It is a joke in my household that I tend to assign myself homework. I love writing essays, and sometimes I go way too far with it. I recently finished a 5,000 word essay on the Naomi Novik book Spinning Silver. It took me three years. I told Jim I wanted to do a sermon today way back on January 12. It’s now March 8, I’ve spent every spare minute researching, read four books, more than a dozen articles, and all 12 issues of Life and Labor.
Why did I get so excited for a holiday which the United States does not officially recognize, and which many of the people in this room probably haven’t heard of?
March 8 marks International Women’s Day, an official holiday in more than 20 countries across the world. In many countries, International Women’s Day is celebrated much like Mother’s Day is celebrated, where flowers and gifts are given to the women in one’s life. But if we have a day like Mother’s Day, why do we need International Women’s Day?
If you are familiar with the holiday, you already know the answer. International Women’s Day isn’t about celebrating women. In 1907 in Stuttgart, the International Socialist Women’s Conference declared that the fight for women’s suffrage should be helmed by socialists, not “middle class women.” The Socialist Party of America pushed back against this notion, and on February 28, 1909 celebrated “National Women’s Day.” It is widely believed that this National Women’s Day was the precursor for what would become International Women’s Day, celebrated first on March 19, 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, following a declaration at the International Socialist Women’s Conference earlier that year.
But the March 8 date wasn’t settled until 1917, when Russian socialist women, most notably Alexandra Kollontai, led a protest for peace on International Women’s Day, one of many events during late February and early March that would eventually come to be known as the February Revolution. If you are not familiar, the February Revolution resulted in the abdication of the tsar and the implementation of a provisional government which would by 1922 become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more commonly known as the Soviet Union.
If I haven’t crammed the word ‘socialist’ into the last five sentences enough, International Women’s Day is a holiday rooted in suffrage and socialism. In fact, in 1917 in Russia, the holiday was called международный день работниц, which translates to International Day of Women Workers. In fact, depending on where you are, the holiday is still called International Women Worker’s Day.
In 1917, International Women’s Worker’s Day wasn’t celebrated with gifts and flowers, but with the legalization of divorce, abortion, and cohabitation. To this day, International Women’s Day isn’t a celebration of women, but rather a call to action for equality and worker’s rights. In 2017, over 50 countries participated in an international women’s strike for International Women’s Day.
Zooming in to America, we have a complicated relationship with women and labor. During World War I and World War II, women were called on to enter the workforce in roles they would have otherwise been barred from. In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote about a strong cultural push from magazines, advertisers, and even the education system to encourage post-war women to return to the home. The 1960s saw a marked rise in women whose aspiring profession was “housewife.” Friedan’s work is often credited as sparking the second wave feminism movement of the 60s and into the 80s. By 1989, sociologist Arlie Hochschild would write about the “Second Shift.” Although women had won their place in society as workers, they had not lost the expectation of housewife, and were therefore expected to perform two full-time jobs.
Hochschild drew deserved critique for falling into the same assumptions that had plagued feminism in America from the beginning. Black women, working class white women, lesbians, single mothers, and others from across intersections didn’t need a word for the second shift. They had never had the expectation of “profession: housewife” placed on them such that the double burden of work and home was notable.
This tension which would take a hundred years to work through in the discourse of mainstream feminism was already present in the 1910s. A suffragette movement strengthened by ‘bourgeois women’ found itself in tension with women labor organizers. The ‘double burden’ which Hochschild brought to light in 1989 and the lack of representation of working women was something anarchist and labor activist Emma Goldman wrote about in 1917.
Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present physical training have not equipped her with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the same remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical wellbeing. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a “home, sweet home” cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting—after a day’s hard work. Glorious independence!
I can’t help but reflect on the timeless slogan “bread and roses.” In 1912, speaking at the Women’s Trade Union League of New York, labor organizer and feminist Rose Schneiderman said “what the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.”
In 1910 while fighting for the right to vote, suffragist Helen Todd said “woman is the mothering element in the world and her vote will go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country, in the government of which she has a voice.”
In 1907, Mary McArthur spoke at the British Women’s Trade Union League, and, paraphrasing the Roman philosopher Galen of Pergamon, said, “If thou hast two loaves of bread, sell one and buy flowers, for bread is food for the body, but flowers are food for the mind.”
