问答题

International Women’’s Day is an occasion marked by women’’s groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. The idea of an International Women’’s Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. In the years before 1910, from the turn of the 20th century, women in industrially developing countries were entering paid work in some numbers. Their jobs were sex segregated, mainly in textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were wretched and wages worse than depressed. Trade unions were developing and industrial disputes broke out, In Europe, the flames of revolution were being kindled. Many of the changes taking place in women’’s lives pushed against the political restrictions surrounding them. Women from all social strata began to campaign for the right to vote. In the United States in 1903, women trade unionists and liberal professional women who were also campaigning for women’’s voting rights set up the Women’’s Trade Union League to help organize women in paid work around their political and economic welfare. These were dismal and bitter years for many women with terrible working conditions and home lives driven by poverty and often violence. In 1908, on the last Sunday in February, socialist women in the United States initiated the first Women’’s Day when large demonstrations took place calling for the vote and the political and economic rights of women. The notion of international solidarity between the exploited workers of the world had long been established as a socialist principle, though largely an unrealized one. In 1910, delegates went to the second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’’s clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament came with unanimous approval that women throughout the world should focus on a particular day each year to press for their demands and International Women’’s Day was the result. That conference also reasserted the importance of women’’s right to vote, dissociated itself from voting systems based on property rights and called for universal suffrage — the right to vote for all adult women and men. It also decided to oppose night work as being detrimental to the health of most working women, though Swedish and Danish working women who were present asserted that night work was essential to their livelihood. What were the general characteristics of industrialized world at the turn of the 20th century