Marxist feminism in action
The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance have placed the issue of women's liberation at the centre of our work since our formation during the youth radicalisation and the "second wave" of feminism in the 1970s. This has led us to initiate and become actively involved in numerous campaigns and activities over the years, including:
* Helping to organise the first conference of Women's Liberation in Sydney, and involvement in Sydney Bread and Roses and women's trade union conferences, including Women and Labour.
* Participating in the collective which produced Mejane in the 1970s, one of the first Australian feminist newspapers, and later in a new collective which sought to change the focus of the feminist journal Refractory Girl away from an ALP "femocrat" orientation, back to feminist activism.
* Involvement in the committee of the Working Women's Charter in Sydney and Wollongong, which led in 1980 to the historic Jobs for Women campaign against BHP Port Kembla's discriminatory hiring practices. Our role was instrumental, not only in initiating legal action along with the predominantly migrant women workers, but also in backing the action with a political campaign which helped to ensure its victory.
* Participating in the first conference of the Network of Women Students Australia (NOWSA) and campaigning consistently for women's rights on campus.
* Involvement in the founding of the Women's Abortion Action Campaign and, since then, organising and supporting public actions for reproductive choice, and for high quality, accessible child-care facilities for those who chose to have children.
* Active involvement in campaigns for the rights of lesbians and gay men, including in the early, far more political, Mardi Gras marches in Sydney.
* Consistent international solidarity work with organisations and feminists struggling for justice overseas, most recently the successful campaign to free Indonesian trade union leader Dita Sari from jail.
* Playing a major role each year in the IWD march and rally organising collectives, in which we continue to argue for a political focus on the persistent inequality between women and men and the need for further change. We also participate actively in the Reclaim the Night events which challenge violence against women.
Resistance and the DSP's understanding of the nature of women's oppression and future liberation means that we see this question as fundamental to the struggle for socialism — and we put that perspective into practice, every day and in every way.