Urte March reviews Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Aruzza, et al

The United Nations has reported that domestic violence is the biggest killer of women across the world. The report looks at data from 2017, during which time 87,000 women were murdered and 58% of them by their partner or a family member.

On June 14, in Switzerland, around half a million people took part in the women's strike. In all major cities, but also in parts of the country that are not well organised politically or in trades unions, women, especially those who work in the care sector or education, were on strike. In many places, strikes and actions began in the morning and spread throughout the day. According to the Swiss Confederation of Trade Unions, some 100,000 people took part in the strike on the morning of 14 June.

ON 6 FEBRUARY 1918, the Representation of the People Act extended the franchise to some women over 30 and all men over 21, so that for the first time in the history of Britain’s ‘centuries old democracy’, a majority of the adult population had the right to vote. Yet millions of the women who had […]

Working class women across the country are confronting austerity and winning local battles. Bringing these class fighters together to forge a working class women’s movement has the potential to bring the cuts government to its knees, argues Joy Macready You can hear the rumble. Snippets here and there, up and down the country. Impressive victories […]

The methodology of ‘intersectionality’ is currently gaining increased support on the left in the UK. Joy Macready argues why it shouldn’t be used as the basis for a socialist approach to liberation ‘Intersectionality’, or the study of how multiple systems of oppression or discrimination interact, is gaining prominence amongst the left in the UK. For […]

Joy Macready reviews 'Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (2013)'

In celebration of International Women’s Day and as part of an ongoing debate about the principles of women’s organisation and the revolutionary movement, Joy Macready looks at the history of early Soviet Russia and its lessons for today The Marxist position on women’s liberation owes a great debt to a remarkable group of women in […]

Revolutionary communists start from the view that working class women are the central agency in the struggle against their own oppression, aided at every step by class-conscious working class men. As Lenin wrote: “We say that the emancipation of the workers must be effected by the workers themselves, and in exactly the same way the […]

International women’s day needs to be put back on the map as a rallying point for women’s liberation around the world, writes Joana Ramiro  

We need a new women’s movement based on both gender and class politics, argues Jo Cassidy

Betty Friedan, who died last month, was a key figure in the modern women’s movement. Her book, The Feminine Mystique, published in the United States in 1963, galvanised women into action and shook up the picture of the ideal family that dominated US life in the post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Friedan came […]

Andrea Dworkin died last month. Dworkin was seen by most as an intransigent, man-hating radical feminist. She wrote extensively about male violence, drawing upon her own experiences.Dworkin had a very traumatic life. She suffered anti-Semitism and sexual abuse from a very young age. Then, after decades as a feminist writer and lecturer she was drugged […]

Workers Power 279 October 2003 One hundred years ago this month the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded. The WSPU became the militant wing of a mass movement of women fighting for the vote. Within this organisation many of the direct action tactics used today were first developed. Kirstie Paton and Stuart King […]

Sylvia Pankhurst developed a very different view from her mother and older sister of how the vote for women could be achieved. Although she did not speak out against it, she was opposed to the ‘terrorist’ turn which she believed “retarded a wonderful movement which was rising to a great climax”. For Sylvia a successful […]