International Women's Day, my lifeline

Today at 79 years old, International Women’s Day continues to be my lifeline.

In 1978, I was in Sweden because my then husband had been invited and I was “part of the luggage”. Harriet Clayhills, owner of the Women’s Bookstore in Stockholm, complained that Americans had distorted the beginnings of IWD by claiming that IWD had started in the US. She maintained that it had started in Copenhagen in 1910, “there was no such thing as a March 8, 1908”. I told her that I was from Québec, not to be angry with me, and wrote on a small piece of paper “March 8, 1908”.

Back in the US, again looking for a job, I researched at the UCLA library and finally figured out the “real” origins of IWD with my ex-husband’s help. Both of his parents were Russian and he had a worldview that I did not have then. I am doing better in my late 70s, having lived in and visited different countries.

To summarize a long, somewhat complicated history, the roots of International Women’s Day are to be found in the American Woman’s Day for the vote in the US, prior to 1910.

It took me six years to finally get a book published in 1984 by a small feminist press in Montréal les éditions du remue-ménage on the ORIGINS of IWD, with photographs and illustrations (still available, seems cheaper directly from the publisher. No English translation, sorry.)

Writing this book forced me to reconsider my life and in 1982, when the manuscript was accepted for publication, I started to become my own person.

In 2015, it was quite a pleasant surprise to be contacted by Jawahar, a Journalist-researcher living in India. First I was disappointed it was not a woman, but now I am happy that he has finished his book ' The Real Origin and Establishment of International Women's Day and March 8 '.

It will be published in a few months. As far as I know, it is the first book in English covering these specifics aspects of IWD’s history.

Today, when I google “Renée Côté International Women’s Day” I am very proud that my book is still making a difference in the world, not only in my life. As Harriet Clayhills told me in 1978: “without the knowledge of the past, we don’t have a future”.

Renée Côté, Oregon, USA.