Women’s Day and the Left

Mar 28, 2011 Editorial

One of the interesting ironies of the present global order that insists on the irrelevance of ideology is the ignoring of the ideological implication of the statement itself. The implication, of course, is that the neo-liberal order is so dominant that it is taken for common sense and “just the way things are”.
This was brought home quite dramatically during the commemoration of “International Women’s Day” (IWD) that was commemorated earlier this month on March 8th. The struggle for the recognition of the problems of women in general and women workers in particular, is one that was initiated and conducted almost solely by individuals from the left. The reasons as to why that fact has been airbrushed out of the historical picture reveal much about the present dispensation in which we live.
The irony is even stronger for us in Guyana because the struggle for women’s rights in the modern era were waged from the 1940’s by individuals such as Janet Jagan (whose death anniversary is commemorated this month) Jane Gay, Winifred Gaskin et al. who were all women firmly embedded within the leftist tradition.
Our country’s history, grounded in slavery and indentureship brought out most clearly the double oppression of women: first on the level of denying their humanity and then on their sex. During slavery women had to work side by side with the males but also bear the burdens of producing children that would become new slaves.
Alternatively they were raped by whites to produce mulatto children that soon were alienated from them. During indentureship, it was official policy for the women to receive a lower pay for their day’s work than for a man doing the same work.
Matters were not much altered when the above-mentioned women began their struggle, inspired by the world’s leftist movements. Let us remember the UN had just been formed and there were no recognition of specific women’s rights.
Clara Zetkin, socialist leader and head of the Women’s Office of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, pushed quite early in the 20th century for an International Women’s Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – to be known as Women’s Day – to recognise the social contribution of women.
In 1910, the 2nd international conference of working women was held in Copenhagen and attended by over 100 women from 17 countries. The first International Women’s Day was honoured in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1911 on March 17.
That their demands are still relevant in the present, summarises the deeply structural forces that define the condition of women: women’s right to work and be given equal wages, better social and economic conditions for women and children; controls on rapidly rising food prices; to vote, to hold public office and to end other forms of discrimination. The great “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” in NYC a week later, in which 140 mostly immigrant women workers were killed, fired the struggle for equal wages in the USA.
The shift to March 8th for observing IWD emphasises its nexus with leftist struggle. On the last Sunday of February (March 8th by the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of the world), Russian women went on strike for “bread and peace” (over 2 million of their men-folk had perished in the then ongoing WWI). Against overwhelming hardships, the women persisted and effectively became the catalyst for the Russian Revolution. Four days later, the Tsar abdicated and the provisional government granted women the right to vote.
The lesson for us in Guyana is that great national problems can be overcome if women can unite. Because the entrenched powers always seek to preserve the status quo – and few would deny the status quo in Guyana is not stacked against women – the struggle to rectify that imbalance cannot be waged in the idiom and ideological premises of neo-liberalism that justifies the present dispensation.
The question to those that celebrate Janet Jagan’s and Winifred Gaskin’s struggle, “Where is the left today?”

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Women’s Day and the Left

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