Articles from the Committee for a Workers International on women's rights.

CWI statement on International Women's Day March 8, 2004

Women Reclaiming feminism?
Over the last 20 years the women's movement has fragmented Two articles from The Socialist, 3 August 2003

International women's day No to war, fight for women's rights and socialism
TO CELEBRATE International Women's Day (8 March), the CWI is organising a speaking tour of England and Wales by Titi Rasheed of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) in Nigeria. CWI online, 8 March 2003

International Women's Day Women demand an end to war and exploitation.
International Women's Day, 8 March, is commemorated this year on the eve of war. CWI statement, 2 March 2003

For socialism and women's liberation Alexandra Kollantai
As a new generation of women in the anti-war and anti-capitalist movements celebrate International Women's Day (8th March), Chrisitne Thomas looks back at the life and ideas of the Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollantai, a pioneer of the struggle for socialism and women's liberation. CWI online. CWI online, 2 March 2003

"No" really does mean no
THE TRIAL of top snooker player Quinten Hann for rape, highlighted all the prejudices, backward attitudes and myths which still surround this issue. Christine Thomas, 19 July 2002. This article first appeared in The Socialist.

International Women's Day 2002
March 8, International Women's Day, this year should be celebrated to the sound of the cacerolazo - empty pans and lids being clashed noisily together. It is the sound of protest in Argentina - especially of Argentinian women - expressing anger against empty stomachs and no trust in those at the top. CWI Women's Day Statement, 1 March 2002

Women of the world: step up the fight for socialism
The Committee for a Workers' International - with parties, sections and members in 35 countries in all five continents - greets the working women of the world for International Women's Day, 2001. Since the end of the 19th Century, March 8 has been the day on which to commemorate the struggles, the victories, the heroine leaders and the martyrs who have fought to better the lot of women in society.

World March of Women 2000: Against Capitalism which breeds poverty and violence! For a Socialist World!
The 'World March of Women' is a cry for justice on the part of half the world's population. On International Women's Day - March 8 - this year, demonstrations were held in more than 50 countries in every continent. CWI leaflet, 14 October 2000

New Century: New struggles. Women and the fight for a socialist alternative
Working women around the world have a right to expect a new century, especially a new millennium, to bring them a better deal in life. After all, the 20th century saw unimagined strides forward in science, medicine and technology and even in attitudes towards women in society. International Women's Day 2000

Articles from Around the World
Included here are ten articles commissioned by the Committee for a Workers' International for use on and around March 8th - International Women's Day. They have been circulated to the sections and groups of of the CWI in all five continents of the world to be used in their publications, in leaflets and at meetings or events being held around that time. We hope you will find the material informative, inspiring and useful for discussion with people around you - especially, of course, working class women and young women in the schools, colleges etc.

Women fight the system
The Committee for a Workers' International commemorates International Women's Day 1999 - Monday 8th of March - by calling on all socialists and class fighters to help restore the true significance of this day in the calendar of the workers' movement. It is a day for remembering that women constitute half the world's population but carry much more than half the burdens of everyday life. Now, as the world economy enters recession, it is working women of town and country who suffer disproportionately. International Women's Day 1999

Women Workers of the World: Fight for a Socialist Future.
It is more than 140 years since, in New York on March 8th 1857, the first mass demonstration of women workers took place in revolt against abysmal pay and working conditions. It is 150 years since, on the eve of revolution spreading across Europe, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their famous indictment of capitalism - the Communist Manifesto. How far has the lot of half the world's population been bettered since then and how far is there still to go? International Women's Day 1998

Articles from Justice on women's rights:

Covering Up Campus Rape
Women Confront College Administrations' Silence
By Jessica Moore
Justice #36, September 2003

Women Dying for Healthcare
The Failure of For-Profit Healthcare
By Vanessa Fatton
Justice #35, June 2003

Women's Rights Under Attack
By Charlotte Cox
Justice #34, April 2003

Pamphlet:
Fighting for Women
Rights and Socialism

Leon Trotsky on Women

Marx on Women...

