This document is one of the resolutions from the 12th World Congress of ISA (formerly the CWI), which took place in January-February 2020. Following a certain delay due to pressing work and interventions into the stormy world situation, it was uploaded to our archive in July 2020, for the benefit of our readers. Documents were agreed on World Relations, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and on women’s struggles and socialist feminism.
In the last 10 years, millions of women in all continents have taken to the streets again and again to protest widespread rape, femicide and other manifestations of gender oppression. Massive and determined movements against violence against women like Ni Una Menos were built up in Latin-America. In Argentina one woman is killed every 40 hours, in Brazil it’s every 2 hours.In 2018 thousands of women met to organise the struggle in Argentina. In Chili in 2019 women took the initiative to denounce rapists through a choreography and the dance spread around the world. This struggle also links up with the struggle of trans people for their right to exist and against the violence they are confronted with, Brazil being the country in the world with most killings of trans people. But continuing mass protests also shook countries like India, South-Africa and Spain, to name but a few, and the movement is still spreading.
In some countries concessions were won: in India for instance police officers can now be given 2 year prison sentences for refusing to accept a complaint for sexual violence, in Spain the movement forced higher sentences for the “wolf pack” and obtained more means to be invested in the struggle against sexual violence. As a result of the struggle and growing politisation the first two trans women were elected to state parliament in Sao Paulo (Brazil), which helps making trans people visible and can be a boost to the struggle.
Abortion rights have been obtained in Ireland, a struggle in which the bold intervention of our comrades played a decisive role. The example of Ireland inspired women in different countries, leading to a victory in South-Korea and sparking a movement in Argentina, where a pro-choice bill was rejected with a small minority and where the fight will continue. Movements in Spain and Poland stopped the attempts of right wing conservative governments to turn the clock back on abortion rights. It shows how a determined mass struggle can push back conservative forces in this important field. Lessons of this should be discussed in the movement in the USA, where the coming to power of Trump has led to an ongoing attack on this fundamental right, the same as in Norway, where the parliament restricted the right to abortion.
Me Too, and its various international variants, has encouraged millions of women all over the world to speak out against harassment and violence in every walk of life, in the home, on the street, in the workplaces. We welcome this breaking of the taboo around sexual harassment, explaining the limits of individual action and court cases and the need to organise collective struggle, to show the justice system that women are not going to take this anymore and to take the struggle into the trade unions and the workplaces.
Struggles have since then erupted in many workplaces, including Google and McDonalds. In June 2019 it led to the adoption by the International Labour Organisation of a convention against violence and harassment at work. In many countries trade unions are already taking up this struggle in the workplace, but we’ve still got a long way to go.
Violence against women is also economic violence: all over the world a gender wage gap is still in place, keeping women in dependent positions, meaning for many women it’s a “choice” between poverty and homelessness or remaining in an abusive relationship. But the fight back has started. In Iceland a women’s strike imposed a law on wage equality (2018),in Glasgow a strike of women workers for equal pay, which was met with spontaneous solidarity walk-outs from male refuse collectors and other workers, won important concessions on wages for the local public workers (2018).In 2019 an impressive nationwide feminist strike in Switzerland took place and pressure is mounting on the government and bosses to act.
Women all over the world have realised that just lobbying the establishment parties and institutions is not enough. They have taken up the fight, using working class methods of struggle like mass mobilisation and strike, including the feminist strike. The partial victories that have been won are important as they push the movement onwards, but much more is needed to stop this worldwide epidemic of violence, harassment and humiliation of women and gender non-conforming people.
Women at the forefront in working class and youth struggles
Young women are also everywhere in the first ranks of the climate movement, from Sweden to Kabul, after female leaders already having been a prominent feature in all major student struggles. Often they stand tall against outright sexist attempts of ruling class figures to ridicule and belittle them. In all the massive movements of the last decade women have been an important component part of these movements, combining the central demands of the movement and specific women’s demands. In 2018 hundreds of thousands of women went to the streets against Bolsonaro with the slogan #NotHim, in Sao Paulo there were more than a half million. In spite of Bolsonaro’s victory this force hasn’t disappeared as a strong element of resistance against the government of the extreme right and will resurface in the near future.
