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By Miriam Martin in Vancouver
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Friday, 07 March 2008 |
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The idea of guaranteed quotas
for women on trade union and party committees has become fashionable. But there
are no shortcut solutions to this problem. Inequality exists because of
capitalism and will continue to exist as long as capitalism exists. This
inequality can only be fought by a united struggle of the whole labour
movement. Only when capitalism is abolished and a system of democratic planning
introduced will we be able to create the material basis for all inequality and
prejudice to whither away once and for all.
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By Miriam Martin
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Thursday, 08 March 2007 |
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Today is International Working Women’s Day
– originally instituted not as a day to celebrate, but as a day for militancy
and action. Now many liberal institutions and feminist organizations recognize
International Women’s Day, but few acknowledge its roots or its historical
significance. They have in fact attempted to remove the class content of this
day of struggle.
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By V.I. Lenin
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Wednesday, 08 March 2006 |
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"The working woman and the peasant woman are oppressed by capital, but over and above that, even in the most democratic of the bourgeois republics, they remain, firstly, deprived of some rights because the law does not give them equality with men; and secondly - and this is the main thing - they remain in "household bondage", they continue to be “household slaves", for they are overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household." V.I.Lenin, March 4, 1921 |
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By Jorge Martín
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Wednesday, 08 March 2006 |
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The early origins of International Women’s Day are closely linked to the struggle of women textile workers. This year’s International Women’s Day finds 240 textile workers, mainly women, occupying the premises of the Sel-Fex company in Caracas. Their struggle is no longer just a struggle against the bosses for concrete demands, but a struggle to defend the Bolivarian revolution and to build a better future for Venezuelan working women and all working people in general. |
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By Miriam Martin in Vancouver
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Tuesday, 08 March 2005 |
 Mainstream feminism has attempted to reduce March 8th to a vague and depoliticised celebration of
the female sex as a homogenous group, but to socialists and working
class women the world over, it is a day for mobilizing, a day of class
struggle. It was in fact first launched by Clara Zetkin at the second
International Conference of Women Socialists, held in Copenhagen in
1910, with the aim of mobilizing women for the struggle against
bourgeois domination.
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By Elisabetta Rossi
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Tuesday, 30 March 2004 |
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On March 8, International Working Women’s Day, we published the first part of this article. The second part deals with the negative effects of the Stalinist degeneration of the soviet state and how this led to the undoing of all the work the Bolsheviks had started in their attempts to achieve a genuine emancipation of women.
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By PTUDC
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Monday, 08 March 2004 |
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International Working Women’s day was celebrated in Lahore. It was organized
by the Pakistan Trade Union Defense Campaign (PTUDC), Youth For International
Socialism (YFIS) and the People’s Youth Organization (PYO). The seminar was on
International Working Women’s Day and the inauguration of the book specially
published for this occasion ‘Natasha—A Bolshevik Woman Organizer”. |
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By Pat Reet
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Monday, 08 March 2004 |
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The key role played by women in the 1984-1985 miners' strike has been an
inspiration to working class women everywhere. Many other issues affecting women
have yet to be fought. Cuts in education, housing, transport and health just to
name a few. Originally published in 1986.
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By Elisabetta Rossi
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Monday, 08 March 2004 |
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To celebrate International Working Women's Day we are publishing an article on women and the Russian Revolution. It shows how that single event did more for women than any other struggle that had come before it and indeed after as well. First published (July 18, 2002) in issue Number 5 of 'In difesa del marxismo', the theoretical magazine of the Italian Marxist journal FalceMartello. |
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By Norma Edith Ramírez H, Militante - México
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Monday, 24 November 2003 |
On the occasion of the International Day against Violence against women we are publishing this article on the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. More than 4,000 women, young workers and students, have disappeared since 1993 in this Mexican city in the US border. Recent investigations have uncovered a network linking these disappearances to drugs, smuggling, political corruption, etc.
