In fact, the country’s rate of gender-based violence surpasses the European Union (EU) average.

The IWD 2025 website highlights combating gender-based violence as a step toward accelerating gender equality. Ironically, the reality remains that even important advancements in gender equality have often fallen short of ensuring a safe environment for women.

While celebrating achievements and milestones is undoubtedly important, we also need to dedicate more time to reflecting on what is still not working. It’s discouraging that, over a century since the inception of International Women’s Day, we are still struggling with many of the same issues. Women have come a long way, but at times, we have been running in place. Unfortunately, this condition has been exacerbated in recent years by political changes that have created more challenges for gender equality.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2025)

Updated on March 10th, 2025 to include explanation of key milestones

You might be interested to read: Remembering Rosa on May Day

Visit my other blog: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/

#women #history #socialism #Germany #Russia #US

Image: Statute of Clara Zetkin in Leipzig (via Pinterest)

Sources:

Amnesty International (2009) Women make history. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2009/02/mujeres-hacen-historia-20090227/ [7 March 2025].

BBC News (2024) Is Iceland the best place in the world to be a woman? https://youtu.be/h_y4xMOKWUM?si=Ehja0Pb25tikVKRs [21 December 2024].

Encyclopedia Britannica (n.d.) Why Is Women’s History Month Celebrated in March? https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-womens-history-month-celebrated-in-march [8 March 2025].

International Women's Day (2025) What are some key ways to ACCELERATE ACTION for gender equality? https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Missions/20724/key-ways-to-ACCELERATE-ACTION [7 March 2025].

Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (n.d.) The History Behind March 8. JKU. https://www.jku.at/en/department-for-equality-equitable-opportunities-and-diversity/gender-diversity-management-unit/the-advancement-of-women-at-the-jku/march-8-international-womens-day/a-history-of-the-advancement-of-women/ [8 March 2025].

OECD Stats (2023) Time spent in paid and unpaid work, by sex. stats.oecd.org [18 December 2023].

Statista (2024) Number of domestic conflicts and violence in Iceland from 2015 to 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1463279/number-of-domestic-violence-cases-in-iceland/ [22 December 2024].

The Hindu (2025) ‘International Women’s Day: when women marched for Bread and Roses.’ https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/international-womens-day-2025-history-of-womens-day-when-women-marched-for-bread-and-roses/article69302167.ece [8 March 2025].

POPULAR TOPICS #subculture Gurlesque: Poetics of the Bizarre, Ugly, and Feminine #films Mrs. Robinson, Countercultures, and Politics #history The Dutch Golden Age, Golden for Whom? I also write articles here: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/

A European Social Survey data (published in 2023) revealed that heterosexual couples reported lower life satisfaction when the wife/partner was the breadwinner compared with when the husband/partner works or both are working. Looking at this and other surveys in the US taken in the last decade, it appears that there is a nostalgia for the Donald Draper golden era where men being the sole breadwinner was the norm. After over a half a century of the so-called sexual revolution in Western societies, why are the men still expected to hold the primary role of the main provider for the family, while, as further findings show, men are adversely affected by this expectation?

Who Wears the Pants Matters

First, let’s discuss the surveys in more detail. The European Social Survey also showed women's life satisfaction is lower (6.33) when they are the sole earner and higher (7.10) when their husband/partner is the sole earner. Men’s life satisfaction is 5.86 when his wife/partner is the sole earner, versus 7.16 when he is the only earner. In fact, men and women struggle—but men most—in terms of mental health issues in situations when their spouse/partner is the breadwinner and they are jobless.

This tells us that heterosexual couples in the European countries surveyed (United Kingdom, Spain, Slovenia, Portugal, Poland, Ireland, Germany, France, and Finland) are happier when they are able to fulfill their livelihood under traditional gender norms. Any deviation from conforming to the traditionally ascribed roles for men and women resulted in adverse effects for both sexes, but particularly more for men. Reasons may lie in lower income when women work than a two-earner or male-breadwinner household and the psychological pressure that men particularly experience when they cannot provide for the family.

Take Thee to Be My Wedded Husband

Another survey, by the Pew Research Center in 2017, revealed that over 70 percent of Americans say that men should be the family’s provider. The survey which looked at heterosexual marriages found that 71 percent of women surveyed expected their male partners to be the breadwinner to qualify as a good partner, notwithstanding 39 percent of women said that women should be able to provide financially for their families.