After already three decades of neoliberalism that ground down all systems of social security, public services, health care and affordable public housing, the 2008 economic crisis unleashed a massive acceleration of austerity. People dying of curable diseases because they can’t afford care or medication, whole families ending up without a roof over their head, children going to school without food in their bellies, students working in the sex-industry to pay for their education… have become a “normal” feature of daily life even in the richest countries in the world. At the same time working conditions in care and public services, which are heavily feminised sectors, have become more and more untenable, with an epidemic of work related diseases as burnouts, depressions and chronic back pain. The reprivatisation of care work hits women twofold: firstly as workers in those sectors, who tend to earn low wages and lower pensions as a result; secondly as unpaid workers at home in the care for children, sick and elderly people. The ongoing austerity has pushed the workers in such sectors to fight, with for instance teachers being in the forefront of the recent struggles in North-Africa.
This is the background against which we see today a world wide determined struggle of the mostly female workers in education and health care. These struggles put forward demands for more personnel, on wages and working conditions, but also the demand for quality services that are accessible to all, taking up the needs of the majority of the population and of the poorest layers in society.
Since the 1980’s the proletarianisation of growing layers of women, which is an underlying force behind the women’s movement, went hand in hand with privatisation of public services, deregulation and the massive creation of jobs in private services. This led to a massive and growing sector in which low wages and precarious contracts make it impossible for the workers to live off their wages. Many women are forced into part time work because they still do the bulk of domestic work. There are still big layers of women who remain dependent on their partners’ wages, which can trap poor and working class women in relationships they don’t want want to be in anymore. The precarious contracts in often non-unionised workplaces make it extremely difficult for women to fight workplace harassment.
Many of these struggles are taken up by the trade unions under pressure of their rank and file, in which ever more women are active. However, in a whole range of countries workers had to organise outside of the trade unions as they were either not present or their leaderships not prepared to fight. In the Netherlands and in West Virginia the first strikes in education were organised by a Facebook appeal by individual teachers and only when the struggle was spreading the trade unions were prepared to back it up. These struggles were key in igniting a resurging militant labour movement.
Our comrades need to fight in the trade unions so they take up these issues, the fight for a living wage and secure contracts for all workers as well as for quality public services, but also to take up the fight against workplace harassment. Working class women fighting on all issues, and raising their own specific demands, will lift the boat of the whole working class of all genders, including improving the consciousness and attitudes on these questions.
Socialists must also fight for their trade unions to start a unionisation campaign in so far unorganised sectors. Where trade unions are absent or unwilling we must help workers organise in workplace committees and campaigns.
But women do not only play an important role in workplace struggles. As the scandals in Britain about the common practice of sleazy landlords requesting sex from their female tenants in lieu of rest showed, the high prices for housing put women in a very vulnerable position. Studies also show a high rate of sexual abuse of homeless women. It is therefore no coincidence that we see in many places massive campaigns around the issue of affordable housing, in which women play an important and leading roles, as in the PAH (Platform of Citizens Affected by Mortgages) in Spain.
It is also generally the case that women vote more to the left. In the US a lower percentage of women than men voted for Trump. The difference is even bigger when it’s about support for the hard right. For instance the far right Vlaams Belang in Belgium gets only half the percentage of votes of young women than of young men.
As the history of class struggle shows, it is often the less organised layers of the working class – — women, youth, immigrants – — who are first drawn into struggle. Where the highly organised sectors have often been able through struggle to maintain better conditions, it is these layers who are first forced to struggle because their wages don’t permit a decent life. Their struggle draws in and stimulates the wider struggle of the working class and play an important role in the regeneration of class struggle.
