 as much as we talk about the Russian Revolution all of the time we have to ask this question, why do we do that ? why is it so important nd obviously this starts with the fact that it's the first time in history that workers took power and began to transform society and to to change things beyond just taking control of the economy, but beginning to change everyday life and changed the social relationships that existed between people, and one area where we saw huge changes yn y U.S.S.R. yw ydy fyddwch yn gwybod ac yn y bryd y gwybod. Dyma, gyd yn gweithio angen a bryd, ac ddiddorol y byd yn gwneud o'r cyfnod y bydd yn gwneud am y cwmwylliant Cymru, sy'n gweithio'n cyffredinol a'r cyfnod i'w cyfnod yw'r cyflwylliant. Yn y gweithio, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwybod yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio yw'r cyffredinol i'r U.S.R. yn y 1920. Rwy'n gweithio gwybod, ond o'r ffordd i gael yr un ffordd i'r ydydd, ond, ychydig i'r ysgol yw'r ysgol felly rwy'n gwybod. Felly, mae'n rhaid i gael y bydd angen ar y cyffredin, byddwch gweithio, byddwch gweithio'r ysgol yma, ac nifer o'r ysgol yna'r ddydd y byddwn i'r ysgol, ond rydw i'n gweithio'r ffordd i'r ysgol yma i'r ffamili ac i'r cyffredin o'r ffamili. pan mae'n iawn i chi'n amlwg at y fath o'r blaenwyr yn eistedd ar gyfer y syniad yw'r fath. A bod, rwy'n meddwl i'r gwaith cymryd wedi'i gweithio dda i ddarparu dda i Zarisd, oherwydd i'n gwneud y gwasanaeth ar y cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, ac mae'n meddwl i'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud ymlaenwyr i'r SESR. As many people will be aware already, the Tsarist regime was an absolutist regime and it used force as well as backward prejudices in society to keep the masses down. For example, it utilised the Black Hundreds which was a reactionary monarchist, ultra nationalist group to incite pogroms and violence against basically anyone who had a disagreement with the Tsar or a different point of view. It was a deeply reactionary and oppressive regime and it was very closely linked with the Orthodox Church which held a material and ideological control over the population and it was essentially a tool of the state to keep people down. It owned 7.5 million acres of land, it had an annual income of over 150 million rubles and it preached, which it still does today, that a woman's place is in the home and has no other role than as a mother and a wife. Here we see this concept of the man as the head of the family, this very deeply patriarchal attitude and that really reflected as well the view of the Tsar at the time, the little father of the entire Washington empire. This view permeated right throughout Washington society and so as a consequence the position of women was secondary, they were seen as property. That's even codified in Tsarist law and we kind of see very many examples of what is quite a very almost medieval perspective of women that exists still even into the 1800s, where women are subject to men's ideas, their control, their desires and men literally had by law the right to beat their wives. A fact that demonstrates the regression of Russian society under capitalism is the fact that domestic violence was decriminalised in 2017 in Russia. To give an idea of how brutal it was at the time though, this is from a law and advice written about wife beating, so apologies if this is a bit brutal but I think it's important to hear. If a wife refuses to obey and pays no attention to what her husband tells her, it is advisable to beat her with a whip according to the measure of her guilt. But if her fault is very serious, the matter is not so simple and her disobedience beyond all bounds, then strip off her shift, seize her hands and give her a sound beating. And I think through this you can see how casualised and how normalised that kind of violence was that this was a piece of advice written and the control that was held over women went beyond physical violence as well. So from a domestic ordinance or like a law of the time it said, a woman must consult her husband on all occasions about everything. If she receives an invitation or someone's ready to visit her, it must only be if her husband permits it. But she must talk with her guests of nothing but embroidery and household matters. And so again you can see the control over women that was exerted by the male members of the household that was even exerted to what you were allowed to discuss and even what you could talk and think about even in like a private setting. Now this oppression of women, it wasn't isolated, it was incredibly widespread, especially in the kind of quite culturally backward countryside where the church and tradition had a really firm hold. And of course the majority of the population were peasantry. According to an 1897 report, sorry, only 13.1% of women in the Xarist Russia were literate, girls received on average about a year with what we would class as secondary education. And that was because they then went to work in the fields at the age of 12 to 14 and were unable to attend school at any other time because they were then also beholden to the domestic chores and the cooking and the cleaning for the male members of the household. So they were doing this from an incredible young age. Of course the effect of this would be to isolate women and young girls from each other but also from the ability to organise, to discuss and just be active with the women essentially. And whether we're female proletarians, those women were paid less for the same type of work, so a lower rate of pay. And also at this time, and this was true of most trade unions in Europe actually, they weren't allowed to join trade unions because there was a perspective that women were less intelligent and that would mean they couldn't understand the workplace issues to the same extent they were less likely to strike and they would hold the male movement back. So conditions in women, although that one about