THE fact that corporate capitalism has captured and commodified International Women’s Day in the 21st century should not be allowed to obscure the socialist feminist aims and origins of our day 122 years ago. 

IWD was founded at the beginning of the last century by a powerful socialist women’s movement. Its aim was to both highlight and celebrate the struggle of working women against oppression and double exploitation. 

The issues addressed by the Socialist Women’s conference of 1910 (which established March 8 as IWD), are, apart from women’s suffrage, still with us. 

We face exactly the same struggle today. But we fight with one hand tied behind us because unlike the last century, in Europe and the US at least, we no longer have a strong united women’s movement — we need one more than ever. 

In practical terms this means, if we want to tackle the manifestations of women’s oppression today, that we have to build a broad-based women’s organisation capable of challenging male supremacist ideas and practices and campaigning on the kind of issues raised in the Charter for Women. 

Such a women’s movement must have black and white working-class women as its leadership in order to build a mass base among those women who were overlooked in previous attempts at women’s organisation in the 1960s and ’70s. 

Regenerating the women’s movement organisationally must also proceed from the standpoint of reclaiming feminism from those who would take it down sectional blind alleys in the interests of those comparatively few women who stand to gain from constant compromise with capital. 

The early socialist feminist pioneers — Sylvia Pankhurst and Klara Zetkin — fought a similar battle with what they termed “bourgeois feminism” in the women’s suffrage movement. 

But our socialist feminism today must also contend with new ideological challenges which would have shocked our socialist foremothers. 

They, who fought for women’s sex-based rights, could not have not have imagined that, having won such rights for women (to education, to vote, to divorce etc), there would be a questioning of whether such rights are necessary. 

They knew that this was only the beginning, that the battle to extend women’s sex-based rights was incomplete and they imagined it would be pursued by subsequent women’s movements. 

They could not have imagined that there would be an unrelenting ideological onslaught on the very notion of women’s sex-based rights, let alone their extension. 

Pankhurst, Zetkin, Kollontai, Krupskaya and their socialist sisters could not have conceived of a situation in which the attack on women would have escalated to the point at which the very definition of “women” as a biological sex would be subject to sustained interrogation. 

As socialists they would have rejected any ideology which privileged individual as opposed to collective rights, especially when it threatens and undermines the collective rights of women.

This “erasure” of women is of special concern at present and it’s what makes the rebirth of a women’s movement so urgent. 

We know that the effect of the pandemic has impacted disproportionately on women both globally and domestically. We also know that fuelled by pervasive misogyny bolstered by dangerous “incel” activity, violence against women, in the home and in society at large, has increased exponentially. The need for a women’s movement to combat sexism and misogyny is more vital than ever.

We understand what our socialist foremothers understood 100 years ago — that the super-exploitation of women as workers and their oppression as women is a fundamental prerequisite for the operation of capitalism, economically, politically and ideologically. 

Hence, the eradication of capitalism is the essential precondition for the liberation of women. So, should we just allow history to take its course, content in the knowledge that our time will come after the revolution? 

Of course, we must reject such a sterile and simplistic view of social change which confines women to the role of an audience in the drama of life. 

Marxists understand that the motor of social change is class struggle and that this is unceasing in class society, because of the ongoing struggle to improve our lives and livelihoods. 

Is this merely reformism? Zetkin answers this question: “Each reform, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.” 

Lenin, in his conversations with Zetkin, spoke of the need for women to mobilise around their immediate demands. Such demands, he said, “are practical conclusions which we have drawn from the burning needs, the shameful humiliation of women, in bourgeois society … We demonstrate thereby that we recognise these needs, and are sensible of the humiliation of the woman, the privileges of the man.” 

For both of them, a separate women’s movement allied to a class-conscious workers’ movement was essential to fight for immediate change and also for revolutionary change — “the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it” (Lenin).

The reforms we demand are outlined in our Charter for Women, which covers all aspects of women’s lives — in society, in the labour market and in the labour movement. 

Thus we seek to build a broad-based women’s movement together with a labour movement which rejects sexism and racism. 

Women’s interests are best served both by a separate movement for women and by a labour movement with massive female involvement.  

The self-organisation of women will always be essential but it must work alongside a regenerated labour movement which rejects capitalist ideology.   

It could hardly be otherwise because women are now over 70 per cent of the UK labour force and 54 per cent of the British trade union movement. 

It is axiomatic that, if it is to be effective, the labour movement must address the issues raised by women, not as an optional extra but as an integral aspect of every agenda. 

Women can no longer be counted on to pay their dues and act as voting fodder. The labour movement not only betrays women, but also weakens itself if it refuses to recognise the women’s agenda (as defined by women) and continues to be divided by the historical seepage of capitalist values on race and sex lines. 

The history of the labour movement in this country and elsewhere has shown that the level of class consciousness at any given moment is a crucial factor in determining the extent to which women’s oppression is challenged. 

How do we proceed from here? At the moment we are witnessing a renewed interest in the fight to protect women’s sex-based rights and the consequential opposition to “women’s erasure.” 

There is also a growing recognition of misogyny, domestic abuse and violence against women. As a result many different campaigning organisations have emerged, some on specific issues and some, like Woman’s Place UK (WPUK), FiLiA and the National Assembly of Women (NAW), with a broadly overarching women’s liberation agenda. 

Many other women’s organisations, advisories, subcommittees have long existed within the trade union and labour movement. 

The question arises — is it possible to for all these organisations and campaigning groups to be drawn together around a broad common programme or set of demands? 

In 1970 the Women’s Liberation Movement attempted this. The Ruskin conference of that year drew together disparate women’s groups around a set of four demands. 

In 2020, WPUK, (supported by Southall Black Sisters and the NAW) organised a conference of 1,000 women. The FiLiA conference organised a massive women’s conference in 2021.

Clearly the interest is there — what we need urgently is an attempt to create some kind of structural federal unity based around an overarching non-sectarian socialist feminist perspective. 

Unity is strength: our strength as women lies in our ability to act as a collective force. The lesson from and the challenge for us on IWD is to rebuild a women’s liberation movement which not only combats the current regressive misogynistic theory, policy and practice, but campaigns around a programme to challenge our oppression and exploitation and opens the path to socialism and liberation.