"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production." - Karl Marx, from the Communist Manifesto

Fighting For Women's Rights

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The Bush administration and his right-wing backers are conducting a steady assault on women’s rights. Last year marked the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the mass movement that forced the Supreme Court to legalize abortion. But today only 13% of US counties provide abortion access, the result of a steady decline in access under both Republican and Democratic administrations. High costs, forced waiting periods, parental consent laws and mandatory anti-abortion classes create an increasingly hostile environment for women.

These attacks on women’s right to choose are not simply the product of right-wing lobbying efforts. Capitalism in general rests on women’s oppression, sexist ideology, and the traditional family. Most directly, big business does not want to pay for social programs that assist women’s economic independence and relieve the burdens of domestic labor. Affordable abortion access, health-care, child-care facilities, nursing homes, subsidized housing, welfare, etc., are being cut back in order to finance tax cuts for the rich.

Corporations still get away with paying women much less than men for equal work. Moreover, sexist attitudes in the workplace keep women in lower-skilled, lower-paid industries and jobs. Corporations and the politicians they finance actively work to maintain these lucrative inequalities. Sexist ideas are actively encouraged to undermine women’s struggles against inequality.
The struggle for women’s rights is interwoven with the broader struggle against corporate power and capitalism. We need to re-build a mass, radical women’s movement that is completely independent of both corporate controlled political parties. While some Democrats give lip service to women’s rights, any politician who energetically campaigns against the structural realities of sexism will be sidelined early in their career by the pro-big business party leadership. Defending and expanding women’s rights will mean building an independent political movement, uniting the various social struggles together, and fighting to break the political power of big business.

Hands off!

Bush attacks women's right to choose

Last year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the mass grassroots movement that forced the Supreme Court to legalize a woman's right to a safe abortion.

This right is a vital necessity for women to be able to control their own bodies and lives, especially poor and working women.

Though a woman's right to choose is now supported by a majority of Americans, Bush and the religious right are bent on rolling back access to abortion. But women are fighting back. The four largest women's organizations have joined together to organize a massive protest to defend women's abortion rights on Sunday, April 25 in Washington, D.C. The protest organizers estimate that it will be the largest abortion rights demonstration in the capitol in over a decade, if not in U.S. history.

The first ban on an abortion procedure since abortion was legalized came in November 2003 when Bush banned “intact dilation and extraction,” misnamed as “partial-birth abortion,” a term coined by the National Right to Life Committee but not recognized by any medical association. This procedure is vilified for taking place during the third trimester of pregnancy, but it is very rarely used (only .05% of all abortions), only when a fetus is deformed or the mother's life is in danger.

The ban makes no exceptions for when the health of the woman or fetus is at risk or when the pregnancy is due to rape. Many healthcare professionals oppose the ban, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Nurses Association, and the American Medical Women's Association.

The “Partial Birth” Abortion Ban fosters an anti-abortion climate that has already limited the availability of abortions to a mere 13% of U.S. counties according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The ban is an alarming intrusion of government control over women's private lives that opens the door to further limitations on the right to choose, threatening to turn the clock back to the days when thousands of women died every year from illegal, unsafe, back-alley abortions.

Women's rights under attack

This assault on abortion rights comes alongside a series of vicious attacks on women's rights by the Bush administration. Bush declared the Sunday before the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to be "National Sanctity of Human Life Day." He tried to connect abortion with terrorism, stating: "On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life... Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life."

This is coming from a president who lied about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and terrorist links, killing thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, and U.S. soldiers in the process. While Bush spends $400 billion/year on the military and handed out $1.7 trillion in tax breaks for the rich, he has cut funding for healthcare, childcare, and elderly care, disproportionately harming women who are expected to pick up the slack for the reduced services.

Ever since the women's liberation movement forced the Supreme Court to legalize abortion in 1973, the religious right has been dead set on overturning this decision. But given the public's support for a woman's right to choose and the balance of forces in U.S. society, the right wing has been forced, instead, to resort to gradually chip away at women's abortion rights.

