|
|
International Women’s Day
Over the years, International Women’s Day –
originally intended to mark the inspirational struggle of the half of
the world oppressed because of gender – has been commercialised,
stripped of its radical message on women’s key part in the socialist
movement. As a contribution towards reclaiming the day and its real
significance, ELEANOR DONNE outlines its origins and relevance today,
while ANNE ENGELHARDT reports on the struggle for abortion rights
worldwide.
MARCH 8th IS International Women’s Day.
These days in most parts of the world this event has lost its political
character and is often little more than a glossy promotional event for
‘woman friendly’ businesses and a vague ‘celebration’ of women’s
achievements. It is worth reminding ourselves, however, of its roots in
the socialist movement of the early 20th century, and the role it played
as a focal point for the struggles of working-class women
internationally, for better working conditions and pay, and for a
political voice.
1908: Fifteen thousand women marched
through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting
rights.
1909: In the US, women garment workers went
on strike for better pay and working conditions. In accordance with a
declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National
Woman’s Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women
continued to celebrate National Women’s Day on the last Sunday of
February until 1913.
1910: At the second Conference of Working
Women in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin of the German Social Democratic Party
(SPD) proposed the idea of an International Working Women’s Day to
highlight the particular oppression of women and honour their struggle
for equal rights, including the right to vote and stand for political
office. Over 100 women from 17 countries unanimously agreed the proposal
that they should celebrate a ‘women’s day’ under the slogan: "The vote
for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism".
(Alexandra Kollontai, A Militant Celebration, 1920)
1911: Following the decision agreed at
Copenhagen in 1911, International Women’s Day was honoured for the first
time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than
one million women and men attended rallies campaigning for women’s
rights to work and for training, to vote, hold public office and for an
end to discrimination. The Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai,
captured the mood of militancy: "Germany and Austria on Working Women’s
Day was one seething, trembling sea of women. Meetings were organised
everywhere – in the small towns and even in the villages halls were
packed so full that they had to ask male workers to give up their places
for the women. This was certainly the first show of militancy by the
working woman. Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and
their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings. During the
largest street demonstrations, in which 30,000 were taking part, the
police decided to remove the demonstrators’ banners: the women workers
made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only
with the help of the socialist deputies in parliament". (A Militant
Celebration)
Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic
‘Triangle Fire’ in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working
women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event
drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation
in the USA and became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day
events.
1913: Russian women observed their first
International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February 1913 with
illegal meetings. They expanded their campaign in 1914, many facing
imprisonment and exile by the tsarist regime. The call for the vote in
Russia was seen as an open call for the overthrow of the tsar.
First world war, 1914-18: The Socialist
International disintegrated as most of its constituent parties lined up
behind ‘their own’ countries’ ruling classes on the outbreak of war.
Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish leader of the German
revolutionary movement, used International Women’s Day as a focus for
anti-war rallies in 1914 and 1915, in spite of efforts at sabotage by
right-wing leaders in the SPD. Luxemburg was assassinated in 1919 along
with Karl Liebknecht, with the complicity of the SPD government.
1917: On International Women’s Day, Russian
women textile workers began a strike for ‘bread and peace’ in response
to the death of over two million Russian soldiers in the world war, and
to demand an end to food shortages. They faced armed troops and
crucially persuaded them not to fire on the demonstrations and to join
their struggle. The tsar was forced to abdicate and the provisional
government was formed. The women’s strike had commenced on Sunday 23
February, according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This
day in the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March. (After the
Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, the Soviet Union adopted the
Gregorian calendar.)
Kollontai wrote: "The 1917 Working Women’s Day has
become memorable in history. On this day the Russian women raised the
torch of proletarian revolution and set the world on fire. The February
revolution marks its beginning from this day". (A Militant Celebration)
In many countries, especially those of the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, International Women’s Day is still an
official holiday. This is largely because of the significance of that
date in February 1917 in sparking the movement that led to the Russian
tsar being overthrown (known as the February revolution). Later, as
Stalinism took hold and the progressive programme of the early Soviet
state on women’s rights was rolled back, International Women’s Day was
stripped of its revolutionary character, ending up as something like a
cross between Valentine’s day and mother’s day when men honour their
wives, girlfriends, work colleagues, etc, with flowers and small gifts!
Do we need International Women’s Day today?
