International Working Women’s Day 2024

Militancy is not masculine, fragility is not feminine

Despite the theme of International (Working) Women’s Day 2024 being “Invest in Women”, the socialist origins of International Working Women’s Day must not be forgotten. In Australia, IWWD was commemorated for the first time in 1928 with a rally in Sydney, organised by the The Militant Women’s Movement of the Communist Party of Australia. They were campaigning for equal pay, leave and an 8-hour day for shop girls. In the following years, IWWD events and organisers continued to campaign for improved working conditions, equal pay, Aboriginal women and income support for the unemployed. In campaigning for better wages and conditions, working women knew that the struggle to recognise their lives and labour as valuable was not going to come from asking to be invested in, but by demanding it. As French anarchist Louise Michel said, “our place in humanity as women must not be begged but taken”.

Today in Australia, women are trade union members in bigger numbers than men and the political gap between the genders is widening. Working women across Australia are using their collective power to campaign in a number of areas to improve workplace conditions and end harmful practices that disproportionately affect women. 

This IWWD, we stand in solidarity with Palestinian women and their struggle for liberation. The slaughter, displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has disproportionately affected women in Gaza. Opposition to the systemic colonial violence perpetrated by Israel must be active and direct. We must call out cynical bourgeois white feminism and it’s hypocritical ignorance towards the Palestinian struggle. Here in Geelong and Australia, we are directly connected to the genocide by arms manufacturing and the governments support for the Israeli regime. As feminists, anarchists, and human beings with beating hearts we believe it is our duty to fight for a Free Palestine.

A revolutionary socialist movement will not be won without organised, class conscious, militant women. Vapid slogans and breakfasts used by bosses, politicians and corporations have no place in our struggle for liberation. The working class women of today must draw inspiration from the radical origins of International Working Women’s Day to struggle against domination, imperialism and discrimination and organise for a world that is free, equal and just.

Photo by Matt Hrkac