Of the men surveyed in the Pew study, 72 percent said that to be a good partner, it is important for the man to be able to financially support his family, while just 25 percent of men thought that a woman needs to be a breadwinner to be a good wife. This shows that the traditional sexual division of labor is at the center of heterosexual marriages and not being able to conform to these roles may devalue one’s eligibility as a potential spouse.

Lower well-being in unemployed male in heterosexual unions is fairly universal.

Reflecting on the findings of a previous study in 2016 by the University of Connecticut, it appears that society puts a heavier burden on men than women in taking on financial responsibility in the family that it affects men’s well-being. The survey revealed that American men who took greater financial responsibility in the family reported a strain in their well-being with negative effects on their health.

What’s also interesting is that the European Social Survey findings furthermore showed that the issue of lower well-being in unemployed male in heterosexual unions is fairly universal across the nine countries surveyed. It is even the case in more gender-equal countries such as Finland.

Aggrieved Entitlement

The survey findings could be linked to the economic challenges Western countries face and which are affecting the middle-class, the class that tends to maintain the status quo of traditional gender roles. These challenges have brought about discontent in the people of the class as they are not able to live the comfortable life their parents had lived.

Sociologists have referred to the above experience as “aggrieved entitlement”, a concept introduced by American gender expert Michael Kimmel, which refers to the anger and resentment experienced by individuals of a dominant or privileged group when they feel they are losing the traditional privileges they believe their group has been entitled to for generations. These traditional privileges include what was or apparently what is still considered men’s superior position as the provider of the family.

The postwar economic boom and the idealization of prewar traditional family values in the West during the 1950’s–60’s made it possible for men of the middle- and upper-middle class to take on the role of sole breadwinner as portrayed by Donald Draper, the character in the US TV series Mad Men (a situation similar in other Western countries). However, over the decades, stagnant wages and job insecurity, wage gaps in favor of the rich, and changes in women’s economic roles all impact on how men of the privileged group are able to take on their privileged role as sole breadwinner.

The Oppression of the Privileged

A country's struggling economy is one of the main causes of men’s loss of privileges. For example, the rise in the cost of living and housing has caused some privileged groups to feel that they are suffering from an injustice which further caused the men, especially, to feel disempowered by not being able to have control over and secure their “rights”.

The above condition has caused resentments targeted towards specific ethnic groups as individuals from some privileged groups perceive that social changes driven by factors such as changes in the population, economy, or labor market have redistributed the privileges which had been exclusively enjoyed by their families for generations. This may also be exacerbated by a leadership crisis where leaders have failed to solve economic issues which affect privileged groups.

Aggrieved entitlement reflects how patriarchal values oppress men, even the privileged.

Aggrieved entitlement reflects how patriarchal values oppress men, even the privileged, as well as women, and in some instances may even have a more negative effect on men. Nevertheless, the loss of male power by giving up the breadwinner position would disrupt the power imbalance between the sexes and the order of things maintained by the privileged groups. This power structure has proven difficult to transform by social changes that have been driven by feminism, as it serves capitalism, among other ways, by reproducing the labor force and sustaining a gendered labor market.

Thus, to prevent mental health issues in relation to financial responsibilities in the family, it is about time that in socializing children, society introduces values that do not promote traditional gender roles. However, for any fundamental change to take place that would lead to equality, changes that could transform the patriarchal family structure and the class structure in society are what’s needed, which of course is not within the scope of this essay.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2024)

#gender #labor #work #sociology #class #men #mentalhealth #US #Europe

You might be interested to read: Political Strongmen and the Crisis of Democracy

Image: Mad Men Parodies (Pinterest)

Sources

ABC News Australia (2024) 'Growing concerns cost-of-living crisis is influencing the rise in extremist views.' YouTube. https://youtu.be/yhb3br85mGs?si=8sWHRFIXlBzweuky [22 March 2024].

Bankole, Sam (2024) 'Joey Barton, Aggrieved Entitlement, and the Myth of White Male Privilege.' The Oxford Student. https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2024/01/17/joey-barton-aggrieved-entitlement-and-the-myth-of-white-male-privilege/ [23 March 2024].

