For and Against Feminism is not simply a history. It is also a present and a future. The final section of the book, Coming to Terms With Our Colonial Past, in many ways points to directions for future theoretical work.
women & feminism
Women’s Health on the Cheap — Again: Inadequate Screening for Cervical Cancer
This is a summary of a talk presented at a meeting of Melbourne Radical Women held on 9 March 1988. Evelyn is a socialist feminist and lesbian activist. Women’s health issues are given a low priority by governments in all capitalist countries, especially when it comes to funding. This is blatantly obvious when we look… Read more »
Radical Women Statement to AZT Rally and Candle light Vigil
Melbourne, 3 March 1988 Radical Women is an international socialist feminist organisation comprised of women workers, students and welfare recipients of many races, both gay and straight, older and young. We are pleased to be represented here this evening and are delighted that we could help build this important rally. We demand that all people… Read more »
‘Equal Opportunity’ in 1988 – A Balance Sheet
The limitations of seeking employment equality within the existing structures are clear. Equal opportunity programs only provide the option for some to get nearer to the top of an unequal system. We need to defend and extend such reforms by using them as tools to protect existing rights and gains. But reforms cannot finally redress the inequitable position of women and other oppressed groups in the labour market, let alone society as a whole.
International Women’s Day: Ghetto Festival or Front Line of the Struggle for Women’s Liberation?
One is that we are all lesbians or a least celibate women who prefer to socialise mainly with other women. This has become a stumbling block to the movement. Instead of clear political demands about fighting the oppression of lesbians that we expect all who support women’s liberation to take up and fight for, we’ve got a bizarre combination of lesbian political invisibility but an underlying assumption that in our lifestyles we are all dykes. We’ve got to make IWD political; we have to address the issues of the day — those that people who aren’t at IWD are concerned about or fighting around.
Women’s Emancipation and Permanent Revolution
Revolutionary feminism is the only program and method that can truly unite the class and the Trotskyist movement, for it is a unity based on equality and mutual respect and not on a lower caste sacrificing itself for an upper caste. Women, people of colour, lesbians, youth, elders and differently abled just happen to be the most exploited sectors of the proletariat. We as Trotskyists are obliged to hoist our banner with them.
Clara Zetkin – Revolutionary Fighter for Women’s Liberation
Zetkin was a pioneer who paved the way for many fighters for women’s liberation who followed. She was a great leader of working class women. One of her greatest contributions was to successfully challenge the dangerous and incorrect notion that socialism and feminism and incompatible ideologies.
A Tribute to Doctor Bertram Wainer – Courageous Fighter for Abortion Rights
This tribute to the work of Bertram Wainer, who died on 16 January, 1987, was presented to the 28 January 1987 meeting of Radical Women. It is only fitting that this Radical Women meeting pay tribute to Doctor Bertram Wainer, a courageous man, who died this month at the age of 58. Wainer’s name is… Read more »
Real Rape Law Campaign Gathers Momentum
Rape is a largely unreported crime. And, given the myriad obstacles which a rape victim must endure, it is hardly surprising that many women decide not to notify the police. As a starting point, the law needs to be changed to mitigate the rape victim’s trauma from simply reporting the crime.
