The Power of Women’s Liberation
The eighth of March was declared Women’s Emancipation Day by Clara Zetkin, a German socialist, at a 1910 Socialist Internationale meeting for women in Copenhagen, Denmark. I mention this because from the beginning of International Women’s Day, women’s struggles have been connected to class struggle. Some sources say that International Women’s Day started in the United States in 1908 in connection to a march demanding women’s suffrage [right to vote] and an end to child labor.
Women’s struggle for liberation is a leading force in all liberation work. Women have played pivotal roles in every movement against colonialism, imperialism, war, racism, and the other oppressions.
I have celebrated International Women’s Day through most of my adult years. Together with other women I have organized or been in marches for women’s rights and made speeches and given talks at marches, on panels, and in international women’s organisations.
This year I joined a group of young women from Extinction Rebellion. They chained themselves to a fence that had been put up to prepare for construction in a place containing wildlife and endangered species. Our message was that we were fighting for and protecting life, as females. At the time of this writing, the group has prevented the bulldozers from entering the place for eight days.
We celebrated International Women’s Day in my RC leaders’ class. We remembered the many glorious women’s workshops led by Diane Balser [International Liberation Reference Person for Women] when she was in Denmark, at which we learned about “female first” and not accepting human separation. We remembered battles and victories, both personal and in the wider world. I talked about the history of International Women’s Day up to the present. I reminded us all that men are not the enemy, that they and we share a common goal of a world free from all oppression, including sexism and male domination. We are fighting together against the oppression. And no revolution will succeed without the work of ending sexism at its core.
My leadership in RC and in the world is forever inseparable from my being female. For members of my class, working for women’s liberation has been an opening to a larger perspective, more understanding of the world, and more activism and political work. Women’s liberation work has put the revolutionary aspect of RC at the center of what we do.
Copenhagen, Denmark
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 204, July 2021)