It’s 2025, and the CEO of my company is a woman. Woman have secured the right to vote. We have secured our place as workers. I can buy as much bread as I want. And yet I find myself in a desert, devoid of even a dandelion.
Turns out roses are expensive. And maybe I could buy this rose, but turns out that rose is made from slave labor in Cambodia, which is why it’s even affordable. And there’s this rose over here, but that rose is made from cheap plastic which may or may not be contributing to the destruction of the coral reefs. I could make my own computer generated rose, using the app RoseGPT but turns out to generate a single computer rose can consume as many as three bottles of water, that’s a real statistic, look it up.
The worker’s movement isn’t just about being able to work. It’s about that work being ethical enough, fair enough, limited enough that we are able to afford and have the time to enjoy the small, quiet things in life.
This sentiment runs through the early worker’s movement and the fight for the eight hour work day. 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will. But because we only treat economic labor as work, housework is considered part of ‘what we will.’ ‘What we will’ was meant to be leisure, music, books – roses. And for the kind of person who does not need to worry about cooking and cleaning and caring for children, they probably do gather roses.
I don’t believe the solution to this is ‘feminism.’ Or rather, I believe that equality of sexes will allow for the advancement of housework as a legitimate form of work. But modern feminism has too closely been associated with bringing women into men’s sphere of power, and I don’t believe that’s what’s needed here.
When Kollontai wrote about this in “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle” in 1921, she argued that it was capitalism that was at the root of inequality of sexes. There is a strong theme in turn of the century feminism.
Her argument was that the capitalist concept of individual property ownership extended to the home, such that men felt ownership of their partners, not just physically, but spiritually.
The “crude individualism” that adorns our era is perhaps nowhere as blatant as in the organisation of sexual relationships. A person wants to escape from his loneliness and naïvely imagines that being “in love” gives him the right to the soul of the other person – the right to warm himself in the rays of that rare blessing of emotional closeness and understanding. We individualists have had our emotions spoiled in the persistent cult of the “ego”. We imagine that we can reach the happiness of being in a state of “great love” with those near to us, without having to “give” up anything of ourselves.
The claims we make on our “contracted partner” are absolute and undivided. We are unable to follow the simplest rule of love – that another person should be treated with great consideration. New concepts will teach us to achieve relationships based on the unfamiliar ideas of complete freedom, equality and genuine friendship. But in the meantime mankind has to sit in the cold with its spiritual loneliness and can only dream about the “better age” when all relationships between people will be warmed by the rays of “the sun god”, will experience a sense of togetherness, and will be educated in the new conditions of living. The sexual crisis cannot be solved unless there is a radical reform of the human psyche, and unless man’s potential for loving is increased. And a basic transformation of the socio-economic relationships along communist lines is essential if the psyche is to be re-formed. This is an “old truth” but there is no other way out. The sexual crisis will in no way be reduced, whatever kind of marriage or personal relationships people care to try.
I’m struck by modern author bell hooks’ text ‘The Will to Change’ which is about the importance of bringing men into feminism. “Men in patriarchal culture responded to feminist demand for greater equity in the work world and in the sexual world by making room, by sharing the spheres of power. The place where most men refused to change – believe themselves unable to change – was in their emotional lives.”
Socialism has been critically important to early feminism because capital places no value on women’s work. Women are not paid to raise their own children, clean their own home, make their own clothes, or cook food for their own family. In our current era where for the vast majority of Americans, the expectation for women is that they will have a job, capital still places no value on work that was traditionally done by women – there are of course the easily recognized tasks that I’ve already outlined (child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, etc). But we also devalue softer skills that are associated with women – community organizing, family planning, social networking, emotional labor. Even things which should be universal – friendship, romance – women are expected to do the majority of the work for. Women were welcomed into men’s world – accepted as workers, politicians, and landlords. But men are still not permitted into woman’s world – we still have difficulty accepting men as healers, homemakers, or caregivers. Doctors, yes – the technical surgeon. Fathers, yes – the stern taskmaster. But the healer who sits by your bed and listens quietly to your troubles, the homemaker who provides a place of comfort and safety in their community, the caregiver who is loving, kind, and gentle not only to their immediate family, but to their friends and neighbors… that we have a lot more difficulty imagining as a space for men.
For feminism to advance, women’s work and not just women workers must have value in our society.
