International Women’s Day and its role in the consolidation of the female socialist worker’s movement in Moravia before 1914

Abstract

During the last years before WW1 the gender strategy of Moravian socialists started to follow the concept of new socialist woman. This effort was realized in several specific measures, first of all the introduction of International Women’s Day, the re-establishment of women’s party conferences and establishment of women’s political organizations. The new holiday helped revive the fading working-women’s socialist movement in Moravia during the years before WWI. It became an effective tool which helped both competing socialist parties – autonomists and centralists – to keep pace with growing competition of women’s interest associations of Catholics and The People’s Progressive Party. Thanks to the revival of women’s suffrage demands the Social Democracy could partly present itself as a protesting party again. The introduction of International Women’s Day led to the consolidation of disrupted women’s campaigning centres and partly also to spreading to new regions. However, the new holiday did not solve all the problems. Just as in previous years, especially women from the countryside remained resistant to socialist activities, due both to the lasting gender prejudices within their own party and the different political orientation of potential sympathisers.