WOMENS MOVEMENT
In Madrid, the saleswomen of one of the Simago chain stores have been in struggle for more than a month. They went on strike after one of their union delegates was fired because she had eaten a sandwich on the job (the rule says that you have to do this in the toilets!). The police arrested some of the striking women, claiming that they had obstructed the entrance to the store, About thirty women then occupied a church for three days, with the support of the neighborhood association and the women's group of the Aluche neighborhood. They were forcibly ejected, after which a solidarity demonstration of 1,000 was organized. The saleswomen are now back at work, but they are holding general assemblies to discuss how to struggle for an increase in their scandalously low wages and against the harassment they suffer. They have established ongoing links with the Women's Social Center recently set up in the neighborhood. Three weeks after these events, since the management had still not rehired the fired saleswoman, her comrades organized a boycott of the Simago chain for June 2224, with the aid of various Madrid women's groups. (The Association of Housewives' Groups, dominated by the Communist party, refused to participate because the action was not legal.) This was a very militant action, widely reported in the press. It raised slogans for the immediate rehiring of their fired comrode and on eby JACQUELINE HEINEN® the struggle against the specific oppression in the department stores. In the Basque country, domestic workers have gotten together and are fighting for a forty-hour workweek, social security coverage, a minimum wage, and the right to unionize. In Barcelona the wives of the workers of Motor Iberica barricaded themselves into a church on June 1 in support of the wage demands of the workers and to break the wall of silence surrounding this strike. The occupation has enabled them to discuss their own problems (as housewives, part-time workers, or poorly paid domestic workers) and to see how much easier it is to care for children collectively and how much the population manifests its solidarity. They hod left their ghetto. The police who came to throw them out by force -with jeeps, trucks, and anti-riot equipment - compelled them to return to their homes, but things will never be the same again. Throughout the Spanish state, neighborhood women's groups organized a boycott of the markets on June 26, following a demonstration of more than 50,000 in Madrid four days earlier against the rising cost of living and for the legalization of the neighborhood associations.
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SPAIN The militancy exhibited by these women is commensurate with the mobilizations of the entire Spanish proletariat: work stoppages in solidarity with Motor Iberica in Barcelona and with Feramica in Martorell; demonstration of 15,000 in Barcelona for amnesty and for the rehiring of all workers fired during struggles, inspired by what happened in Bilbao, where all the workers at Babcock Wilcox fired since 1939 had been rehired, and by the rehiring of all the workers fired during the 1962 strike at Siemens-Barcelona; the very militant demonstration of 15,000 in Santa Coloma, a suburb of Barcelona, which stopped in front of the headquarters of the Guardia Civil, chanting "dissolve the repressive bodies"; 10,000 youth in Cornelia, in the Barcelona area, demanding jobs for all and concluding their demonstration with a big festival; the metalworkers and chemical workers of Madrid taking to the streets to back up their demands. mujer en santa coloma ХАТУ
CONTRA LAS VEGALINE DE MAIRDS DE LAE ASOCIA
5 Сосони 1 Абосійною ок. The social and ideological crisis But the context in which the rodicalization of ever broader layers of women is occurring is also determined by the social and ideological crisis in which the Spanish bourgeoisie has been mired since the death of Franco, The fierce repression against many militants, among them many women, has not managed to quell the need for self-expression, for liberation, for throwing off the stifling straitjacket of Francoism. The innumerable articles now appearing in many bourgeois newspapers and magazines on sexuality and contraception - from advertisements for this or that pill to what position to assume to avoid pregnancy - simply reflects the pressure being expressed by ordinary women in neighborhood meetings where sexuality is discussed, one's own sexuality, where a series of taboo questions are finally opened up (like the meeting in Barcelona that brought together 900 women and men). 18
In this country in which the troditional role of women has been so extolled by the reactionary bourgeoisie, in particular by the Phalangist party whose women's sections are assigned the task of teaching young giris how to become good mothers; in this country where the obligatory "social" service still exists — for young girls ir consists of doing six months' apprentice housekeeping; in this country where up to a year ago wives were considered abnormal beings needing permission from their husbands in order to go to work; in this country where marriage in the Catholic church is practically mandatory, the spirits are in revolt - and the bodies too. This is evidenced by the first issue of the women's journal in the Santa Coloma neighborhood: the illiterate women are demanding to be taught to read, adolescents want to discuss their rights with their parents, and some fathers are engaging in discussion in the nurseries on the discrimination against their daughters ("why. these pink and blue baby clothes?"). The emergence of the women's movement in Spain has been shaped by contradictory factors. One is that only 15 percent of all women are wage workers, while more than 50 percent of all women remain in the home. But another is the strong tradition of solidarity with workers struggles, in demonstrations and on strike picket lines. Only 0.24 percent of all university students are women and a very low proportion of women are skilled workers. But at the same time in the public debates in past months women have often expressed their desire to have occess to culture. There is a poverty of social resources available to women to ease their domestic fasks, but at the same time women have been active participants in neighborhood struggles for several years. Today, they are beginning to become conscious of their specific oppression as women, particularly around the struggle for free child-care centers. (One of the most advanced examples of this was the simultaneous occupation of