Stop war and ethnic cleansing
After the fall of the Berlin wall, imperialist domination has accelerated, creating inhumane conditions in always bigger parts of the world. Despite the abominations of the stalinist states, the social systems in Russia and Eastern Europe still represented a huge counterweight to capitalism. Their liquidation announced a new period of unbridled conquest and triumphalism for the world market, which forces entire new regions into poverty and misery, with sweatshop conditions in delocated industrial branches and regions forced into subsistence agriculture, creating the harshest conditions possible.
Imperialist wars and conflicts caused by worldwide competition put whole layers of women in danger of being raped as part of the war machine or being forced to flee their native regions, often ending up in refugee camps where abuse is rife or risking their lives and that of their children in trying to reach Europe or the US. These conditions lead to a new rise in outright slavery, women making up 70% of modern slaves. Many of them — women as well as children and gender non-conforming people — end up in the most brutal segments of the Sex-industry.
Many of the regimes that have come under pressure by economic slowdown have consciously pursued a conservative agenda, strengthening patriarchal ideas and the role of the traditional family. In that way in Turkey and in Russia marital rape has been taken out of the penal law, as Erdogan and Putin try to cling to their position by whipping up reactionary prejudices among the most backwards sections of the population. In Latin America the governments of the right and extreme right have brutally attacked social rights, hitting the poorest layers the hardest. In Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile,… we see a genocide against black people and ongoing attacks on indigenous people. In Brazil the government is implementing a policy of public security that permits more violence against black people. Homicide of black women has increased with 54% in the last decade. There is a racist and sexist war taking place in Latin America.
Where western media, establishment parties and international institutions as the UN hypocritically condemn these features of modern life, none of them can be counted on in the struggle to stop these horrific conditions that are inherent in a capitalist society in crisis. The fight is not taken up by them, no allies are found among them. This became clear once more with the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish region in North-Syria, breaking down the relative freedom for women that was obtained in Rojava, with the permission of all imperialist powers.
Where a fight is being had, it is the workers and the oppressed layers of these regions who have launched strikes, movements and outright revolts, in which women find themselves in the forefront. That is a striking feature in the revolts in North Africa and the Middle East, in Latin-America and in the far East. Their allies in these movements are the workers and all the other oppressed groups in society. Across the world, women are at the forefront of the struggle adding strength, determination and consciousness to the struggle as well as making sure that the movement also fights for women’s rights, radical changes in the status of women.
Or as one female teacher said in Sudan: “It was not strange to see so many women at the front in the marches. This is because of growing awareness of women’s rights. Women in time realized they have to stick to their demands”.
No way forward under capitalism — We need to fight again as gains of second wave feminism are under attack by austerity and the rise of right wing populism
All gains under capitalism are partial and temporary, and will often be perverted as capitalism adapts to them and turns them into profit making opportunities. The fact that the revolutionary movements of the 60’s and 70’s stopped half way gave the opportunity to the ruling class to undermine emancipation and drive sexism, racism, LGBTQI+-phobia up again in a bid to divide and rule.
The sexual freedom fought for was used to create a vicious and profit hungry sex industry that reflects, profits from and promotes sexism. The access to work that was an important material basis for the emancipation process in the 60’s and 70’s was used by the bosses to massively create low paid jobs, part time and temporary contracts that don’t permit economic independence and have to be done next to remaining the main providers of unpaid care and services in the home. The democratisation of education, including higher education, was never completed. The cuts in education have led to higher costs for students and their families, with unprecedented numbers of students having to provide the cheapest labour possible in order to pay for their studies, leaving them still with often decades of paying for student loans.
Massive movement have erupted against right wing leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Pinera, to name just a few of those that use populist rhetoric — and outright state violence — against the rights of women, LGBTQI+people, immigrants in an attempt to divide and rule. Their actions have given confidence to right wing and far right groups and individuals to unleash brutal violence against these oppressed layers.
