[Reader-list] The Meaning of International Women’s Day

[Asit Das]

The Meaning of International Women’s Day
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/international-womens-day-kollontai/>

The first International Women’s Day was celebrated 102 years ago by
revolutionaries in Russia.
by Alexandra Kollantai
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/alexandra-kollontai/>
[image: A March 8, 1917 demonstration led by Alexandra Kollontai and other
organizers.]

A March 8, 1917 demonstration led by Alexandra Kollontai and other
organizers.

The following article was published in *Pravda* one week before the first
celebration of the “Day of International Solidarity among the Female
Proletariat” on March 8, 1913. In St Petersburg this day was marked by a
call for a campaign against women workers’ lack of economic and political
rights and for the unity of the working class, led by the self-emancipation
of women workers.

This article <https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1913/womens-day.htm>
was
transcribed by Sally Ryan for marxists.org.

What is “Women’s Day”? Is it really necessary? Is it not a concession to
the women of the bourgeois class, to the feminists and suffragettes? Is it
not harmful to the unity of the workers’ movement?

Such questions can still be heard in Russia, though they are no longer
heard abroad. Life itself has already supplied a clear and eloquent answer.

“Women’s Day” is a link in the long, solid chain of the women’s proletarian
movement. The organized army of working women grows with every year. Twenty
years ago the trade unions contained only small groups of working women
scattered here and there among the ranks of the workers’ party… Now English
trade unions have over 292,000 women members; in Germany around 200,000 are
in the trade union movement, and 150,000 in the workers’ party; and in
Austria there are 47,000 in the trade unions and almost 20,000 in the party.

Everywhere — in Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland —
the women of the working class are organizing themselves. The women’s
socialist army
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1907/is-conferences.htm> has
almost a million members. A powerful force! A force that the powers of this
world must reckon with when it is a question of the cost of living,
maternity insurance, child labor, and legislation to protect female labor.

There was a time when working men thought that they alone must bear on
their shoulders the brunt of the struggle against capital, that they alone
must deal with the “old world” without the help of their womenfolk.
However, as working-class women entered the ranks of those who sell their
labor, forced onto the labor market by need, by the fact that husband or
father is unemployed, working men became aware that to leave women behind
in the ranks of the “non-class-conscious” was to damage their cause and
hold it back.

The greater the number of conscious fighters, the greater the chances of
success. What level of consciousness is possessed by a woman who sits by
the stove, who has no rights in society, the state or the family? She has
no “ideas” of her own! Everything is done as ordered by the father or
husband…

The backwardness and lack of rights suffered by women, their subjection and
indifference, are of no benefit to the working class, and indeed are
directly harmful to it. But how is the woman worker to be drawn into the
movement, how is she to be awoken?

Social-Democracy abroad did not find the correct solution immediately.
Workers’ organizations were open to women workers, but only a few entered.
Why? Because the working class at first did not realize that the woman
worker is the most legally and socially deprived member of that class, that
she has been browbeaten, intimidated, persecuted down the centuries, and
that in order to stimulate her mind and heart, a special approach is
needed, words understandable to her as a woman.

The workers did not immediately appreciate that in this world of lack of
rights and exploitation, the woman is oppressed not only as a seller of her
labor, but also as a mother, as a woman… However, when the workers’
socialist party understood this, it boldly took up the defense of women on
both counts as a hired worker and as a woman, a mother.

Socialists in every country began to demand special protection for female
labor, insurance for mother and child, political rights for women, and the
defense of women’s interests.

The more clearly the workers’ party perceived this second objective
vis-à-vis women workers, the more willingly women joined the party, the
more they appreciated that the party is their true champion, that the
working class is struggling also for their urgent and exclusively female
needs. Working women themselves, organized and conscious, have done a great
deal to elucidate this objective. Now the main burden of the work to
attract more working women into the socialist movement lies with the women.

The parties in every country have their own special women’s committees,
secretariats, and bureaus. These women’s committees conduct work among the
still largely non-politically conscious female population, arouse the
consciousness of working women, and organize them. They also examine those
questions and demands that affect women most closely: protection and
provision for expectant and nursing mothers, the legislative regulation of
female labor, the campaign against prostitution and infant mortality, the
demand for political rights for women, the improvement of housing, the
campaign against the rising cost of living, etc.

Thus, as members of the party, women workers are fighting for the common
class cause, while at the same time outlining and putting forward those
needs and demands that most nearly affect themselves as women, housewives,
and mothers. The party supports these demands and fights for them… The
requirements of working women are part and parcel of the common workers’
cause!

On “Women’s Day” the organized demonstrate against their lack of rights.

But, some will say, why this *singling out* of women workers? Why special
“Women’s Days,” special leaflets for working women, meetings and
conferences of working-class women? Is this not, in the final analysis, a
concession to the feminists and bourgeois suffragettes?

Only those who do not understand the radical difference between the
movement of socialist women and bourgeois suffragettes can think this way.

What is the aim of the feminists? Their aim is to achieve the same
advantages, the same power, the same rights within capitalist society as
those possessed now by their husbands, fathers, and brothers. What is the
aim of the women workers? Their aim is to abolish all privileges deriving
from birth or wealth. For the woman worker it is a matter of indifference
who is the “master,” a man or a woman. Together with the whole of her
class, she can ease her position as a worker.

Feminists demand equal rights always and everywhere. Women workers reply:
we demand rights for every citizen, man and woman, but we are not prepared
to forget that we are not only workers and citizens, but also mothers! And
as mothers, as women who give birth to the future, we demand special
concern for ourselves and our children, special protection from the state
and society.

The feminists are striving to acquire political rights. However, here too
our paths separate.

For bourgeois women, political rights are simply a means allowing them to
make their way more conveniently and more securely in a world founded on
the exploitation of the working people. For women workers, political rights
are a step along the rocky and difficult path that leads to the desired
kingdom of labor.

The paths pursued by women workers and bourgeois suffragettes have long
since separated. There is too great a difference between the objectives
that life has put before them. There is too great a contradiction between
the interests of the woman worker and the lady proprietress, between the
servant and her mistress… There are not and cannot be any points of
contact, conciliation, or convergence between them. Therefore working men
should not fear separate Women’s Days, nor special conferences of women
workers, nor their special press.

Every special, distinct form of work among the women of the working class
is simply a means of arousing the consciousness of the woman worker and
drawing her into the ranks of those fighting for a better future… Women’s
Days and the slow, meticulous work undertaken to arouse the
self-consciousness of the woman worker are serving the cause not of the
division but of the unification of the working class.

Let a joyous sense of serving the common class cause and of fighting
simultaneously for their own female emancipation inspire women workers to
join in the celebration of Women’s Day.