It was in 1857, that on 8 March in New York City, garments workers went on strike. Suffering horrific conditions, endless hours and low pay, they took to the streets demanding better money and working conditions. Dispersed after being attacked by police, the women continued to fight and from their movement the first women’s labour unions were established.

In the early 20th century, their movement blossomed. New York City’s streets again saw women march demanding shorter hours, better pay, an end to child labour and the right to vote in 1908. Leading labour organisers sought to strengthen the movement internationally. At the Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen in 1910, Clara Zetkin asked over 100 women from 17 countries – representing unions, socialist parties and women’s working clubs – to pass a motion for an International Working Women’s Day. They did so, unanimously, and the so International Women’s Day was born.

Zetkin, in conjunction with other well-known women from the movement including Rosa Luxembourg and Theresa Malkiel focussed on the conditions that dictated women’s lives. They organised with women working in inhumane conditions for long hours and no pay. Women who also went home to complete their “second shift” – cleaning, cooking, childrearing and household managing; women who were the engine keeping families, communities, companies and countries running, but whose work received little pay and even less recognition.

International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

It was after the first International Working Women’s Day – a day that saw a million women across Europe take part in rallies – that 140 women’s lives were claimed in the tragic “Triangle Fire” of 1911. Many of them Italian and Jewish migrants, these women died working for next to nothing under atrocious conditions in a New York garments factory. We know, of course, that this is a situation women in the global South endure today.

Rose Schneiderman, a socialist who worked tirelessly to draw attention to conditions that had caused the Triangle Fire, a year later coined the slogan that reverberated across the women’s movement: the demand for “bread and roses”. Demanding that women have the right ‘to live, not simply exist’ in a speech, she said: “The rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.” Five years later, Russian textile workers called for “bread and peace” when they went on strike in protest of the millions of men they knew killed in World War I. Their strike ignited the Russian Revolution.

International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined ‘The Matchgirls Strike’ International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to ‘rush’ the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: ‘The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen’ Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Women’s March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Women’s March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Women’s Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

Recurrent across this history of International Women’s Day is one tactic: strike. Women - most often low income, migrant women working tirelessly as employees, carers, wives, mothers, sex workers - knew the power of their labour. They knew withdrawing the work they did would stop the world turning and win them victories.

It is not a tactic lost today. In the tradition of the matchgirls’ strike that birthed the modern trade union movement, the Grunwick and Dagenham strikes that set the foundations for equal pay and migrant workers’ place in workers’ movements, and the Irish women’s strikes since 2000 that marked the founding of the Global Women’s Strike organisation, strikes are having a resurgence.

International Women's Day: women walk down street in Bilbao for 'feminist strike'

In the UK, many are spearheaded by grassroots and largely migrant workers. The United Voices of the World, workers enduring horrific treatment and poverty wages from outsourcing firms have organised strikes and won sick pay, holiday pay and in-house contracts. All across this month, too, academics are striking against a raiding of their pensions. This week, with Oxford University backing down, it looks like they are also set to win. And in Yarls’ Wood detention centre, women forcibly detained and driven to work for next to nothing to maintain the centre’s functioning are on strike from work and from food.