Editorial:

Long live International Women's Day

International Women's Day (IWD), (March 8) originated as a day 
on which the working class and revolutionary movements marked the 
common struggle for social, political and economic rights for 
women. For many years IWD took the form of militant marches and 
other actions in support of equal pay, the right to work, rights 
of married women, the right to vote, for women's services and 
women's reproductive rights, and many other social, economic and 
political rights, and against the exploitation of women.

Some progress was made. Women won the right to vote; gains were 
won on pay rates; education, childcare, women's services, 
abortion, non-discriminatory legislation, and some "male" areas 
of work opened to women. Many more women gained some measure of 
economic independence.

Today many of the gains of years of struggle around women's 
rights are being wound back. The Howard Government, since its 
election in 1996, has implemented policies that discriminate 
against women. It has withdrawn funding from programs and 
services that were trying to deal with the consequences of 
already existing inequality. The result has been sharp cut-backs 
in services, the closure of rape crisis centres, and too few 
shelters for women and their children who have been made homeless 
through domestic violence, eviction, unemployment and poverty.

Legal advice, English as a second language classes and many other 
valuable services have also been hit. Migrant and Indigenous 
women who already faced the greatest disadvantages, have born the 
brunt of many of these cuts. Muslim women are on the receiving 
end of the hatred and racist sentiments being fomented by leading 
politicians and some sections of the commercial media.

The population in women's prisons has increased, the highest 
percentage increase being in Indigenous women. Most are victims 
themselves of physical abuse and drug and alcohol dependency. 
Many are caught in a cycle of poverty perpetuated by the 
Government's punitive welfare regime.

The exploitation of women as sexual objects in the commercial 
media and advertising has reached levels that not so long ago 
would have been publicly unacceptable.

Why has the forward progress been stopped and even wound back on 
nearly all fronts in Australia and many other countries? The 
great leap forward in women's rights was in the period following 
WW2. That was when the socialist states (in Eastern Europe and 
the Soviet Union) implemented and practiced equality between the 
sexes at a level never before achieved. The national liberation 
movements of the former colonial countries also took steps to end 
the oppression of women in some countries.

In Australia, the campaign for women's rights was led by the 
militant progressive organisations, such as the Union of 
Australian Women, with strong participation by the sections of 
the organised labour movement. The struggle for women's rights 
was given huge impetuous by Communist Parties as they added 
theoretical substance and backing to the women's movement, 
drawing on such figures as Engels, Lenin, Clara Zetkin and Rosa 
Luxembourg.

Novelists and poets such as Katherine Susannah Prichard, Joan 
Williams, Mena Calthorpe and many more came to the fore. In the 
field were outstanding and dedicated activists such as our own 
Phyllis Johnson. But gradually the objectives of the women's 
movement were diverted. Certain trends emerged, such as the 
posing of women against men, targetting all men as "the enemy" 
and denying men any role in the struggle for women's 
emancipation.

In some quarters the struggle for "status" and breaking through 
the so-called "glass ceiling" has become the priority. These are 
essentially the aspirations of individual middle class women to 
move up in the bourgeois world.

These ideas weakened and divided the women's movement, removed 
the objective of ending exploitation. At the same time the ever-
flexible ruling class moved subtly to divert and pretend to 
support the banners of the women's movement. Even John Howard 
appointed a women's issues adviser.

At the same time as these trends were being pushed by the 
capitalist ruling class, the socialist states of eastern Europe 
and the Soviet Union were broken up and many of the gains made by 
women in those countries were lost.

However, the cause of women's emancipation and equality has not 
gone away. It will re-emerge strongly in the future as part of a 
new wave of struggle for socialism, a society that is alone 
capable of fulfilling not just the aspirations of women in 
society, but those of all its members.