Metadata

The International Women’s Day Committee (IWDC) was a multi-issue group that held bi-weekly meetings in Toronto from 1978 until 1987. In 1987, IWDC changed its name to Toronto Socialist Feminist Action (TSFA) in order to better differentiate the group from the International Women’s Day Coalition, a larger formation that met annually to organize the IWD march and related events. Members of IWDC/TFSA participated in a wide range of activist struggles, including reproductive rights (particularly abortion rights), labour rights, international solidarity work, anti-racist activism, the sex debates, LGBTQ activism, and AIDS activism. We were involved in local, national, and international organizations, bringing an anti-racist socialist feminist politic to every context in which we worked, from the National Action Committee on the Status of Women to picket line support for striking garment workers.

The mandate of IWDC/TSFA was included in every issue of the organizations’ publications:

We are a socialist-feminist group which operates on the principle that mass action is our most effective instrument of change. We believe that the oppression of women touches every aspect of our lives and that the liberation of women will require fundamental changes in the structure of society.

As with all enduring organizations, the group’s size ebbed and flowed over its many years in existence, involving dozens of women coming together for periods of time to develop a specifically socialist feminist politics and practice. Many of these women remain politically active, and likely all remain politically engaged.

From 1979 to 1986, IWDC produced four issues a year of the International Women’s Day Committee Newsletter.

Debi Brock was a member of IWDC/TSFA from 1985 until 1992.

International Women’s Day Committee (IWDC) / Toronto Socialist Feminist Action (TFSA) Documents

	Title	Date	Region
	International Women’s Day Committee Chronology (1978-1982)	1982	Ontario
	International Women’s Day Committee Information Pamphlet	--	Ontario
	IWDC Draft Basis of Unity	1979	Ontario
	IWDC Letter Urging Support for Women’s Solidarity Actions for Fleck Strikers	1978	Ontario
	IWDC Women’s Strike Support (1979)	1979	Ontario
	Organize IWD 1979 – Flyer	1979	Ontario
	The International Women’s Day Committee – We Continued the Fight	1978	Ontario
	Women’s Right to Choose Protest (1979)	1979	Ontario