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By Sonia Previato
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Thursday, 10 October 2002 |
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Following on from our publication of Part One of this article to commemorate
March 8, International Working Women’s Day, we are publishing Part Two, which
starts with the role of women in the Italian resistance movement and then goes
on to analyse the Italian feminist movement from the Second World War up until
today. |
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By Sonia Previato
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Thursday, 10 October 2002 |
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Tomorrow, March 8, is International Working Women’s Day, and to mark
this important event we are publishing this article. It was first printed in
issue Number 5 of ‘In difesa del marxismo’, the theoretical magazine of the
Italian Marxist journal FalceMartello. Although originally written for an
Italian audience we believe it is of interest to labour movement activists and
youth around the world. |
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By Sadaf Zahra
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Wednesday, 10 July 2002 |
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Sadaf Zahra looks at the terrible situation in Pakistan where rapes and killings are done in the name of family honour, and are rarely investigated by the police. In areas where tribal customs still prevail, it is not uncommon for public punishment to be inflicted on women as a form of retaliation against their families. Such a case occurred recently in the village of Meerwala where a woman was subjected to gang-rape under the decision of a tribal council. |
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By Rukhsana Manzoor
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Friday, 19 April 2002 |
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This is a report from Pakistan on the conditions of women workers and the activities and programme of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign on this question. |
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By Peter Doyle
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Wednesday, 17 April 2002 |
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Peter Doyle, an organiser for the public sector union Unison in Cumbria, Northern England, reports on the Equal Value claims that his union region is submitting to the government to get women workers in traditional "women's jobs" in the health service the same levels of pay as workers in traditional "men's jobs". They are on the verge of an important victory. |
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By Phil Mitchinson
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Friday, 08 March 2002 |
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The Irish population in a referendum has just rejected a government move to further restrict women's limited access to abortions. This is a blow for the reactionaries but the right to abortion is still out of reach for most Irish women, being available only to those who can afford to travel to Britain. |
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By Marina Kosara, from the YS, Vienna
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Friday, 08 March 2002 |
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We are publishing a letter about the conditions of female immigrants to Europe written by Marina Kosara, a member of the Young Socialists in Vienna who works with immigrants. |
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By Gaye D. C.
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Tuesday, 05 February 2002 |
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This is a short article about the terrible conditions women face in Nigeria. |
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By Rob Sewell
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Wednesday, 05 September 2001 |
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While middle class feminists regard the oppression of women as an inherent biological trait of men, Marxism explains that the root of women's oppression lies not in biology, but in social conditions. Marxism sees the liberation of working class women as a part of the struggle for the liberation of the working class as a whole. While feminists set women against men, the socialist movement attempts to forge solidarity between male and female workers in a common struggle against capitalist exploitation. |
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By Alan Woods
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Thursday, 19 July 2001 |
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For Marxists, the root cause of all forms of oppression consists in the division of
society into classes. For many feminists, on the other hand, the oppression of
women is rooted in the nature of men. It is not a social but a biological
phenomenon. This is an entirely static, unscientific and undialectical
conception of the human race. It is an unhistorical vision of the human
condition, from which profoundly pessimistic conclusions must flow. For if we
accept that there is something inherent in men which causes them to
oppress women, it is difficult to see how the present situation will ever be
remedied. The conclusion must be that the oppression of women by men
has always existed and therefore, presumably, will always exist.
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By Ana Muñoz and Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 08 March 2000 |
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Marxism has always been at
the forefront of the cause of women's emancipation. The
8th of
March (International Women's Day) is a red letter day for us as it
symbolises the
struggle of working class women against
capitalism, oppression and discrimination throughout
the world.
We are publishing an updated version of the document we
published last year on
March 8, where we outline the first steps
given by Marxism to fight for women's rights,
what the first
successful revolution meant for the emancipation of women,
conditions of
women under capitalism both in advanced and Third
World countries and pose the question
of how to eliminate
inequality between men and women for good.
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By Jen Pickard
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Saturday, 01 May 1982 |
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The life of Sylvia Pankhurst is rich in experience for all activists in the labour movement. The names of the Pankhurst family are synonymous with the struggle to win the vote for women, but what distinguished Sylvia Pankhurst's approach from that of her mother Emmeline and her sister Christabel were class issues. It resulted in the 1920s, after nearly twenty years of struggle, with Emmeline standing as Tory Parliamentary candidate and Sylvia becoming a founder member of the British Communist Party. The seeds of such a divide were there from the early days of the suffragette organisation.
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Women & Marxism 