But their actions in government have only accelerated and deepened measures taken by their so-called progressive counterparts as the US-Democrats or bourgeoisified social-democratic parties. Where the Democrats gradually undermined access to abortion rights through massive under-financing of the services needed for it while keeping an often theoretical right, Trump and the whole right went on an outright attack on the right itself.
For socialist-feminists the Clintons, the Mays, the Merkels, the Lams of the world, are class enemies, our allies are the working class movements and the movements of all oppressed people. The working class has the power and the capacity of uniting these struggles against the common enemy that is the parasitic capitalist elite and of transforming society.
What a socialist feminist program is and how it would transform life for everyone
The role women workers play in the regeneration of working class struggle and the role of the feminist movement in pushing forward and strengthening the mass struggles that have erupted in the recent past have an important other aspect: they insert in all those struggles demands that point to the need to change society fundamentally.
The feminist movement has put International Women’s Day back on the agenda as a day of mass struggle. Our sections must take this on, intervene in it or take their own initiatives to fight for a socialist feminist strategy and program, reclaiming this day for working class feminism as it was intended to from the start.
These movements will continue to grow in the coming period, with ups and downs as victories and defeats will have their effect. But the burning need felt by women to obtain full emancipation will push them towards socialist-feminist ideas as the program for women’s emancipation and the program for building a socialist society are one and the same.
We saw a glimpse of what is possible in a world in which this parasitic elite is driven out of power by a working class revolution and the first steps in the transformation of society in a socialist direction in the first five years after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Women obtained for the first time in history not just the right to vote, but abortion rights and divorce on demand, maternity leave and other special working conditions that took in account the double role women play in society — production and reproduction. Free public services like in childcare, education, health care and housing went a long way in emancipating and liberating women of the double day task and the second class position they have in class society. Extensive rights of national minorities in the tsarist empire, including the right to self-determination of oppressed nations, and rights of LGBT-people were put in place.
The nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, including the financial sector, and abolition of the state debt, liberated the means to do this, even in what was one of the poorest and most backward regions in the world. It permitted a truly democratic functioning of society, with democracy not being limited to voting rights, but with workers, through soviet-structures from below, controlling, running and planning the production and services for the benefit of the whole population.
The leaders of the Russian Revolution not only understood the role women — half of the working class — could play in the revolution, paying special attention to their organisation in the ranks of the working class organisations, but also the key role they would have to play in building a socialist society. As the main carers in any form of class society they are key in knowing — and organising for — what is needed to come to a society in which the individual well-being of every single person is the responsibility of the whole society and not the burden of mostly women in the family.
The limited material resources at the disposal of the state and the conditions generated by years of war against the internal and external counter-revolution put extraordinary strains on the plans and intentions of the Bolsheviks in this matter. However, a century later, their legacy and achievements continue to stand out.
Tragically, this truly inspiring building of the first workers’ state that offered unprecedented individual freedom for all through collective democratic organisation, was halted by the failure of revolutionary movements in more advanced countries, not through the will of the masses of those countries, but the betrayal of their leaderships. The isolation of the Russian revolution and the wearing down of the working class by years of civil war, combined with the economic, social and cultural backwardness inherited from the old Tsarist regime, led the ground to a political counter-revolution in the form of the crystallisation of a privileged bureaucracy at the top of the state. This bureaucratisation led to the erosion of many of the revolution’s gains; unsurprisingly, among the first under attack were the rights of women, youth, national minorities and LGBT-people. It led to a horrendous autocratic system.
Any new attempt at building a socialist society needs to take into account these lessons, among which the all important role of a revolutionary party and the need for the working class to build its unity with all the oppressed in order to win. Revolutionaries have to be part of and learn from the movements of all oppressed layers in society, for example the LGTBQI+ movement that has shown how the hetero norm is something that affects everyone, the women’s movement that has shown how men as well are limited in their freedom to choose by strict gender roles, or the independence movement in Catalonia that shows how the whole Spanish state is undemocratic. The working class can only liberate itself as the liberator of the whole of humanity.
