8 MARCH - INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY - HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Today, women in countries across the globe will commemorate this special day.  Since the women’s labour movement started in America in 1909, IWD has been considered by many to be an important day on the calendar, for celebration and remembrace. The origin and significance of this date is still linked to the American female labour movement which coincided with the push towards women’s suffrage that was, at the time, gaining importance across Europe.

 

The movement seems to have begun in February 1909 when around two thousand people gathered in New York’s Manhattan. Around this time, many American women activists became well known in those early days. Among several famous female activists Meta Lilienthal Stern (1875-1948) recalled in one of her essays:  ‘the very first observation of our national Women’s Day proved so successful that thereafter it became generally accepted as an annual Socialist holiday.’ Along with May Day, she explained, that this holiday stood ‘for new hopes and new ideals; the abolition of wage and sex slavery; the coming of a freer, better and happier manhood and womanhood.’

In preparation for this year’s IWD celebrations, their website message  states: 

A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. So let's all choose to challenge. How will you help forge a gender equal world? Celebrate women's achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.

As Vice President and Archivist of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, I've studied our SWWJ history and have noted those members who have been and are successful in their professional lives, linked as they are to literature, journalism and the creative arts.  Since our Society was created in London by a leading male newspaper editor in 1894, great changes have occurred globally, linked to the rights of working women.The London newspaper industry had been thriving in the bustling Fleet Street cobbles of the 1890s. Much has been written about this most famous of London thoroughfares, lit at dusk by gas lamps, workers dodging hurrying horse-drawn hansom cabs, and the inevitable smell of printers’ ink amid the incessant thrumming from the huge hot metal typesetting machines – standard technology of the day for mass-market printing. These machines lurked in the basements, churning out hundreds of ‘dailies’, books and magazines created predominantly by male journalists.

Over past centuries, there had existed numerous talented female writers, but rarely did women acquire the opportunity of seeing their work on the page and performed on the stage. Although at the start of the twentieth century Britain had been ruled by a queen for sixty-four years, the status of women writers at the end of her reign was abysmal. Many females whose written work was enjoyed by all social classes, had to fight hard for their work to be recognised and published, but often resorting to the use of male pseudonyms for their by-lines.

However, during Victoria’s last decade, a wealthy influential newspaper proprietor and editor of several newspapers came on the scene. Joseph Snell-Wood was the editor of The Daily Graphic and Bystander; also Queen Victoria’s favourite best-selling weekly journal, The Gentlewoman.  Entrepreneurial skills seem to have been inherently part of this forty-one-year-old publishing magnate’s character. His organising ability was illustrious. He was well-known in royal circles and had been responsible for creating a charity which raised over £10,000 for the Chelsea Hospital for Women in the form of the Chelsea Arts Ball which was held annually thereafter at the Royal Albert Hall until the 1950s. As an employer of several women on his newspaper, Joseph understood their dilemma and promised to help.

On 1 May 1894, Joseph made a pledge to launch and fund a specialised organisation purely for women. He paid our initial set-up costs, provided advice and help with contacts and introductions. Immediately, more than two hundred women applied to become members, mostly journalists at the start, but later joined by novelists, poets, playwrights and females working in all areas of publishing. Years later, in 1951, Joseph’s Victorian brainchild was renamed The Society of Women Writers and Journalists. By then, its reputation had spread and we were welcoming members from many nations around the world.

SWWJ pioneers have included luminaries such as Lady Sarah Wilson, Lady Violet Astor, Dame Rebecca West, Radclyffe Hall, Dr Marie Stopes, Vera Brittain, Elizabeth, Lady Longford, Shirley, Baroness Williams and in later years, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Martina Cole, Sandra, Baroness Howard, Joyce Grenfell OBE and a host of other well known writers including Victoria Wood CBE  and currently Floella, Baroness Benjamin, DBE DL, our current President.

Seven years ago, our SWWJ members celebrated their 120^th  anniversary lunch at Stationers’ Hall, the place where, despite Hitler’s bombardment of London in1940, members met regularly. Our speaker at this wonderful occasion was our then President, the late Victoria Wood CBE. Then, in May 2019 we enjoyed another lovely birthday party at Stationers' Hall with our new President Lady Floella with the novelist Kate Mosse OBE providing an uplifting speech. 

Nowadays, in the midst of this pandemic, we keep in touch via our website where members enjoy uplifting zoom interviews and webinars by well-known writers and entertainers.

 

To learn more about joining SWWJ, please contact us at www.swwj.co.uk where a warm welcome awaits both professional and aspiring writers.