Slutwalk Dunedin 2013
The forecast was for rain and snow but but the sun shone through for Dunedin’s SlutWalk 2013. About 200 people turned up to oppose victim-blaming, with a hardy few showing some skin to the chilly wind to protest the idea that “slutty clothing” has anything to do with sexual violence. SlutWalk started in 2010 in […]
Women, Politics and Class: a Socialist Analysis for Aotearoa
Women face a contradiction. While equal pay for women and men working for the government became the law in 1960, it wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act passed in 1972 that equal pay between the sexes across the board became legal. The Domestic Purposes Benefit, providing state support to single parents, was introduced in 1973. […]
Book Review: Alison McCulloch, Fighting to Choose: The Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand
When an abortion service started in Invercargill last year, anti-abortionists quickly mobilized against it. An anonymous e-mail was to sent to the Abortion Law Reform Association NZ threatening ALRANZ and clinic staff: “People who work at the clinic are legitimate targets and so are you. You’ll be hearing from me again, that is if your […]
Fighting to Choose: the Abortion Rights Struggle in New Zealand
[Alison McCulloch is a freelance journalist and abortion rights activist based in Tauranga. Her history of the abortion rights struggle in New Zealand, Fighting to Choose, will be published by Victoria University Press next month. We spoke to Alison about her book and the campaign.] Alison, you’re an active member of ALRANZ, the pro-choice organisation. […]
Why women need abortion rights: the socialist case
Shomi Yoon gave this talk to the Wellington branch of the International Socialist Organisation in March. “Not the Church, not the state, women must decide their fate”: this was the fighting slogan of the abortion rights campaign of the 1970s. Women’s liberation was a movement that swept across the world, growing out of and alongside […]
Celebrating the struggle against sexism
This talk was given to the Dunedin branch of the International Socialists by Miranda B to mark International Women’s Day 2013. The first International Women’s Day (IWD) celebration was held over 100 years ago in 1911. In the last few years it has been taken over by mainstream or bureaucratic bodies, in particular the United […]
The making of the Mystique
FIFTY YEARS after its publication, The Feminine Mystique has been credited with everything from single-handedly sparking the women’s movement to perpetuating an outdated and long-gone stereotype of the American family. Neither is true, but many of the issues that Betty Friedan’s book raised–such as the role of women and the nuclear family–make The Feminine Mystique […]
Nothing natural about sexism
Marx’s collaborator Engels wrote that “…the first class antagonism which appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression with that of the female sex by the male.” So women’s oppression existed before the rise of capitalism, but has not always existed. […]
Marxism, feminism and women’s liberation
Sharon Smith, author of the soon-to-be-republished Women and Socialism: Essays on Women’s Liberation, examines how the Marxist tradition has approached the struggle to end women’s oppression, including its attitude toward other theories, in this article based on a talk given at the Socialism 2012 conference in Chicago. INESSA ARMAND, the first leader of the women’s department of […]
The Paris Commune of 1871: Women and Revolution
By Rowan McArthur “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.” – This is a quote from the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. Its truth has been proven time and again, with women being at the forefront of resistance […]
