Lesson 5

Let’s start this lesson by thinking about feminist political manifestos…..

Political parties use manifestos to describe their core values and long-term aspirations. This is the most common understanding of political manifestos. These manifestos are generally regarded as blueprints for political changes to government or governance. Manifestos of this type are issued in large number at local, regional or national elections, to persuade party members to mobilise around key issues and to send out a clear message of a programme for change to voters.

While manifestos often outline an extended case for political changes, political parties tend to summarise their programmes into particular slogans or key statements of belief, e.g. “one person, one vote”, “no taxation without representation”, “putting our country first”…..  The idea of the slogan is that it should be memorable, distinctive and persuasive as a rallying cry. It is the slogans which tend to be memorable as the condensed version of a party’s programme for change. Think of some of the most memorable feminist slogans: “votes for women”, “women’s rights are human rights”, “reclaim the night”, or “the personal is political” (There are many others!).

This lesson puts forward the argument that the manifestos of political parties are different from the “manifestos” or mission statements of feminist organisations and tendencies within feminism, in general. Many of the feminist art manifestos in the art world contain phrases or references to contemporary politics and to larger feminist political campaigns.

Feminism is not a political party. It is a political movement, working across parties and in broader coalitions and alliances.
There are women’s parties with feminist agendas in some countries: a few have succeeded at the ballot box but none have become majority ruling parties. These include:-

Women’s Equality Party (UK) Read their manifesto for the EU in 2019
Feminist Initiative (Sweden); see their Plan for a Politics of Intersectionality
There exists in Finland,  Feminist Part / Feministinen Puolue
and in Spain, Partido Feminista de España, PFE (founded 1975) which regularly issue manifestos at elections.
National Women’s Party (Washington, USA) which lobbies, has an historical archive, as well as puts forward candidates.
or the Peace and freedom party: California’s Feminist Socialist Political Party (USA) who lobby and campaign for the democrats.
In South Africa, a relatively new party, Women Forward issued the following slide show of their manifesto.

In India, the National Women’s Party, India and the All India Women United Party recently collaborated at the 2020 elections.
In Russia, there is a Women’s Union of Russia
and in 2020, a new Women’s Party was started in South Korea.

There are also lobbying groups for women or political alliance groups for women within most major national parties. There are many of these groups, on the left and the right. If we want a fuller political analysis of women’s activisms in politics, we would also have to consider their work in attempting to change mainstream party politics.

You might want to consider whether there is a difference between developing countries and Western countries in terms of the politics expressed in women’s parties and in the women’s associations/lobby groups of major political parties. Are they always liberal, social democratic or socialist in their concerns?

The focus on women’s representation, equality and intersectionality appears as a common set of ideas, as does campaigning for social justice for women in law and an end to domestic violence. Gender mainstreaming, issues in women’s representation in the media, and women in decision-making at all levels are also present. These references relate to broader international campaigns for women, as expressed in/by the United Nations, to which most nations in the world are supposed to adhere.

Do you know of other women’s parties, which you find interesting or engaging? Do they all have feminist agendas?

Feminist campaigning groups

The list above are parties for women standing for election, but there are many other campaigning groups who have been working on a cross-party basis to improve the representation of women in politics (at local, national, regional and international forums) and to advance different agendas on single issues.

Many of these groups have met or taken part in the UN conferences for Women since the 1970s.  This link outlines a brief history of the conferences and the actions taken.  The UN conferences for women brought together groups from across the world. If you would like to read a more comprehensive account and analysis see H. Pietila’s account of women’s interventions in the UN until 2007: ‘Unfinished Story’.

Some of the campaigning groups for women’s representation in government include:-

Fawcett Society (UK) (named after the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Dame Millicent Garett Fawcett, a liberal democratic alliance, started in 1897).
NOW (National organisation for women) USA (started in 1966). Their current focus is: (1) End the Criminalization of Trauma; (2) Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment; (3) Mobilize for Reproductive Justice; (4) Advance Voting Rights; and (5) Protect Immigrant Rights.
Fifititu (Austria) has since the 1998 been advocating Cultural Policy of 52% for women. Their website contains a news database on culture.
In Australia, the Australian Women’s Party (1995-2003) existed as a ‘political movement to primarily attain equal representation of women in our federal and state parliaments and to select and endorse candidates so that we may have an equal input and say in the decision-making process in the management of our Nation’. A second Women’s Party (started 2018-2019) but seems shortlived.
Gabriela National Alliance, The Philippines is an alliance of 200 women’s groups across Asia, focused on women workers. They have 2 representatives in the US Congress and a USA Branch.
or other unions and associations like, KWAU Korean Women’s Association United who in  7 chapters and 30 member organizations strive ‘to achieve gender equality, democracy, and peaceful reunification in the Korean peninsula by facilitating solidarity and collective actions among women’s groups since its establishment in 1987.’

