Despite almost all governments in the Western world claiming their commitment to ending women’s oppression, as 8 March rolls around again, it is clear that the liberation of women is still as far away as ever.
Throughout 2024, a woman or girl was killed in the UK every three days by their partner. A string of shocking scandals about police abuse and harassment of women and abuse within the Church of England have also hit the headlines in recent months.
In the workplace, things fare no better. A 2023 poll by the TUC found that three in five women workers reported experiencing sexual harassment, bullying, or verbal abuse in the workplace.
This was most graphically illustrated by last year’s revelations around Mohammed Al-Fayed – the late owner of the Harrod’s department store – who was exposed for using his power at the company to systematically trap, harass, and rape women and girls.
And when it comes to family life, working-class mothers are feeling more squeezed than ever. Childcare costs in Britain have risen above inflation rates, reaching a rate of 7 percent throughout 2023 and 2024.
Average full-time childcare is now £15,000 per year, with London rates reaching £20,000. Unable to keep up with these costs, more women are being forced to take on the double burden of work and childcare, pushing them into isolation.
But at least we now have our first female Chancellor overseeing this decline, right?
Hypocrisy from both sides
Rising anger at the position of women and girls has been opportunistically picked up by right-wing billionaires and bigots to push their reactionary culture war agenda.
Elon Musk – who is alleged to have harassed women who work for him – spent December on X discussing the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal in Britain. Even Andrew Tate – who has been charged with sex trafficking! – chimed into this discussion.
For these demagogues, the abuse of young women is nothing more than a political football, to whip up hatred, racism, and Islamophobia against Muslim men.
But sexism and abuse exist everywhere in society – not just among a certain race or religion – precisely because this rotten, oppressive system upholds the degradation of women, through various institutions.
Labour politicians and liberal journalists were up in arms about Musk and Tate’s furore. But they are nothing but hypocrites!
In reality, Starmer and his government – who are part and parcel of the liberal establishment in Britain – do not care any more about fighting women’s oppression than the right-wing do.
Starmer, for example, failed to prosecute the serial abuser Jimmy Savile back when he was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. In 2021, the Labour leader’s response to the murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a police officer was to promise more police on the streets.
What’s more, this so-called ‘progressive’ wing of the ruling class has slashed child benefit, cut childcare, women’s refuges, and social care services, and overseen the decline of the NHS – leaving working women everywhere worse off.
We can have faith in neither side of this toxic culture war divide. They are just two sides of the same capitalist coin. And neither will improve the position of women, far from it.
Class war not culture war
Since the 1990s, we have been told that the liberals were a better choice for women. This is because they stand on the ‘woke’ side of the culture war, advocating for more women in high-up places, or an end to discriminatory language.
Feminists, liberals, and capitalist ministers have spent the past 30 years pushing the narrative that having more women politicians, CEOs, and business owners is the solution to women’s oppression.
But this is increasingly being exposed for all its hollowness: decades of ‘girlboss’ feminist phrase-mongering has not advanced the position of women one inch.
The feminists say that in order for women’s lot to improve, men’s lot must shrink; they must give up their ‘privilege’. This feeds directly into the right-wing narrative that men’s position in society is under attack.
In opposition to this divisive logic, Communists say: women and men both stand to gain from a united struggle to overthrow capitalism. We aren’t interested in whether our exploiters are men or women – we want to get rid of exploitation altogether!
For bourgeois women, having the freedom to join the ranks of the rich and powerful is enough. For working-class women only real freedom – genuine social emancipation – is enough.
That means an end to being trapped in the home because of childcare and domestic labour, an end to fearing rape and harassment on every corner, an end to going hungry in order to feed your children.
No politician or girlboss will achieve this for us. The working class must unite and struggle for real emancipation, through overthrowing the entire system.
MI5 caught lying about state-sanctioned abuse of women
Mia Foley Doyle, London
It was recently revealed that British intelligence and ‘security’ agency MI5 has lied to three courts over a period of years, while defending their handling of a state agent who violently abused his partner.
