Clara Zetkin

AWL North London discussion forum: Clara Zetkin and working-class women's organising

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Date: 
18 May, 2010 - 22:00 - 23:15
Location: 

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Is the struggle for women's liberation a class struggle? Do working-class women have common interests with women bosses? Clara Zetkin, the German revolutionary, believed they didn't. She and her comrades helped build a mass working-class women's movement to fight for women's rights within the context of a class struggle against capitalism. Can we learn from their struggles to develop a working-class, socialist feminism today?

Remembering Rosa Luxemburg — standing against the socialist betrayers, by Clara Zetkin

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Together with Karl Liebnecht and — a little later Leo Jogiches — Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by right wing reactionaries in January 1919, after the failure of the rising by the Spartacists, the young, small, newly-formed Communist Party of Germany. She had spent the years of the First World War mainly in jail.

Who was Clara Zetkin?

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Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) pioneered the idea of a working class-based women's movement. In 1891 she became editor of the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD) newspaper for women "Die Gleichheit" (Equality) which she produced for 25 years (circulation 112,000 in 1912).

German socialist women’s movement - Self-organisation and class unity

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During the nineteenth century, the emerging workers’ movement began to develop its policy on the “woman question”. Some of the early, “utopian” socialists argued strongly for women’s liberation.

Organising Working-class Women

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The second in a series of articles about the German socialist women's movement 1890-1914, by Janine Booth

Education

German socialist women placed strong emphasis on education. They set up education clubs for women and girls (Frauen- and Madchen-Bildungsverein), which held meetings, hosted lectures, published articles and pamphlets, and gathered information on women’s working conditions. Each club had between 50 and 250 members, who paid a small monthly fee.

Working-class Women and Bourgeois Feminists

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The third in a series of articles about the German socialist women's movement 1890-1914, by Janine Booth

What is often seen as one issue - referred to at the time as the ‘woman question’ - actually developed quite differently amongst women of different classes.