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.