But we should be clear - their real agenda is to eventually ban abortion completely.

That is why it is absolutely crucial that as many women and men as possible come to Washington, D.C. on Sunday, April 25, to demonstrate support for a woman's right to choose safe, legal abortion and birth control.

We need to organize abortion rights teach-ins or protests at our campuses, workplaces, and communities in the build-up to April 25 to get busloads of people to Washington, D.C. We need to make April 25 a wake-up call to every person who is not aware that reproductive rights, women's health, and women's lives are on the line.

Should we support Kerry and the Democrats?

We can't wait around expecting judges or Democrats to protect our rights. We need to take to the streets now to defend our rights ourselves. This is how women succeeded in winning the right to choose in the first place. The same is true for how women won the right to vote, which was certainly not won by voting!

The leaders of the main women's organizations (NOW, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Feminist Majority, and Planned Parenthood), however, argue that a key priority is turning out the vote for John Kerry and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, the Democrats' record proves that we can't rely on them to consistently stand up to Bush and the right, much less wage a serious struggle to advance the interests of women.

If Kerry and the Democrats were serious about defending abortion rights, why don't they use their authority and access to the media to help mobilize for April 25 and call for mass protests to stop Bush's attacks on women? They only pay lip service to our demands during election years.

Bush's recent late-term abortion ban only passed due to the support of 17 Democratic Senators, including Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, along with 62 Democratic Representatives.

Campaigning in the 1992 election, Bill Clinton pledged to pass a Freedom of Choice Act to guarantee the right to abortion, but after his inauguration he barely mentioned it again. During the entire eight years that Clinton and Gore occupied the most powerful office in the country, they failed to challenge the numerous restrictions on abortion rights that were passed. Rather than expanding the accessibility of abortion services or making them free, Clinton actually signed into law abortion restrictions for Medicaid recipients, Washington D.C. residents, and federal employees.

The Democrats have a long history of betrayals from Jimmy Carter's signing the Hyde Amendment [see sidebar] to numerous laws that roll back abortion access in states and cities under Democratic control.

The big-business Democratic Party stands completely opposed to the fundamental interests of the majority of women. Rather than funding healthcare, education, and childcare, they spend billions on the Pentagon and imperialist wars. It was Democratic President Clinton who carried out a savage attack on the poor, especially women of color, when he destroyed welfare in 1996.

Our real allies in the struggle against Bush's assault on women are the anti-war movement, the labor movement, LGBT people fighting for same-sex marriage rights, and people of color opposing racism. On all of these issues, big business and the Democrats are on the other side of the barricades. By linking up with these other struggles we can multiply our power and beat back Bush and his right-wing, corporate agenda. Organizing powerful, mass protests like April 25 can make it politically unfeasible for politicians from either party to erode women's rights. But let's not stop there. Let's use April 25 as a springboard to build a massive women's movement that fights sexism on all fronts. Real choice means:

• Safe, accessible, free abortion on demand for women of all ages
• Safe, free birth control and an end to forced sterilization
• Money for jobs, healthcare, and education, not war and occupation
• Free, high quality healthcare, education, 24-hour childcare, pre-natal care, and elderly care
• A $500/week minimum income for those caring for children, the elderly, or the needy, and for those who are unemployed
• Paid parental leave from work
• Equal pay for equal work
• An end to sexual harassment, domestic violence, and rape

Rolling back abortion access

• The number of abortion providers has fallen by 66% in the past 20 years.
• Since 1995, states have enacted 335 anti-abortion measures.
• 33 states have laws requiring parental consent for minors.
• 18 states require a waiting period and "counseling" (usually anti-abortion).

In 1977 the Hyde Amendment was signed into law by Democratic President Jimmy Carter, denying all federal funding for abortion and eliminating access for large numbers of poor women. Weeks after the passage of this amendment, Rosie Jimenez, a Medicaid recipient and mother of two, bled to death from a back-alley abortion.

To get involved, get abortion rights stickers or campaign materials:

(612) 760-1980,