Judith Woodward Discrimination Acts and the minister. We've got equality - or have we?
ne capitalist economic crisis is hitting the whole working class is hitting women Despite acts of parliament, despite (or rather because of) a woman prime minister, unemplovment and cuts in social services fall harshly on women as they work harder the home - to fill the gap.
Abortion rights are under attack, rape and violence against women are In the United States the pattern is the same Decomine senators and even Juages and are even allowed to mine coal, but abortion is virtually illegal in some states, both contraception and abortion are very difficult to obtain for young people and the Equal Rights Amendment will not be passed.
Every time capitalism
takes it away with the other. In order to fight for our liberation as women we have to light the social structures that keep in chains. prime ministers. Whose side on depends on which class you're in Untortunately the Labour leadership does not offer a clear alternative. minister for women's affairs, but they have not said wriwl tney are gome to night tor and how they are going to organise women.
And there is a problem with the that people inside Labour •SCC women's rights — they tend to reduce to geling more women into nostions of power and influence within the party and parliament.
It would be a pity if the fight for positive discrimination within party's structures was reduced to this, and if women in the party saw their main task as that of challenging male prejudices isn't just question men s a matter o. fighting the social structures aictate inal women's Tole 1s in the Tamily, in a position of economic and social dependence. when Sylvia Pankhurst was first organising working Common Market regula- but hardest.
the world in the 1960s.
especially in the major women and men alike challenge the Women are thousands gives been done in Britain fragettes Maggie has WOLICIS you're abortion watershed for us, Nation were the working class.
for the United States, the the draft, women should be into the armed forces as well up used armed developing which The modern women's liberation movement was com our or the sirue gle of workers and students all over •It did a creat deal to start to challenge women's subordinate role. It identified the role of women in the tamy and ar nome their subordinate role. It changed the lives and atitudes of many working class was it began to JECT women's biology meant that they had an inferior and subordinate role in But the women's movement did more than just change atitudes. It started womer detence of ineir rignis, wnien nad no since the sufThe women's movement also forced the labour movement into action rights, limited way, and despite the fact that not many working women were active In The abortion campan est.
campaign was WOHH abortion rights and women's liberclass issues, issues which confront the ruling class and benefit This is important today because ment once again class limes are starting to force divide the women's movement internatonaly, Por example the Nationa Organisation of Women (NOW) in Torics. year), has a leadership which argues tions of Reagan, far from opposing for drafted This is not at all in the interests of women, but only in the interest of the and Us ruling class, and its preparations leaders force against the TEVO EBOTS America and the Middle East. Such a leadership has nothing worthwhile to say to the mass of working women.
There are some important Tessons to learn from the suffragettes if we want to take forward the building of a mass women's movement with a clear The women's movement at the beginning of the 20th century in Bri quarter of t million people marched into Hyde Park to demand votes for women. Yet this mass movement eventually delivered into the hands of the ruling class instead of carrying the fight for women's liberation to its logical conclusion Tabustne workers of Dublin were locked out by the bosses. At the Countess the nationalist women of Ireland in the Cuman na this point, suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst CETAC against Home Rule for Ireland in stead of identifying with the struggle of Irish nationalist women. Instead Christabel said the suffragettes woul their leader Carson, simply because Carson was in favour of votes for In 1914, when the first imperialist war broke out, the suffragettes supported the war effort. They ended up calling for a rapid return of a Tory oi the move developing into powertu whole whimpering full stop, co-opted by the It was derailed by its leadership's failure to deal with major ciass istow did this happen? How did Christabel, who started as a member the Independent Labour Party end up as a Tory candidate?
One reason was the attitude which prevailed inside the labour movemen most importantly of Labour Although working organised around the fight for the vote, the trade union and the Labour Party did not come round to it until it and with the active hostility of sections of the labour bureaucracy, peo ple like Christabel were driven into the arms of the Tories and the ruling Christabel herself did not have the FIGE 0 2 FOR/ V0BS JOI N9 CLC base of the movement that we have to build. It can only be women, and first and foremost the who demands.
'None are so fitted to break the chains as those who wear Them, none so wel equipped to decide what is a ferter. In its march towards freedom, the work. ing class must cheer on the efforts o those women, who the ages have risen to strike them off and cheer all the louder if in its hatrea of thraidom and passion for freedom, thetamena fores adot the militant wwwsoever cannes me ourworks orie citadel Contre lasse sons for women lasting gains libcration.
Today we are beginning to see the ment of women within the labour movement itscif, where demands for WOHeIS ticulated. This is reflected in women's were committees inside the unions and the women's sections of the Labour Party which are growing. It is and sexual harassment. It is reflected in the prepared to fight this government Despite the recession and its effects joining the unions at twice the rate of Tractional roles an the labour metemens are e dem chator post be movement are being discrimination, The debate on positive action is posis an arrou chalenge to me wal women are traditionally reserve army of labour.
These changes are beginning to lay the basis for a women within the labour movement - one which will not meckly ask for the re-distribution of wealth betweer men and women or just fight for a change of attitudes, but will challenge Unfortunately there are socialists within the labour movement who see this as a recipe for saying that women have to wait for socialism before they can demand their rights. This is exactly what the suffragettes were told by the likes of MacDonald and other Labour leaders. nonsense! Women must begin the struggle for their liberation now Suppose that struggled for the right to vote? All and workers would have been set back bi the denial of this basic democrati right.
If women had not struggled to defend abortion rights in the last five or SIX YCArS WC would have heen set back LONEL oppresse thel James Connolly said:
feeling on the labour.
of oppression the working women's CUTE being arreflected in which women challenged creches and so on used as a mass movement of whole.
whole dangerous women had WE MAY somet haven't gone a l by getting the v let up and these the trade unions us. And it's all o tion for a woma Labour Party fes Saturday 5 June Coaches are towns including train from Mand Coventry, five fi If your Labou transport yet thi Why not get your workplace from Ferrantis i currently on stri Chocolate facto organise a deleg Let's take th have a festival b of this Tory gov a hundred years ing to organise : Women strikers at Lee Jeans won
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tions on women's employment. We've got women into parliament and now we've even got a woman prime
fomen 13 role in society e came 100r challenge
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