Only Christians Are REAL Women

The misappropriately titled REAL Women of Canada is a self avowed group of Christian women, fundamentalist Christians to be exact. White Whing Conservative Christian women to be more exact.

Along with attacks on unions, gays, pro-choice advocates, and anyone whose values are not theirs, read pluralistic secular progressive and classical liberal, they were created to attack feminism and feminist gains for women.

Of course they are only several centuries late since the feminist movement began with the classical liberal work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstoncraft written in 1792!

Mary was married to anarchist Willam Godwin, mother of the author of Frankenstein; Mary Wollstonecroft Shelly. And she was an intellectual partner of liberal author J.S. Mills.

REAL Women have always viewed themselves as good old girls, the ladies auxilary of the right wing neo-cons. For women who say that a womans place is in the home, they sure do alot of public bitching about the State replacing the Church as the source of social services.

They have launched a campaign to end funding for the Status of Women. As usaual, its an annual event for this small vocal minority. It's an old war, as Marriane Faithful would say, between those who advocate for womens rights, and those who advocate for christian rites.

Joined in this oppurtunistic campaign to get the Harpocrites to end funding for Status of Women is the right whing blogosphere, with the usual comments from both men and women in that small minded community saying that Feminists don't speak for them.

And the usual smear campaigns about radical feminist groups funded by Status of Women, radicals like LEAF which represents women lawyers. Or those radicals in the Aboriginal movement, the women adovactes who are fighting for their rights against the family compacts of Department of Indian Affairs approved Chiefs who dominate the Aboriginal Political community. Opps the right wing usually likes these women.

Ah well consistency is the hobgoblin of the little minds on the right. Caus one of the arguements REALwomen and their ilk use is that THEY don't get funded by Status of Women. So no womens groups should. They are NOT arguing that taxpayers should NOT pay for womens organizations to lobby the government, just that they don't get funded by the State. And that's not fair. Yep consistency is the hobgoblin.....

You would think that since the Churches are tax free and lobby on behalf of REAL Womens political agenda this would suffice as ripping off taxpayers. But REAL Women wants to rip you off twice. And then if that isn't enough wishes to end lobbying that would counter their taxpayer funded lobbying efforts.

P.S. the Housewife on the magazine cover is probably an Irish maid. The bourgoise housewife MANAGED the home, like her husband the boss at work managed his workplace.

Also See:

Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Catholic Hajib

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Grandmother of Second Wave Feminism Dies

The Real Crime In Canada

The Sanctity of Marriage Debate

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
SOW, StatusofWomen, Canada, REALwomen, Christians, Feminists, feminism, Poltics, Harper, PM, Conservatives, neo-cons, lobby

UK

It’s Women who face the brunt of Tory cuts – Kate Osborne MP on Women’s History Month

16th March 2024

“This Government is failing women. They are playing politics with real lives, real people, and real communities. They made no effort to address health inequalities, tackle the gender pay gap, or the huge levels of women in poverty.”

By Kate Osborne MP

Every March we celebrate Women’s History Month, to raise awareness of the invaluable contributions women have made – and continue to make – to better our communities and the world we live in.

We must continue to raise our voices on the injustices that women face, but I want to start by highlighting the recent wins women have had to not only celebrate these but use them to propel our successes forward.

This year’s Brit Awards were dominated by women, with 70% of winning acts either female or non-binary.

The significance of this cannot be understated. Young women looking to go into the music industry will see that this is becoming a place for them, a place their value is recognised and their talents are celebrated.

After all, our successes aren’t just for this generation – they are for the next, and the next after that, and for all the women that follow.

The Women and Equalities Committee, which I sit on, has been hearing an inquiry on misogyny in music, looking into a range of evidence on how these attitudes can filter through society to impact attitudes towards, and treatment of, women and girls.

Little wins can have a huge rippling effect on our society, and although the Brit Awards don’t by any means signal the end to misogyny in music, they do represent a huge leap forward for the industry in recognising the incredible talent that women hold.

And they’re not the only sector changing – as of February this year women hold 42% of board seats at the UK’s biggest listed companies, up from 24.5% in 2017. Change is possible, and change is happening.

Across the channel, France has enshrined abortion into the constitution, marking an unbelievably significant win for women’s rights by becoming the first country in the world whose constitution explicitly protects the right to an abortion in all circumstances.

France was also right to call the rest of Europe into action, the UK has repeatedly let women down with regard to healthcare and – with the number of women becoming economically inactive due to long-term sickness reaching a five-year high – the Spring Budget should have been the turning point for change.

It is incredibly disappointing and quite frankly dangerous that this opportunity was not taken up.

This Government is failing women.

They are playing politics with real lives, real people, and real communities. They made no effort to address health inequalities, tackle the gender pay gap, or the huge levels of women in poverty.

Strong and well-funded public services would be vital for our social infrastructure, by promoting well-being and gender equality through a stronger economy with a healthier, better-educated and better-cared for population.

This should have been the cornerstone of this budget.

Instead, the Spring Budget made cuts to vital public service funding, ignoring warnings that by focusing on tax cuts instead of investing in our public services we risk reversing the already little progress made towards women’s equality.

The tax cuts funded by this downscale continue to benefit men far more than women, with the Women’s Budget Group revealing that women would gain significantly less than their male counterparts, with single fathers receiving hundreds more than single mothers.

The announcement of an increase in the Child Benefit Cap to £60,000 further feigned support by abandoning parents who already receive the maximum payment and are still struggling, and falling short of ensuring future parents can access adequate financial aid to support the next generation.

So, once again, it’s women facing the brunt of the Tory crisis.

Under this Government women are more likely to use a food bank.

Women are more likely to work in sectors experiencing detrimental funding cuts.

Women are more likely to leave work due to caring responsibilities, or long-term illnesses.

Women are more likely to be on precarious zero-hour contracts, and twice as likely to miss out on key protections such as statutory sick pay.

Women’s maternity services are struggling with black and ethnic minority women being failed.

Women pensioners are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to not have a sufficient pension and more likely to be living in cold homes.

From birth to old age women are being failed.

Women won’t forget what this Government has done.

The efforts of feminists are still needed in the UK. The same efforts that get increasing numbers of women elected to Parliament, that challenge the gender pay gap, that confront gendered healthcare standards.

This country is on its knees under the Tories, and is crying out for change.