These groups have mission statements. They describe their activities and work in terms of what they are “about”: as movement, union, alliance, campaigning group. They issue advisory reports and launch campaigns.

Political manifestos issued by different tendencies within feminism

There are political manifestos by different tendencies within the women’s movement and issued by different branches within feminism.

In Lesson 1 of the basic course, an outline is given of the many different tendencies within feminism, historically and politically. Feminism is an umbrella term for a politics conducted by, for and on behalf of women. This is the primary definition of feminism, even though there are many feminisms.

In this lesson, it is the differences between the politics of feminist tendencies that you are encouraged to consider.  This is not to “box in” feminism as a certain type of category: liberal, socialist, anarchist etc. but it is to understand how feminism is a broad alliance of different forces and aspirations.

On KT press’ website page for feminist art manifestos, there are links to many political manifestos from feminism online. This course was also to encourage you to think about the relationships between feminist politics and art’s cultural politics more deeply.

Emerging Women’s Liberation Movements, 1969-1971.

Let’s consider the contrasts between emerging feminist movements and their political programmes of the period 1969-1971. Comparing these initiatives enables us to consider the very different political programmes which have emerged within feminism.

The demands of women’s liberation in the UK

In the UK, a large women’s liberation conference (1971) developed what became known as the 4 demands, this was later extended to 7 in and through other political conferences. These demands formed a consensus around a political/activist programme which was to become put into place through legislation and social campaigns.

This action plan was drafted prior to the Equal Pay Act of 1975, prior to the introduction of any Equal Opportunities action plans, prior to campaigns for nursery education for working mothers or nursery education for all children, payments of child benefits, prior to the establishment of many rape crisis centres and women’s refuges, or women’s health/advice centres, and prior to any Anti-Sex Discrimination legislation in the UK. Women had the right to vote (1918/ 1928) and had experienced the broadening of “family planning” services, because of the introduction of oral contraceptives (1961), in the 1960s and the end of prosecution for consensual homosexuality (1967). The gap between legislation and its practice, the absence of legal frameworks in some areas (recognition of rape in marriage), and access to services, as well as recognition of women’s civil rights in practice and policy, were at the centre of these demands. These are demands for recognition of women as full citizens of a state.

‘1. Equal Pay, 2. Equal Educational and Job Opportunities, 3. Free Contraception and Abortion on Demand, 4. Free 24-hour Nurseries’ (agreed, 1971). 5. Legal and Financial Independence for All Women, 6. The Right to a Self Defined Sexuality. An End to Discrimination Against Lesbians. (agreed, 1974), 7. Freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of violence or sexual coercion regardless of marital status; and an end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and aggression to women.(agreed, 1978).

The Demands from the National Women’s Liberation Movement conferences (1971-1978) (UK). Archived on the Feminist Archive North website, as the aspirations of the political programme of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

You might like to reflect on whether the 2010 Equality Act in the UK and its list of protected characteristics has met these 7 demands?

Redstockings: A case for a radical feminism

The Redstockings Manifesto (1969) is a political manifesto of a very different kind. It was widely read around the world and adopted by radical groups in the USA and in Scandanavia, particularly. It is an analysis of women’s situation under patriarchy. It identifies women as oppressed class (different from traditional class politics of workers-capitalists), men as the agents of this oppression, and calls for women – all women – to stand in solidarity against this oppression and develop collective methods for changing these relationships which are political, not personal. It calls for consciousness-raising as the main and immediate method through which women can ‘develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of all our institutions.’ The Redstockings Manifesto is usually considered a manifesto of women’s liberation and a radical feminist manifesto (i.e. not aligned exclusively to liberal, socialist or anarchist tendencies).

Redstockings Manifesto (1969/1970). ‘The Redstockings Manifesto’ was written by an unknown author, and used by the Women’s Liberation Party in 1969.