the trade unions was more widespread around Europe, quite clearly the rest of these conditions that I've outlined. Paying this picture of how women in Tsaristwysia had far worse conditions than women in the rest of Europe. Just to contrast that, I talked about the literacy rates for women in Tsaristwysia by 1800, so way before the 1900 when I was quoting from almost, 40% of women in Britain were literate. And by 1855, 77% were literate. And then as well I think a good contrast is the life expectancy to give an idea of the quality of life for women as well. For women in the UK in 1900 life expectancy was 50 compared to 30 for women in Tsaristwysia. So conditions for women, okay they weren't utopian in the UK at this time, but compared to Russia they were far more advanced in many different ways. Now this oppression of women within Tsaristwysia was consciously maintained by the states and by the regime through the institution of the state itself, but also its interaction with the church and the concept of tradition, these conscious ways that views were maintained and perpetuated. But as well as that there was a material basis for the economic, the material basis for this oppression which is based in the economic backwardness of Tsaristwysia itself. Now the development of Russian capitalism didn't really begin until the 1880s and into the 1890s following the emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 and that's incredibly late of course compared to the rest of Europe. And so what that meant was that their old feudal social relations had existed in Tsaristwysia for far longer than elsewhere in other countries where capitalism had developed at a faster and earlier rate. And in those countries the presence of women in the workplace had begun to transform the situation for them and for the whole of society in general. So when we do begin to see the development of capitalism in Russia it really shakes the whole of society out of this sort of feudal barbarism that had been existing there still and it brought presence from the villages into the towns or into the cities to work and we see the beginnings of capitalist industrialisation. But the level of economic output remained relatively low and this slow development of capitalism meant a slow development of the working class overall as well. And so out of 150 million population at the turn of a century only about four to five million Russian workers and the rest were peasants. Now due to its position in relation to the means of production the peasantry cannot play an independent class role and it can't fight independently against capitalism. And so it wasn't until the working class begins to develop that a struggle for emancipation for both workers and women can really begin to be seen and the results of that can be measured. And so it's on account of this late development and the semi-fuelled economy prior to the turn of the century that had kept these conditions of women in such a low position in this almost medieval type picture that I painted of it. And so I think really we do see a very harsh kind of picture for women, a really harsh question of the women's question. Now coming from such a backwards position I think it makes the gains made by the Russian Revolution even more remarkable when we see what they are. And so just to paint a kind of general picture of that to contrast how far society had to come it is such a huge leap. So as soon as the Bolsheviks came into power they immediately passed a series of laws and they ensured legal equality for men and for women. Women were no longer considered objects of property to the men and women were given the right to vote immediately as well. Now to contrast that in 1917 the only other countries in Europe that had the right to vote were Denmark and Norway. And in England of course we know that women over the age of 30 got the right to vote in 1918 but not until 1926 if you were under 30. In the US women didn't get the right to vote until 1920, Sweden 1921 and then it was even later like 30 years later for France and Italy as well. The Bolsheviks granted free access to abortion in 1920 and again they were the first country on earth to do this. And this is just remember just years after this picture of Zaraith Russia that I've just painted. And in addition to that they developed not just access to abortion but the obviously gains that the revolution made that go beyond this that we'll talk about later. Sort of help develop an understanding of why women choose abortions and helping to eradicate all the factors that might bring that on as not necessarily a choice. They established special maternity wards and they brought in paid maternity leave which is really significant. They brought in maternity leave before and after birth which is something that Britain didn't introduce until 1975. They had night work for pregnant women and women who had just given birth completely abolished so that they could stay at home and like recover. And by 1926 marriage didn't have to be registered, divorce was made as easy as possible and the concept of illegitimate children was abolished as well so that all children could be treated equally. The other conditions as well that were changed really disproportionately positively affected women. So for example a decree adopting the 8 hour working day which they brought in just four days after the Soviet government came to power and showed that women would have time to politically engage where they hadn't in the past. And then of course things that are maybe more famous like the public laundries and the public canteens were brought in as well which freed women up from domestic chores. So how is it that the Bolsheviks were able to make such a big change? How is it they were able to get to this point from such a further back position? Well with the economic upheaval that the beginnings of the Development of Capitalism book came this social upheaval as well that I was talking about. Workers were increasingly