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In August 1910 the socialist women's conference adopted a proposal to hold a day of action for working women annually. In the first year, the day of action was held on a Sunday in March, but has since been established as the 8th of March.
The German Socialist Clara Zetkin, leader of the International Socialist Women’s Secretariat, convened the conference and proposed the establishment of International Women's Day. 99 women from 17 different countries attended the conference held in Copenhagen in the House of the People in Jagtvej 69 (later known as Ungdomshuset).
One of the conference's main issues was the struggle for w
In August 1910 the socialist women's conference adopted a proposal to hold a day of action for working women annually. In the first year, the day of action was held on a Sunday in March, but has since been established as the 8th of March.
The German Socialist Clara Zetkin, leader of the International Socialist Women’s Secretariat, convened the conference and proposed the establishment of International Women's Day. 99 women from 17 different countries attended the conference held in Copenhagen in the House of the People in Jagtvej 69 (later known as Ungdomshuset).
One of the conference's main issues was the struggle for women's suffrage, that only very few countries had introduced. The Danish women won the right to vote for city councils in 1908 but only received the right to vote for parliamentary elections in 1915.
The resolution from Clara Zetkin states:
"In agreement with the class-conscious political and trade union organisations of the proletariat in each country, the socialist women in all countries shall organise a Women's Day every year. First of all, the Women’s Day shall have the aim of achieving universal suffrage for women. This claim shall be in line with the socialist understanding of the entire women's rights issue. The Women’s Day shall be international in its nature and must be prepared meticulously. ”1
The Conference decided that the demands for the day of struggle should be
The struggle for women's suffrage
The fight against the threat of war
The fight for care for mother and child
The fight against price rises2
The first International Socialist Women's Conference had been held in Stuttgart in 1907 as a prelude to the Second International Congress. In 1889 the second International was founded under the auspices of Engels. The German Social Democrats, who played a central role in the International, had established already in the 1890s a women's secretariat headed by Clara Zetkin.
Until then there had been a relatively free flow between the labour movement and the women's movement, which considered itself to be trans-political, but in particular was filled with petty bourgeois women. However, in 1907 the labour movement decided to put the issue of women’s suffrage at the top of the agenda and also to stop cooperation with the "bourgeois" women's organisations and instead conduct its own campaign.
Now it was made clear that it was working class women for whom the Socialists fought and that the women's issue could not be separated from the class issue and the fight against all oppression and for a socialist society.
Petty bourgeois women did not see the women’s question as a class issue, but believed that all women had the same interests across classes. For them it was about the right to vote, to education and, for example, the possibility of becoming lawyers and doctors. Marxists also struggle for full equality before the law and in education, etc., but we also explain that although equality before the law may be established this does not mean that oppression will disappear, as we have already seen. For middle-class women, it means they can have an education, become doctors, etc., but it does not solve the problems of the vast majority of women. Marxists are fighting, therefore, against this kind of petty bourgeois feminism, which does not see class antagonisms and capital as the enemy, but instead sees it as a common struggle for all women against male-dominated society.
Marxists are fighting for full women's emancipation, but are against feminism, because it is a petty bourgeois school of thought that ignores class antagonisms. At the same time, we recognise that many good socialists consider themselves to be feminists, and we want to struggle together with anyone who will fight for women's emancipation through socialism.
In Denmark, the trade unions and the Social Democrats took the same position as the International and in 1908 adopted the following:
There is only one labour movement. It deals with the education of the members and the socialist voters.
There is no room for separate women's associations in the party. There is only room for women's unions in trades without men and subordinate to the central organisation.
Women's access to the party must be facilitated. They are to pay half the subs.
The women's movement and women's parties [independent of the party] are superfluous.
In 1914 the First World War broke out, and it also fractured the international socialist movement into two wings between the reformist and revolutionary, a split that was further deepened by the Russian revolution.
The reformists believed that you could reform your way to a just society by, for example achieving suffrage for all, fighting for higher wages, etc. They defended the capitalist society and merely wanted to change it gradually. On the other side stood the revolutionaries, among others Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, who explained that you couldn’t simply change society gradually. Any concession from the capitalists is a struggle and liberation cannot be achieved without changing society fundamentally. It was primarily the revolutionary wing, that after the Russian Revolution founded the Third Communist International, which maintained the celebration of the 8th March as International Women's Day.
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