The dawn of our liberation: The early days of the International Communist Women's Movement

http://links.org.au/the-dawn-of-our-liberation-the-early-days-of-the-international-communist-womens-movement
Date Written:  2018-10-13
Publisher:  Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23115

An examination of the early days of the international Communist Women's Movement (CWM). The article focuses on three points in particular: the CWM's ideas on women's emancipation, the relationship with non-communist women's movements and the problematic relationship with male comrades.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

"A chorus of women's voices singing the International is heard in the streets of Moscow. Moscow proletarian women are joyfully marching to the opening of the First International Conference of Communist Women at the Bolshoi Theater. Foreign visitors are also joining in."


"By eight o'clock in the evening the theater is packed. Parterre and tiers are occupied by women workers. The stage is occupied by delegates from Germany, France, England, America, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Bulgaria, India, Georgia, Caucasus and Turkestan."


This is how revolutionary women described the opening of their first conference held in Moscow in July 1920. Twenty-one women representing 19 countries gathered that month to discuss women’s issues in the framework of the Second Congress of the Communist International (or the Comintern). The Comintern had been founded a year earlier, on Vladimir Lenin's initiative, to replace a (Second) Socialist International which had discredited itself by militarist and nationalist policies during the World War I.

Women's emancipation had long been an important point of socialist agenda. The Comintern's program included total equality of rights of men and women in law and practice, integration of women into political life, free education and medical care for women, social measures to ease the burden of housework and childcare, and measures to do away with the sexual double standard for men and women.