IN THE ADVANCED capitalist countries women’s
position in society and our rights generally have improved greatly since
the first International Women’s Day events in the early 20th century and
even since the International Year of Women in 1975. This has led some,
even some ex-veterans of the 1970s women’s movement, to argue that women
are not specifically oppressed any more. Others have even argued that
men have lost rights in favour of women. Perhaps that is why there is
now a semi-official International Men’s Day (in November in case you
were wondering).
However, it is not the case that women,
working-class women in particular, have achieved equality, let alone
liberation, and in some parts of the world their situation has got
worse. In the former Stalinist countries women face increased poverty,
violence and sexual exploitation as the economies nose-dived with
capitalist restoration, childcare and public services were slashed, jobs
disappeared and society fragmented. In the ex-colonial world women make
up the majority of the poor, and girls and women often face oppressive
laws controlling their sexuality and behaviour.
The struggle against women’s oppression, the
determination to change society that was the inspiration for the
original International Women’s Day is just as vital today. Clara Zetkin,
Alexandra Kollontai and others active in the Socialist International in
the early 20th century understood that working-class women have the most
to gain from getting rid of the system of capitalism and, in spite of
the obstacles they face, can be the most determined fighters for
socialism.
Bread & Roses
THE SONG, Bread and Roses, by the ‘working women of
the west’ (1911/12), is associated in particular with the strike of
women immigrant workers at a huge textile mill in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, in 1911. With the help of the mass union movement, the
Industrial Workers of the World, in particular their full-time
organiser, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, they won most of their demands for
increased pay and better working conditions.
As we go marching,
marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million
darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched
with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the
people hear us singing: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
As we go marching,
marching, we battle too for men,
For they are
women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives
shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts
starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.
As we go marching,
marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying
through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art
and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is
bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.
As we go marching,
marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising
of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the
drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a
sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
Our lives shall not be
sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts
starve as well as bodies: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
The global struggle for abortion rights
THE ABORTION DEBATE has been stirring up the
media-landscape again. However, while the abortion issue is being used
as a political football in the election campaigns of Spain, Italy and
the US, women worldwide still have to suffer the consequences of illegal
and botched abortions, as well as the daily crimes of rape and domestic
violence.
That women should have the right to choose does not
only mean the right of abortion on demand but also reproductive rights
in general, as well as their right to have choice in every single part
of their lives. That includes free access to every kind of education, to
good and equally paid jobs, childcare and also medical care.
However, these options for working-class women often
lie behind obstacles like money, dependence on the husband or the
family, on the state and religion. All over the world, women are faced
with the fear of losing their jobs, houses, their children, even their
lives.
Every year about 70,000 women die because of the
consequences of unsafe abortion, 67,700 in neo-colonial countries. Of
the 42 million abortions a year, over 20 million are under unsafe
conditions and with unskilled personnel. The main reason for a high
mortality rate is the strict laws on abortion and women’s right to
choose, as well as the limited access to contraception that leads to
unwanted pregnancies, and problems accessing affordable medical care.
More than one billion people live in poverty
worldwide. The majority of them are women. The rightwing of the Catholic
church demands a worldwide moratorium on abortion and argues that the
right of life starts with conception, even comparing the abortion rate
with genocide – in Africa every sixth child dies before the age of five,
and every day 26,000 children die because of HIV/Aids or illnesses like
malaria. In Zimbabwe life expectancy is only 37 years (in the period
from 2000-05), a 14-year reduction since 1970. The main reason for this
decline is HIV/Aids. Even the chance of a woman dying in childbirth in
Africa is three times higher than in industrial states.
In Asia women often use abortion as a way of
contraception, because medical access for contraception in most
countries is hardly developed. Vietnam is recorded by the World Health
Organisation as having one of the highest abortion rates in the world.
"Every minute, 398 women become pregnant, 180 pregnancies being
unplanned, and one women dies from the complications of pregnancy".* In
Yemen only 22% of all births are attended by skilled doctors or nurses,
which helps explain the high infant mortality in this country.
Legalised abortion
A LOT OF countries changed their legal frameworks
between 1950 and 2007 and legalised abortion, although some of them have
restricted their laws again since, and most of them do not allow
abortion on demand. The progressive changes in legal frameworks were not
made voluntarily, but pushed through by class struggles and mass
movements worldwide.
The first country that allowed abortion was Russia.
After the Russian revolution in 1917, the world’s first workers’ state
was founded, and it gave the first impressions of how a society in which
workers have power could look like. Russia’s economic backwardness and
poverty were big obstacles to equalising and improving the lives of
women. Yet in 1929 a report into the mortality rates of women having an
abortion found a rate of "less than one-tenth of 1%", compared to the
more economically advanced Germany, which had a mortality rate of 4%.
