The socialist feminist conference of International Socialist Alternative (ISA) couldn’t have come at a more important time. On the one hand, there is the brutal situation facing women across the world. For example, when Jane Barros from Brazil and the International Women’s Bureau opened the conference, she drew attention to the harrowing conditions of particularly Black and indigenous women in Latin America, where 118 million women are living below the poverty line and in Argentina 50 women were killed in January alone. On the other hand, almost every country has witnessed huge protests and uprisings by women in the last two years.
This was the backdrop to the first discussion on “Marxism and the struggle against women’s oppression today”. Sarah Moayeri from Austria introduced the discussion by highlighting the common features of the women’s movement, particularly how opposition to gendered violence is at its core, along with a deep mistrust of the capitalist establishment and the police in particular. The role of socialists within this movement is to raise arguments on why gendered violence is systemic, that we can’t rely on the police to keep us safe and point to the need for a fundamental change of the system.
Members from the US, including Socialist Alternative councillor in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, pointed out the bankruptcy of liberal or pro-capitalist feminism which argues for women to ‘lean in’ to get further in the workplace or in politics. This needs to be counterposed in the movement with the need for socialist feminist struggle, which is collective struggle uniting the working class to win gains for all working and oppressed people. Despite ebbs and flows in the size of protests by women in different countries, the general trend is towards an undermining of post-modern, ‘post-feminist’ arguments, which are seen by wider layers of peopleas incapable of dealing with the problems that working class women face. It is not automatic that the rejection of ‘girl boss feminism’ will result in the development of a socialist consciousness, but in the context of a growing anti-capitalism amongst young women in particular, there is increasing support for socialist ideas.
Socialist feminist activists from Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Britain and Israel-Palestine developed these points in the discussion, pointing to the radicalisation of young people on various issues of oppression and climate destruction, that it is often the same people who are on protests against gendered violence and victim blaming, the Black Lives Matter protests and participating in the climate strikes. Contributions from Quebec, Brazil, Cyprus and Canada showed the reasons why more women are moving into action, namely in response to neo-liberalism and the impact it has had in the previous decades on women, and how this has been compounded by the experiences during the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, as Anja from Belgium and the IWB talked about in the closing remarks, in many countries there are new layers of working class women moving into action, not waiting for ‘establishment feminists’ or not being satisfied with the small concessions they are calling far, instead looking towards the need for system change. And these new layers will bring the struggle against women’s oppression into other struggles, such as is happening in the revolutionary movement in Myanmar.
During the course of the weekend, over 80 people from 22 sections of ISA participated in commissions on the current struggle of women, an historical look at second wave feminism, reviewing ISA’s socialist feminist work in previous decades and building ISA amongst women today. The conference concluded with a pledge to fight against sexism in all its forms, including in the workers’ movement, and to build a revolutionary organisation in which all oppressed people can participate in free from prejudice and discrimination.
In closing, it was noted that almost exactly 100 years ago, an international women’s conference had taken place, that of the Third International. Inspirational Marxist Clara Zetkin had summed that conference up by saying “We women are not discouraged by what lies behind us, nor are we afraid of what threatens us. Our eyes are fixed on the shining goal of communism, which will liberate humanity. And despite everything, we have only one slogan: ‘Onward!”. A century later, the ISA has its eyes fixed on the same ‘shining goal’ and this international conference provided us with the determination to fight alongside the millions of workers and oppressed internationally to achieve it.