brought together in the workplace and in the years 1865 to 98 so in the space of 33 years the number of factories that employed over 100 workers doubled so this quick development begins. And women were brought into the workforce as a consequence of this and taken out of the isolation of the home that I described to begin with. And so this is what when we really begin to see the beginnings if not the total development of change for women at this time. Now obviously we know that capitalism brings misery and hardship particularly for women who are still under this double burden of domestic work at home as well. But the fact is that by bringing women into the workforce created this progressive step because it meant that women could begin to be organised. Lenin writes about the impact of the development of capitalism and Russia on women and he said By destroying the patriarchal isolation of these categories of the population who formerly never emerged from the narrow circle of domestic family relationships by drawing them into direct participation in social production large scale machine industry stimulates their development and increases their independence in other words creates conditions of life that are incomparably superior to the patriarchal immobility of pre-capitalist relations. And so it's this involvement in social production that is really key here and so consequently from the 1890s we begin to see some steps forward taken for women they are beginning to partake in strike action they gain education to an extent because there are government initiatives set up to educate workers so they can read and write and be better workers essentially. And actually to illustrate this increased involvement 16.5% of the delegates elected to the first Soviet in the 1905 revolution were women so you can see that wouldn't have happened if there weren't increased involvement from women. Now historical events have an impact as well and World War I greatly accelerates this process that's going on. Obviously we know that the mobilisation of men into the army means that women are drafted into the workforce into industry and so by the end of the war women accounted for 40% of the workforce in large industry and in some places even higher so in the Moscow region 60% of all textile workers were women and to raise the consciousness of these women who were beginning to move into the workforce in huge numbers Bolsheviks began to organise in 1914 they created a journal aimed at working women Robert Knitzer and it had people on the editorial board like Krupskaya who you might be familiar with in Colin Tyne but more importantly they had on their representatives female representatives from every factory who were discussing the articles that were coming in politically engaging with the editorial board and I think it really shows the huge amount of courage that women had because at this time during the war it was illegal to organise in this way the Bolshevik party were illegal and it just shows the amount of courage that they continued to organise and publish regardless of this. Now what's really key about this publication Robert Knitzer is that it didn't simply write about women's issues and try to connect with women on issues that are only related to them and it didn't try to separate out the struggle between male and female workers it educated women about the political necessity of transforming society along socialist lines with the need to go further than just democratic demands that would bring about legal equality and the Marxist perspective of this of course is that we can only bring about equality by transforming society into a socialist society by fighting for socialism but that didn't mean that these demands for greater equality what we might call bourgeois democratic demands to have no place in that and Lenin explains the connection of these two things very clearly so I will quote him he said, only those who are totally incapable of thinking or those who are entirely unfamiliar with Marxism will conclude that a republic is of no use that freedom of divorce is of no use, that democracy is of no use, that self-determination of nations is of no use Marxists know that democracy does not abolish class oppression but only makes the class struggle clearer, broader, more open and sharper and this is what we want, the more complete freedom of divorce is the clearer will it be to the women that the source of her domestic slavery is not the lack of rights but capitalism the more democratic the system of government is the clearer it will be to the workers that the root of the evil is not the lack of rights but capitalism and so this fight for reforms prior to the revolution was absolutely crucial and formed part of the way in which Bolshevik fought to unite female and male workers against the single enemy of capitalism itself so agitation amongst women was really key for winning them to the revolution itself but of course despite the fact that there was increased struggle at this time and despite the fact that we see the emergence of capitalism in it beginning to transform relations conditions for women didn't improve in the same way that it didn't for workers in general of course and that's because capitalism cannot emancipate women because it cannot change the material conditions that engender that oppression to begin with in fact capitalism perpetuates oppression against women so why was it then that the USSR was able to make these changes well it was because it seized hold of the means of production and it transformed the economic base of society so that conditions for women as well as social relationships and the oppression that they had faced could begin to be able to be changed that formed this base actually if we look at those demands that I listed out or those things that the Bolsheviks actually changed very quickly to begin with the majority of the things that they changed initially were bringing in things that we considered these bourgeois democratic