Communist Party of Australia

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.

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 attacked. In particular during the years of the Howard government which implemented policies that discriminate against women. Funding was withdrawn from programs and services that were trying to deal with the consequences of already existing inequality.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 that have been fomented by leading politicians and sections of the commercial media.

The population in women’s prisons has increased, the highest percentage increase being Indigenous women. Most are victims themselves of physical abuse and drug and alcohol dependency. Many are caught in a cycle of poverty perpetuated by a 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 Frederick Engels, VI 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 Phyllis Johnson of the Communist Party of Australia. But gradually the objectives of the women’s movement were diverted. Certain trends emerged, such as the posing of women against men, targeting all men as “the enemy” and denying men any role in the struggle for women’s emancipation.

Such 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.

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.

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