Building an inclusive women'

From the beginning of the 1980s, there was a significant fragmentation of the feminist movement. This was due to many activists building careers in government, institutions and/or social services; the labour bureaucracies and managerial structures of companies increasingly opening to women; and many feminists building movements around social issues, such as peace and the environment.

In recent years, however, there has been a slight revival of the movement. International Women's Day has been joined by Reclaim the Night collectives as a focus for joint activities by feminist groups, and in the last few years the Women and Labour Conference has returned

Women have begun to struggle in diverse areas against the images of women in the media and in education, for equality in the churches, for economic independence, equal pay, greater job access and training, and for more childcare facilities, etc.

Moreover, women have been actively resisting the attacks on their rights, with new organisations or coalitions coordinating a united defence or fight back for a period of time. These initiatives point to possible organisational developments for the women's movement in the future.

The question that faces the movement in the 1990s is how to draw the new layers of radicalising women into a unified movement.

The women's liberation movement has always been a heterogeneous movement containing many different political viewpoints and theories about the nature and the origin of women's oppression. The diversity of opinion reflects the different social realities women encounter based on intersections between class, race, age, ethnicity, etc.

These differences inevitably led to a variety of feminist organisations, each giving priority to their particular experience of oppression and inequality; for example, neighbourhood groups, student groups, groups of older women, groups organising at workplaces, lesbian groups, groups based around magazines, action coalitions around specific demands, etc. The heterogeneity of the movement was accompanied by a commitment to women's organisational autonomy.

Political consciousness develops from particular experiences of oppression and then spreads to a more general feminist understanding. But this process became somewhat distorted in the women's movement.

Autonomy was increasingly interpreted as an absolute, with each group asserting its own needs and identity at the expense of united action, not only with other movements for radical social change, but even with other feminist groups. This set up a process of definition, limitation and in some cases exclusion and competition about who were the true feminists. Fragmentation was extolled by many as a virtue. Affirmation of difference replaced the capacity of the movement to plan strategically how to win liberation for all women.

Women-only groups
The dominant organisational form of the women's movement has been women-only groups. These express the determination of women to lead their own organisations in which they can learn and develop without fear of being put down or dictated to by men, or having to compete with them from the start.

The simple recognition that our oppression is systemic is not enough. We must also consider the tangible ways in which oppression manifests in the everyday lives of women. From birth, women are taught to be passive and maintain a degree of decorum while boys are equipped with the social tools necessary to participate in society and play leadership roles.

The small consciousness-raising groups of the second wave of radicalisation provided the first step to help many women realise that their problems do not arise from personal shortcomings, but are socially created and common to other women. They lay the groundwork for women to break out of their isolation for the first time, to gain confidence and to move into action.

Autonomous organising offers women the opportunity to explore their potential in a non-threatening environment and practise being articulate in political debate. Before women can lead others, they must learn to lead themselves. Feminist groups that consciously and deliberately exclude men help many women to take the first steps toward gaining confidence, pride and courage to act as political beings.

A class perspective and building alliances
But if women-only groups limit themselves to discussion circles as a substitute for joining with others in action, they can become an obstacle to the further political development of the women involved.
To those who claim that women-only groups divide the working class along sex lines we say that it is not those fighting their oppression who are responsible for creating or maintaining divisions. Capitalism divides society by class, by race, by sex, by age, by nationality, by skill level and by every other means possible.

Sexism is one of the most powerful weapons utilised by the ruling class to divide and weaken the working class and progressive movements. But it does not simply divide men and women; it affects both men and women.

Its hold is rooted in the ways in which ruling-class ideology sets each section of the working class against all others; for example, it promotes the idea that women's equality can only be achieved at the expense of men (by taking men's jobs away from them, by lowering wages and by depriving them of domestic comforts).

The fact is that capitalism cannot afford the liberation of women. Capitalism's interests both ideological and economic contradict the needs of the fully self-realised and liberated individual.

The struggle against the oppression of women is not a secondary or peripheral issue. It is a life and death matter, and the women's movement has a central role to play in helping the working class to understand that their interests are identical with the needs and demands of the most oppressed and exploited layers of the class: women, oppressed nationalities, immigrant workers, youth, the unorganised, the unemployed. Winning the organised labour movement to fight for the demands of women is part of educating the working class to think socially and act politically.

The Melbourne experience
The women's liberation movement in the west has traditionally been a white women's movement fighting for the rights of white women. In identifying gender as the primary form of oppression, it has failed to recognise the many facets of oppression and belittled the struggles of ethnic and indigenous women.

Presently, feminism is not a homogeneous movement. Many feminist groups and organisations actively take on race, class and sexuality as key issues in understanding oppression holistically and globally.

The Melbourne IWD Collective this year made a commitment to making our material accessible to ethnic minorities by translating our message into as many different languages as possible. In this context, however, a literal translation is not enough. We need to explore the potential of translating ideas.

Another breakthrough has been the introduction of a Charter, a simple statement of the collective's aims. While there remains some disagreement about a paragraph encouraging all supporters to take part in building and attending the rally and the march because of a desire to encourage greater participation by women; there has been more interest from ethnic groups in IWD than last year because of this paragraph. Kurdish, Tamil and Latin American women's organisations have become involved with the Melbourne collective this year because they see no contradiction between their liberation as a sex and their liberation as an ethnic group.

Before feminism can argue that it represents all women and seeks to liberate all women, we must break down some of the barriers to participation in our own organisations. Oppression manifests in many ways and woman is not a homogeneous category.