MARCH 8 IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

March 8 is International Women’s Day. Said to commemorate an 1857 strike by women workers in New York’s garment industry, the effort to set aside a day to celebrate women’s achievements and assess their status gained momentum from the women’s rights movements of the 1970s.

By Noel Osment, Staff Writer,

The San Diego Union

“We want bread — and roses, too.” This was the message carried by women pickets during a strike of women garment workers in the late 1800s, said Carol Rowell, who spoke at an International Women’s Day rally yesterday at the Community Concourse.

The day is said to have been declared March 8, 1910, in Helsinki, Finland, to commemorate a demonstration and march in 1857 in New York City on behalf of women garment and textile workers.

Since then, some bread and roses have been gained, but, Rowell said, “at any level, high or low, woman is oppressed. Independent radical feminism is a necessary sociological and psychological tool in the struggle for liberation.

Rowell was representing the Center for Women’s Studies and Services, one of more than 36 organizations sponsoring the rally under the umbrella of the Feminist Action Coalition.

The rally was one of a number of activities in this area as well as throughout the world in which women gathered to review their progress and to discuss problems still faced. Prominent among issues discussed yesterday was the plight of the Equal Rights Amendment, which must be ratified by three mere states by March 22, 1979, to assure passage.

Joan Casale, president of the San Diego Chapter of the National Organization for Women, said help is needed in two areas.

The first, she said, is a strong economic boycott of unratified states.

(Unratified states are Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.)

The second area of need, she said, is to obtain a time extension of seven years to get the necessary ratifications.

“It took 150 years to get the right to vote, and 50 years to get the ERA out to the states. It’s unfair to expect passage in only seven years.” (ERA began ratification proceedings m 1972.)

Casale said that Rep. Bob Wilson, R-san Diego, has said he will support extension, but that efforts must be made to persuade Reps. Lionel Van Deerlin, D-chula Vista, and Clair Burgener, R-LA Jolla, to support the time extension.

Sen. S.I. Hayakawa, R-calif., she said, has stated that he is adamantly opposed to a time extension.

Educator Myrra Lee discussed women in education.

“The educational system has always been a means for promoting the status quo,” she said.

Now, she said, Title IX provides a means to assure equality of education for women,

but, women have been programmed not to prepare themselves for what they might really want to do.

Another rally speaker was Merkle Harris, director of the Welfare Rights Organization. “The major component of people I represent are female heads of households and their struggles, but we have all — no matter what strata of women — been victims of the same myths of sexism and racism. I now see a beautiful awareness that repression comes in many forms.”

Cmdr. Beth Coye, USN, cited legal changes in the Navy within the last five to 10 years that have increased opportunities for women.

Attributing many of these changes to former Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt, she said that the number of women officers has tripled within the past five years.

As to the future of Navy women, the question, she said, is whether they will have the opportunity to go to sea, and on that question, she said, the Navy is proposing a change in legislation which would allow women sea duty aboard non-combat vessels.

Gloria Serrano, San Diego County acting Affirmative Action coordinator, said that while the situation has improved for women within the county work force, “1978 will be a bleak year for affirmative action programs (generally.).”

“The issue of reverse discrimination has caused a kind of hysteria, which is somewhat understandable in view of high unemployment.”