Labour’s New Deal for Workers would mark a significant move in the right direction, by banning zero-hour contracts; closing the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gap; establishing a day-one right to flexible working; and introducing fair pay agreements to boost pay and conditions in social care.

Only under a Labour Government will women have their talents and efforts recognised and celebrated year round.

We need a general election now.

---

• Kate Osborne is the MP for Jarrow and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.

Who Speaks For Canadian Women

Well not Real Women no matter how much they insist on it. They speak for right wing fundamentalist protestant women, a minority if ever there was one, except in the rank and file of Harpers Reform/Alliance/Conservatives. Their agenda, pretty clear;

Real Women’s letter to MP’s has called upon the Harper government to defund the powerful radical feminist lobby that allows only one interpretation of women’s rights and equality to be represented.

Lorraine McNamara, Real Women’s National President, writes, “The feminist ideology does not now, and never has had the support of the vast majority of Canadian women.”

McNamara writes, “Feminist groups have few, if any, members, and are, in effect, mostly phantom organizations sustained only by the funding they receive from the Status of Women. Since these organizations represent no one but the women who run them, they should not receive financial support from the Canadian taxpayer.”

Also see:

History of the WRF

Catholic Hajib

Whose Family Values?

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
daycare, childcare, feminism, Canada, Real-Women, Conservatives, right-wing, anti-feminism

UK

Women feel need to be 'looking over their shoulder' on public transport

Stewart Paterson
Tue, 7 March 2023 

The research was carried out for Transport Scotland (Image: Getty)

WOMEN feel they need to maintain "a constant state of vigilance" on public transport, research has found.

The study found concerns about men as “potential perpetrators of harassment, assault or anti-social behaviour” made women and girls feel unsafe on buses and trains.

The research for Transport Scotland found women changed or adapted their travel plans to avoid the risk of harassment or assault.

Women reported avoiding public transport completely, asking a male relative to meet them and taking steps like holding keys in their hand for self-defence and wearing trainers or flat shoes to be able to run if necessary.

Scotland's transport minister Jenny Gilruth said the report found women and girls are “constantly looking over their shoulder”.

Gilruth said: “It has become normalised and tolerated.

“Women should be able to travel safely on public transport and men should learn to behave themselves.”

Glasgow Times:

Because of the risks associated with public transport, the study found, the likelihood of delays or cancellations put women off using public transport at night to avoid having to wait alone in the dark.

Young women were more likely to report sexual harassment, disabled women were more likely to report anti-social and intolerant behaviour and women from ethnic minorities were most likely to report extreme examples of verbal sexist and racist abuse.

Women also noted that people, including other women, were unwilling to get involved “in situations that didn’t involve them”.

The report made 10 recommendations to improve safety for women and girls.

They include strengthening existing rules around non-consumption of alcohol on public transport and at points of interchange.

Other recommendations include more credible and accessible information and guidance for women and girls on what to do and who to contact if they feel threatened or unsafe.

Better lighting and security and increasing staff presence on board and at stations were also suggested.

Gilruth said what women face is not acceptable.

Glasgow Times:

She said: “During our research, women and girls told us they shoulder significant responsibility for adapting their own behaviour to try to ‘be’ and ‘feel’ safe on public transport.

“They are often in a constant state of vigilance, particularly at night time, and as a result end up changing their plans, only travelling at certain points of the day or not using public transport altogether.

“This is simply not acceptable in 21st-century Scotland.

“We will now work with transport operators and stakeholders to carefully consider these recommendations and how we can implement them quickly and effectively, to ensure our transport network is safer and more secure for all who use it.”

Superintendent Arlene Wilson, of British Transport Police, said: “We will use these findings to work with our partners to ensure that sexual harassment will not be tolerated on the network and we will always take reports of this behaviour seriously.

“Our officers continue to patrol the rail network to catch offenders and reassure passengers.”

She urged the public to report anything by texting 61016 or via the Railway Guardian app.

She added: “In an emergency, always dial 999.”

The battle for safer streets is not zero sum: let’s safeguard women and fight racial stereotyping

Jinan Younis
Tue, 7 March 2023

Photograph: Dmytro Betsenko/Alamy

Over the past month, it’s felt like every day has brought a grim reminder of the dangers faced by women on our streets and in our homes. The inquest into the murder of the Epsom college headteacher, Emma Pattison, and her daughter; the conviction of the murderer of the charity worker Elizabeth McCann; the arguments over the release of Joanna Simpson’s killer; the life sentence awaiting the boyfriend of Elinor O’Brien, who stabbed her in a “rageful and violent attack”; the conviction of the serial rapist police officer David Carrick; and the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey. And it’s three years since the disappearance of Sarah Everard, murdered after being stopped on her way home by the rogue police officer Wayne Couzens (affectionately known by his colleagues as “the rapist”).

Against the backdrop of these horrific headlines, I have been having more and more conversations with women about how they feel unsafe in the streets. We’ve exchanged stories of being followed and catcalled, of sharing Uber rides with each other and making sure we text when we’re home safe. We’ve lamented the increased risk of attack that trans women face, and how Black and minority ethnic women face the threat of both racism and misogyny. We’ve discussed the 800 Met police officers under investigation for domestic and sexual abuse, and what it means for women’s trust in the police – though that’s a privilege many women of colour have never had.

But in my recent conversations with some women about their feelings of safety, I have noticed underlying coded messages. They say things like “it’s a dodgy area”; that they “wouldn’t want to be alone around there”. They say they are scared of men in hoodies.

Some forego any pretence. One woman said to me: “I probably do find Black men in hoodies more scary.” Others admit they quicken their pace when they see a Black man walking down the street.

When women talk in general terms of “dodgy” areas or that some “types” of men feel scary, often a lightly masked stereotype has informed that fear. Studies have shown time and again that images of Black men were seen as larger, more threatening and potentially more harmful in an altercation than a white person. Being scared of certain areas where there are more of the “types” of men perceived as scary, then, becomes code for being more scared of Black and minority-ethnic men in public. When I’ve challenged these women, they protest: “It’s just the crime statistics!”, without acknowledging that behind these statistics lie stories of police harassment, ethnic profiling and racial criminalisation.

Studies have tried to get to the bottom of this. One, in 2014, questioned a group of women about their fear in public spaces and reported: “Racist comments came up in the discussion: although the young women acknowledged they were stereotypes, they conditioned their feelings anyway.” A study last year examined views of Australian women on street harassment and spoke of “some participants saying they felt unsafe or perceived behaviour as threatening because the person was ‘not like them’.”