Anarcho-feminists in the 1970s: revolution against the state

Compare this manifesto or the aspirations of the Women’s Liberation Movement with that of the Anarcho-feminists who call for a Woman’s Revolutionary Movement that does not ‘mimic, but destroy[s], all vestiges of the male-dominated power structure [and] the State itself’….because…’The world obviously cannot survive many more decades of rule by gangs of armed males calling themselves governments. The situation is insane, ridiculous and even suicidal’.  Anarcho-feminist politics are aligned with socialism (pre-Marxism but take a strong distance from Marxists). They are libertarian socialists: valuing freedom of expression, the right to criticise, and ‘the courage to question and challenge absolutely everything – including, when it proves necessary, our own assumptions.’
While they value collectives and believe in collective action, they are critical of how feminism is thought of as “therapy” (a negative description of consciousness-raising) or ‘large, bureaucratised groups which have focused their activities along specific policy lines, taking great pains to translate women’s oppression into concrete, single-issue programmes’ (single-issue campaigns for reform, not systematic change) and focus instead on how “WE ARE THE REVOLUTION”.

These are two documents written by Anarcho-feminists in 1971, published in their new journal, Sirens.

Black Women’s Liberation in the 1970s in the USA

All three of these manifestos/political demands are in sharp contrast to the analysis of racism and capitalism in The Black Women’s Manifesto (USA, 1970) and their call for the necessity of black men and women to work together for their own liberation. Quoting Linda La Rue, the feminist argument about black women’s consciousness is to be found in how:-

The black woman is demanding a new set of female definitions and a recognition of herself as a citizen, companion and confidant, not a matriarchal villain or a step stool baby-maker. Role integration advocates the complementary recognition of man and woman, not the competitive recognition of same.

The Third World Women’s Alliance Black Women’s Manifesto (1970) (published as a pamphlet in New York, available through Duke University Library’s, documents from the women’s movement archive online).

It is not just the language but the political aspirations of these programmes which are different in the first few years of the Women’s Liberation Movement. While the first example campaigns for legal and social changes; the second argues for changes amongst women in their consciousness of their own situation; the third presents the idea of a need for revolution combined with continuous critique; and the fourth for a rejection of recognition of black women beyond limited roles, for equality and respect, in a new alliance between anti-racism and feminism inside and outside the struggle for black liberation.

Other visions of self-development and autonomy from France and Italy

You might also like to consider the differences between the programme and analysis proposed in other manifestos in France by Monique Wittig, Gilles Wittig, Marcia Rothenberg and Margaret Stephenson ‘Combat pour la liberation del a femme’ (L’Idiot International (Paris) May 1970 pp.12-16) p.184  and in Italy with the 1970s Italian Manifesto of Rivolta Femminile or Carla Lonzi’s Let’s Spit on Hegel.

In the 1980s-1990s

Similarly, if you look across the manifestos produced by different tendencies during the 1980s, you can see clearly different factions, modes of organising and marked differences in aims and ambitions.

Compare, for example,

Combahee River Collective (1986) The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing In The Seventies and Eighties. Kitchen Table/Women of Color

with Donna Haraway ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’ (1985) First published in Socialist Review No 80 1985.

or in the early 1990s,

Lesbian Avengers of New York Civil Organising Project ‘Out Against Right: The Dyke Manifesto: basic principles’ (1992-1994)

or RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO. The Riot Grrrl Movement began in the early 1990s by Washington State band Bikini Kill and lead singer Kathleen Hanna.

Feminist Political Manifestos today…

In March 2019, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser published Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto.  (Available as a PDF) This manifesto puts forward the argument that that feminism must be anticapitalist, eco-socialist and antiracist. Feminism is not about a liberal/neo-liberal struggle to get into the professions (and they target Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In as an example of a female empowerment for the 1%), it is about a mass movement of women against racism, ecological destruction, capitalist exploitation of women, and a feminism without borders! (for which huelgo feminista in Spain and their manifesto for 8 Million Women is their main example).

Will we continue to pursue “equal opportunity domination” while the planet burns? Or will we reimagine gender justice in an anticapitalist form that leads beyond the present crisis to a new society?………

Uniting women separated by oceans, mountains, and continents, as well as by borders, barbed wire fences, and walls, they give new meaning to the slogan “Solidarity is our weapon.”

