Work Amoung Working Women and Working Class Housewives

Drawing women into the strike assumes especial importance in connection with the rationalization of industry and the growth of female labor. Experiences have proven that working women and wives of workers play a very large role in strikes and lockouts, and therefore, it is necessary:

1. While work is still in its preparatory stage, to give special attention to the organization of working women, and to include in the general demands, such demands as especially concern women.

2. To draw working women and workers’ wives into active work at the outbreak of the strike, charging them with various functions of an agitational and organizational character, relief work, etc., and creating for this purpose during the strike special committees composed of strikers’ wives.

3. To create special flying squadrons of working women to work among working class housewives.

4. In electing anti-lockout or strike committees, to see to it that a sufficient percentage of working women are included. In those factories where the vast majority of workers are women, the majority of the strike committee must be composed of women.

5. All delegations for the purpose of establishing contacts with other sections and other industries must absolutely include working women.

6. If a large number of working women are involved in a strike or lockout, it is necessary to convoke special working women’s conferences to prepare in organized form the general demands of the working women, and to maintain the most active women workers on strike committees. However, this by no means should exclude the working women from holding general conferences with the working men; on the contrary, this is absolutely necessary.

7. In view of the fact that in liquidating strikes, reformists usually reach an agreement with the employers at the expense of the weakest categories of the proletariat (women workers and young workers) it is necessary, especially towards the termination of the conflict to see to it that the interest of these categories are protected.

Next: Forms and Methods of Mobilizing Young Workers