fourteen Barcelona child-care centers by the parents, children, and teachers at the end of May.) Finally, the European women's movement has had an impact; through the "Year of the Woman" declared by the bourgeoisie it found channels through which to make its demands known and inspire Spanish women to begin struggling for themselves. Women's groups are springing up wherever they had not existed before: in the neighborhoods, the univerities, and some factories. In several cities these groups have begun to coordinate, giving rise to conferences such os the one in Madrid last year, where 500 women were able to meet for the first time. The "Women's Days" held in Barcelona at the end of May is another example. It was attended by 1,500 women on the first day and 4,000 on the last day. Participants came to discuss point by point the eight themes that were on the agenda on the problems of women workers, women in the neighborhoods, questions of sexuality, the laws, the mass media, etc. It was during these first regional encounters (with many delegates coming from other cities in the case of Barcelona) that it became clear that the movement was already structured around three major poles. In addition to the Movement of Democratic
Women (linked to the CP) and the pole of rodical feminists, who uphold positions similar to those held by this current in the rest of Europe (a current that owes a lot of the press coverage it initially got to its extremist positions), there is a third pole represented by such groups as the Association of Women University Students, the Women's Liberation Front in Madrid, and ANCHE in Barcelona, which emphasize the necessity for an independent revolutionary women's movement. Beyond these divisions, what was striking about the discussion during the Barcelona "Women's Days" were the links, very close from the outset, between the various groups and the workers movement (even certain groups upholding more or less sexist positions), either through their organic links with the tenant associations, parent associations, or local workers commissions in the case of the neighborhood women's groups, or through the program of demands put forward by the other groups and the understanding of the importance of a struggle around specific oppression, which tends to be the oppression not only of women, but also of all the workers. (Catholic women linked to the Christian Democracy, who were officially present at the beginning of the "Days, " had to leave because of the uproar touched off by their reactionary positions on the family.) The CP and the radicalization of women In this situation, the work of gaining a base in the neighborhoods that has been carried out by the Communist party for about ten years now has had far from negligible effects. This is true even though the housewives groups (Amas de Casa) linked to the tenants associations did not have a feminist slant at first. Organized and led for the most part by the Movement of Democratic Women (MDM), they were content to mobilize women as one more force in the social struggle. Nevertheless, the deepening of the political and economic crisis linked to the daily confrontation with social problems that almost always relate to the role of women in capitalist society - housing, child care, neighborhood management, parks in which children can play - has led these groups to modify their positions and put forward specifically feminist objectives, even on questions that seem least related at first glance. "If we have to broach the problem of rats, " which infest the filthy neighborhoods around the great cities and are a real danger to small children, "we will do so while also asking ourselves why it is always women who have to discuss this sort of problem, " says a woman of the MDM. Which does not prevent her from locating this struggle in a totally reformist perspective: *The future democratic government will be able to respond in large part to the needs expressed by the demands for free child-care centers, building new schools, and the question of prices. Even if it does not permit a full liberation of women, it will create the material basis to enable us to work toward this. "
YA ESTAMOS HARTAS DESER ESCLAVAS Saleswomen of Simago chain on strike. The explosive situation that will inevitably result from the fall of the dictatorship and the intensification of the contradictions of the system in the eyes of the workers (because of the future government's inability to deal with their demands) will enable revolutionaries to get a growing response to their strategic perspectives. The head-on battle against positions like those expressed above by a leader of the Communist party will then take on its full significance for broad layers of women and men who are now still victims of the worst reformist illusions. For the immediate period, given the urgency of a united battle against repression and the breadth of the campaign for amnesty, this polemic appears relatively abstract to them. But be that as it may, militants, and above all women militants, of the CP have understood one thing: the Importance of the neighborhood as the natural terrain for assembling all women who do not work and the necessity for engaging in a dialogue with other political currents. Along with all the ambiguities of the recent program of the CP, in which this party affirms "We must be a feminist party. We are the party of women's liberation, " there is also the explicit recognition of the women's liberation movement as a "broad front in which organized movements coexist side by side with important currents in which basic orientations confront one another." These are certainly the most open positions that have been taken on the question of women by any European CP up to now. So open, in fact, that the woman of MDM interviewed in an article published in the magazine Triunfo declared: "We believe that there are interclass demands among brood popular and bourgeois layers that can structure a feminist movement." An alliance with the "democratic" wing of the bourgeoisie is thus called for. But the very dynamic of the movement in a region like Barcelona, in which the traditions of workers struggle are very strong, indicates that the CP will soon have some trouble with its ranks. "It smells a bit bourgeois here, doesn't it, " said a woman of Santa Coloma, a member of the MDM, when the Catholic women were present at the Barcelona "Women's Days." And, casting a glance at the solemn pictures on the wall, where the diplomas of honored doctors are traditionally hung up, she said, "I'm illiterate; but I'm here anyway."
