For International Women’s Day 2026 we are publishing a speech by CHRISTINE THOMAS at a recent meeting with sympathetic co-thinkers of the CWI on the state of the global movements against women’s oppression.
Next year is the tenth anniversary of the #MeToo movement which became symbolic of the global movements that were taking place against women’s oppression at the time. Obviously sexual harassment was just one aspect of their oppression that women were fighting against. There were also mass protests against sexism more generally, provoked by outrageous comments by judges about rape and sexual assault. Violence against women in all its forms was central to many of the protests and movements, as well as reproductive rights, specifically the question of abortion.
In a general way we can characterise these protests and movements as a global feminist wave; a third feminist wave if we accept that the first wave was the struggle for equal rights at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, especially around the question of the right to vote, and the second wave was the movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, also an international phenomenon, although it took place mainly in the more economically developed capitalist countries.
But the third wave didn’t begin with #MeToo. In 2011, 200 ‘Slut walks’ took place in 40 cities around the world on the issue of victim blaming – the idea that women encourage rape and sexual assault because of the way they dress. These were a foretaste, a small sign of what was to come later on a much larger scale.
However, it’s important to emphasise that we’re talking about women’s movements in the plural. This wasn’t a single, unified global women’s movement, even though there were some attempts at international coordination. The movements took on different forms in different countries, and there were some countries in which none have occurred either at the time or since.
Third feminist wave in context
Why did the movements take place when they did? After all, violence against women is a serious problem in society affecting one in four women at some time in their lives. Horrific attacks were taking place against women in the 1990s and early 2000s but they didn’t result in tens of thousands taking to the streets.
The anger that exploded at the time of #MeToo was rooted in material conditions, in global economic and social processes, and the key turning point was the 2007-2009 global recession and its aftermath. The economic recession, the austerity that most governments subsequently resorted to in order to make the working class pay for the crisis, and the gross inequality that created, had the effect of undermining and eroding confidence in all capitalist institutions, including in its ideological apparatus, fuelling anger against all forms of inequality and oppression and all types of injustice.
So the movements that erupted against the special oppression of women, but also movements around other forms of oppression and injustice, LGBTQ+, racism, climate destruction etc have to be seen against that general background.
Of course, the other consequence of the Great Recession and increasing austerity and inequality has been the growth of right-wing populism. And the threat of attacks or actual attacks on women’s rights, on the gains that women had previously fought for and won, provoked mass protests, especially in the US, Brazil and Poland. But it’s important to stress that the rise of right populism hasn’t been a linear process. We’ve characterised this period as one with elements of revolution and counter-revolution, of polarisation, and of contradictory processes.
Initially the effects of the recession on consciousness were expressed through a turn to the left in many countries, resulting in the rise of left-populist parties like Syriza and Podemos in Europe and the Sanders and Corbyn phenomena in the US and Britain. And we see that still being played out today with the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York. But the betrayal or ineffectiveness of those new left forces, combined with the bankruptcy of the former capitalist workers’ parties, opened up a space for right-wing populist forces to enter and to come to power in a number of countries, a process that’s still continuing with the election of Trump Two in the US, Georgia Meloni in Italy and the electoral victories of the right in several Latin American countries.
Right-wing populism
Scapegoating immigrants has been a feature of almost all of those right-populist forces. Some have also employed anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-feminist rhetoric and policies to try and secure and then bolster an electoral base. But we need to be clear, not all right populists have done so, and those that have don’t necessarily reflect majority social attitudes in those countries.
The situation with trans rights is slightly different from that of women’s rights. Not in the ideological underpinning of anti-trans and anti-women’s rights propaganda; they’re both rooted in the traditional gender binary and its economic and ideological advantage for capitalist rule. But it’s a fact that transgender people make up a very small percentage of society and of the workforce, are less visible, and therefore are easier in that sense to scapegoat.
The recent anti-trans Supreme Court ruling in Britain, which came in the wake of a barrage of anti-trans propaganda in the right-wing media in particular, also rested on and exploited the genuine fears that many women have of gender violence. This was whipped up by some feminist organisations who have argued that trans women need to be excluded from women’s spaces because they are a threat to women.
