12 / 50 · Work & collective action

Clara Zetkin

Germany · 1857–1933

Zetkin organised socialist women and helped establish the movement behind International Women’s Day. She argued that women’s working conditions and political rights had to be understood alongside class relations.

Her feminism was rooted in socialist organising, often in tension with other women’s movements. That history reminds us that agreement on equality has never meant agreement on how to achieve it.

“Hand in hand with the men of her own class, the proletarian woman fights against capitalist society.”

Speech on socialist women’s organising (1896), translated excerpt.