I find that the women who speak to me in problematic terms are usually those who have either not spent much time in areas with a high minority-ethnic population, or are part of the gentrification of poorer neighbourhoods and are living side by side with different racial groups for the first time. These women would typically pride themselves on being “anti-racist” – they may even have joined the mass global outrage over police brutality against Black men and women in 2020. They may have dipped into an anti-racism reading list. Yet it seems they haven’t truly interrogated how racial bias has seeped into the way they perceive their own safety.

This racial stereotyping can lead to a very real feeling of fear and vulnerability in women. Because that feeling is so real, women find it hard when challenged to unpack what biases have informed that fear. There’s a sense of outrage that anyone would question a woman who says she feels unsafe. Yet I am not challenging the fact women feel unsafe in the streets. I am simply asking for women to look at how their prejudices may inform who they are fearful of and why.

There are consequences to making lazy generalisations about “areas” that seem scary, or the “types” of men who inhabit them. It’s part of the same stereotyping that leads to the violent overpolicing of Black men. The Metropolitan police, for example, are four times more likely to use force against Black people, because officers perceive them as “more threatening and aggressive”.

The impact of this coded fear of certain “types” of men in certain “areas” is clear: increased policing of these communities. That means more surveillance, more targeting and more racial profiling of groups who are already treated with greater suspicion and violence than their white counterparts. If the headlines have shown us anything, it’s that women’s fear shouldn’t be relegated to a specific type of person; that anyone is capable of violence towards women, from teachers to police officers to intimate partners.

The goal of women’s safety does not lie in racial stereotypes. We should instead direct our concern towards a culture of toxic masculinity that has seeped its way into every corner of society. It shows up as misogyny in our institutions, in our workplaces and in our schools. It can be seen in the normalisation of violence against women in our popular culture. It is rooted in rigid concepts of gender and “manhood” and is supported by a system that routinely fails to believe women, and that blames and intimidates them.

Everyone should be able to feel they can walk down the street without fearing attack, assault or humiliation. So when we tackle the very real issue of women’s safety, we have to avoid actions that make the streets more dangerous for others.

This is not a zero-sum problem: we can fight for women’s safety in the streets and avoid playing into racial stereotypes. To have a coherent, intersectional approach to women’s safety, we have to work towards building streets that are safer for all vulnerable groups.

Jinan Younis is Head of the diversity, equity and inclusion practice at the strategy firm Purpose Union, and a former assistant politics editor at gal-dem magazine. She has contributed to the books I Call Myself a Feminist and Growing up with gal-dem. She is the past winner of the Christine Jackson Young Persons Award

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Researcher explores the truths 

behind myths of ancient

 Amazons 

Hippolyta, Antiope and Penthesilea. These are the names of Amazonian women warriors made famous in folklore, thanks in large part to male Greek storytellers like Homer and Herodotus. In some archaeological digs in Eurasia, as many as thirty-seven per cent of the graves  contain the bones and weapons of horsewomen who fought alongside men 







 [Credit Erich Lessing/Art Resource] 


They were huntresses, founders of cities, rivals and lovers of adventurous men. They battled the Greek hero Heracles and fought alongside the Trojans in the final hours of Troy. And yet, they are widely held to be little more than figments of Greco-Roman imagination. But warrior women actually existed, according to Stanford's Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in the Department of Classics. In her new book, "The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World," Mayor explains the real-world underpinnings and history behind the Amazonian folklore. In Hellenic legends, as Mayor learned, Amazons often faced defeat and death at the hands of male Greek heroes. Yet the storytellers also described these female foreigners as exceptionally heroic, civilized and worthy counterparts to the Greek champions. "Amazons were modeled on stories of self-confident women of steppe cultures who fought for glory and survival and enjoyed male companionship," but, as Mayor puts it, "on terms that seemed extraordinary to the ancient Greeks." The hereditary stories left quite a mark on the Greeks. "The popularity of Amazon stories and images suggests that Greek women and men enjoyed imagining heroes and heroines interacting as equals and seeking adventure and glory in hunting and battle," Mayor said. 

An ancient Greek vase depicting an Amazon female warrior  [Credit: Colin/WikiCommons] Real women warriors

 Mayor began her investigation by amassing all the surviving ancient Greek and Latin accounts she could find that told of encounters with Amazons as well as "warlike, barbarian" women who behaved like Amazons of myth. The texts described them as members of nomadic tribes roving the territories that the Greeks collectively called "Scythia" – a vast expanse between the Black Sea and Mongolia – from the seventh century B.C. until the fifth century A.D. She proceeded to research the Scythians – Eurasian steppe peoples who cultivated a mastery of horseback riding and archery for thousands of years. Mayor consulted early European travelers' reports and ethnographical materials as well as contemporary descriptions of steppe life, comparing the latter to ancient Greek knowledge and speculation concerning the identity of the Amazons. Mayor also analyzed physical evidence – including "actual battle-scarred skeletons of women buried with their weapons and horses" – and she corresponded with the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg to learn how researchers there used infrared cameras to reveal invisible tattoos on frozen female Scythian mummies from more than two millennia ago. "Their tattoos of deer and geometric designs resemble the tattoos and patterns on Amazons depicted in ancient Greek vase paintings," Mayor said. Furthermore, Mayor was able to collect and verify lesser-known tales and reports (such as a newly translated Egyptian papyrus in Vienna) that showed warrior women were the subject of much fascination in cultures beyond Greece – Persia, Egypt, Caucasia, Armenia, Central Asia, China and among the steppe peoples themselves. Examining the corroborating evidence, Mayor found that "real women warriors lived at the time that the Greeks were describing Amazons and warlike women of exotic eastern lands." She even determined that there was even more respect and exaltation for women warriors in the non-Greek traditions that stretched from the Black Sea to China. In these non-Greek stories, she said that male and female enemies were so equally matched that neither could win: "Instead of ending in doom for the woman, the former foes declare their mutual admiration and decide to become companions in love and war." 




