First Meeting of the SlowMemory Study Group

8 March 2024, Tirana Albania. Image: Paola Williams

“Red Shoes” (Zapatos Rojos) is an art project by Mexican artist Elina Chauvet. The installation features shoes painted red. It serves as a powerful reminder of women murdered or disappeared due to gender-based violence. This symbolic form of protest has become a yearly tradition in Tirana and other cities across Albania.

In Albania, 8 March is celebrated as International Women’s Day. Under Enver Hoxha’s regime, this day was given special significance, not only as a celebration of women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements but also as a platform for promoting women’s rights and equality. The regime’s publication, Shqiptarja e Re, was used as propaganda and a pedagogical tool, with the party-state portraying itself as the “Mother of Albania”.

Even today, 8 March is still commonly perceived as “Mother’s Day” by many, with women often celebrating at dinner parties and receiving red roses. However, in recent years, the day has taken on a deeper meaning, serving as a reflection on the ongoing challenges women face, such as femicide, gender-based violence, discrimination, and unequal opportunities in both their professional and personal lives.

Gilda Hoxha (Mediterranean University of Albania)

Image: Johanna Vollmeyer

8 March demonstrations in Spain are huge with 1000s of people on the streets. Many people participate as part of a very strong and progressive feminist movement in Spain. However, in recent years the movement has split into two parties. One in favour of the new transgender law, which is one of the most progressive in the world, while the other party is very critical of this law, being concerned about perceived disadvantages for women. For two years now, two separate demonstrations have therefore taken place on 8 March. The image is of my son on his first 8 March demonstration: there were many people (mostly, but not only, women) on the streets fighting for women’s rights, which felt empowering and encouraged me to attend in the future. This cheerful character of my first demonstration with my son has since been lost to me due to the fragmentation of the feminist movement, but I still believe it is important to continue the fight for equality.

Johanna Vollmeyer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Credit: @Marshojmë S’Festojmë.

Disenchanted by mainstream gender equality rhetoric accompanying the neoliberal rationality of post-war state and nation-building, the commercialization of International Women’s Day, and its conflation with Mother’s Day, a feminist awakening and movement rose in Kosovo under the banner “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” [“We March, We Don’t Celebrate”]. Since 2016, “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” has staged protests every year on 8 March in Prishtina, the capital city, and other cities in Kosovo against structural inequality, gender oppression, gender-based violence, and discrimination. “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” creates a feminist platform demanding an end to gender-based violence, equal pay, the valorization of housework, and equal rights to employment and inheritance, while promoting solidarity. It highlights the political dimension of 8 March and the memory of the international women’s struggle for equal rights and social justice. It bridges waves of feminism and the enduring memory of women’s collective mobilization for gender equality across time and space. By reconnecting with historic women’s marches, “Marshojmë S’ Festojmë” reflects the evolving times, deep-seated gender regimes, struggles for equality, and the essence of the feminist movement in contemporary Kosovo. It demonstrates the power of gender and memory in shaping events and how marching on International Women’s Day carries a temporal dimension of slow memory, an alternative imagining of a socially just future locally and globally, constantly in flux.

Vjollca Krasniqi, University of Prishtina

In 1975, one year after the 1974 revolution, women and men marched side by side for the first time to celebrate International Women’s Day. Source: Archive of “Diário de Notícias” newspaper.

In Portugal, 8 March is not a holiday and never has been. On 8 March 1975, the first International Women’s day was commemorated in Portugal with a march celebrating working antifascist women, in the aftermath of the revolution of 25 April 1974. Men and women gathered in this march that also claimed equal rights for women, as in Portugal the right to vote was only extended to every woman after the 25 April revolution. However, men and older generations in general – who actively participated in these first marches – are now distancing themselves from the contemporary marches of 8 March. Nowadays, International Women’s Day is referred to in the media, and there are marches for women’s rights and against domestic and gender violence in the main cities of the country. They reflect international agendas more than celebrate national figures, leaders or role models in women’s rights. Some people offer “their women” (friends, relatives, mothers, wives, etc) flowers but that’s a personal option – albeit increasingly promoted by media and commerce – to which, more often than not, many educated women reply “I don’t want flowers I want rights”. 

Clara Sarmento, Polytechnic University of Porto

An International Women’s Day greeting card sent to Maija Spuriņa’s family by distant relatives in 1981. Typed on the front: “Greetings on Women’s Day!”. Handwritten on the back: “Warm greetings to you all on women’s day! We wish you joy and good mood! Akmentini family, in Talsi, 1981.” (From family archive)

In Latvia, 8 March is associated with the Soviet era, when it was widely celebrated in workplaces and at home. It was common to send greeting cards via post, and for men to greet women with fresh cut flowers, sweets, and small gifts. Because being a mother was seen as an integral part of women’s identity, the date also served as a Mother’s Day. Even though this date was not perceived as explicitly ideological, Soviet propaganda clearly used it to emphasize and celebrate the supposed gender equality in the Soviet Union, while the flower and gift-giving tradition to a certain extent reinforced traditional gender roles.

When the Soviet regime collapsed, Latvian society underwent extensive cultural de-Sovietization. The tradition of flower- and gift-giving lived on, but for many Latvians acquired a negative connotation due to its Soviet roots. More recently, local feminist movements have started organizing Solidarity marches on the date and thereby redefined it as a day to raise awareness of enduring gender inequalities rather than a day to receive flowers and gifts.

Maija Spuriņa (Latvian Academy of Culture)