Bode, Nicole (2017) 'Why men are (still) expected to be the breadwinners.' Ladders. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/report-fewer-men-ever-breadwinners [24 March 2024].

Kowalewska, Helen (2023) ‘Male’ and ‘breadwinner’—breaking the link.' Social Europe. https://www.socialeurope.eu/male-and-breadwinner-breaking-the-link [23 March 2024].

Kutsch, Tom (2016) 'Men who act as breadwinners face negative health effects, study finds.' The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/19/men-breadwinners-health-effects-wellbeing [24 March 2024].

Pew Research Center (2017) Americans say a man should be able to support a family financially but don’t say the same about women. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/09/20/americans-see-men-as-the-financial-providers-even-as-womens-contributions-grow/ft_17-09-20_spouses_americanssay/ [24 March 2024].

POPULAR TOPICS #subculture Gurlesque: Poetics of the Bizarre, Ugly, and Feminine #films Mrs. Robinson, Countercultures, and Politics #history The Dutch Golden Age, Golden for Whom? I also write articles here: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/

“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.” That is one of the most famous lines from Hollywood’s classic, The Graduate (1967). Through Benjamin’s (Dustin Hoffman) relationship with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft)—a young fresh graduate with a bored middle-aged, middle-class housewife turned seductress—the movie tells a story of a noteworthy period in American history.

Following the postwar economic boom and increase in population, in the 1950s young middle-class couples moved from the overcrowded cities to new housing areas in the suburbs. These homes, equipped with new efficient home appliances, particularly in their kitchen design, were dubbed the “typical American house”. In 1959, Nixon once tried to enlighten Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev about the dishwashers directly installed in these houses. Nixon claims, “In America, we like to make life easier for women.”

It was during this Cold War period that the ideal white middle-class American family consisting of children, a male breadwinner and housewife was part of a political propaganda. In the US Cold War propaganda abroad, gender ideology played an important role to establish capitalism’s success over communism through the image of the Western middle-class, breadwinner-housewife nuclear family.

In fact, in the 1950s, the term middle-class Americans was more of a political term rather than an economic term, as political scholars have pointed out. The term was used to refer to an American identity associated with a set of values, a specific lifestyle, taste, and culture. This was marked by the rise of a consumer culture and a culture of conformity. It was against this setting that counterculture movements began to emerge.

The counterculture movements criticized the establishment, class divisions, education, gender norms, as well as the family and marriage institutions. The movements' dissatisfaction with American society is reflected in The Graduate through Ben’s journey to leave his dull privileged-life and break free from society’s conventions.

The story line reflected the hypocrisy of the privileged life in the comfortable suburban homes, which confined women to domesticity. In her research published in her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan revealed that behind the doors of many seemingly happy suburban homes, lived an unhappy educated housewife who was discontent with domestic life. As much as the counterculture movements, such as the Beat and hippie movements, appear to offer a kind of sexual revolution—women—as disclosed in Beat women’s memoirs, remained as sexual objects and domestic creatures.

It was not only traditional values that encouraged women to primary be domestic beings, but it was also the politics of the day. For example, political issues surrounding childcare in the US had a significant contribution to the domesticity of women. During the Second World War, women were mobilized to work due to the urgent need of fulfilling war production. To encourage and enable women to join the workforce, the government provided quality federal-funded daycare. When the war ended and women were expected to return home to make way for male employment, the daycare initiative ended, despite considerable opposition from many women.

When the need for federal-funded collective childcare was raised again in the 1960s and ‘70s, it continued to face objection, in part, because the Cold War foes use such a system, so it was deemed incompatible with American values. Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 arguing that it would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.” Thus, childcare was and is still treated as an issue for individual families—particularly the women—to cope with, rather than an economic investment that will empower women and their families. Not surprisingly, to date, the US has no adequate childcare infrastructure intact, a problem which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

However, as with the politics of the Cold War era, male-dominated countercultures which emerged at the time too did not want to deal with any issues that might disrupt the gender power structure too much at their inconvenience. In terms of gender equality, changes were slow. As we see, after Mrs. Robinson’s liaison with Ben, she comes back to the comfort of her suburban home, behind the doors of the domesticity that define her.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2021)

#ColdWar #counterculture #US #childcare #WorldWar2 #gender #history #literature #films #cinema #class

More on The Graduate https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-graduate-and-middleman.html More on US wartime childcare https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2021/09/war-politics-and-childcare-in-us.html More on countercultures https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2017/07/flapper-queens-beats-mods-and-punk.html

Sources

Dratch, Howard (1974). The Politics of Child Care in the 1940s. Science & Society, 38(2): 167–204. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40401779 (Accessed 25 July 2021).