Under the growing influence of Stalinism, the
abortion law was repealed in 1936. In 1956 abortion was legalised again
but only up to twelve weeks of pregnancy. From that time, unfortunately,
it became the common family planning method in the absence of the
availability of good quality contraception.
In Britain, the law was changed in 1967 and abortion
on request was allowed up to 28 weeks (reduced in 1990 to 24 weeks). It
remains one of the most liberal abortion laws worldwide. The Abortion
Act was introduced as one of many reforms gained in the years of the
economic boom. More and more women became employed. Involvement in trade
union struggle, economic independence and improvements in their living
standards meant that they were not only successful in the struggle for
abortion rights, but also for equal pay and sex discrimination
legalisation.
In France and Germany protest movements of women at
the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s demanded the
legalisation of abortion. In France, part of the campaign included
dozens of famous actresses and artists saying to a major magazine that
they had had a termination. The same campaign was brought up in Germany.
Even the legalisation of abortion in 1972 in the neighbouring state of
the GDR (Stalinist East Germany) put pressure on the West German
government to liberalise the legal framework on abortion. A law was
passed for termination on request up to twelve weeks. This was
overturned a year later by the Constitutional Court. So today, abortion
is legally only allowed after rape, incest or a few other circumstances.
In practice, however, this limitation is not strictly applied.
Canada is the only country where, since 1991, no
abortion law exists and a termination is regarded as a normal medical
procedure.
Backstreet abortions
IN COUNTRIES WHERE abortion is illegal the mortality
rate among women is generally above average, because of illegal and
therefore mostly botched abortions. Skilled doctors are afraid of being
punished and, although women fear punishment too, they are forced to
search for a solution, trying to abort themselves or visiting dubious
practitioners, putting themselves in danger of injury or even death
because of bungling.
In South Africa the abortion law was liberalised in
1997, and between 1996-2000 the abortion mortality rate decreased more
than 90%. In Brazil 250,000 women are admitted to hospital each year
because of abortion complications, even though only 140 legal abortions
were registered in 2004, after the law on abortion was tightened by the
supreme court.
Women who can afford it try to abort in countries
where it is allowed. For example, in 1971 specialist clinics were set up
in the Netherlands and, from 1975, there were about 12,000 women from
Belgium and 9,000 from France travelling there each year.
The number of Irish women who went to Britain to
have an abortion increased from 261 in 1970 to 6,400 in 2000. Still
today, abortion in Southern Ireland is only allowed under special
circumstances, for instance, if the life of the mother is in danger.
Even then doctors or nurses are allowed to refuse to give medical help.
Women fight back
IN 2003 IN Nicaragua, where over 80% of the
population is Roman Catholic, women’s organisations launched a campaign
called ‘I want to be excommunicated’. The reason was that a
nine-year-old girl had an abortion with the help of three doctors after
she had been raped. But the church excommunicated the parents and the
doctors, and the case was brought to trial. Over 26,000 people signed
the petition. Because of the protests the case was stopped by the
prosecution. However, in 2006, the abortion law was tightened again and
now does not allow abortion under any circumstances.
Pro-choice protests are taking place across Britain
as right-wing MPs attempt to attack abortion rights. While in Italy, the
most recent struggle concerning pro-choice took place on Valentine’s day
when all over the country women protested after the police confiscated
an aborted foetus at a hospital in Naples, falsely accusing the woman
who was still in hospital that her termination had taken place outside
the law. That took place while Silvio Berlusconi, other right-wing
politicians, and the Vatican, announced that they support a moratorium
on abortion worldwide. The protests were quite successful, however,
showing that there is opposition to the positions of the political
rightwing.
The main reason that abortion has returned as a
current issue is that there is a lack of working-class movements at the
moment. After the collapse of Stalinism after 1989, the leaderships of
many workers’ organisations, like trade unions and workers’ parties,
moved to the right. While there are no big workers’ organisations that
we can use to fight back, the class struggle from above goes on to try
to cut back every achievement of previous workers’ movements, including
cuts in our rights.
Even the point that the ruling class has no
solutions to the crisis in the economy, makes it feel in danger. On top
of social cuts, cuts in healthcare, childcare, the privatisation of
public companies and services, they produce a reactionary atmosphere
against the rights of wage earners and especially against women.
* Abortion: A Worldwide Perspective, Colin Francome and Marcel
Vekemans, published by Middlesex University Press (2007), £19.99. This
well-researched book covers 82 countries.
|