A battle between Amazons and Greek warriors is depicted in a marble sarcophagus  on display at the Pio Clementino museum in the Vatican  [Credit: Colin/WikiCommons]

 Gender dynamics While Greek heroes usually defeat Amazon women in their mythic narratives, the triumphs are depicted as hard-won from worthy rivals. As Quintus of Smyrna described the tragically slain Queen Penthesilea in The Fall of Troy, "All the Greeks on the battlefield crowded around and marveled, wishing with all their hearts that their wives at home could be just like her." "After Heracles, Amazons were the single most popular subjects in vase paintings of myths," Mayor wrote. Artistic Greek objects of all sorts, crafted for men, women, boys and girls, underscored that admiration for the Amazons transcended gender and age groups. Mayor's exploration of the subtler gender dynamics within the Scythian culture is reflected in her linguistic analysis of the Greek name for this people, Amazones antianeirai. Homer's Iliad offers the earliest reference to the Amazons in the eighth century B.C., using the full designation Amazones antianeirai. 

Mayor counters the popular modern translations of antianeirai as "opposites of men" or "against men," pointing out that in ancient Greek epic diction, the word would more ordinarily translate to "equals of men." Scythian culture, she explained, was not a purely female-dominated society. Instead it afforded a greater range of roles to women and promoted parity between genders. Scythian women often dressed in the same clothes as their male brethren and often joined them in battle – helping them thwart forces such as those of Cyrus the Great and Darius of Persia. For example, the "Nart" sagas, Scythian oral traditions of the Caucasus passed down to their descendants, hold great praise for their women warriors, as led by the valorous Queen Amezan: "The women of that time could cut out an enemy's heart … yet they also comforted their men and harbored great love in their hearts." The sagas point to the possibility of a Caucasian etymology for the Greeks' nomenclature of "Amazon." Mayor's work also clears up confusion over whether the word signifies women who sacrificed a breast to become better archers: "The single most notorious 'fact' often used to describe Amazons is wrong … The origins of the 'single-breasted' Amazon and the controversies that still surround this false notion are so complex and fascinating that Amazon bosoms have their own chapter,"  Mayor said. 

Author: Fabrice Palumbo-Liu | Source: Stanford University [October 29, 2014] 

PAKISTAN

Harassment, patriarchy and inflation come under fire in Aurat March

Shazia Hasan 

Published March 13, 2023 

(Clockwise from top) Aurat March participants dance after smearing colours on each others’ faces in a symbolic Holi played at Burns Garden on Sunday; a tableau is under way on the stage; women covering their heads with chadors listen to a speech; and a rally is taken out at the end of the event.—Online/ Shakil Adil / White Star

KARACHI: Raising voice over the many injustices in society, raising awareness on multiple issues, standing up for each other, Hum Aurtein managed to gather, in no particular order, women, men, transgender persons, workers, peasants, members of minority communities, students and children at the sixth Aurat March in all its unapologetic, unabashed brazenness at the Burns Garden here on Sunday.

There were stories to listen to, faces to read along with interesting posters and placards.

There were also taboos to be broken. One placard had the words ‘Sunno, Samjho, Seekho, Badlo [Listen, understand, learn, change], another read ‘We Are Not Ovary-Acting’. Some other interesting messages on placards included ‘I Want To Exist Without Apology’, ‘Abort the patriarchy’, ‘Anti-hero’ and ‘Bachay Paida Kerne Hain Tau Inn Ki Perverish Bhi Kerna Seekh Lo [You want children, then learn to bring them up also].

The stories were all around you, and not just up on the main stage. Rukhsana Paveen Kho­khar had her eight-month-old daughter, Mashal, in her arms who was looking around inquisitively while taking in her surroundings and the happenings. “I have named her ‘Mashal’ because I want her to light up the path for everyone. Similarly, I have named my other daughter, who is six, Mazaib, meaning bea­utiful like the moon. The moon also lights the night sky,” she expla­ined, adding that her mother, Khandul Mai, was also there at the Aurat March with her.

“My mother struggled a lot to get me educated. I’m the first female in my family who studied right up to master’s. I have a master’s in English literature. Throughout my schooling I stood first in class and in intermediate, BA and MA I passed in the first division. And this despite all the men in my family, save my father who was a poor labourer, being dead set against educating girls,” she said.

People from all walks of life pour their heart out as fiery slogans heat up Burns Garden

Meanwhile, up on the stage there were people coming up to tell you about their struggles, their issues. There were performances, singing of songs, acting out skits and tableaux. There were chairs if you would like to sit on them and watch, there were also carpets spread out on the grass if you would like to sit down on the ground. The Net­work of Organisations Working For People With Disabilities Pakistan, or NOWPDP, had arranged for wheelchairs too, for the disabled or the elderly. You could also just roam around and mingle or watch from under the big shady trees of Burns Garden.

There was an air of ease, of freedom to do as you please, women came dressed in pretty cotton saris, ghararas, ghagras, skirts, pants, jeans, plain shalwar kameez, there were several men with long hair who wore their hair in buns or in pony tails, girls had pink, blue and purple streaks in their hair, many of them were smoked, too, filling their lungs with smoke. Why why not? They were their lungs, they could do whatever they jolly well felt like doing with them bringing up the famous, or infamous most misunderstood slogan from the first Aurat March ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’! It was repeated several times up on the stage, too, along with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s inspiring poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’.

Speaking about the Aurat March, economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, who has attended all the six marches, said that it was an opportunity to express themselves, which was an important pillar of our social ideology. “It tells us how society should be organised, pluralised with freedom,” he said.

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan, who was also there, said that he had so far attended five marches and that the Aurat March was a movement.

“Such movements build up slowly but they should happen as they point out the ills in society which people don’t usually talk about,” he said, adding that the media should also write about these ills to spread the word and raise awareness.

Fatima Majeed from the fisherfolk community came up to talk about the hardships fisherfolks face, about pollution in the seas, about dirty fuel for power generation such as coal.

Labourers and workers lamented loudly about inflation and the rising costs of fuel, Pastor Ghazala Shafique spoke about minority rights, sanitation workers, crimes and injustices against minor girls abducted and made to change their faiths.

Radha Bheel spoke about bonded labour and how girls were chained as they worked. How they are also raped as they work like slaves. “We are fighting against child labour, we are fighting for education, for respect,” she said.

Women from Lyari spoke about how the skin of their hands burn and their nails crack while peeling red chillies, tamarind and garlic. Other women spoke about harassment at the workplace.

Laali from Mirpurkhas came up to talk about the difficulties women of the flood-affected areas have been facing.

