Women’s Struggle

There has been a litany of incidents of horrific violence against women and girls in Britain in recent years. The scale of misogyny in London’s Metropolitan Police is on full view following the jailing of […]

Looking around the world on International Women’s Day 2025 it would seem that women’s rights are under attack more than ever before in almost every part of the globe. Poverty, inequality, war and environmental destruction […]

From Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales). Originally published under the title “Boy Trouble”. Recently there has been a proliferation of articles, books, reports and surveys looking at boys and young […]

The Communist Women’s Movement inspired tens of thousands of women following the Russian revolution. CHRISTINE THOMAS looks at the latest volume in an ongoing series regarding the Communist International that pulls together previously unpublished material […]

If the development of a society can be judged by the extent to which women are involved in it, that is certainly the case with a revolution. In 1871, women – especially women workers – […]

We have recently seen significant victories for women internationally, such as the mass movements in Latin America, which forced governments to legalise or relax restrictions on abortion. The French parliament has voted overwhelmingly to enshrine […]

International Women’s Day 2024, 8 March, takes place in a world in turmoil. Since January, the conflict in the Middle East and horrifying onslaught on Gaza have intensified. The war in Ukraine is also showing […]

Angela Saini’s recent book is really a misnomer. While its title – The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule – seems to promise an explanation of how women came to be treated as unequal, second-class […]

The appalling actions of the president of Spain’s football body, Louis Rubiales, after the team won the women’s football World Cup, have highlighted aspects of women’s oppression. It was not a kiss. Rubiales sexually assaulted […]

The jailing for 28 months of Carla Foster, a 44-year old woman with three children, one with special needs, for terminating a pregnancy during Covid lockdown has shone a spotlight on abortion laws in England […]

To commemorate International Women’s Day (8 March) we are publishing an article written for Solidarität, the newspaper of the German section of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). socialistworld.net ‘Woman, life, freedom’, ‘Black lives […]

Women around the world will be marking International Women’s Day in a variety of ways. Protest demonstrations can be expected in many countries against the oppression that women face, not least in Iran, where anti-government […]

Sozialistische Organisation Solidaritaet, the German section of the CWI, is publishing a new edition of the influential book, The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, first printed in 1986. Below is the introduction to the […]

Below, we publish the text of a Socialist Students’ (England & Wales) leaflet for ‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women’ on 25 November. socialistworld.net A recent National Union of Students (NUS) study […]

How will we afford to keep the heating on? This is a question facing thousands of working-class households this winter, even after the British Tory government’s colossal energy bosses bailout, writes Bea Gardner. The poorer […]

CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews two recent books by authors coming from different feminist perspectives and asks: what strategy is needed in the struggle to end violence against women, sexism and oppression in the new era? One […]

The Committee for a Workers’ International extends heartfelt greetings to working and poor women of all countries on the Day of International Working Women’s Solidarity. This special day in the calendar of socialists, established by […]

25 November was International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Below we print extracts of a leaflet the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales) produced for campaigning on the issue of gender violence […]

In the last of our series of articles on women’s struggles from across the world to mark International Women’s Day, Rashme Madhavan reports from India. socialistworld.net On the 8th of March, the capitalist media and […]

On December 30, 2020, the Argentine Senate voted in favour of a law legalizing free abortion previously approved in the Chamber of Deputies. The approval was resolved with 38 votes in favour, 29 against and […]

On International Women’s Day socialists salute the struggles undertaken by working-class women, both past and present, we also prepare for future struggles. We salute the 1917 heroic struggle of women textile strikers from the working-class […]

Despite freezing temperatures and the raging pandemic, thousands of women, men and LGBTQ+ people continue to protest against the stricter ban on abortion in Poland. A similar attack on women’s reproductive rights was defeated by […]

The Covid pandemic has shone a spotlight on all forms of inequality in capitalist society. If you live in a poor area you are twice as likely to die from Covid than if you live […]