demands ideas around legal equality like you know divorce, right to divorce, these kinds of things but even for them to be able to do that it required them to change the material base those things could not be delivered on any other basis and the workers transferred the means of production from private to social hands and this is the kind of key aspect they took steps towards transferring property from private hands to social hands now the origins of women's oppression comes hand in hand with private property and so it's only through the abolition of private property itself that we can begin to see the eradication of that oppression as well and I don't have time to unfortunately go into the details of this you know Ravi mentioned Engels's text origins and we can perhaps talk about it a bit more in the discussion as well about where this comes from but this was an absolutely essential first step so the nationalisation of the economy utilised a wealth that had previously been in private hands and it used that to facilitate turning private what had been private labour in the home like domestic labour into something that was carried out socially it made it public, it made things like social childcare, feeding and cleaning in the home a collective task and by doing this it freed up the time of women to engage more politically and removed them away from the home as well so instead of returning from work and making the tea, making the lunches, sorting out kids clothes for the next day cleaning the house and all of those other tasks that actually the majority of women are still doing today women would be more freed up to engage and to do things for themselves reading, talking, educating, organising now the 1919 political programme of the communist party of the Soviet Union had this as its stated aim which I think is really important it said, not satisfied with the formal equality of women the party strives to free women from the material burden of obsolete domestic economy by replacing this with the house communes, public dining halls, central laundries, crushes etc was a central demand and it wasn't something secondary to the aims of the communist party at this time but none of that was possible, it was only possible if the means of production are nationalised and placed under the democratic control of the workers and of course this is the key difference between a capitalist and a socialist economy and this can only be done on the basis of socialised production and distribution which is done on the basis of the abolition of the profit motive so the planned economy began to bring women out of the home and it began to bring them out of isolation where as I said people could discuss but what it was doing is allowing people to become independent, conscious workers themselves in a society that they could be active within freeing them up to an extent that I think we can definitely argue had never really been experienced before and often we see women, thank you, not participating in politics to the same extent of men because of this additional burden and the additional responsibilities so the revolution sought to change this by reducing that and it was only able to do that because it taken those resources that had been private and made them public but it wasn't, I think what's important when we look at this is to also talk about the role that women played actively in a bit more detail so not just thinking like oh well they were having discussions but they concretely shaped the future of the USSR as well now everybody knows the role that women played in the insurrection and the February insurrection that they were involved in taking strike action and protesting on the day of the February revolution in 1917 that they led workers into the streets and they were joined by male workers and that they petitioned for bread because the conditions were so horrendous and that they won round the army who had been sent to send their rifles onto the women and instead of them shooting the women they shot, they pointed them towards the regime they didn't shoot the regime, they pointed them at them and this is really well known but there's so much more to women's involvement in the revolution itself and in the shaping of society afterwards as well that's really important some of the ways in which they shaped this was that they ran and were elected to positions in the Soviet they played leading political roles in these organisations and bodies and actually Alexander Colin Tye was elected to the People's Commissar of Social Welfare in the First Bolshevik Government which made her the first female minister in the entire world Beyond that position though women were organised, we were involved in organising an armed defence of the revolution they fought arm in arm and side by side with the Red Guard they took in part in revolutionary work at a local and national level as well just carrying out daily tasks that they wouldn't have been able to do prior to this or wouldn't necessarily have been involved in things like distributing leaflets, transporting weapons, sorting out communications caring for the wounded, organising all this kind of stuff as a part of the events of the revolution and they played a crucial role in organising women workers through additional special committees as well and this was really important for outreach and engagement of other workers too the way that they did this was agitation amongst women but again it wasn't along the lines of using feminist propaganda or specifically just women's issues to engage women it was about engaging a section of the working class who were workers who needed to be involved in this revolution just as much as anybody else to be able to make it fully democratic as possible and the fact that they were women really was tangential to this there were Marxists who were going out talking about the need to socially transform society what that looked like, what democratic workers control was and involving other women