Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights

Addenda
Addenda p.2 Footnote should read: I am referring here to an article by Georgia Pearce entitled .4 Russian Exile, Alexandra Kollontai and the Russian Woman Worker, which appeared in the English newspaper, The Woman Worker, of May 1909. This newspaper is not to be confused with the Bolshevik paper of the same name, to which Kollontai refers in her footnote to p. 26 (cf. erratum below). p. 18 For “In England the number of women workers organized into unions had already passed the 20,000 mark;” read “In England the number of women workers organized into unions had already passed the 200,000 mark;” p.24 Insert after “On the central committee of the Party there was also a Special rep-” the words “resentation for women workers. The Women’s Bureau of the Party was not.” p.26 Footnote should read: The ‘Woman’s Day’ was held by the Party in the following three years... (From : Marxists.org.)

Editors’ Notes
1. Kollontai is referring here to the First World War and the changes brought about in the international socialist movement by the war and the Russian revolution. Before the First World War, all the socialist parties were organized in the Second International. In 1918, when this pamphlet was published, negotiations for affiliation to the Third International were underway. This Third Communist International (the Comintern) was initiated by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, and European socialists at this time had to choose between two distinct forms of organizing. Those who continued their affiliation to the Second International were committed to socialism by reform, while those who joined the Third International were committed to socialism through revolution. It is important to remember that at the time of the Russian revolution, Marxists assumed that revolution in Europe would follow very quickly, and that socialism in Russia would not come about in isolation. (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 2 : Forms of Organisation of Women Workers in the West
The forms which have been adopted by the female proletarian movement in various countries are so variegated and idiosyncratic that it is difficult to describe them in a short and cursory outline. The variety of these forms is due, in the main, to the distinctive peculiarities of the social-political and economic conditions of each country; it also depends in part on the conscious part of the working class and the women workers’ movement. We must not lose sight of the fact that the female proletarian movement in almost all countries is still in its formative period and therefore depends to a considerable degree on the atmosphere of “sympathy” or “indifference” which it meets among its class comrades who have already progressed a lone way along the road of the struggle for the better future. The female proletarian movement is manifested in the following most typical forms. First of all trade unions, which fall into two groups &... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 1 : The Socialist Movement of Women Workers in Different Countries
One might think that there could be no clearer or more well-defined notion than that of a ‘women’s socialist movement’. But meanwhile it arouses so much indignation and we hear so often the exclamations and questions:- What is a women workers’ movement? What are its tasks, its aims? Why can’t it merge with the general movement of the working class, why can’t it be dissolved in the general movement, since the Social Democrats deny the existence of an independent women’s question? Isn’t it a hangover from bourgeois feminism? Questions like these are being asked not only in Russia. They are repeated in almost all countries, they can be heard in all languages. But most curious of all, it is where the women workers’ movement is least developed, where organized women workers are least numerous m the Party and in the unions, that one hears loudest and most assured the voices of those who deny the necessity of technically separ... (From : Marxists.org.)

In Place of a Foreword
This pamphlet I am publishing is not new. It is a reprint of my articles which were published before the war. But the question of organization which was put at the Congress of Women Workers brings onto the agenda of our party work a means of agitation among the mass of working women in order to draw them into the Party and thus prepare new forces for the construction of Communist Russia. Meanwhile we are suffering from an acute lack of material, which could help our party comrades who are involved now in the organization of the commission for agitation and propaganda among women workers by giving them access to information about the history of the socialist movement of women workers and about how and what was done in the field of organization of the women proletariat in other countries. The poverty of our party literature on this particular question obliges me to agree to the reprint in hurried format of my previous articles without being able to rework them. If I were to... (From : Marxists.org.)

First published: as Kak boryutsya rabotnitsy zo svoi prava, Moscow; Translated: from the Russian by Celia Britton, Bristol, with an introduction and notes by Sheila Rowbotham and Suzie Flemming; Printed and published by the Falling Wall Press in association with members of the Women’s Liberation Movement First edition October 1971 Second edition November 1971 © Falling Wall Press , 79 Richmond Road, Montpelier, Bristol BS6 5EP. The publishers wish to thank Ted Braun for his editorial help with this pamphlet; Transcribed: by Damon Maxwell. Introduction by Sheila Rowbotham Early years Alexandra Kollontai was born in St. Petersburg in 1872, the daughter of a Russian general. She married an engineer, Vladimir Kollontai, but found her... (From : Marxists.org.)