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By Rowan McArthur and others “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.” – This is a quote from the Russian Revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. This has been proven, time and again, with women being at the forefront of resistance and struggle. Women led the march from Paris to Versailles which forced King Louis XVI and his family to move to Paris and recognise a new constitution in 1789, called men out on strike sparking the Russian revolution of 1917 and women play a key role in strikes and the mass movement resulting in and continuing on the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. All throughout history women have smashed sexist stereotypes of being passive, weak females, and joined in, lead and defended mass movements, revolts, riots, strikes and revolution!
Fighting against their oppressors for peace, equality, bread and justice has united working class women and men since the beginning of class society and can still be seen throughout the world today. But joining in the struggle has not always been easy for women as one article states ‘the rise of modern industry often set men and women against each other, as employers tried to use women as cheap labour to undermine men's traditional skills and organisations, while men tried to exclude women from many skilled trades. Within the working-class movement there were many reactionary ideas about women, the worst perhaps being among the followers of Proudhon (an anarchist) in France, who said, 'Woman must be housewife or whore,' and wanted to exclude women from the workforce altogether.’
However Marx and Engels, in their first important piece of political writing, the Communist Manifesto of 1848, came down clearly on the side of women. This had been proven by the militancy of women in the early 19th century. The poet Southey wrote about a women glovemakers' protest in 1807: 'Women are more disposed to be mutinous: they stand in less fear of the law . . . and therefore in all public tumults they are foremost in violence and ferocity.'
The ferocity of women was also noted in the Derby silk riots of 1833 and the 'Plug Plot' strikes in Lancashire in 1842. Women readily joined the trade unions that sprang up in the 1820s and 1830s, and were involved in Britain's first socialist movement. This was later proven again in 1871 during the Paris commune where thousands of women were apart of and took up arms to defend a workers government. Tony Cliff explains ‘On the first day of the Commune, the 18th of March, women played a crucial role in neutralising the troops sent by Thiers to seize the cannons of the National Guard. At Montmartre General Lecomte gave the order to fire. At this the women spoke to the soldiers: “Will you fire upon us? On your brothers? Our husbands? Our children?” General d’Aurelles de Paladine describes what happened: The women and children came and mixed with the troops. We were greatly mistaken in permitting these people to approach our soldiers, for they mingled among them, and the women and children told them: “You will not fire upon the people”. This is how the soldiers of the 88th, as far as I can see, and of another line regiment, found themselves surrounded and did not have the power to resist these ovations that were given them. People were shouting, “Long live the line!”
Faced with this unexpected intervention, the soldiers hesitated. A warrant officer stood in front of his company and shouted: “Mutiny!” Thereupon the 88th battalion fraternised with the crowd. The soldiers arrested their general.
In the rue Houdon crowds of women assembled. General Susbielle gave the order to charge. “But, intimidated by the women s cries, the cavalry, ‘backed up their horses’, which made people laugh. Everywhere ... the crowd, mostly composed of women, surrounded the soldiers, stopped the horses, cut the harnesses, forced the ‘bewildered’ soldiers to fraternise with their ‘brothers’ in the National Guard.”
Tony Cliff presents the writings that one reactionary writer had to say about women in the Paris commune:
The weaker sex behaved scandalously during these deplorable days ... Those who gave themselves to the Commune – and there were many – had but a single ambition: to raise themselves above the level of man by exaggerating his vices ... They were all there, agitating and squawking ... the gentleman’s seamstresses; the gentleman’s shirt- makers; the teachers of grown-up schoolboys; the maids-of-all-work ... What was profoundly comic was that these absconders from the workhouse unfailingly invoked Joan of Arc, and were not above comparing themselves to her ... During the final days, all of these bellicose viragos held out longer than the men did behind the barricades.
In Russia even before the first mass strike wave of 1905-7, women were a substantial part of the new industrial labour force and had begun to take strike action for specifically women's demands such as maternity rights, time off for breast-feeding and laundry days, and the end of sexual abuse by management, as well as for improved pay and other conditions. During the early years of the First World War, women organised to fight falling wages and factory layoffs; they formed unions of domestic servants, soldiers' wives, laundry workers and bakery workers, as well as the older textile and manufacturing unions.
On International Working Women’s Day, 8th of March 1917, the women in Petrograd decided to celebrate by striking and walking down the streets in protest demanding Bread and Peace. The striking women went to the workplaces of their male comrades throwing snowballs through windows and calling them out to join them bringing over 50,000 workers on strike. This sparked off a strike wave which two days later had spread to 240,000 workers and mass demonstrations surging through Petrograd, two days after this soldiers changed to the side of the workers and the Tsar abdicated, ending a line of tyrannical and oppressive rulers which had lasted for centuries.
This sparking off of strikes and mass demonstrations eventually led to the Russian government being smashed in October and in its place a system of workers and soldiers councils was formed. Before this women and men were not equal, women could not choose who to marry, homosexuality was illegal, sex was characterised by violence and oppression and sexual behaviour was controlled by the church. Pesants married out of necessity and domestic violence was common. A proverb ran, ‘Hit your wife with the butt of an axe, get down and see if she is breathing. If she is, she is shamming and wants some more.’ After the Bolshevik party took power men and women became equal under law, divorce was available on demand, church control of sex was abolished and abortion on demand was legalised. All reference to sex was abolished from the criminal code in 1922 and now a sex crime was described as an act violating the individual’s right to ‘life, health, freedom and dignity.’ But of course change does not happen overnight and many bigoted ideas and practices remained. But the advances were striven to be made real, freeing women and men to realise their own sexuality. At no other time in history have the rights of women been so dramatically turned around. This was not just a workers revolution it was also a sexual revolution! Sadly this society like the Paris commune only lasted for a short period of time before counterrevolution set in. But although the revolution was hijacked by Stalinists only a few years later rolling back the advances, for these few years women were freed up from domestic labour, with the creation of free food halls, prostitution was legalised and health care provided as well as training in other work. Gay marriage was legal and the bolsiveks sought to liberate men and women from the constrains of the family. Many of the gains made in the revolution still do not exist in many countries today. Even here in New Zealand gay marriage is not legal and you cannot get abortion and divorce on demand and there certainly aren’t free communal food halls.