workers as much as possible and this was crucial not just run up to the revolution and not just in the insurrection itself but actually beyond the revolution itself as well and so in 1919 the Communist Party transformed these kind of committees as they had been into a concrete body, they created the Zenerdell and this was kind of the women's department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and it was led by Colin Tye and the Nessar Armand but it wasn't just about a party structure it was about engaging people and women outside of this and so it was also consisted of as well as party members of the Bolsheviks women outside of that too and their task was to draw unorganised women in the factories and the villages into the party, into an understanding of Marxism and by 1928 this organisation had reading groups of 2.8 million women right across the country engaging in socialist ideas and political discussion reading together and educating themselves so on a kind of involvement level this was a really key part of broadening out the revolution ensuring the maximum participation of every part of society particularly of a section that had been downtrodden up until this point but they did more than that, they also were instrumental in arguing for and bringing about reforms and changes it was actually the Zenit doll that were responsible for the act that legalised abortion and made it available in state hospitals and they were doing this because again you know just having a revolution doesn't automatically change the situation these were concrete questions that affected women that needed to be addressed that were being addressed through this organisation of women so this I think is really kind of key to see the extent and the level of the involvement of women but what was the impact of this generally on them well I mean it's quite hard to measure so I'm going to use a measure here that we're going to take with a pinch of salt but to show the extent of increased participation by women we can sort of look at voting records so between 1926 to 1934 the women's vote rose in urban areas from 42% to 89% and in the villages in the more rural areas it rose from 28% to 80% and obviously that's not a concrete measure we can never use statistics to kind of just show us the increased participation but I think that really does give an idea in numerical form of the amount and the extent to which women were engaging in political decisions or thinking about it more than they had been in the past so these are again you know just to kind of illustrate a little bit further the changes that were brought about that showed the extent to which women were involved but also the types and tasks that they were able to carry out that hadn't been done before and this real shaping of the future of the policy of the USSR and the shape of society and their engagement in it but it doesn't mean that everything was perfect there were also limits to the advancement of the emancipation of women sorry women within the USSR the planned economy gave rise to the basis from which to material emancipate women but freedom for women isn't just a question of freeing women up from domestic labour this is just the beginning whilst the USSR did make huge steps towards transforming the material conditions necessary women were still limited in the amount that they were genuinely freed from the home and many of the steps that were put in place so the beginnings of things happened but were not fully realised so steps towards socialised childcare and laundry for example weren't fully achieved and also importantly the attitudes towards women weren't fully transformed these things can't be changed completely overnight and so this question of transforming consciousness remained one of the barriers that existed within the society of the USSR and Trotsky and Lenin recognised this they recognised that formal equality and legal equality and even material changes being brought in wasn't enough and Trotsky uses a nice metaphor to describe this he says a deep going plough is needed to turn up heavy clouds of soil and what he's getting at here is obviously that kind of millennial old deep-rooted oppressive views of women in the role that they have in the home it's been perpetuated and still is in our society today by the czarist regime and all these other things that came before it can't just be uprooted overnight it won't automatically change for this the conscious engagement of the working class and its leadership as well is necessary now a worker state demands the greatest participation of the working class that's a marvel and also for people to be educated for that to happen and so the Russian Revolution made it essential that women increased and also meant their literacy levels to be able to engage that they were involved in reading groups and political discussion but it also meant that education was required to break this traditional view that had existed and again this was central to the Communist Party in the USSR they made this concrete in the 1921 third Congress of the Common Turn when they said the aim was to fight the prejudices against women held by the mass of the male proletariats and increase the awareness of working men and women that they have common interests it was also to conduct a well-planned struggle against the power of tradition so actively engaging ideologically against this against bourgeois customs and religious ideas clearing the way for healthier and more harmonious relations between the sexes guaranteeing the physical and moral vitality of working people now whilst this was begun and women materially did engage in social production and their political engagement increased again there were limits to this and it's quite a lengthy quote from Lenin but I think it is really helpful to understand kind of just what they were fighting against really and again you may recognise some of this in today's society but he says very few husbands, not even the proletarians