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SPAIN The radical feminists Because of the present strength and base of the reformists and because of the revolutionary dynamic of the situation in Spain, the radical feminist current that publicly emerged during the December women's conference in Madrid scarcely has any room for development in the coming period. Its present audience partially derives from the fact that it represents a pole of attraction for many women, youth or intellectuals, who resist entering the neighborhood groups because of the social composition of these groups, the age of the women involved in them (often in their forties), and their primary concerns (cost of living, child care, the question of the family as seen by married women, etc.). This does not mean that the women who follow the radical feminists today necessarily adhere to the theories of Lidia Falcón on the struggle of the sexes or the building of a woman's party. It is thus the task of the third component that has recently emerged in the movement, within which revolutionaries generally predominate, to win to their posifions the women who are attracted to the radical language of the radical feminists (which often corresponds to their own revalt against the family and society) rather than to their strategic perspectives. To understand this necessity is also to understand its corollary: the need to win the women of the neighborhood or factory groups away from CP influence, women who have already exhibited an extraordinary militancy but who could remain completely disarmed in foce of the betrayals of the reformists if no alternative is proposed to them,
J What tasks for revolutionaries In part, building this alternative consists of effecting the linkup of a part of the women's movement with the most advanced fringes of the working class around common objectives such as the struggle against repression and the active boycott of the government referendum. But it also consists of the fight of women to impose, es20 pecially within the workers commissions, the existence of structures that enable them to defend their own demands (equal job training and wages, struggle against sexist harassment in the factories, free abortion and contraception on demand, etc.). Another element in building this alternative is the capacity of vanguard women to stimulate the emergence of women's groups in the factories, groups that coordinate among themselves and would be an integral part of the independent movement around all factors underlying the specific oppression of women. Part of building this alternative is also understanding the primordial role the neighborhood women's groups can play in the coming period in the emergence of a women's movement on clearly anticapitalist positions. This is because of the depth of the economic and social crisis, the dynamic of demands such as "free child-care centers and schools for all" (which has already been advanced today), and the focal point the neighborhood represents for the struggle of the most oppressed social layers. Hence the importance of revolutionary women militants" being present in the existing neighborhood groups and pushing for their creation where they do not yet exist. Contrary to the Maoists, who have exhibited the most incredible sectarianism, trying to create their own women's groups and putting forward their own movement, the self-styled Democratic Association of Women, we believe that the women's movement must be independent, united, broad, and democratic and that its strength derives precisely from the ability of the various political currents, sectors, and groups to confront one another within the movement and forge unity around specific objectives, It is the achievement of this unity that will also determine the capacity of the women's movement to stimulate mixed struggles of a mass character that compel the leaderships of the traditional workers movement to take into consideration such objectives as free abortion on demand, the struggle against discrimination against women in job training and employment, the struggle for improved social services, and so on. The very way in which the women's movement in Spain has tended to structure itself during the past several months should permit it to attain these goals. Sectoral coordinating bodies of neighborhood groups in Barcelona and Madrid, coordination among the various sectors at the local level (neighborhood, university, factory), the regional coordination recently decided on in Catalonia - these are the sort of links that are decisive in taking account both of the diversity of the movement and of the specific character of the many groups and sectors that are part of it, while still permitting a constant dialogue among all of them. Whether this movement stands on class-struggle positions, whether it is organically linked to the overall struggle of the Spanish proletariat, and whether it will participate in the emergence of organs of dual power in the future will depend on the place revolutionaries are able to occupy within it.