Socialism Today Issue 285

This month’s Socialism Today is a special issue to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD), which takes place on 8 March. Socialist Party national committee member BEA GARDNER gives an overview of the articles which have been included in this issue and explains their relevance to the struggle against women’s oppression today.

This year, 2025, marks 115 years since the idea of an international ‘women’s day’ was first endorsed by the International Socialist Women’s Conference, meeting as part of the World Congress of the Second International – an organisation embracing socialist parties and trade unions including the early Labour Party, but also the formally Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

On the agenda was how to strengthen the relationships between different sections of the international involved in agitation and campaigning among working women, a programme of demands to improve conditions for mothers and their young children, and how socialists should relate to the women’s suffrage movement.

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As the age of austerity arising from the great crash of 2007-2008 entered its second decade, a new movement of women struggling against their oppression took shape. But mistaken ideas on how oppression can be ended resurfaced too. The ideas of socialist feminism were more relevant than ever, argued CHRISTINE THOMAS, in the December-January 2018/19 edition of Socialism Today, No.224.

Feminism is back. All over the globe women have been taking to the streets and speaking out about gender oppression. Mass protests against violence against women have erupted in response to horrific rapes and murders of women in India and Argentina. On 14 November, more than 1.5 million students answered the strike call of the Sindicato de Estudiantes and Libres y Combativas, the socialist feminist platform of SE and Izquierda Revolucionaria (CWI) against sexism in schools and in the legal system of the Spanish state. In Ireland, Poland and Argentina women have organised to defeat new and existing reactionary constraints on their reproductive rights, challenging the stranglehold of the Catholic church over social issues.

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In the March 2022 edition of Socialism Today, issue No.256, CHRISTINE THOMAS reviewed two books by authors coming from different feminist perspectives and asked: what strategy is needed in the struggle to end violence against women, sexism and oppression today?

Daring to Hope, by Sheila Rowbotham

Published by Verso, 2021, £20

Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation, by Julie Bindel

Published by Constable, 2021, £16.99

One effect of the Covid pandemic has been to shine a spotlight on gender inequality in capitalist society and on violence towards women in particular, one of the most extreme manifestations of women’s oppression today. Unfortunately, it is one that many women will face at some time in their lives. One in four will experience domestic abuse and one in seven will be raped. On average, two women a week are killed by a current or ex-partner. Most women don’t feel safe from violence, abuse or sexual harassment whether at home, at work or in public spaces, including on social media. A staggering 97% of women report that they have experienced sexual harassment. It is therefore no surprise that violence against women has been the catalyst for a whole number of movements recently; in Britain most notably following the murder of Sarah Everard in South London in 2021.

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In the search for a way to fight against discrimination and oppression, asserting identity can be an important first step towards the development of socialist consciousness. If it leads on to an understanding of the class nature of capitalist society and the need for united, mass struggle, argues HANNAH SELL, in a shortened version of an article first published in Socialism Today No.192, October 2015.

Over recent years there has been a growth in support for what can broadly be described as ‘identity politics’ among many mainly young people who are rightly angry about and radicalised by, their experience of sexism, racism, homophobia, prejudice against disabled people and other forms of oppression. In one sense, asserting the importance of their identity is an inevitable part of the political awakening of many members of oppressed groups within society. Recognising that you are oppressed, and that you can fight against your oppression through a common struggle with others who share the same oppression, is a vital first step.

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In a 2003 article CHRISTINE THOMAS looked back at the life and ideas of the Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollantai, a pioneer of the struggle for socialism and women’s liberation. The second part, focusing on the post-1917 period, was published in Socialism Today, issue No.73, March 2003. The complete article has only been available online until now.

Alexandra Kollantai is probably the best-known woman among Russian revolutionaries, the first woman elected as a full member of the Bolshevik central committee and the first female commissar (minister) elected after the October 1917 revolution.

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A selection of Socialism Today articles

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