IT WOULD be tempting to mark International Women’s Day as a day to celebrate women’s victories. That would be a mistake because even after 50 years of the Equal Pay Act & Sex Discrimination Act, working-class women in Britain cannot chalk up many victories. 

Some have argued that women have made great progress in the 21st century, and thus they question whether it is necessary to continue the debate on women’s inequality. 

Compared to previous centuries when women were the property of men and had no rights at all, it is clear that women’s status in many countries has improved, at least juridically — although it has gone backwards in others. However, apart from the right to vote and own property, equality for women as it now exists is based, by an unseen process of co-option, on the successes of a favoured few; for working-class women little has altered. 

Even though women now account for over half the workforce, job segregation, precarious work and the sex pay gap persist, underpinned by the myth of the “family wage” and compounded by the lack of affordable childcare. 

Austerity politics, having undermined public services, has led to the feminisation of poverty. In the home, up to one in 10 women experience domestic violence each year; one in four will experience this type of abuse at some point in their lifetime. An incident of domestic violence takes place in Britain every six to 20 seconds — this is usually unrecorded. 

The rise of misogyny and violence against women and girls is not just alarming but has reached epidemic proportions globally. These acts of violence are deeply rooted in systemic sex inequalities and discrimination, which have been exacerbated by socio-economic conditions, cultural norms, and insufficient legal protections. 

In Britain, the National Police Chiefs Council report (July 2024) acknowledged that violence against women is a “national emergency” in England and Wales. 

Although their analysis revealed that two million women a year are estimated to be victims of male violence, they admitted that this was an underestimate because many if not most offences were not reported. Unsurprisingly, this report fails to mention that police violence against women has massively dented trust in the police, as has the police spies scandal — women who were deceived into intimate sexual relationships with undercover police officers. The deployments of these officers span well over 40 years.

What this reveals is a very uncomfortable fact — misogyny remains embedded in the 21st-century culture bequeathed by its long history in all forms of class society. Misogyny is not simply hatred of women, it is an ideology and practice the purpose of which, when actualised, is to control and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male patriarchal dominance. 

This subordination of women is often manifested through violence, coercive control, domestic abuse or sexual harassment. It is both a product and a manifestation of women’s oppression. 

Oppression is the most important means of maintaining the class relations which support class exploitation. It is a function of class society as well as being a product of it. Unlike discrimination, oppression is linked materially to the process of class exploitation as well as operating at “superstructural” level through the oppressive ideologies of patriarchy, sexism and misogyny. Thus we have to recognise misogyny as a global apparatus of women’s oppression in class society.

The response to VAWG and the violence against prostituted women is inadequate and has revealed problems. In the case of the prostituted, sexual violence is normalised — it’s just “part of the job.” 

The motions to decriminalise prostitution at this week’s TUC women’s conference (thankfully defeated), failed to acknowledge this uncomfortable fact. In general, not only has the oppression of women and accompanying violence and misogyny been consistently downplayed by the state, but it has also been shamefully relegated to a secondary position by the left. 

This reflects a more general movement, even on the left, over past decades, away from class politics towards an individualist politics which threatens the very concept of women’s collective rights. 

We have to recognise that women’s rights and protections, fought for and won through struggles over the last two centuries, are now facing sustained and serious ideological attack. This has been the result of the growth and ascendancy of neoliberalism and its accompanying ideological attack on collective identity of women and unified class struggle. 

Thus, as women, while we celebrate on International Women’s Day our sisters’ struggles for women’s liberation and socialism, we must be vigilant and challenge the formal and informal ways our history has been erased and subjected to hostile political capture. Even more important is the clear and present danger of the erasure of our biologically recognised form as species beings — as women. 

Ideologically driven policy capture is has permeated all public institutions and labour movement organisations, with the honourable exception of the Communist Party. 

Socialists have to recognise that patriarchal sexism and misogynistic violence are the tools by which women’s oppression is maintained in class society the world over. The price of retaining, let alone extending, our rights is eternal vigilance. Our vigilance must be accompanied by resistance.

Let this day be a call to arms to expose and challenge the evidence of women’s super-exploitation worldwide and the misogynist violence underpinning it. The struggle for socialism and the liberation of women go hand in hand — this is the real message of International Women’s Day.