think of how much they could lighten the burdens and worries of their wives or relieve them entirely if they lend a hand in this women's work that would go against the privilege and dignity of the husband he demands that he have rest and comfort the domestic life of the woman is a daily sacrifice of self to a thousand insignificant trifles the ancient rights of a husband, her lord and master's survival notice objectively his slave takes her revenge also in concealed form her backwardness and her lack of understanding for her husband's revolutionary ideals act as a drag on his fighting spirit on his determination to fight they are like tiny worms gnawing and undermining perceptively slowly but surely our communist work among the masses of women and our political work in general involves considerable educational work amongst the men we must root out the old slave owner's point of view both in the party and among the masses and this is important because I think these these worms that he talked about will come back in a minute but yeah like the progress of this changing in perspectives and mindsets was halted in its steps but it wasn't halted by lack of will it was halted by thank you by the material conditions, by the problems with the economy that were faced and so the second kind of limitation I guess that was placed on the complete emancipation of women was the transformation of daily life and the extent to which that could really be achieved by the development of the productive forces being held back by that previous backwardness that I described at the start now as we know with the USSR the old ruling class with the support of the international bourgeoisie launched a counter-revolution in civil war against the workers and this really occupied lots of the resources but also the thought of the people of the USSR and it limited the advancements elsewhere so which energy and organisation was going into the defence of the revolution that you couldn't spend the amount of time and energy that would be wished to on all the questions as well so the economy was heavily damaged by the need to defend against this but also limited by compromises that had been made earlier like the Bresletovs Treaty as well as it having started this far further back position and so that meant that the means of production in Russia were far from developed enough to actually be able to provide enough for everybody at this time let alone go beyond that and provide these things that were talking about the greatest nursery spaces and communal kitchens and things so economic development limited what could be put in place and what could be changed the Bolsheviks had absolutely the correct idea in addressing this question of education against prejudice against women and I think you can see from their stated aims and from their actions that they actively fought to change mindsets but the conditions that gave rise to those views to begin with could not be changed without the material changes necessary and so they were limited by that material factor and the third barrier that came as a consequence of that was also the degeneration that came to the USSR which we're familiar with and the importance of the ideas of Stalinism that developed so the limitations obviously of the economy crystallised led to the crystallisation of this bureaucracy under the leadership of Stalin that rose above society and essentially in many ways liquidated the power of the working class and this political counter-revolution that ensued was clearly expressed through the status of women and the change and again a degeneration in the conditions that existed for women now at this time as I said there were the beginnings of change happening and there were tremendous changes as I've talked about like really remarkable things had been changed but women were still confined to their home by many domestic tasks and worse under the counter-revolution of Stalin they reintroduced some of the old bourgeois attitudes towards women for example re-establishing this maternal role but also things like making abortions real legal in 1936 they made divorce much more expensive and much more difficult to access prizes were introduced for families with many children child care hours were cut as well to coincide with the working day so it meant that immediately after work women were tied back to the domestic labour of the home again and girls and boys were educated separately so girls could learn girls subjects that would get them ready for the home and being good housewives these kind of things that all add up to this overall view of women again as the homemakers and not involved fully in the same way as men and definitely not as equal and under these conditions people reverted to their old ways and their old ideas that had been pushed by the Stalinist regime's adaptation to Sovenism the USSR's success and therefore the successful emancipation of women had been at this point as was like the success of the USSR generally related to and dependent on the success of the global revolution and of course we knew that that didn't happen and didn't come about so it's important to kind of despite these limitations it's still important to state that even after the USSR became degenerated and we can see some of the gains that were clawed back it was still able to make huge advancements for women and I think that really can't be understated because it gets at the heart of what is key to transforming society here and that is the economy and the way in which it's controlled so for example even under the degenerated system women still received full maternity pay and they received this for like 56 days on the side and I said I wanted to contrast this to the US today the US is arguably and probably accountably like the most developed capitalist state in the entire world and yet the US has the worst record on maternity rights there is absolutely no obligation for an employer to give paid maternity leave in the US at all whereas in