I'm free on Monday, would 11 am be ok?
Yes Eats in the past women have gained less than men but if you take one example, the Russian revolution, within weeks women were appointed to government positions including welfare and social services, women were allowed equal access to education, any form of work, equal wages and childcare, laundry and food was socialised to lessen the domestic burden. Although many ordinary Russians were sexist this is because of the time in which the revolution happened. Russia before the revolution was a deeply patriarchal society with a huge divide between the classes, the city and peasant populations, it was also far less industrialised than the west.
Interesting article here www.marxist.com/emancipation-women-russia.htm
Interesting little snippet of info about feminism and class, Emmeline Pankhurst banned the women workers of the east end from attending her meetings. She was really only concerned with winning the vote for women like her......middle class women.
These are the words of Clara Zetkin as she makes clear, middle class women protect their own rights first, (despite the fact they are also oppressed, they are privileged)
"The right to vote helps the bourgeois women to break down those barriers, in the form of privileges for the male sex, that are an obstacle to their own development and activity. For workingwomen this right becomes a weapon in the battle which they must wage for humanity to overcome exploitation and class rule. It allows them a greater participation in the struggle for the conquest of political power on the part of the proletariat with the aim of going beyond the capitalist order and building the socialist order, the only one that allows for a radical solution to the women's question (?). The workingwomen cannot therefore count on the support of the bourgeois women in the struggle for civil rights. Class contradictions exclude the possibility of workingwomen becoming allies of the bourgeois feminist movement. This does not mean that they reject bourgeois feminists if the latter, in the struggle for universal female suffrage, should stand by them in fighting the common enemy on different fronts. However, the workingwomen must be fully aware of the fact that the right to vote cannot be won through a struggle of the female sex without any class discrimination against the male sex, but only through the class struggle of all the exploited, without any sex discrimination, against all the exploiters, always without any sex discrimination."
Only when all oppressed peoples work together can the work of re-shaping society happen.