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Versailles. They arrived at dawn on Oct. 6, 1789, invaded King Louis XVI’s
bedroom and “accompanied” him, against his will, back to Paris. And that was it for
an independent French monarchy.
Women’s Petition (New Zealand)
In 1891, when a bill came up in New Zealand’s Parliament that would give
women the right to vote, local suffrage activists dispersed petitions throughout the
country in support. Nine thousand women signed; the bill passed the lower House of
Representatives but was defeated in the upper body, the Legislative Council. The
next year, the bill came up again. This time 20,000 women signed petitions, but the
bill was again defeated in the Legislative Council. Then, in 1893, the bill came up for
a third time; 32,000 women — a full quarter of all the European women in New
Zealand — signed petitions delivered to the Parliament. When it passed the House,
suffragists held huge rallies and sent flurries of telegrams to persuade members of the
Legislative Council. It worked; the bill passed 20-18, and the colonial governor
signed it, making New Zealand the first self-governing country to allow women to
vote. (This meant white and Maori women; because of a nationhood requirement,
Chinese immigrant women were excluded).
March for ‘Bread and Peace’ (Russia)
Though socialist women in the United States and Europe had been holding
“International Women’s Day” demonstrations for several years, Russian women took
it to a new level in 1917. On March 8 (still February by the Russian calendar), female
textile workers in the capital went on strike, demanding an end to World War I, an
end to food shortages and an end to czarist rule. They asked male factory workers to
join them, and according to revolutionary Leon Trotsky, 90,000 people struck that
day. The next day, it doubled. The czar abdicated less than a week later. Since 1975,
the United Nations has celebrated March 8 as International Women’s Day.
Abeokuta Women’s Revolt (colonial Nigeria)
Abeokuta is now a city in Nigeria, but in the 1940s, it was a city-state under the
control of British colonial authorities via a local puppet alake (king). There, a woman