The RCP has kicked off our celebration of International Working Women’s Day (IWWD) in the past week by reclaiming its revolutionary heritage.
We held meetings across the country, covering the communist origins of IWWD, the present situation that women face across the world, and what the communist answer is to the complete bankruptcy of liberal feminism.
Our communist societies at Birmingham, Warwick, Leicester, Goldsmiths, Bristol, Nottingham, Cardiff, UEA, and LSE held meetings on this question.
The discussions have been really wide-ranging. At Leicester University, the comrades discussed Trump and how right-wing demagogues are gaining popularity precisely due to the failure of liberalism. In Birmingham, the limitations of ‘girlboss’ feminism were brought out as completely shallow and detached from the real struggle many working-class women face.
At Goldsmiths, there was an interesting discussion about how women are not being taken seriously, and even harassed by the police, the so-called ‘protectors’ of society.
The vile rotten nature of society is abundantly clear for many people, and of course especially for women. Capitalism in crisis has offered them nothing, on the contrary, it has only reversed any gains made in the past.
Many young people are seeing through the hypocrisy of liberal politics and are searching for an alternative.
This is precisely what we have to offer. There is a way forward for true women’s liberation, but we believe this can only be achieved through a united working-class struggle against capitalism.
We fight for a society where both men and women are freed from capital; freed from the suffocating oppressive nature of this system, which is only driven by the need for profits rather than progressing society for the benefit of human needs.
This is only the start, we have more meetings planned at King’s College London, SOAS, University of Kent, Imperial College London, Sussex University, and City University London. If you want to find out more, come along and join us!
Bristol
The Bristol communists held an open meeting on Monday 3 March on the struggle for women’s emancipation.
The meeting was greatly attended. We even had to get more and more chairs just to have everyone seated!
Lotta Angantyr from the executive committee came down to give the talk. She explained that women’s oppression hasn’t always existed. It emerged with the rise of class society, which disproves any misconceptions that sexism is somehow biologically determined.
She also mentioned identity politics and gave great examples of how it acts as a divisive force rather than something that can help working-class women liberate themselves.
After, comrades got to talking with students and one raised how the Marxist position on the history of women’s oppression was the only one that made sense after hearing the talk, and that he’d never really heard points like ours before.
In the end, they bought Engels’ Origins of The Family and wanted to meet more to discuss the ideas. There is a real appetite for Marxist ideas, we just have to get out there and provide them!
Cardiff
In Cardiff there were 26 in attendance for our talk on ‘The Struggle for Women’s Emancipation’ on 6 March. The talk focussed a lot on the role of women in revolution, how they tend to play a leading role, and how their oppressed position in society stems from the creation of surplus and class society.
The discussion was extremely varied, with questions around how to fight oppression, what would the socialisation of domestic labour look like, and the hypocrisy of liberal bourgeois feminism.
There was a tremendous collection of over £250, with some students buying £25 tickets to attend our Lenin School this weekend. After the meeting, the majority of those in attendance came to the pub to continue the discussion for several hours.
London School of Economics
On 6 March, the LSE Communists held an open student meeting discussing how to fight Women’s Oppression with nine people in attendance. Comrade Lubna Badi led off and after this introduction, the welcoming atmosphere allowed for a wide-ranging and engaging discussion, where the different students shared their frustrations at women’s oppression.
These frustrations included several topics, from the negligence women face by medical professionals to the constant lack of safety women experience on a daily basis.
Students were angered about the LSE management’s shameful defence of a sex pest senior member of staff, who despite having fourteen different allegations levelled against him, has been protected by the management. This demonstrates the importance of linking our ideas to the real issues and frustrations that students face.
After the meeting, several students agreed to sign to reactive our society and to join a reading group of the Communist Manifesto. They were also excited to come to future society meetings!
Reclaim International Working Women’s Day!
Amy Harris, Leeds Arts Communists
In the run-up to International Women’s Day (IWD), universities across the UK host events and talks from their ‘most successful’ female alumni. It is hard not to roll your eyes at the many CEOs that find their way onto the list.
Originally, the acronym of this day; IWD, had an extra ‘W’, referring not just to women but working women. In a calculated effort to separate the event with socialist ideas, ‘working’ has been dropped.
Last year, Oxford University ran a forum to ‘inspire inclusion for women in business’. This specifically focused these women on exploiting African workers.
Similarly in 2023, the University of Leeds posted an ‘alumni spotlight’ article about Caroline Abel, the CEO of the Central Bank of Seychelles. The island of Seychelles is a known tax haven which the Central Bank is completely complicit in.
It is difficult to see what any of this has to do with international women’s liberation. While a few female CEOs profit from the exploitation of workers worldwide, ordinary working women are forced back into the home because of the rising cost of child and elderly care and refused access to abortion and healthcare.
As bourgeois institutions trumpet ‘inclusion for women’, 20 million girls worldwide could not return to school after the pandemic due to the strain lockdown imposed on poor households.
IWWD was originally founded by the German communist Clara Zetkin in 1910 as a celebration of women’s participation in the mass struggle for socialism.
This is the same Zetkin who said: “bourgeois feminism and the movement of proletarian women are two fundamentally different social movements”.
It is not hard to imagine what her opinion would be on the bastardisation of this day.
Her words are as true today as then. Liberal answers to women’s oppression stop at giving the opportunity for bourgeois women to exploit workers just as harshly as bourgeois men do.
Real gender equality can only be achieved when working women are freed on a material and economic basis, and can stand side-by-side with men in political life.
A glimpse for this was shown after the 1917 revolution in Russia which implemented socialised institutions such as public dining-halls, central laundries and nurseries in order to “free women from the material burden of obsolete domestic economy”.
Despite imperialist encirclement in a backwards country, the new Soviet state also legalised abortion, and maternity leave was granted to all. It only takes a glance at the ‘land of the free’ today to see how progressive these freedoms were.
It is absolutely clear that liberal feminism has failed women. Universities continuing to throw themselves into supporting ‘girlbosses’ only furthers students’ anger at the hollowness of the answers provided by these institutions.
If you agree that a woman’s place is not in the boardroom, but in the revolution, then join the Communists and help us reclaim the revolutionary heritage of International Working Women’s Day!