Clearly we oppose that false argument and the attempts to sow divisions between oppressed groups. The ruling provoked a massive demonstration in support of trans rights that involved much broader layers than the LGBTQ+ community. But at the same time as that was happening we’ve also seen a slight falling back in social attitudes on trans rights, which has not been the case regarding women’s rights and the rights of gays, lesbians and non-binary people.
Having said that, it’s interesting that nine months on from the ruling the Labour government still hasn’t introduced the guidelines that are needed for the ruling to be implemented, not least because of the expense and the problems it will pose for employers in the workplaces in relation to the provision of toilets and rest rooms. With many ‘grey areas’ it potentially could give quite a lot of power to the trade unions in organised workplaces on this issue.
The far right in the anti-immigrant, anti-asylum hotel protests in Britain have also exploited real fears by local working-class women about gender violence and women’s safety after reports in the media of a small number of sexual attacks by asylum seekers. We have pointed out that women are most at risk from violence in the home, from current and former partners, while calling for a united fight for jobs, homes and services for all, including for funding for refuges, for housing and specialised services for women facing gender violence, as well as other safety measures like street lighting and public transport.
Shifting attitudes
With regards to women’s rights, there has been a sea-change in social attitudes in many of the more developed capitalist countries and in some ex-colonial countries too. This has been based on a decades-long process in which women have been drawn into higher education and the workforce in increasing numbers, which in turn has strengthened their confidence and then been reflected in wider changes in attitudes regarding gender roles and norms.
Just to give one example of how deep that shift has been, and in historically quite a short period of time, the most recent British Attitudes Survey found that while in 1987 48% of people agreed that “a man’s job is to earn money and a woman’s to look after the home and the family” only 9% thought so in 2022, an incredible 39% fall. There have also been significant shifts in attitudes on the question of gender violence.
However, while these important shifts in attitudes have taken place, you still have ideas about traditional gender norms and expectations which have been around for thousands of years, since the rise of the first class-based societies, which also continue to have an impact on attitudes. A dual process taking place.
The material basis for those ideas no longer exists in the same way – there’s no longer the need for male control of women’s sexuality, reproduction and behaviour for the purpose of passing on wealth and private property to legitimate male heirs. Nevertheless, ideas about male control and authority, and appropriate gender roles and behaviour, are more than just a hangover from previous class societies.
The structures, the institutions and the ideological apparatus of capitalism rest on and exploit inequality and oppression from previous class societies and therefore simultaneously reproduce and reinforce them. From the unequal exploitation of women in the workforce, to the exploitation of women’s unpaid labour in the family and the home, to the capitalist-owned private companies that commodify and objectify women for profit.
Limits of right populism
In some cases, the right populists have been able to exploit that residue of backward ideas about gender roles to secure an electoral base. This is especially true amongst a layer of men who feel alienated by the changes that capitalism has brought to their lives and identity, and want a return to the old certainties of the past in what is now an extremely volatile and uncertain world. They can be attracted to the idea that feminism and women’s rights ‘have gone too far’, and that a culture war needs to be waged against ‘wokism’ and ‘gender ideology’ because these are undermining traditional men and women’s roles and the family, and destabilising society.
But that is a very narrow social base in most countries. Not only are the Maga movement’s ideas on abortion not supported by the majority of Americans, they’re not supported by many of the people who voted for Trump, as was seen in the state ballots on abortion that took place at the same time as his election. All the exit polls showed that the biggest issue motivating people to vote for Trump was the economy, and they did so in most cases despite his stance on social issues, including many women.
The number of abortions in the US has actually gone up since the overturning of Roe vs Wade, mainly because of the wide availability of the abortion pill via post. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t women who’ve suffered from not being able to access an abortion, there clearly are. But Trump has so far had to resist the more extreme demands from the Maga movement to go further and introduce a federal ban on abortion and on abortion pills or even on contraception, because of fear of an electoral backlash (although there could still be bitter struggles within and between states over these issues).