Friedan, Betty (1973) ‘Up from the Kitchen Floor.’ NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/04/archives/up-from-the-kitchen-floor-kitchen-floor.html (Accessed August 22, 2020).

Krasner, Barbara (2014) ‘The Nuclear Family and Cold War Culture of the 1950s.’ Academia. https://www.academia.edu/9926751/The_Nuclear_Family_and_Cold_War_Culture_of_the_1950s (Accessed December 21, 2019).

Maragou, Helena (2015) Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Middle Class: A Cultural History. Review https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10458 (Accessed 14 November 2021).

Punch, David A. (2018) The Graduate: Symbolism in Film. https://medium.com/@DavidA.Punch/the-graduate-symbolism-in-film-a549ef9882c0 (Accessed 21 November 2021).

The Kitchen Debate-transcript 24 July 959 Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev U.S. Embassy, Moscow, Soviet Union. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1959-07-24.pdf (Accessed August 16, 2020).

POPULAR TOPICS #subculture Gurlesque: Poetics of the Bizarre, Ugly, and Feminine #films Mrs. Robinson, Countercultures, and Politics #history The Dutch Golden Age, Golden for Whom? I also write articles here: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/

The moral devastation experienced by the US after the Great War led the country to the quest of achieving a new stability. This was sought through regaining economic strength and retaining traditional values. It was during this aftermath that many American modernist writers, in search of a safe haven, emigrated to Europe. Many settled in Paris, finding the freedom that could release them from the disillusionment caused by the war.

For many years Paris was home to American modernist writers, poets, and artists during an era of postwar recovery and prefascist political power. These writers were then known as “the Lost Generation”—those who due to the war had lost their faith in the government, God, and the American dream.

Even with the economic and social independence that American women gained in the roaring '20s, the literary and art scene still offered less freedom to women. This led many American female writers and artists to join the emigration to France in the 1920s and '30s. Among these women were Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Solita Solano, and Thelma Wood, just to name a few. However, “the Lost Generation”, a term first coined by Stein, remained associated mainly with male writers, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald—the major heroes of this generation.

In the 1920s and 30s, Paris had inspired women modernist writers and artists as the city gave them freedom to live an alternative lifestyle to that of the conservative postwar American society. These Parisian women, who led the unmarried, bohemian, and bisexual lifestyle, were later dubbed the “Left Bank women writers”, as they famously resided in this part of Paris. Their work and lifestyle quickly became a subculture within the male dominated literary and art community of American modernists.

The Left Bank women writers were less acknowledged in modernist literature than their male peers. They were eventually recognized but labeled as “women writers” or “lesbian writers”. Some writers find this separate category of recognition as derogatory. Barnes, who is well-known for her classic novel, Nightwood (1936) which was influenced by her relationship with Wood, once said, “I hate women writers!” and wanted to disassociate her work from this label. The category had emerged owing to the absence of white heterosexual male bias (albeit still predominantly white) in the works of Left Bank women writers. Despite this, arguably, the category may have kept the work of Left Bank women writers at the margins of the modernist literary movement.

The male comrades of the Lost Generation emerged from a state of cultural changes and turbulent times. Even though breaking with traditional literary conventions, they were often criticized for preserving a predominantly masculine culture; thus, contributing to modernism’s marginalization of women.

Photo: Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in a Paris cafe around 1922 (Maurice Brange)

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2021)

#literature #Worldwar1 #womenwriters #lostgeneration #history #US #Paris #gender #women #subculture #counterculture

If you are interested in this topic, you might like to read: Unsung Women Writers of the Postwar Era https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2019/03/unsung-women-writers-of-postwar-era.html

POPULAR TOPICS #subculture Gurlesque: Poetics of the Bizarre, Ugly, and Feminine #films Mrs. Robinson, Countercultures, and Politics #history The Dutch Golden Age, Golden for Whom? I also write articles here: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/