This year, 8 March marked a century
of the celebration of International Women's Day. But aside from a few
publications and websites of women's movements, this event went largely
unremarked in the mainstream press, and also in the public consciousness.
The idea of International Women's Day was born in the socialist movement
in the first decade of the 20th century. Clara Zetkin, socialist leader
and head of the Women's Office of the Social Democratic party in Germany,
proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration
on the same day - to be known as a Women's Day - to recognise the social
contribution of women and to press for their demands. As a socialist and
an early (but not self-acknowledged) feminist, Zetkin saw this as part
of a broader anti-capitalist movement that would also foster cooperation
between women in unions, women's organizations and socialist parties so
they would unite and fight jointly in the class struggle for a more progressive
society.
This suggestion was accepted unanimously at the second International conference
of Working Women in Copenhagen in 1910, which included over 100 women
from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's
clubs, as well as the first three women elected to the parliament in Finland.
The first International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured in some European
countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland) in 1911 on 17 March.
Rallies were held involving more than a million people (both women and
men), raising demands for women's right to work and be given equal wages,
to vote, to hold public office and to end other forms of discrimination.
The Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai described one of these rallies
as composed of ''one seething, trembling sea of women... certainly the
first show of militancy (in Europe) by working women'' (www.leftwrite.wordpress.com).
The demands raised at those first demonstrations still resonate today:
an end to imperialist wars; better social and economic conditions for
women and children; controls on rapidly rising food prices.
In the United States, on 8 March 1908, socialist women and women workers
from the clothing and textile trades in the city held a mass meeting for
an eight-hour day and women's suffrage. But less than a week after the
first IWD in Europe in 1911, on March 25 the tragic ''Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory Fire'' in New York City in the United States led to the deaths
of more than 140 working women, mostly recent migrants into the US. This
led to greater attention to working conditions and labour legislation
for women, in the United States and other developed countries, and these
also became important rallying points for the demands made for women on
IWD in later years.
The reason that the date was shifted to 8 March is of great relevance
for the global women's movement. In 1917 in Tsarist Russia, Russian women
went on strike for "bread and peace", partly in response to
the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. The strike began on
the last Sunday of February (which was 8 March by the Gregorian calendar
used throughout most of the world). The strike continued despite state
repression and personal hardship endured by the women. This was the catalyst
for - and effectively became the first stage of - the Russian Revolution.
Four days later the Tsar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government
granted women the right to vote. Ever since, IWD has been celebrated on
8 March not only to press for demands for gender equality, but importantly
as recognition of the tremendous power that women can wield when they
unite.
The association of IWD with broader struggles of working people has remained
a critical part of its essence. The slogan most often used on IWD was
''Class struggle is women's struggle - women's struggle is class struggle!''
It was therefore very much part of the activities of trade unions and
workers' organizations, who recognised that women's emancipation cannot
occur within a social and economy system that denies the emancipation
of workers in general, and vice versa.
But as IWD became more international (taken up by the United Nations in
the second half of the 20th century) and even ''official'' in scope, this
critical link between the emancipation of women and broader economic and
social emancipation of all has often been sidelined. This reflects a general
tension that unfortunately still remains between feminism and other progressive
Left movements - a tension that persists all the more because the Left
is the natural and inevitable home of those aspiring to the liberation
of women.
Women have been part of the working class since the beginning of capitalism,
even when they have not been widely acknowledged as workers in their own
right. Even when they are not paid workers, their often unacknowledged
and unpaid contribution to social reproduction and to many economic activities
is absolutely essential for the functioning of the system.
However, it did take a long time for women's struggles to be accepted
as integral part of working class struggles for a better society. For
many decades, even after the first IWD was celebrated to highlight the
demands of women, trade unions and other worker organisations tended to
be male preserves, based on the ''male breadwinner' model of the household
in which the husband/father worked outside to earn money, while the wife/mother
did not earn outside income and handled domestic work.
It has taken prolonged struggle and determined mobilisation to generate
greater social recognition of the role of women as wage workers in different
forms, as well as to bring out the crucial economic significance of unpaid
household labour and community- based work that is dominantly performed
by women. Even so, it must be admitted that a major problem for many women
activists has been the fundamental inequality in the alliance between
feminism and socialism. As noted by Donald Sassoon in his magisterial
history of the European Left in the 20th century (''One hundred years
of socialism'', The New Press, New York 1996, page 419) ''It was accepted
by socialists only on their own terms, namely that the social struggle
between capital and labour was to be recognised as fundamental; the emancipation
of women as women depended on the victory of the working class.''
Partly this reflected a concern that ''bourgeois'' feminism would distract
from the critical question of class struggle, which is why even someone
like Clara Zetkin could insist that socialist women should avoid co-operating
with other feminist groups. But the social reality of the experience of
socialist countries in the 20th century has also shown that the breaking
of gender stereotypes and domestic division of labour are not necessarily
achieved through the dictatorship of the proletariat, even when significant
strides are made in gender equality in other ways.
For socialist feminists, this has meant a dual and more complex process
of struggle: the need to address and confront the unjust economic order
that is expressed in class societies, and the simultaneous need to address
and confront the constantly regenerated patterns of gender inequality
and subordination that are expressed not just in economic terms but also
socially, culturally and politically. The complexity is usually made more
intense because of the fact that the second type of struggle involves
taking on not only opposing class forces, but also elements within parties,
trade unions and other organisations of the Left.
The fact that this second kind of struggle is happening more and more
in India and elsewhere may appear to be divisive of Left and progressive
movements, but it is actually a sign of great vitality. True emancipation
obviously requires a politics that has been shed of its explicit and implicit
masculinity, to pave the way for socialism for women and men equally.
For that reason alone, it is probably important for socialist men to remember
and celebrate International Women's Day.
April
11, 2011.
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