Proletarian women's movement

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The proletarian women's movement emerged from the workers' movement and is closely associated with the name of the communist women's rights activist Clara Zetkin (1857–1933).

Emergence

When at the end of the 19th century there was growing conflicting interests in the (still) broad front of the women's movement , the proletarian women formed their own organization. They felt that other organizations such as B. the German-Evangelical Women's Association , the Catholic Women's Association or the Jewish Women's Association is not represented. Due to the different living environments between workers and bourgeois housewives , all wings of the women's movement fought for emancipation, but linked different demands and ideas.

Living worlds and differences to the bourgeois women's movement

While husband and family separated increasingly for bourgeois women, proletarian women were integrated into everyday work. For bourgeois women, the family should be the place where men can relax so that they can go back to work the next day. The women did the household, which became increasingly easier for them through practical inventions (such as technical devices or canned food) - and thus became monotonous. In order to break out of this monotony, these women began to get involved in charitable projects. With the growing organization of bourgeois women, so did their demands for political participation. They were also committed to equality in marriage law, e.g. B. for a simpler divorce law , separation of property and the free disposal of women over their own property.

The workers, on the other hand, had no assets to protect. The women were poor and therefore often dependent on charity. Many working class women had to work because the man's salary was insufficient to support the family. While the “passive woman” was a status symbol among the bourgeoisie, the poor working class families were concerned with survival.

Since the working women could not demand wages because of their lack of rights, they were cheaper workers from the start. This unequal treatment with men placed the discussion of industrial women's labor (and its equality with men) at the center of the proletarian women's movement. While the working women tended to associate emancipation with equal rights in the world of work, the bourgeois women saw in emancipation more of an outbreak of their bourgeois passivity . With organized social work, they gradually gave them more say in politics. Since bourgeois women increasingly included proletarian women as recipients of their charitable work, the distance between the two groups increased. While the bourgeois women's associations merged in their own association , proletarian socialist workers' organizations of their own emerged in the context of social democracy .

Forms of organization of the proletarian women's movement

The first socialist women's organization was the " Berliner Arbeiterfrauen- und Mädchenverein " founded by Pauline Staegemann in 1873 . Such associations were, however, suppressed by the state through the Socialist Law passed in 1878 , which is why informal structures were developed in the 1880s. The proletarian women's movement organized first in "agitation commissions" and when these were also banned by a loose network of women of trust. Even after the fall of the Socialist Law in 1890, the repression continued: The Prussian association law forbade membership of political associations until 1908. The women of trust continued to work and from 1900 met regularly for open women's conferences, which brought all activists together and served the supraregional exchange. In contrast to the increasingly bureaucratising workers' movement in the SPD and trade unions, the proletarian women's movement around 1900 was very grassroots democratic. The central coordinating body of the women's movement was the magazine Die Equality , which was headed by Clara Zetkin .

Zetkin was the dominant personality in the proletarian women's movement; following Friedrich Engels and August Bebel , she had reformulated the theoretical foundations of a Marxist theory of women's emancipation and, above all, brought them together for the first time in an action program. Zetkin stood for a revolutionary course of the proletarian women's movement, she demarcated herself against reform-oriented currents in the labor movement as well as against the liberal-moderate bourgeois women's movement. Zetkin was also a militant opponent of the war, which is why she was dismissed as editor of "Equality" in 1917: the Social Democratic party executive found her articles critical of the war too uncomfortable.

In addition to the networks of women of trust, there were also activities of the proletarian women's movement within the trade union movement, in which Emma Ihr and Ida Altmann in particular stood out . Together with others, they fought for the establishment of a union workers' secretariat, whose first secretary from 1905 was Ida Altmann. The trade union women's movement advocated occupational health and safety, working time restrictions and the abolition of the wage differences between men and women who did the same work that were common up until then.

The November Revolution split the proletarian women's movement into a reform-oriented social-democratic wing and a tendency close to the KPD. In addition, from 1921 onwards, a Syndicalist Women's Association that was closely related to anarcho- syndicalism was formed .

See also

literature

  • Richard J. Evans : Social Democracy and Women's Emancipation in the German Empire (= International Library. Vol. 119). JHW Dietz, Berlin et al. 1997, ISBN 3-8012-1119-3 .
  • Florence Hervé (ed.): History of the German women's movement (= new small library. 48). 5th, revised and completely changed new edition. PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-89438-084-5 .
  • Sabine Richebächer: We're just missing one little thing. German proletarian women's movement 1890–1914 (= Fischer pocket books. 3724). Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-596-23724-6 (At the same time: Frankfurt am Main, University, dissertation, 1979).
  • Vera Bianchi: Feminism in proletarian practice: The "Syndikalistische Frauenbund" (1920 to 1933) and the "Mujeres Libres" (1936 to 1939) , in progress - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 27–44.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Richard J. Evans: Social Democracy and Women's Emancipation in the German Empire. 1997.
  2. ^ Ralf Hoffrogge : Socialism and the workers' movement in Germany. From the beginning until 1914. Schmetterling-Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-89657-655-2 , pp. 90–98.
  3. ↑ See Sabine Richebächer: We are only missing one small thing. 1982.
  4. ↑ Cf. Gisela Losseff-Tillmanns: Ida Altmann-Bronn (1862-1935): Social Democrat - Freethinker - Trade Unionwoman , in: Arbeit - Bewegungs - Geschichte Issue III / 2016.
  5. ↑ On the latter cf. Vera Bianchi: Feminism in proletarian practice: The "Syndikalistische Frauenbund" (1920 to 1933) and the "Mujeres Libres" (1936 to 1939) , in progress - Movement - History , Issue I / 2018, pp. 27–44.