Transgender community member Bindiya Rana, Shahzadi Rai, Dr Mehrub Moiz Awan and rapper Jaan-e-Hasina brought up the difficulties faced by their community.

Arzoo Raja, Neha Pervaiz and other teenage Christian girls, who have now been recovered after they married Muslim men as old as their fathers, came up to tell their own stories in the form of a tableau. “I have a body, I have a soul and I have my faith,” they sang.

“We don’t speak about any one woman, we raise voices for all women, from all communities, classes, faith and sects. We raise voice for all genders, too,” said social activist and classical dancer Sheema Kermani.

Finally, there was a small celebration of Holi as all the participants of the Aurat March rubbed colour on each other’s cheeks. Many participants, who felt they have been wronged in any way in life, were also invited to dip their palms in red colour and leave their palm impressions on a long white cloth that had inscribed in red the words ‘The injustice done to you will not be forgotten’.

Chanting slogans then and reading out their charter of demands, the Aurat March then moved out of Burns Garden to march to the Fawwara Chowk.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

The women will march

  

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

Maria Amir 

Published March 8, 2023

The years following the inaugural Aurat March in 2018 have been met with what is now an alarmingly familiar pattern.

Each year, around February, there is a marked uptick in online vitriol directed at women speaking about their rights on any public forum. Television anchors and guests spin cautionary tales, detailing various themes of behayai [shamelessness] that the Aurat March is exclusively held responsible for. Most of these commentators are men, but there are many women who also buy into this narrative.

As if Pakistan’s greatest problem at present is behayai, and even if that were the case (which it is not — that particular list is unending), the insinuation that our behayai problem stems from the one day a year when women chant slogans and carry placards calling out abusive, neglectful men and patriarchy in general, rather than the slew of rapes, child abuse cases, grave robbing, domestic violence, killing in the name of ‘honour’ and near institutionalised sexual harassment of women in the workplace and in public spaces are apparently the hallmarks of a ‘respectable’ society.

The ‘men are not robots’ debate

This time is marked with men reminding us that women in Pakistan have no real problems because religion affords us rights even if the men interpreting, institutionalising, and preaching that religion markedly do not.

We are told from a young age that we should not go ‘outside’ because ‘it isn’t safe for women’. Pray tell, what is so dangerous outside that women must be so wary of? Is it goblins or ghosts or wolves or djinns?

We are told not to go outside because the danger facing women outside their homes is men. While all men obviously do not abuse women, women are in no position to distinguish between which men are and are not a danger to them — therefore women must be wary of all men.

It is men who taught us this lesson by telling us that they respect us and the only way they have devised to show us this respect is to cage our movement, lock us up, prevent us from working and limit our potential. All because men cannot control themselves in the presence of women, something that they proudly reaffirm for us publicly with comments like “agar aurat aise kapre pehne gi to aadmi kya kare [What can a man do when women wear such clothes?]”, “aurat bahar phire gi to uss ke saath bura hi hoga [Only bad things happen to women who venture outside]” and the now infamous “Mard robot thori hein [Men are not robots]”.

Women are punished for a problem that men have with female bodies. This is a lesson they have taught us by reiterating that a woman’s izzat [honour] is framed through her jism [body] and men’s izzat rests in how they manage ‘their’ women.

‘Not real women’

All the concerns with badgering and intimidation, media harassment and misrepresentation are things the Aurat March and its organisers are deeply familiar with. None of this is new. Every independent minded woman who stands up for herself in our country, in any capacity, is punished for it socially.

The present charge against women participating in the Aurat Marches is that they are not ‘real women’. ‘Ye asli aurtein nahin hein’, a phrase that expands the ‘good woman/bad woman’ binary into new territory, where supposed ‘bad women’ aren’t even women any longer.

This vitriol and baseless propaganda is achingly familiar. The Aurat March is also well acquainted with the charge of being ‘foreign funded’. If only!

Read more: Let me womansplain the Aurat March to you

Aurat March funds are painstakingly collected through bake sales and dholkis, with students and volunteers selling everything from handmade face masks, tote bags and posters to conducting storytelling sessions.

In some ways, the greatest testament to the fact that the Aurat March receives no foreign funds is the treatment it receives. No matter how Pakistanis denigrate western nations at political rallies, no one messes with any group or institution that actually has foreign funds backing it up. Not in this country.

The state’s response

While all these struggles are familiar, 2023 has been the start of something new and ominous in the form of the state’s response to the Aurat March.

For several years, Aurat March chapters in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Multan and Lahore have met with intimidation from religious groups and local administrations, and the marches have either been limited or redirected but they have never been stopped altogether.

This has been the first year when the Lahore District Commissioner actively chose to cater to the Haya March over the Aurat March, even though the former arose as a violent response to intimidate Aurat March organisers. The Lahore, Islamabad and Multan chapters all received notices that the march would not go ahead two days before March 8, and it has taken entire days for volunteers, lawyers and organisers camping outside of the courts to finally secure permissions and security protocol for the Aurat March to proceed.

This new form of intimidation implies that the real problem here isn’t about freedom of expression or assembly, not even women’s free expression or assembly, but rather about who the women taking to the streets are, what they are saying and who claims them.

The Aurat March works independently and while women organising under any other banner have the protection of a political party or religious group, someone to ‘claim’ them as ‘their’ women and therefore ensure their safety, the Aurat March rejects this frame. Despite having fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the women gathering at the Aurat March do so as individuals asserting that they are enough to be regarded as human beings with rights.

By claiming only themselves, they demand the protection of the state from violence, threats and harassment. Denying peaceful protesters this protection while it is extended to violent groups openly making threats, carrying sticks, and throwing bricks, implies that the state endorses institutionalised violence over independent, peaceful citizens, especially when those citizens happen to be women.

Here to stay

The Aurat March is an inclusive, grass roots led movement that welcomes khwaja siras, gender minorities, men, and women from all walks of life to protest for women’s rights on March 8, which is a global event marking International Women’s Day.

The Aurat March begins its organising efforts early on and hosts both private and public events to plan its manifesto, its art and poster campaigns and its fund-raising campaign. Grassroots organising with women’s groups, ranging from farmers and sanitation workers to religious minority communities and domestic workers, continues all year-round, so for all the people accusing the March and its organisers of being elite women who don’t have ‘anything to do with Pakistani women’s struggles’, it would be prudent to visit their vibrant social media pages and see how much effort every chapter of the Aurat March makes to engage with as many women from as many walks of life as possible.

