March is Women’s History Month in the U.S., and March 8th is International Women’s Day globally. International Women’s Day has a history directly connected to the movement for socialism in the U.S. and around the world.

First, here is some of the history that the book banners of today are trying to erase:

After the Socialist Party of America had demonstrations for a women’s day in support of women workers in 1909, Clara Zetkin of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) led the successful campaign to have March 8 established as International Women’s Day at the 1910 Congress of the Second International. The international association of Marxist political parties had earlier established May Day at the beginning of the 1890s.

After the Russian Revolution, International Women’s Day was declared an official holiday in the Soviet Union. Advanced by Communist parties around the world, the U.S.S.R. was the first nation to recognize the holiday, and it was subsequently established in the socialist countries which came into existence after World War II.

It was advanced in the U.S. by the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups in 1967.

The United Nations officially recognized it as a global holiday in 1977.

After WWII, the women’s liberation movement in the U.S. fought for gender equality in education and employment, for reproductive rights, and continued the fight for a constitutional Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA would prevent state governments and the federal government from repealing many gains made in the struggle for women’s rights.

Here are some questions related to the fight for women’s equality.

1. Now that Donald Trump has won the 2024 Republican nomination for president, women’s liberation activists point to the following acts of his first administration as reasons why he must be defeated:

a. Eliminating federal funding for the United Nations Population Fund and other international funding projects dealing with women’s reproductive rights and health
b. Actively refusing to enforce the Obama administration’s strengthening of the Equal Pay Act by permitting corporations receiving government contracts not to report the wages and salaries they pay workers based on gender
c. Censoring references to contraception, abortion, and sex education from the Department of Health and Human Services and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups under the federal government’s family planning program
d. All of the above

2. The campaign for reproductive rights, which resulted in the Roe v. Wade decision making abortion legal in the U.S., was led by

a. the national Democratic Party.
b. the American Medical Association.
c. the National Organization for Women.
d. the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

3. For Marxists and Communists, the struggle to achieve gender equality has special importance because

a. the nuclear family must be defended.
b. it is fundamental to achieving working class unity and ending the super-exploitation of women, which is a source of super-profits for capitalism.
c. the family must be abolished as the foundation of women’s exploitation.
d. raising women to leadership positions in corporations, banks, government, and the military will end capitalist oppression.

4. As Karl Marx noted about struggles for democracy, the struggle for women’s liberation faces contradictions, detours, and setbacks. Which of the following are examples of these in recent decades?

a. While advances by women in employment in the arts, sciences, and other professions have been made, right-wing policies have resulted in the loss of social benefits to single parent households and the declining incomes of “pink-collar” workers.
b. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and the failure so far by Congress to revive it
c. The “glass ceiling” effect preventing women from advancing through promotions in fields where they previously had no positions, and the undermining of legislation and policy to establish equal pay for equal work
d. All of the above

5. Women members of the Communist Party USA have made major contributions to a wide variety of people’s struggles and victories throughout U.S. history. Which one of the following was not a Communist?

a. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
b. Phyllis Schafley
c. Angela Davis
d. Louise Thompson Patterson

Answers here.

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