We only have to look at what’s happened in Minnesota with the mass protests against ICE and the fall in support for Trump in the polls to see the consequences of overreach. Other right-wing populists like Meloni in Italy have had to tread very carefully on issues relating to women. It’s true that she, like other right populists, has latched onto the declining birth rate to promote a nationalist, pronatalist agenda, usually combined with anti-immigrant, ‘defence of Christian values’ rhetoric. But despite the ideology, nowhere, apart from the Taliban in Afghanistan, has there been a concerted effort to drive women out of the workforce and into the home so that they can concentrate on having more babies.
Instead, governments have mainly concentrated on economic incentives to encourage women to have more children. But with the exception of an almost imperceptible increase in births in Hungary, they’ve failed spectacularly. And if Mussolini in fascist Italy failed to increase the birth rate, governments today have no chance!
Once again we see the contradictory processes at play. On the one hand, in general, the capitalist class want to continue to benefit from the exploitation of women in the workforce, but at the same time they benefit both materially and ideologically from the unpaid role of women within the home giving birth to and raising the next generation of workers. Because of the depth of the economic crisis of capitalism that’s a contradiction that can only be resolved with the socialist transformation of society.
For women the main consequence is to increase and intensify their ‘double burden’. This often leads to stress and other problems, but is also a factor radicalising women in this period, because of the conflict between expectations and lived reality.
For most women, particularly working-class women in the more developed capitalist countries, the main threat to their rights and the gains that they have made previously is the ongoing austerity that all governments are resorting to. In Britain, progressive laws have been passed on domestic abuse and coercive control and there’s a general acceptance of zero tolerance of domestic abuse, but funding for refuges, housing and specialist services for women experiencing violence are being completely decimated. Although this has provoked some local protests and strikes by service providers and users which in some cases have been successful in fighting back against the cuts.
Prospect of future struggles
Clearly the global feminist wave has ebbed for now. Although that doesn’t mean that there aren’t protests and movements still taking place. To just give one example, in November 2024 half a million people protested in Rome in Italy against domestic abuse after a young woman was murdered by her boyfriend.
However, things are clearly not at the same level and intensity as they were a few years ago, which is inevitable; there will always be ebbs and flows in social movements, in all movements. But the depth of the capitalist crisis, economically, politically and socially and the continued existence of women’s oppression in all its forms, means that new struggles around women’s specific oppression are also inevitable, and that will be the case up until the socialist revolution and actually even in the initial transition from capitalism to socialism too.
We can’t know for sure what the triggers will be or exactly what form those struggles will take. They could be against governments actively seeking to wind back women’s rights, like the attacks on abortion in the US and Poland, or in response to the effects of austerity. They could be a response to blatant sexism from the legal system from the police or other institutions, or to violent attacks against women, like the incident in Italy, or in India in the same year, when a female doctor was brutally attacked and killed in the rest room in the hospital she worked in.
There are so many issues that could be a catalyst for struggles and protests to emerge. And aspects of women’s special oppression could also be a spark to ignite much broader movements as we saw in Iran in 2022 after the killing of Mahsa Amini in police custody for not wearing the headscarf. This rapidly became a lightning rod for all the grievances of Iranians against the theocratic regime, and many of these same women will have taken part in the recent mass uprising.
Working-class women are likely to be involved in future movements against their oppression in their tens of thousands, just like they were in recent struggles. But because oppression affects all women, these movements are still likely to be cross-class in character, and that means that we’ll likely see the emergence of similar ideas and trends to those we saw during the third wave. And not just in the third wave. Debates about class and identity, separation and intersectionality were all present in the first and second waves, they were just taking place in a different world context.
The movements in the third wave were most definitely a positive development compared to the pre-Great Recession period after the collapse of Stalinism when neoliberal ideas were rampant, when collective struggle was at an extremely low level, and so-called post-feminist ideas stressed individual solutions to special oppression. In that context, coming together to collectively organise against oppression marked a step forward, the beginning of a new period, but one in which the ideological legacy of the previous period was still present.
Ideological trends
One of the positive features in many of the recent movements has been a searching for unity, openness to the involvement of men as ‘allies’, and bringing together the different struggles against oppression – so-called intersectionality. There has also often been an openness and a readiness to embrace the idea of the need for systemic change to end oppression. But there was and still is confusion about what that means in practice.