the USSR in the 1930s they had 56 days mandatory paid leave a second example of the great advancements of the USSR compared to other states as well as the first five year plan meant that between 1927 and 1932 the number of nurseries rose from 2000 to just under 20,000 and they had 12 million kids in nursery and this is very topical this is something that's been in the news a lot in the UK recently because the cost of sending a child to one of these nurseries was about one tenth of the wage of a worker whereas today in Britain a report was released earlier this year that showed that nearly one in five parents with children under five was spending between a third and a fifth of their salary on childcare and 15% of parents in England are spending over a half of their salary on childcare so you can see the contrast in life for parents and what that means today in a modern capitalist state compared to the USSR such a long time ago so even though there were limitations there was also huge achievements so we have to ask this question then why is it that it took a socialist revolution to deliver things like that but also basic legal equality that we don't even have in many states today when developed countries with huge economies that are capitalist are still unable to deliver that because of this question that only the seizure of power by the working class can truly deliver legal democratic reforms only the working class can actually deliver equality for women and then go beyond that and that's what happened in Russia and that's still what's required today actually the reason it took a socialist revolution to deliver bourgeois democratic reforms in Russia was because capitalism was completely incapable of doing so the truth is that the bourgeois democratic program can only be delivered by a socialist revolution because capitalism doesn't have the will and nor does it have the means now it doesn't have the will because it isn't in the interest of capitalism to create true equality so capitalism literally requires domestic tasks to be carried out in the home and families are these private entities that carry out all of these different tasks independently in the home feeding and cleaning and all of those other things now historically that task has fallen to women and it does continue to do so today I think something like 75% of domestic labour globally is still carried out by women it's higher in different states around the world of course as well but public spending on these domestic tasks so putting them into a public domain it's not in the interest of capitalists just don't want and they're not able to spend money on these kind of social projects or spending that doesn't return any profit and I think you only need to look at the NHS and how the government are trying to strip any spending on something that is like a state institution as much as possible and you're just completely unable to maintain that spending as well to sort of give an idea of that and so consequently you get what in capitalism amounts to a huge amount of pressure on women to be in the home still this is where this pressure partly is coming from capitalists propagate prejudices against women to further prop that up again you can look at the way in which abortion has been brought well in the process in America being brought back in again this greater control now at a time when we should be seeing greater progress to increase this control over women in their bodies and there's this overhang that you can clearly see in the position of women from thousands of years ago that's actively maintained in a capitalist society but socialism conversely ends this by wiping out the place that it just stems from but these ideas, they can't begin to be changed they cannot be changed on a capitalist basis unless the material conditions are changed and this is what socialism can deliver that capitalism can't now in addition to not having the will and the desire to change things capitalism also doesn't have the means to grant legal equality or anything that goes beyond that and I said this was very clear today because in Britain there is legal equality between men and women and yet we know very clearly there is a 20% gender pay gap women do 30 hours of domestic labour compared to the 6.5 that men do on average a week here 77% of domestic abuse victims are female while 1 in 4 women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their adult lifetime so capitalism can pass all of these laws that claim legal equality but it can't deliver it it can't even deliver something basic like safety or basic like equality in wages even with this law against rape only 1% of them are actually ending conflict 1% of accusation ending conviction so you can see complete inability to deliver whereas the Soviet Union was able to deliver legal equality because it was able to utilise the resources of the planned economy to start to deliver these changes even capitalism today is even unable to continue with any reforms that have made in the past even small things that have been made to make the lives of women better are being clawed back and huge sums of money that are required to deliver legal equality or actual equality and of course this is the case with all reforms about the working class at the minute that under crisis they are clawed back and you know we've seen they have time to go into the detail a bit but we've seen loads of examples of this over the past year with cuts to women's services around the clock so additionally austerity is like as a consequence of pushing women back into the home as well as making lives safer subsidies to childcare are withdrawn women are the people who go back into the home to look after kids all of this is pointed towards this degradation of the position of women again and unfortunately conditions are going to continue to get worse for women and this is despite the fact that we've seen so many campaigns to change or educate society about the ills of sexist attitudes