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.