The manifesto is inspired by the language of The Communist Manifesto (1848) and it offered 11 theses, beginning with calls for International Women’s Day to return to its first presentation as an International Women’s Strike against the conditions under which women have to work:-

Thesis 1: A new feminist wave is reinventing the strike.
Thesis 2: Liberal feminism is bankrupt. It’s time to get over it.
Thesis 3: We need an anticapitalist feminism – a feminism for the 99 percent.
Thesis 4: What we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole – and its root cause is capitalism.
Thesis 5: Gender oppression in capitalist societies is rooted in the subordination of social reproduction to production for profit. We want to turn things right side up.
Thesis 6: Gender violence takes many forms, all of them entangled with capitalist social relations. We vow to fight them all.
Thesis 7: Capitalism tries to regulate sexuality. We want to liberate it.
Thesis 8: Capitalism was born from racist and colonial violence. Feminism for the 99 percent is anti-racist and anti-imperialist.
Thesis 9: Fighting to reverse capital’s destruction of the earth, feminism for the 99 percent is eco-socialist.
Thesis 10: Capitalism is incompatible with real democracy and peace. Our answer is feminist internationalism.
Thesis 11: Feminism for the 99 percent calls on all radical movements to join together in a common anticapitalist insurgency.

Nancy Fraser has argued consistently that feminism needs to be thought of in terms of 3 trajectories, and 3 simultaneous and interacting strands:

arguments for recognition – the social and symbolic recognition of what women contribute to society, their roles and the value of their work

arguments for redistribution – the economic redistribution of assets, of spending by governments, to prioritise women’s needs and values in policy-making as mothers, as carers, and as the majority of single-parent households and to address structural inequalities in society regarding wealth, pay and economic/cultural/educational assets.

arguments for social justice – for improvements to and changes to the law and legal frameworks that enable justice for women, rather than obstruct it, especially when it comes to violence against women. The gap between the law and practices of discrimination is at the centre of social justice arguments for change.

Thinking of how women’s demands and struggles proceed in these terms, moves the discussion away from liberal agendas of feminism reduced to questions of advancement /empowerment, entry to professions, or “firsts” and into a broader consideration of what society itself should do to support its population, tackling discrimination, poverty, unemployment/ underemployment, and a different set of recognitions for the value of women’s role in culture.

Another recent expression of these political demands can be found in worldwide responses to the COVID-19 crisis in feminist political manifestos like:-

Manifeste Féministe Transfrontière

issued on 1 May 2020, by the campaigning group, Strasbourg Furieuse, who campaign an alternative agenda for the EU parliament in Strasbourg.
You can find it in many languages, here. English Version

A decade earlier, you might have found these expressions of other branches of contemporary feminisms:

Manifesto of the Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering Toujours RebELLEs / Waves of Resistance, Montreal, October 13, 2008

or

Lindsey German ‘A Feminist Manifesto for the 21st Century’(2010)

or

Anohni – Kembra Pfahler – Johanna Constantine – Bianca Casady – Sierra Casady the-13-tenets-of-future-feminism (2014-2017)

In this part of the lesson, I have tried to demonstrate through the many examples listed, how different programmes have emerged in feminist politics. They do not always use the same language, nor do they have the same political ambitions. As in Lesson 1, basic course: some are pro-equality, most are anti-discrimination; some campaign for single issues, most make broader calls for social justice on all fronts. Each of these parties, campaigns or manifestos by different tendencies align themselves to broader progressive political groups campaigning for women’s rights. These include a wide spectrum of political positions, which are represent different branches of feminism allied to different versions of Liberal Democratic, Socialist, Anarchist and Marxist political thought.

Lesson continues in:-

Part 2, Part 3

Summary

Part 1

Mission statements
and women artists’ groups

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Part 2

Women’s Workshop Manifesto (Almost Free Theatre, London, 1973)

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Feminist Art Action Brigade

Manifesto (2003)

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Eva and Co.

THE MANIFESTO: Eva and Co. (c. 1992)

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Part 3

Yes! Association / FÖRENINGEN JA!

Equal Opportunities Agreement (#1, 2005)

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Feminist (Art) Institution (Tereza Stejskalova)

Code of Practice

(2017)

Continue the lesson with Part 2