To mark the hundreth anniversary of International Women’s Day this week, we are publishing an article which forms the centre pages of this month’s edition of Socialist Appeal. The author is a contributor to a recent book on women’s rights and class struggle published by the Danish Marxists around ‘Socialistick Standpunk’.

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.

The present economic crisis, through its sheer scale and reach, is bringing about a wholesale change in the consciousness of working people the world over. It is the poor, the oppressed, and the workers who shoulder this weight in order to hold up the privileges of the rich. There is no portion of the working class that has so greatly and extensively borne this affliction than working women.