One of the most popular quotes in feminist circles today is historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “well-behaved women seldom make history.” I love this quote as well, but primarily because of the way its popularity reveals the problem of modern feminism. It’s interpreted meaning – that in order to change history one must be ‘ill-behaved’ stands in direct opposition to its intended meaning.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s 1976 article “Vertuous Women Found” was not a lauding of outspoken historic women, but a lamentation that it is only when they cross into male spheres that women are spoken of at all.
Cotton Mather called them ‘the hidden ones.’ They never preached or sat in a deacon’s bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard. Neither, because they were virtuous women, did they question God or the magistrates. They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history. Anti-nomians and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all. Most historians, considering the domestic by definition irrelevant, have simply assumed the pervasiveness of similar attitudes in the seventeenth century. Others, noting the apologetic tone of Anne Bradstreet and the banishment of Anne Hutchinson, have been satisfied that New England society, while it valued marriage and allowed women limited participation in economic affairs, discouraged their interest in either poetry or theology. For thirty years no one has bothered to question Edmund Morgan’s assumption that a Puritan wife was considered ‘the weaker vessel in both body and mind’ and that ‘her husband ought not to expect too much from her.’
Even today, for all that we have achieved so much in terms of gender equality, the domestic sphere is still undervalued. And it does a deep disservice to men and women alike.
I could talk for another three hours on this subject. I haven’t even brought up Margaret Drier Robins or Mary Anderson. There are so many important activists of the 1910s whose work has now been forgotten. I could write an entire new sermon and talk about an entirely different set of women and still not run out of things to say.
So let’s wrap things up by asking a question that Aleksandra Kollontai was answering as early as 1913.
Do we really need a Women’s Day? Enthusiasm for women’s rights and International Women’s Day has ebbed and flowed over the years…. Mostly ebbed. But the rationale tends to change with the times.
In 1913, the concern was that too much emphasis on ‘women’s issues’ drew focus away from worker’s rights in favor of the desires of the bourgeois women. This would, in fact, turn out to be an extremely relevant concern, as first wave feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony famously conflicted with black suffragists after the passing of the 15th amendment. Turn of the century bourgeois feminists had a deserved reputation of sacrificing other oppressed groups in the name of advancing the cause of women.
“White feminism” is a term that’s still used to this day, but fourth wave feminism is working hard to create a more intersectional movement. This in and of itself has led to some tension. I recently read a fascinating article by Ann Weisner, the director of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation who asked, “If gender isn’t binary anymore, are women’s organizations even relevant?”
Because here we are, in what should have been the height of the trans rights movement. Gender isn’t binary anymore.
And I myself have used a lot of binary language in this lecture. But it’s important to bear in mind that binaries are a powerful tool of hegemonic control. Quite often, if an otherized group cannot continue to be oppressed, the accomplished goal is not equality, but assimilation of that specific other into the dominant group. What it has meant to be white has changed over time – the truth of that statement has felt especially true while reading labor union essays from a hundred years ago talking about the Italian race. What it has meant to be Christian has changed over time. What it has meant to be middle class has changed over time. And white women in particular have always had a great deal of power and privilege in our country. Emma Goldman cautioned about this, Rose Schneiderman cautioned about this, Aleksandra Kollontai cautioned about this, even Mother Jones cautioned about this. We must be very careful when working for equality that we do not instead achieve assimilation, because as it stands, we already have yet another binary of gender, where femininity and masculinity are both accepted and embraced. But only a certain traditional kind. And only by a certain cisgender kind of person. Even in spaces which would otherwise consider themselves feminist, the “lunagender cottage core goblin” can be a bit much.
Doing research for this sermon it became clear to me just how far we’ve come, how many tremendous improvements were made on the shoulders of these women. And yet in some ways, not much has changed at all. Things are different, improvements have been made, the world continues to turn. There is a form of feminism that is no longer useful. But some struggles are timeless, and those struggles are universal.
May we ever see the day when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born.
We must all of us strive to find those places where we should give freely of our time. And when to charge appropriately for our labor. Life is a balance. Of the worker and the caregiver. The body and the soul. The bread and the rose. We need both, we are both.
So this year, in celebration of International Women’s Day, I encourage us to reflect on the value of women’s work in our community and within each of us – those places where we can be caregivers and homemakers and healers, regardless of gender. And secondly… work to advance the fight for universal basic income. Solidarity Forever.