One hopes that more men and women who are genuinely sceptical of the March would engage with them. If you think you and your concerns are not being included by the March, then show up to the one in your city on March 8 carrying a placard that says what you want to say.

Read more: Is Aurat March un-Islamic?

Despite all the intimidation and the last-minute hurdles, harassment and hiccups, rest assured that the Aurat March is here to stay. It is here to stay because it is a movement that showcases something markedly different from all other protests.

The reason so many people fear the Aurat March is because it features scores of women openly embracing two emotions that women are seldom, if ever, allowed to express in our culture — anger and joy.

Protesters sing songs, dance, perform theatrical pieces and feature artwork that epitomises this potent combination of women’s rage coupled with their joy — all in a public space.

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

These are women who have taken the slurs, insults, and attacks on them and turned them into art and laughed at the men trying to terrify them. Nothing destroys insecure men more than such brazen defiance.

The Aurat March features women speaking simultaneously for themselves and for each other. It shows their collective power — their joy and their rage, proudly on display for all to see without apology and without fear.

I get why some of you are terrified in the face of such uncontrollable, beautiful, and raw honesty but that is your cross to bear.

Because the women will march.


Maria Amir is a former journalist and Fulbright Fellow. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Global Gender Studies at SUNY, Buffalo. Her research interests include South Asian feminist folklore and Women’s Movements.

Resign

Bev Oda the Minister in charge of the Status of Women should resign.

She has cut funding for the Womens programs based on advocacy, education, information and lobbying.They have dropped 'equality' from the funding mandate. And she has the audacity during Question Period in the House to say that she and the Conservatives speak for ALL women in Canada. I think she is confusing ALL Women with the right wing Christian lobby; REAL Women.

Critics slam Oda over funding cut to women's lobby groups.

She has listened to REAL Women and the right wing and included funding now for "spiritual" initiatives. Uh oh can you say seperation of Church and State.

This is the Conservatives backdoor way of funding the right wing Christian anti-union, anti-abortion, anti-feminist, anti-gay rights lobby. Like their day care funding it is faith based politics.

That is the Harper Hidden Agenda. Faith Based intiatives were never discussed by the Conservatives during the election and it ain't in their priorities.

They are using tax payers money to fund tax free church groups and the tax free religious political lobby.Make the bigots pay! Tax the Churches!

Of course there is another reason she should resign, her ties to the corporate Copywrite lobby from whom she took donations during the election.

For more information see the Progressive Bloggers Status Of Women Campaign

The Failure of Christianity

by Emma Goldman

Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man, turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure, while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted upon it.

See:

Only Christians Are REAL Women

Feminism



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The Communist Women’s International, in English for the First Time


Josefina L. Martínez 

July 11, 2023

An Interview with historians Daria Dyakovona and Mike Taber about their new book with documents from the Communist Women’s International

In January 2023, The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922 was published in English by Brill. A paperback edition will be coming in November from Haymarket Books. The book brings together reports, manifestos, and resolutions of the Communist Women’s Conferences, which took place in those years. The work of more than 600 pages, compiled and edited by Mike Taber and Daria Dyakovona, is the product of research, translation, and editing from the Soviet archives.

The book includes minutes and resolutions of the International Women’s Secretariat and the International Conferences of Communist Women, including the First Conference of Communist Women (July–August 1920), the Second Conference of Women (June 1921), the Conference of Women Correspondents (January 1922), the Second Conference of Women Correspondents (October 1922). It also groups together texts that have been hitherto almost unknown, such as those of the Women’s Conference of the Near East (1921), in addition to texts of communist women’s conferences in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Bulgaria, the Dutch East Indies, and Soviet Russia.

These texts bring us closer to the debates that took place among the Communist leaders of different countries over successive meetings, in which they aimed to organize the women’s movement under a socialist and revolutionary perspective. They constitute a contribution to discussions of revolutionary feminism for those who want to know its history, and they serve as reflections on the challenges of the present.

A few days ago, our sister groups in Argentina and Brazil released the book Mujeres, revolución y socialismo (Ediciones IPS) / Mulheres, revolução e socialismo (Edições Iskra) simultaneously in several countries. This new publication, which gathers Marxist writings on women’s emancipation, has similar goals as The Communist Women’s Movement, making it a particular pleasure to interview and exchange ideas with Mike Taber and Daria Dyakovona.

I want to congratulate you on the book. It is a very interesting work. Tell us about the research and editing process. There are writings that were previously unknown; they are findings from the archives. Why publish a work like this today?

Mike: The early Communist women’s movement is virtually unknown today. Even most socialists are unaware of its existence. But as the first truly international revolutionary organization of women, it deserves to be recognized both as a pioneer in the fight for women’s emancipation and as a dynamic force in the Communist International (Comintern) under Lenin. We hope that our new book will help restore the CWM to its legitimate place in history.

Eighty to 90 percent of this volume appears for the first time in English. And the largest single item — the proceedings of the Second International Conference of Communist Women in 1921 — has never appeared before in any language. Typed transcripts of the conference proceedings in German, Russian, and English were obtained by Daria from archives in Moscow, where they had been collecting dust for a century. In preparing these transcripts for publication, we used the English version to a large extent, but it was carefully checked and heavily edited against the Russian and German versions.

Other items in the book were translated straight from Russian or German. A number of German-language items were published originally in Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale (KFI), a journal published in Berlin under the editorship of Clara Zetkin. The KFI was one of the most well-written, lively, independent-minded, and far-reaching publications of the entire world Communist movement at the time.

Our volume shows readers another side of the early Communist International. It also provides valuable insights into the 150-year history of the Marxist movement with regard to the fight for women’s emancipation.

Daria: The book also includes a section on the CWM around the world, which brings together articles from the KFI on specific activities and campaigns of revolutionary women in different countries, mostly in Europe but also in Asia. We thought it would be valuable for readers to learn about the situation of women workers in different countries and the particularities of Communist work there. Another important piece in the book is the report of the 1921 Near East Women’s Conference held in Tiflis (today’s Tbilisi, Georgia), where the specific situation of “women of the East” was discussed. I can already see that this topic is of great interest not only to Marxists and feminists, but also to scholars and all those who are interested in Asia, Islam, and women’s participation in public life in historical perspective.