The agent – who can only be referred to as X – is said to have repeatedly gloated to ‘Beth’ that his role as an informant on far-right groups with MI5 meant the police would not do anything.
With the state’s approval, MI5 agents are authorised to commit crimes in certain circumstances. But, in theory, this already-questionable impunity does not apply to their private lives.
Yet X was correct. When the police did become involved after he attacked Beth with a machete, they conveniently failed to correctly register any evidence, such as a statement, and the case was dismissed.
In the years of internal investigations and court cases since, the security services have actively blocked any legal justice for Beth. Each time, it has cited its long-standing policy to ‘neither confirm nor deny’ the identity of its agents to anyone outside of MI5.
However, the BBC has now revealed MI5 has been lying to the courts. A senior security services officer already confirmed that X was an MI5 agent in a secretly-recorded phone call with a BBC journalist, several years ago.
Why was the phone call where this gaffe happened taking place? Because the security services were desperately trying to prevent the news of agent X’s violent abuse – and their disregard for it – making it to the press.
There are doubtless many more cases like this we don’t hear about – demonstrating just how rotten to their core ‘security’ services like MI5 are, and exactly whose interests they serve.
Legal aid cuts leave women more vulnerable
Sara Al-Disi, Edinburgh
In shocking news, a Scottish woman who was a victim of domestic violence has told of being turned down by 116 legal aid lawyers refusing to handle her divorce.
According to the mother-of-two, many of the companies simply said they were no longer taking legal aid cases, while others gave no explanation. While appalling, it is not surprising why that is the case.
While the justice system as a whole has suffered budget cuts over the decades, it is the legal aid component that has been hit the hardest – undermining working-class people’s ability to be properly represented.
Funding for legal aid has dropped by 29 percent between 2008-24 as a result of government austerity. ‘LASPO’ legislation in 2013 introduced massive cuts to legal aid and services, cutting legal aid eligibility from 80 percent of people to a mere 25 percent.
The Citizens Advice Bureau revealed that as a result there has been a rise of 30 percent in people having to represent themselves in family cases, almost a quarter of those involving children.
Most divorces are filed by women, and those who have experienced domestic abuse have been found to be more financially vulnerable after separation, according to a study at the University of Bristol.
Working-class women are doubly oppressed by capitalism, and disproportionately affected by austerity cuts to healthcare, childcare, and jobs. Cuts to legal aid are now stripping away any semblance of equality or freedom of choice for working women trying to access justice.
It is not merely austerity that cuts across rights women have won over years of struggle, but the crisis of capitalism. It is not enough to live on the scraps of the billionaires, we must end the root of women’s oppression by fighting for the socialist revolution.
LSE bosses defend alleged sex pest senior staff member
Ismail Mohammed, LSE student
Scandalously, upper management at the London School of Economics (LSE) has for several years defended a senior university professor with five formal and nine informal complaints of sexual assault and harassment from female students and staff.
LSE’s ‘investigation’ of the professor’s alleged sexual misconduct not only contained factual errors and omitted vital points, but ultimately dismissed all the allegations – without even explaining how this conclusion was reached to the victims! In reality, this was a cover-up.
According to an extensive exposé in the student press, after the professor got off scot-free, he complained of a “bullying campaign” against him. His colleagues reported that he and his allies launched a “very vindictive, revengeful” tirade against his accusers, and began to harass and intimidate women in the department.
For women attempting to jump all the bureaucratic hoops involved in becoming a tenured professor, daring to kick up a fuss about sexism and abuse can mean having their careers destroyed at the whim of senior staff with friends in high places.
With disgusting hypocrisy, LSE claims they “takes all reports [of sexual harassment] extremely seriously.” But this professor is free to roam all over campus, and even hold one-to-one private meetings with unknowing female students as an academic supervisor.
And with International Women’s Day around the corner, the upper management has the audacity to put on a full programme of women’s history events, capped with a ‘Women Advocating Equity Gala’. What a sick joke!
