Gloria Steinem came to San Diego to celebrate International Women’s Day, at the invitation of her old friend and women's movement colleague, CPI Board Member Gracia Molina de Pick.
Steinem is one of the most influential voices for women's rights and equality in US history. She became a renowned leader of the women's movement in the 1970's, when she co-founded Ms., the first national feminist magazine, and helped to create the National Women's Political Caucus, and the Women's Action Alliance. In 2005, she co-founded the Women’s Media Center.
International Women’s Day grew out of women’s rights and labor struggles in the U.S. and Europe in the early 1900s.
In New York City in 1909, garment workers (many teenage immigrant women) went on strike for an end to sweatshops and child labor, and what become known as the Uprising of 20,000 launched the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire on March 25, 1911, killed 146 garment workers, most of them young immigrant women from Europe. The first workplace health and safety laws were passed following the fire.
The first National Women’s Day (observed on February 28) was declared in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America, in its campaign for women’s rights, especially the right to vote. An International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen adopted a joint Women’s Day to honor and further the movement for women's rights to work, vote, hold public office, and end discrimination. In 1913 and 1914, following women’s peace rallies on the eve of World War I, International Women's Day was moved to March 8.
The United Nations charter, signed in 1945, was the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men.