Daria, in the introduction, you point out that the Communist Women’s Conferences took as an example the work done by the Zhenotdel, or the Women’s Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. What do you point out about it?

Daria: The Zhenotdel appeared in August 1919, one year before CWM was founded, under the leadership of Inessa Armand and Alexandra Kollontai. The latter would also become a prominent leader of the international movement. But Kollontai was also immediately after the revolution elected People’s Commissar for Social Affairs within the Soviet government, and in this capacity initiated the revolutionary Soviet legislation that would change the lives of women. Women were recognized as equal to men, and equal pay for equal work was guaranteed to them. Marriage became secular, and divorce was legalized on demand for both men and women. The category of illegitimacy of children was abolished. The Soviet state legalized abortion, which was provided free of charge in state hospitals. At the same time, new decrees introduced paid maternity leaves, public childcare, and schooling, as well as public services that lightened the burden of housework. It is based on this quite ahead-of-its-time legislation that the newly formed Zhenotdel started its activities to further advance political, economic, and social rights of women.

In the early 1920s, the Zhenotdel participated in a whole range of activities that women belonging to different social layers could identify with. It set up public canteens, laundries, nurseries, and kindergartens. It ensured recruiting of women into workplaces and helped to organize unemployed women into cooperatives. It led fruitful campaigns against famine, homelessness, illiteracy, domestic abuse, hooliganism, prostitution, epidemics, and much more.

Mike, in the prologue you point out five major achievements of the Communist women’s movement in its first three years of existence. What can you comment on these?

Mike: What comes through clearly in this book is the multifaceted character of the Communist women’s movement and its activities during the years 1920 to 1922:

It educated around women’s oppression through its journals and activities. This effort served to win women to the Communist movement, as well as to educate both male and female Communists around the issue.

It worked to develop women as fully rounded cadres, building their self-confidence and leadership abilities.

It organized sections or departments within parties devoted to this work, with an important degree of autonomy and independent initiative. These were not “women’s caucuses,” however, and Communist men sometimes participated in them.

It built a formidable team of female Communist leaders around the world, and it served as a vehicle for collaboration between them. Its central figures — Zetkin, Kollontai, and Armand — were outstanding Communist leaders who often fail to get the recognition they deserve.

It organized international political campaigns and encouraged Communist involvement in fights to defend women’s rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose abortion.

The significance of the CWM’s record grows even more in light of the fact that these accomplishments were made in face of resistance from many men in the Communist movement. But Communist women had the support of central Comintern leaders, such as Lenin, Trotsky, and Zinoviev. One can see the real progress that was made over the three years this book covers.

The first women’s conference was held simultaneously with the Second Congress of the International. What were the expectations at the time? What were the main issues under discussion?

Daria: The First Conference of Communist Women was organized in the summer of 1920. The Second Congress of the Comintern was held at the same time, and was perhaps much more significant and vaster in terms of participation and discussions than the founding 1919 gathering. For the revolutionary women, it was the first occasion to get together as an international socialist but also women’s emancipation movement. All the delegates at the conference insisted on the link between the end of capitalism and women’s liberation.

The First Conference elaborated its program drafted by Zetkin — the “Guidelines for the CWM.” The movement was to encourage the equal participation with men in all spheres of life — social, political, economic, and cultural — but also in the actual revolutionary fight. Despite the universalist character of the CWM, its “Guidelines” encouraged the use of specific strategies depending on where the work among women was to be carried out: in socialist, capitalist, or precapitalist countries. For socialist countries, Communist Women insisted on the importance of permanent and relentless struggle aimed at improving the lives of women and effectively enforcing their rights. For capitalist countries, the guidelines encouraged educational work among women, struggle for universal suffrage, and participation in national and municipal governments; the fight for the right of women to equal, unrestricted, and free education; the fight for equal pay for equal work by men and women; the fight for social aid for pregnant women, mothers, and children; fight for reform of housing and health care systems; and transformation of housing into a social industry. In countries still at a precapitalist level of development, the guidelines urged women in the first place to fight to overcome the prejudices, morals, practices, and religious and legal rules that reduced women to men’s slaves at home, at work, and sexually.

The second conference was much bigger, albeit in a different political context. What do you highlight from it?

Mike: The CWM’s second conference in 1921 showcased a vibrant, living movement grappling with the challenges before it.

The conference was a freewheeling affair that included lively debates on issues such as women’s suffrage, the relative weight of working women and housewives, and how fights around specific issues (called “partial struggles”) fit into the overall working-class battle against capitalism.

There were also frequent observations and complaints at the conference about women’s status within the Communist movement, and about prejudices they encountered on the part of some male Communists. Many delegates spoke of the need to confront these prejudices, and how best to do so. Perhaps that’s one reason why the proceedings of this conference were not published at the time — unlike just about every other major Comintern gathering during this period. One can speculate as to whether this conference made a few male bureaucrats nervous and uncomfortable!

At this second women’s conference, debates of the Third Congress were also expressed, on the question of the united front or the “revolutionary offensive.” Zetkin defended the same position as Lenin, but not all the delegates held that position, did they?

Daria: The Second Conference was held in the summer of 1921 and indeed in a different political context from 1920. After the failed revolutionary uprising in Germany in March 1921 (usually referred to as the March Action), the conference, like the Third Congress of the Comintern, featured a debate between the adherents and opponents of the “revolutionary offensive.” The adherents of the policy, including the KPD leadership and many of the German women delegates at the CWM conference, supported the failed March Action in Germany and believed that Communists all over the world should start uprisings even if not supported by proletarian masses. Zetkin, like Lenin and many other Comintern leaders, was one of the sharpest critics of this vision. This ideological division found its way into the debates of the Second Conference, and Zetkin was personally attacked. Passionate debates between the adherents of the two contrasted visions of the path to be taken by the workers also characterized the discussions of methods of work among women, including such questions as the participation of Communists in the general women’s fight for equality and cooperation with liberal feminists as well as the base of the CWM.

I am particularly interested in the debates on work among women in the East. What were the main contributions on this issue?