Who could have foreseen the gains made from the seemingly small demands for bread and peace? But it is not hard to see the political and economic links that sparked off this revolution. The demands for bread, equality, justice and peace, have been the demands for many a mass movement, strike, riot and revolt before and after the Russian revolution. With women often feeling the burden of rising food prices because they are more likely to shop for food, or the inequality in the workplace as they suffer from lower wages and sexism from bosses and colleagues they are often some of the first to rise up and make demands. During the 18-day uprising that drove Egyptian President Mubarak from power, the extraordinary role of the women gradually came to light. Independent media showed hundreds of thousands in the demonstrations, especially up front, facing police or soldiers. A famous YouTube video of Asmaa Mahfouz, the fierce young woman who exhorted everyone to descend on Tahrir Square for the first mass demonstration in Cairo, rocked Egypt — then the world. Throughout, women were medics, neighborhood defense patrollers and rally leaders.
In the years leading up to the January explosion, women workers were critical in transforming Egypt’s labor movement into an unstoppable force. They will be just as pivotal in the hard work of keeping the revolution on course.
The U.S. business media monotonously stressed that the uprising crossed class lines. But only the alternative press pointed out that conditions for the country’s working and poor were the driving force. And that it was striking workers across the country who finally forced Mubarak out.
Egypt is the Arab world’s most populous country, with the most diversified economy and largest working class. Youth under 25 make up over half the population. Unemployment is the highest for women, the young, the educated and rural dwellers. Forty percent of people live in extreme poverty, surviving on two dollars a day or less. The huge informal economy has many women and youth, who are especially victimized by corrupt police-state “enforcers.”
During Mubarak’s 30-year rule, the once large nationalized sector shrank steadily. In the ‘90s, social services were severely cut back. The process of capitalist globalization, marked by privatization, deregulation, and creation of low-wage free trade zones, expanded vastly from 2004 on. While wages sank, prices rose steeply. The stage was set for labor — and women, who are always hardest hit — to erupt.
The growing militancy of labor in recent years showed the people their power. Egyptian workers have mounted an astounding 3,000 strikes and other forms of protest since 2004.
Although women are under a quarter of the workforce, many labor in free trade zones, in textile and other public industries and in small sweatshops. They have sparked a number of the most important labor struggles.
A crucial one was the strike of over 20,000 at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in the city of Mahalla, December 2006. The women walked out first, challenging the men to follow, shouting, “Here are the women! Where are the men?” The strikers appealed to the community and other plants for solidarity, a hallmark organizing tactic when women workers are involved. Their fight led to further work stoppages at the company and swept through the huge government-run textile industry.
These public workers led the way in connecting the struggle against economic deprivation to opposing the government that is responsible. Some strike slogans were: “We will not be ruled by the World Bank!” “We will not be ruled by colonialism!”
Besides the Misr company, women have been strike leaders in the tax collectors’ movement that built the first independent union and the Hinawi Tobacco Company in Damanhour, among others.
Mahalla female and male leaders strategized a call for general strike on April 6, 2008. The government’s vicious suppression of this national strike inspired the April 6 Youth Movement, a group of young workers of both sexes — unique in Egypt — built around the collaboration of laborers in large factories and small workshops.
The Mahalla workers also initiated meetings with other public workers, as well as private companies, to establish an independent trade union federation. They achieved their goal during the January-February upsurge. This organizing was pivotal in building the strike wave across Egypt that finally drove out Mubarak, his hastily appointed vice president, and the prime minister who replaced them.
The gains won so far still need to be consolidated. The army has not ended the state of emergency, and is making new political arrests and prosecuting defendants in military tribunals. Regime thugs are wreaking havoc with brutal attacks on Coptic Christians, and on a rally of women on International Women’s Day, despite the attempt of male supporters to defend them.
As Andrea Bauer says “Just as women’s inequality was a necessary precondition for capitalism’s rise, it remains a condition of capitalism’s survival. Women’s basic democratic rights cannot be won short of the destruction of capitalism…. And it is the reason why women are the target of every series of cutbacks by the employers, every reactionary crusade by the right wing, and every assault on rights by the state.”
These are just three examples throughout history of women playing vital roles in the struggle against tyranny, structural oppression and inequality. There are countless more, including the recent occupations of wall street, the on-going workers struggle of Greece, the London riots and student demonstrations, the uprisings in Spain, Yemen, Libya, Syria, China, India, Palestine. The strikes and struggles of the great depression of the 1930s, the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, the ford sewing machinists strike in1968 and the equal pay strikes which happened until 1977. Women fought employers and governments, we fought against racism and occupied factories and on Saturday the 15th we will once again take our place and make our demands in occupations around the world.
By Jo Hill IWW folk musician murdered by the ruling class:
Rebel Girl
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows.
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
CHORUS:
That's the Rebel Girl, that's the Rebel Girl!
To the working class she's a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.
Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor,
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl;
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl
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