By Ursula Kempe
This accessible book is based on personal testimonies and interviews, written autobiographies and historical sources. It covers the period from the nineteenth-century to the present day, examining the experiences of women revolutionaries whole struggled against colonialism and imperialism.
The book features women from Palestine, Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, El Salvador, Cuba, South Africa, Ghana and Mali. What it does valuably is to shine a light on women who have been largely ignored in favour of male leaders like Castro, Che Guevara. Mao, Lenin, Yasser Arafat and Nelson Mandela. An important thread which runs through the book is the way in which time after time the struggle for women’s rights was subordinated to the struggle for national liberation, just as all too often women were subservient to men in ‘normal’ everyday life.
Some of the women accepted this view, believing that their very participation in the armed struggle sufficiently demonstrated that the fight for women’s freedom was part of the liberation movement as a whole. Many thought that in the throes of the battle the ‘woman question’ (the revolutionary programme to achieve the liberation of women) was a ‘diversion’ (p.180).
Proponents of the Stalinist stages theory argued that the revolution must first achieve national liberation, then address social oppression, religious persecution, ethnic discrimination, etc. and finally, if we are fortunate, overthrow the bourgeoisie. We only need to look at the vast inequalities in South Africa today, where the ANC did not have the political programme or will to proceed towards the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Trotsky called such a programme permanent revolution.
The political organisations to which many of the women featured in this book belonged were Stalinists or Maoists. Their tactics included underground guerrilla sabotage, bombings, hijackings, bank robberies, police assassinations and even ‘terrorist’ attacks. These tactics are typical of Stalinist and Maoist currents, particularly in countries subjugated by imperialism where few democratic freedoms have been won.
The book highlights the bravery of women revolutionaries who took up these struggles, such as Sara in Kurdistan (imprisoned and tortured) and Marziyeh in Iran (murdered in the street by secret police in 1974).
The sixth chapter on Vietnam and Iran makes clear the blind spots on the Iranian left in relation to women’s oppression. Sadly these attitudes can still be found today.
In an interview Pakistani socialist feminist Ismat Shahjahan, a member of Women’s Democratic Front, says that struggles against imperialism, colonialism and women’s oppression are all feminist ‘because half of humanity is formed by women’ and we need to bring together ‘struggles of women along class and national lines’.
What this leave out is the need for working class and national liberation movements to take up women’s demands, as well as women joining their ranks.
In a similar vein, in the Indian street-play of 1979 Aurat/Woman by Safdar Hashmi, a member of the Indian Communist Party, bourgeois notions of woman’s roles are criticised. It proclaims, ‘without women, there would be no reproduction, no labour-power and thus no capitalism’. While perhaps intended as a call to arms and a proud assertion of the importance or women’s role in reproduction, this could reinforce rather than undermine a gendered division of labour.
In many semi-colonies the lack of democracy, military dictatorships, religious and ethnic persecution, illiteracy, limited rights to land, and social and cultural oppression make the work of socialists far more difficult. Many of the socialist feminists mentioned in this book have tried in difficult circumstances to struggle for women’s rights. For example, in India large numbers of women are raped and even killed when they have to go away from their homes to try to find a place to go to the toilet.
Another country explored in the book is Mali (former colony, French Soudan). Activist Aoua Keita describes how decades ago she joined a Pan-Africanist Party to fight for women’s rights and improved healthcare. Tensions were apparent between women activists and the trade unions, as well as the male-led national liberation movement, who consistently undermined the women’s movement in1959–60.
This included their opposition to women campaigning against polygamy (men having several wives). Even some women were concerned about getting rid of polygamy, as they were afraid they would have no economic support and nowhere to live.
Not mentioned in this chapter on Mali is the subject of female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that is common and has been for at least five decades. The country has no law against it and an estimated 9 out of ten women have undergone this painful, dangerous and life-altering procedure.
This well-researched collection of essays and interviews sheds light on the struggles of socialist feminists who tried to integrate the struggle for women’s rights in the more general struggles for national liberation from imperialism. Despite the limitations of the political organisations these women supported, they risked privations, sexism, and sometimes torture, imprisonment and death to struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Many also actively solidarised with national liberation struggles in other countries.
We learn from this book that much remains to free women and other oppressed groups from exploitation, violence and discrimination. In the semi-colonial world there are clear links between colonialism, and gender-based and sexual oppression, with many discriminatory laws and practices originating in colonialism and the import of Christianity.
To ignore the burning need for women’s liberation in the struggle for national liberation and socialism weakens and divides those movements in the name of a shallow ‘unity’ and commitment to a failed schema for the stages of revolutionary struggle.
But neither should we be complacent here in the ‘enlightened’ West that attitudes and behaviour towards women activists or action to fight for their causes are that much better. Look at the scandals of sexual harassment and exclusion in the GMB, TSSA and RMT, not to mention the Labour Party and many others, including the far left. Nor has the labour movement taken up the social and economic issues of women as forcefully as they should.
An international revolutionary movement needs to be built with a programme that addresses the needs of all the oppressed, from the right to self-determination to the individual right to bodily autonomy, and links these to the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system. A programme that ignores these burning democratic questions and instead demands the oppressed wait for socialism will never reach its goal.