Daria: The agitation, organization, and education work among the “women of the East” had been on CWM’s agenda since its foundation. Eastern women were considered the most oppressed representatives of the female sex, their social and material conditions — the hardest. In 1921, the CWM established the Woman’s Secretariat for the Near East, which was to coordinate work in Western Asia and Turkey. On December 12, this secretariat held a women’s conference in Georgia. The CWM’s policy on women of the East involved flexibility and sensitivity toward the conditions of life and cultural contexts that these women had to face. Communist Women understood that work among women in the East could not be carried out in the same way as in capitalist countries. In the early 1920s, the accent was put on Eastern women’s grassroots initiatives and cooperation between women belonging to different, including nonproletarian, layers in a united-front perspective. The major goal of such an approach was to attract women into cooperatives and workshops that liberated them economically and could also be used as spaces for agitation. Communist women also helped in setting up the infrastructure that would make “women of the East” integrate into social life: workshops, schools, kindergartens, children’s homes, public dining halls, laundry rooms, libraries, reading rooms, etc.

Mike, you point out that, from 1924 to 1926, the communist women’s movement declined. How does this relate to the consolidation of Stalinism in the USSR and in the Comintern?

Mike: The decline of the Communist women’s movement is definitely connected to the rise of Stalinism. The Comintern’s Fifth Congress in 1924, which marked the beginning of the international movement’s degeneration, outlined a perspective of “Bolshevization,” which led to the complete subordination of Communist parties and auxiliary organizations to the Comintern’s leadership in Moscow. An effort to tame the Communist women’s movement was clearly seen at the movement’s Third Conference in 1924, which was held immediately after the Fifth Comintern Congress.

The first two CWM conferences in 1920 and 1921 had set the movement’s main tasks to be participating in struggles for women’s emancipation; seeking ways and means of involving women in social life and political struggle; recruiting and integrating women into the Communist movement; and advocating affirmative-action measures to advance women inside it. At the Third Conference, however, its responsibilities were largely reduced to simply winning women to the Communist movement.

The CWM’s downgraded status was soon registered in practice. Its leading body, the International Women’s Secretariat (IWS), which had been based in Berlin and led by Zetkin, was transferred back to Moscow in early 1924. Its journal, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale, was discontinued in 1925. The IWS itself was relabeled the “Women’s Section of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.” The CWM’s Fourth Conference in 1926 would be its last, although the ECCI’s Women’s Section would exist as a largely meaningless body until its formal dissolution in 1935.

The Communist women’s movement’s decline echoed retreats on women’s rights in Soviet Russia under Stalin. Perhaps the best example of this is abortion, which had been decriminalized in Soviet Russia in 1920. This right was taken away in 1936, as abortion was recriminalized.

Daria, you point out that beginning in 1935, the orientation of the Popular Fronts undermined women’s work. In what way?

Daria: Indeed, the shifts in Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s and, perhaps most importantly, the adoption of the Popular Front policy by the Comintern in 1935 affected the work of women. The Comintern then sought alliances with a very large spectrum of anti-fascist political movements, including the center Left and even bourgeois forces, and tried to avoid antagonizing potential allies with its radical gender agenda, such as, for example, abortion, which was recriminalized in the USSR in 1936.

That said, despite the formal dissolution of the CWM and its central secretariat in November 1935, national women’s sections continued to function in most Communist parties. And women there continued the struggle for women’s rights on the national and local levels. During the entire interwar period, Communist women advocated the creation of broader nonparty women’s organizations that would appeal to wider audiences.

Today, people are still fighting for reproductive rights and the right to abortion. How did the Communist women’s movement raise this issue in those years? What legacy does the Communist movement leave for today?

Daria: Reproductive rights were an issue that the Communist Women often discussed, even though the question of abortion was not included into the CWM’s “Guidelines.” In fact, the CWM’s position on abortion was multifaceted. Communist women saw abortion as necessary so long as society was unable to guarantee the material means for a prosperous and happy childhood for all. This did not prevent them from protesting antiabortion laws, which they did in France and even in fascist Italy in the early 1920s. In Germany, Communist women led a campaign against antiabortion laws under a slogan that is still used by proabortion activists around the world: “Your Body Belongs to You.” In Denmark, Communist Women set up the Working Women’s Information Bureau, which provided information on birth control. In Canada, where abortion was then illegal, Communists joined with non-Communist women to demand the decriminalization of fertility control and establishment of mothers’ clinics, which would provide information on contraception and free contraceptives. At the same time, the CWM insisted on the responsibility of the state in protection of motherhood and children and encouraged women to fight for the creation of better legal frameworks and public institutions for working mothers that would facilitate childcare.

As to the legacy of the CWM, more than 100 years after the creation of the movement, abortion is still not a universal right, while maternity leave in many advanced capitalist countries is much shorter than the 16 weeks that the CWM called for. Many other practices, such as childcare facilities at workplace and the freedom to nurse at work, which Communist Women called on the state to introduce, remain an unachieved goal. That said, many countries have adopted and even gone beyond the demands in the sphere of reproductive rights and motherhood protection formulated by the CWM in the early 1920s.

What do these texts offer to the new generations fighting for women’s rights in many countries? You point out that women are still struggling over many of the issues raised by the Communist women’s movement. And also that the texts offer a strategic perspective. Can you explain that?

Mike: Many of the demands raised by Communist women a century ago remain unrealized today and are still issues of struggle: abortion and reproductive rights, childcare, maternal health and facilities, equal pay for equal work, access to education and social services, women’s burden in housework, the sexual double standard, and of course the continuing fight for political and social equality. The continued battles around these questions give added contemporary relevance to the early Communist women’s movement and will be of considerable interest to many readers. One example of such relevance is the article in our book on the fight against the abortion ban in Germany a century ago.

But what the Communist women’s movement above all offers today, as you indicate, are its strategic insights on the fight for women’s emancipation and its relationship to the revolutionary struggle.

One key insight relates to the revolutionary dynamics of the women’s liberation struggle itself. Given the role that women’s oppression and their second-class status play within capitalism, Communist women were absolutely convinced that female emancipation could never be fully achieved under capitalism, and that the working class had to take political power and begin the construction of socialism. Women workers would be among the central fighters in this struggle.

At the same time, Communist women understood that the struggle for women’s emancipation was an integral part of the fight for socialism. It was not to be seen as a diversion from the overall struggle, or viewed as a secondary issue that could be put on the back burner to make way for “more important things.”

These insights, together with the movement’s historical example, deserve study by women’s rights fighters today, as well as by all revolutionary socialists.




Josefina L. Martínez
Josefina is a historian from Madrid and an editor of our sister site in the Spanish State, IzquierdaDiario.es.