women

Swazi textile workers to resume strike

16,000 Swazi textile workers look set to resume strike action this Wednesday if their demands for better pay and benefits are ignored.

Workers agreed to give STEA and the government 48 hours before resuming the strike action. SMAWU President Alex Fakudze explained that workers suspended the strike last week hoping that STEA would be ready to negotiate a better deal, but failed to do so. The meeting held at Salesian sports ground was attended by about five hundred textile workers, mostly women.

Workers strike and clash with police in Swaziland

Female Swazi textile workers

The last week of textile workers' strikes has seen Swaziland's most intense wave of labour militancy in a decade.

Over 16,000, mostly female, workers have been on strike since March 3rd with workers participating in marches confronting police using clubs and teargas. At least a dozen have been reported injured. 93 percent voted for strike action, while six percent voted against and one abstained.

Vera Drake, dir. Mike Leigh, 2004. Film review – Tom Jennings

Vera Drake vividly portrays the paradoxes of backstreet abortion without passing judgement.

Dilemmas of a Bleeding Heart

Documentary representations of British and European Muslim women. Essay review

Follow-up to ‘Same Difference’ examines images of Muslims in photography and television

Breaking Cover

In The Cut - review

Tom Jennings’ review of Jane Campion's 2003 postfeminist erotic thriller

A Cut Above?

Dancehall Dreams by Tom Jennings (2004). Music review – Tom Jennings

Tom Jennings’ essay on contemporary urban music, gender and class.

Dancehall Dreams by Tom Jennings

Estorach, Soledad

A short biography of Soledad Estorach, one of the most dynamic founders and activists of Mujeres Libres.

Soledad Estorach Esteri was born on the 6th February 1915 at the small village of Albatarrech near Lerida.

Silva Cruz, Maria, 1915-1936

Maria Silva Cruz

A short biography of the iconic figure of Maria Silva Cruz, "La Libertaria," heroine of the Casas Viejas uprising, murdered by the Francoists.

Maria was born into a family of day labourers and charcoal burners in the impoverished village of Casas Viejas in Andalucia on 20 April 1915.

Her father Juan Silva Gonzalez and her uncle Jeronimo were in the CNT. Her grandmother read anarchist novels out loud to her as a young girl.

Women in the 1919 Winnipeg strike - Fireweed

A brief article from the feminist magazine Fireweed about women in the 1919 general strike in Winnipeg.

"In the coming days women would take their place side by side with men, not as dependents or inferiors but as equals. Thus there would be better relationships based on fundamental love and affinity. This strike was part of the great movement for the emancipation of women.

Götze, Anna, 1875-1958

A short biography of anarchist and German revolutionary Anna Götze.

Anna Götze was born in 1875. She was a member of the Social Democratic Party from 1897 up to 1917 and with the end of the war and the Revolution was one of the founders of the Spartakusbund. At the beginning of the 1920s she moved to a clear anarchist position and joined the FAUD. She worked as a folder in the printing industry.

A brief history of the Gay Liberation Front, 1970-73

GLF US poster

A short account of the GLF in the UK which, while we disagree with some of it, contains interesting historical information.

On the 27th June, 1969 as part of its policy of raiding and closing Gay Bars, the New York Police arrived at the Stonewall Inn to rough up the customers and make a few arrests. New York’s finest encountered black and white drag queens, gay men and lesbians, sick of police brutality, and who on being physically provoked fought back.

Caleffi, Giovanina, 1897-1962

Giovanna Caleffi with Maria Luisa (on the left) and Giliana Berneri

Biography of Italian anarchist Giovanina Caleffi aka Giovanna Berneri, who, as well as being involved in anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War and helping rebuild the Italian anarchist movement after it, was also the wife of Camillo Berneri and mother of Marie Louise and Giliana Berneri.

Giovannina Caleffi aka Giovanna Berneri
Born Gualtieri, Italy 4 May 1897, Died Genova Nervi, Italy 14 March 1962

Kollontai, Alexandra, 1872-1952

Alexandra Kollontai, 1952

Short biography of the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai who played a crucial role in the Workers Opposition movement.

Alexandra Kollontai was a major figure in the Russian socialist movement from the turn of the century through the revolution and civil war. During periods of exile she was also active as a speaker and writer in Germany, Belgium, France, Britain, Scandinavia and the United States.

Women fighters in the days of the great October Revolution - Alexandra Kollontai

Revolutionary Russian women in 1905

In this article, written in 1927 (well after the Bolshevik consolidation of power), Alexandra Kollontai describes the leading role in which women played in Russian Revolution of 1917. Though heavily Bolshevik in focus, it describes well the activity of working class women in the revolution.

The women who took part in the Great October Revolution – who were they? Isolated individuals? No, there were hosts of them; tens, hundreds of thousands of nameless heroines who, marching side by side with the workers and peasants behind the Red Flag and the slogan of the Soviets, passed over the ruins of tsarist theocracy into a new future...

International Women's Day - Alexandra Kollontai

International Women's Day poster in post-revolution Russia

First published in 1920, this essay traces the history of international women's day and its importance to working class struggle with particular focus on the 1917 Russian Revolution.

A militant celebration
Women's Day or Working Women's Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women.

On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia - Alexandra Kollontai

Written in 1919, Alexandra Kollontai's essay looks at the role of working class women in the history of Russian radicalism with particular focus on the 1905 revolution.

What year could be said to mark the beginning of the working women's movement in Russia?

Korea: Train attendants strike in longest, most bitter struggle by working women

On March 1, 2006, approximately four hundred women who work as train attendants on the KTX “bullet train” began a strike against casual working conditions.

Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) officials led KTX women workers to believe that although they were initially hired under short-term contracts via an external company, they would be granted permanent status as direct employees of KORAIL after one year. However, the KTX Crew Workers Branch Union’s demands for direct and permanent employment have yet to be met.

Claramunt, Teresa, 1862- 1931

Teresa Claramunt

One of the founders of the Spanish anarchist movement, an ‘organic intellectual’ and one of its most distinguished women activists

“The Louise Michel of Spain"
- Emma Goldman, in a 1937 letter to Ethel Mannin.

Al-Jazeera program on Mansoura-España Garments Company struggle

Group of women occupying the Mansoura Espana Garments Company factory

The Everywoman program on Al-Jazeera takes a look at the struggles of Egyptian women working at the Mansoura-España Garments Company who have been occupying their factory for over a month for better pay.

Aired June 1st 2007 and includes an interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy writer from the 3arabwy blog.

Scotland: Ten week strike to come to an end

Sunvic Controls factory

Workers at a South Lanarkshire factory are expected to return to work after spending 10 weeks on strike.

The 40 female employees at Sunvic Controls in Uddingston walked out after 14 months of talks on pay and new employment conditions collapsed. Union officials said the company wanted to implement periodic lay-offs and short-time working when demand was low. The T&G Scotland section of Unite welcomed the resolution brokered with the help of conciliation service Acas.

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