One hundred fifteen years ago the first International Women’s Day took place in the United States on Feb. 28, 1909. The Socialist Party of America instituted the day in order to honor the garment worker’s strike of 1908 in New York City reported by The United Nations. The fight was started by women demanding better working conditions.

In the following years, it was celebrated by Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. Over a million women and men rallied together to end discrimination and campaign for women’s right to work, vote, and to hold public office.

In 1911, there was the infamous “Triangle Fire” in New York City where more than 140 immigrant women died in a factory fire. This accident was known as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. It drew attention to the deplorable working conditions women were facing and became the topic of discussion and events at future IWDs.

It continued to be celebrated on the last Sunday of February until 1913, when Russian women observed their first IWD on Feb. 23 — the eve of the World War I campaign for peace according to the official International Women’s Day website. Then, after further discussion it was decided that it would be celebrated on March 8 every year, which was “translated in the widely adopted Gregorian calendar from Feb. 23.”

The “first wave of feminism” began around this time. Suffragettes picketed, rallied, petitioned, and organized to gain the right to vote, leading states to slowly adopt suffrage legislation in the first half of the decade. The 19th amendment was finally passed in 1919, guaranteeing American women everywhere the right to legally vote.

However, the recognition of this holiday didn’t change the role of a woman’s day-to-day life in America too much.

While American men were fighting in World War II, women were tasked with replacing them in the factories in order to continue manufacturing the supplies needed. They were encouraged to take on these jobs and increase their earning power to hold down the homefront. But, once the war ended and men came home, women were sent back to their homes, says PBS.

Then came the Baby Boom, and households could no longer just rely on one income to keep them afloat. Women reentered the workforce, both in careers keeping up with the growing post-war economy, as well as home-centered jobs such as selling Tupperware.

At this time, women were facing both the societal pressures of domesticity and economic pressure of having the “ideal lifestyle.” American culture at the time encouraged them to stay at home to look after the house and family, and the 9-to-5 jobs available to them — factory worker, secretary, bookkeeper-weren’t giving them the proper work-life balance.

In the late 1950s, a revolutionary product came on the market for women: Birth control pills. Women now had control over their fertility, which was needed since according to another PBS article, Mothers who had four children by the time they were 25 still faced another 15 to 20 fertile years ahead of them. Growing families were hemmed into small houses, cramped by rising costs.”

Once the 1960s hit, revolutions were in full-swing, including ones for civil-rights, anti-war, and women’s liberation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or sex which allowed women to go into professional fields that they hadn’t previously had access to.

As more time passed, “the second wave of feminism” emerged with similar motives as the first: equal rights and opportunities, [as well as] greater personal freedoms for women”, reports Britannica. In the 1973 decision of Roe v Wade, women were guaranteed under the constitution the right to have an abortion ­– a revolutionary movement for bodily autonomy.

Each decade seemed to bring another, with the third and fourth waves coming in the mid-1990s and early 2010s. The National Organization of Women (NOW) organized the mass marches for women’s rights since the 90s including the March for Women’s Rights in 2004, where over 1.15 million people marched in Washington D.C. to “protect and advance abortion rights, birth control, and access to a full range of reproductive healthcare options.”

Today, feminism is defined by “the belief in the equality of all genders, a set of values aimed at dismantling gender inequality and the structures that uphold it,” according to an 2023 ABC News article. Social media has allowed feminist movements to spread rapidly all over the world and gain the coverage that activists have always desired.

But the fight for women isn’t over in 2024. Two years ago in the United States, the supreme court overturned the decision in Roe v Wade and left the right to abortion up to the states. Since then, access to reproductive healthcare has become as difficult in some places as it was over 50 years ago.

In addition, the World Health Organization reports that 1 in 3 women have been “subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence or both.” Globally, 38% of all women who are murdered are committed by their intimate partners.

So on March 8, while remembering how far women have come in the world since it’s first celebration, there are still many places for reform in order to have them have the complete freedom and protection that they’ve been fighting for over a century.

Marissa Burr is a State University of New York at Fredonia student.