The feminist challenge in changing society: feminizing our perspectives and our movements

LAST YEAR'S READING MATERIALS

Ecosocialist School Amsterdam

9th December : The feminist challenge in changing society: feminizing our perspectives and our movements

“In order to change the conditions of life we must learn to see them through the eyes of women.”

Leon Trotsky (“Against Bureaucracy, Progressive And Unprogressive“ in Problems of Life, from MIA http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/xx/bureaucracy.htm.)

1. Understanding the world:

Class, gender, race (remember Nadia de Mond's lecture on Day 4)

a) women are 52% of the population

b) women are oppressed

c) capitalism uses and reinforces existing oppression to increase its ability to exploit

d) a radical fight against capitalism must take as its starting point the deepest experience of oppression and exploitation

2. Understanding the resistance

a) politicisation starts from real experience

- women's role in the family

- women's experience “as women”

- women's place as workers

b) self-organisation is the key

- autonomous women's movement, a strategic necessity

3. How can our parties embody this understanding?

a) place for women

b) representation of women

c) taking women's politics seriously

d) sanctions in a feminist party

• 'Penelope Duggan' The Feminist Challenge to Traditional Political Organizing, [[1]]

• Jo Freeman the tyranny of structurelessness [[2]]

• Mexico PRT, Sanctions in a feminist party