but they're not having a material gain because the material conditions have not changed and the truth is that no number of campaigns no amount of campaigns on any different topic will be able to bring about equality with uncapitalism as long as there is a material basis to the oppression it will be perpetuated because in the last analysis it is material conditions that determine the way in which we think our society our social interactions with each other and so Mark said that when one is generalised all the old crap revives and I think that's precisely what we're seeing today capitalism has advanced society's productive capacity to a huge degree and it should be able to deliver equality and yet what we're seeing is the opposite of that is the reduction in equality and so for workers in the delivery of bourgeois demands and a proletarian revolution actually the reason they can do this is because they're going beyond the delivery of those to deliver them the working class can't simply lay hold of the ready-made structures and begin to make them work better in a better way, that's completely impossible in the delivery of bourgeois demands workers actually abolish class oppression by seizing the means of production and bringing them under democratic workers control taking this collective product that I talked about earlier of labour, of the working class into their own hands for our own utilisation so we have our own tasks in a proletarian revolution that means that we go further and we deliver that Trotsky talks about this in the third of the permanent revolution we can read about it more there but an example of this this is the reason why bourgeois demands cannot be literally delivered by a capitalist society the USSR in the USSR, the Bolsheviks didn't just make women legally equal but by actually setting about transforming the economy to establish something like a shorter working day to end exploitation through that process they freed up women and through that process they were able to deliver this equality in developing the means of production under the democratic collective workers control of the working class through that they were able to provide nurseries, laundries and canteens that in turn freed up women materially Capitalism whilst it has the means of production in private hands it can't do either of those steps to truly deliver any equality and this is why so long as the fruit of socialised production is in private hands it will not be able to make any changes so it leads us to this question and sorry I've run over a little bit of what is really needed to emancipate women today well Lenin called all of the other methods that we might see in society foul lies that the bourgeoisie puts forward things that we really can't be swayed an inch by things that they say are making changes so these campaigns or women's shortlist increased women in management in different committees or in STEM subjects for example none of these actually do anything to make any change and I hope the statistics that I've used have begun to illustrate a little bit of that actually the truth is that in order for women to be able to participate truly and fully in political life they have to be free from domestic chores to the same extent as men all domestic habits and responsibilities have to be completely revolutionised and they must become social rather than private and just as it was true of the USSR that requires the success of the revolution in fact of the global revolution and so we must fight for workers and women's rights and conditions internationally right now and forge the strongest greatest link between workers of all kinds particularly of course in this case between men and women now the revolution itself is a really powerful lever in the emancipation of women but the complete emancipation of women is completely impossible without the construction of a communist society and that requires the active and educated participation of the working class already we have an incredible division of labour we produce everything socially but individuals privately appropriate that wealth we have the means and society to provide socialised domestic work in fact we could automate a huge amount of it which would free all people from this kind of work and it wouldn't take much to do that we have the capacity to do that now and yet we don't because it is impossible on a capitalist basis to do so as long as we operate on a system based by profit that is not going to be a reality and so freeing everyone from domestic labour is the thing that we need to do and that would allow for this breakdown of relationships that we see today that are described as kind of necessary relationships where people stay together because of the financial and economic need if we could change society it will sweep away that and allow for relationships to develop on a mutual bond fundamentally transforming the shape of the family alongside that as well and Engels describes this as the jump from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom for the family and this is what is required this is absolutely what's needed to emancipate women but also by doing the whole of humanity right now I just want to end on a quote from Trotsky he said he said he said and so it's a huge thing that we're seeking to change just these small reforms but changing the shape of the whole of human consciousness and the family and the position that everybody has within it and this is why for Marxist we understand that we have to fight for reforms now that do make life easier for women but also that highlight all the more how capitalism can grant all of the rights to women that it likes but will remain incapable of providing material changes necessary to remove this double burden that is faced by women or to actually remove any of the oppression faced by women and so ultimately to solve the problems faced by women today we must fight to fundamentally change society and that means fighting for revolution