In 1909 the Socialist Party of America organized the first National Women’s Day, attracting thousands of people to various rallies and events. One year later, German delegates to the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference suggested […]

International Women’s Day rally hosted by the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). Sunday 7th March 2021, 15-00 to 16-30 hrs (GMT) Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/gpD0Bxe5Q Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAuc–vrzsjGdR2IMTQRyzEwpCLVI92M9mS With […]

The 8th of March this year marks the 110th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD). Over the years there’s been a sustained attempt to remove the socialist origin of the day and for it to […]

In the last years, we have made a number of steps forward in relation to women’s rights and equality in Ireland, North and South. The referendum to repeal the eighth amendment and remove the constitutional […]

Members of the CWI in Sindh are planning to hold their annual convention and the traditional Women’s March on Monday, International Women’s Day, March 8th In recent years, there has been a huge increase in […]

Women workers constitute the vast majority toiling in Sri Lanka’s main export industries – clothing and tea. They are the two main groups facing the biggest risks from the current Covid 19 crisis. Every day […]

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune when for a brief but heroic few weeks the working class took power for the first time. In the immortal words of Karl Marx, the […]

The announcement of the most vicious cuts in social spending since the fall of apartheid, while simultaneously cutting taxes on big business, is a declaration of war against the working class, especially women. The budget […]

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg (5 March), one of the most famous political figures of the last century. For the international workers’ movement, she is renowned as a […]

A year has passed since the last celebration of working women’s struggle for a better deal in life. What a year of misery, death, and destruction!  But what a groundswell of hostility to the system […]

International Women’s Day, with its history of being rooted in struggle, has, in recent years, been diminished – much like the Pride marches for LGBTQ+ rights, have. Big business increasingly uses it as a cynical […]

Girls and young women involved in research into sexual harassment say they aren’t shocked by its results (The State of Girl’s Rights in the UK at plan.uk.org). The research found that as many as two-thirds […]

Women’s oppression is not new. It is as old as the division of society into classes. It takes many forms and so does the fight against it. It is significant that women who feel the […]

Featured article from February 2020 Socialism Today (Monthly journal of the Socialist PArty- CWI England & Wales. The relationship between fighting women’s oppression, identity politics, and the struggle for socialism is a feature of many […]

This year, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (25 November) is taking place during the UK general election campaign. With the possibility of the election of a Corbyn-led Labour government, this […]

What force is needed to end the discrimination and division rooted in the capitalist system? Can the global women’s movements become the main agency for change? Is the organised working class now redundant? Christine Thomas […]

To mark International Women’s Day, Socialist Party members highlighted the impact of austerity on vital services for women. They have been speaking at trade union and trades council meetings to raise support for the ‘Women’s […]

 In the era of austerity and capitalist crisis, women are struggling against their oppression. Women are taking action – marching, striking, getting organised.

The year 2018 saw a sad new record being reached of women being killed – most of them by their partners or ex-partners. The Austrian government is using this to go onto another racist offensive. […]

On Friday, 8th March, women across the globe are striking, marching, protesting and celebrating International Women’s Day in unprecedented numbers. In a welcome development, they will be accompanied by more men than in the past […]

As the age of austerity arising from the great crash of 2007-2008 enters its second decade, a new movement of women struggling against their oppression is taking shape. But mistaken ideas on how oppression can […]

Below, CWI reporters provide a selection of 2018 International Women’s Day protests and events from across the globe. Socialistworld.net Germany International Women’s Day marked the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote and galvanized activists […]

To round off our series on the struggles of women for a better deal and for socialism, we are drawing attention to two articles on historical struggles by women.

Get. Them. Out. The Tories have got to go. What other response can there be to the Tories’ annihilation of the services needed by women fleeing domestic violence? This equates to murder by political decisions.

India’s leaders have always boasted of the country being characterised by ‘unity in diversity’ and women are supposed to have been worshipped from time immemorial. The dominant Hindutva philosophy is based on the highly controversial […]