While it’s not necessarily difficult in the current situation to make the link between the austerity attacks that effect women and the capitalism system, it’s much more difficult to make that link regarding issues like violence against women and sexism. And so systemic change is often posed or viewed as reforming or changing the culture of institutions like the police, the judiciary and the education system, or regulating tech companies and social media, or generally changing the culture in society through legal changes and education.
Almost all of which we would support, but while also explaining that it’s a question of which class is doing the regulating, the reforming and the educating and in whose interest it is being carried out. And pointing out that ultimately, only by completely eliminating the capitalist structures and organisations that underpin women’s oppression will the basis be laid for ending it.
It’s also necessary to give a glimpse of what would be possible if society were organised on a different economic and social basis, but with the caveat that under socialism it would still require a conscious campaign to change social attitudes given that initially people would still be holding ideas that had originally been shaped by capitalism.
Even within what could be called the ‘anti-capitalist wing’ of the women’s movements, embodied by the American authors of the manifesto, Feminism For The 99%, there was no clear idea of how capitalism could be transformed (see A Manifesto To Change The World, Socialism Today No.228, May 2019). They seemed to make all the right points. They said that they rejected the celebration of identity for its own sake, recognised the importance of strike action and even of the class struggle.
However, in practice their application of ‘social reproduction theory’ led them to make a false distinction between ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ female workers in caring professions, such as teachers and health workers, who they identified as being at the forefront of workers’ struggles, and ‘backward’, ‘weakened’, ‘demoralised’ male industrial workers who weren’t prepared to struggle. This is a false dichotomy, is divisive, and has created complete confusion about which force in society has the power to overthrow capitalism and how.
Because the third wave was taking place at a time when there was quite a low level of class struggle it wasn’t necessarily straightforward to raise that the organised working class of all genders has the main role to play in overthrowing capitalism and ending oppression in all its forms. But despite the difficulties it was absolutely necessary to do so. Marxists have a responsibility to raise the awareness and understanding of those involved in struggles around specific oppression to how those struggles fit in to the broader struggle to change society.
Class struggle and social movements
There has been a slight upturn in the class struggle in a number of countries in the last few years. The strike wave in Britain and France a couple of years ago and more recently general strikes in Portugal, Belgium and India, and the fantastic general strike in Italy that was against the war in Gaza but also became about everything else that workers were angry with. The response to the brutal rape and killing of the female doctor in India also led to a united strike of health workers which began in West Bengal and then spread throughout the country. Although at an early stage, these developments shine a light on the potential collective power of the organised working class.
However, we need to be clear that an increase in class struggle doesn’t necessarily mean a corresponding decline in struggles around specific oppression, or that those struggles become less important. On the contrary, collective struggle around economic or political issues affecting the whole working class can then give confidence to women and to other oppressed groups to fight against their own special oppression. And that can then feed back into the trade union and workers’ movement, in a dialectical relationship.
This was the case during the second wave in both Italy and in Britain. The feminist movements coincided with big class battles, and there was a coming together of the two movements, both influencing each other. In Britain it resulted in the TUC calling a massive national demonstration on the question of abortion, the first time it had ever called a demo on an issue of that kind. The latter part of the first ‘feminist wave’ in Britain at the turn of the 20th century also took place at a time of heightened class struggle and ferment in society. There were transport strikes and radicalisation over British imperialist control of Ireland. Trotsky talked about the shadow of revolution hanging over Britain at that time. But there was no party able to pull those different struggles together, which led to a section of the struggle for the vote moving away from the workers’ movement in a separatist direction.
The fact that women today are such a large proportion of the workforce in so many countries means that it’s far more likely than in the past that there will be a confluence between struggles around oppression and the workers’ movement. Although nothing is inevitable. The workers’ organisations, both the trade unions and workers’ political parties, have to be seen to be actively addressing and fighting on issues of women’s oppression and other special oppression. And this needs to be done in a way that unites workers rather than dividing them on the basis of their identity.
We can’t take anything for granted, and the role of Marxists is extremely important. Intervening in struggles around special oppression; making the link between oppression, class society, and the role of the organised working class; and fighting for the maximum unity of the working class. In the extremely volatile global situation that we’re now moving into, that approach will become more important than ever.