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However, women did gain new experiences. For instance, in some hospitals, women challenged rules which always required them to do very routine work when men could do it.
Even if they had nothing to do, the men refused to do this work.
The question of the armed struggle is important, but it has been too often assumed that this is the central question, It is just a reflection of other developments. Women can participate in the armed struggle, without considering their role, seeing it as something different from their own problems. It is only when the link between armed participation and questioning the traditional problems of women is done by women themselves that they can give participation in the armed struggle its real meaning.
Women fought in some of the nationalist organisations. But this was qualitatively different from fighting in the left organisations. In the nationalist organisations, it was just an example of a few heroic women, and the way they were looked at in other ways did not change at all.
In the Communist Party the majority of women were still cooking in the HQ — although the CP did train some women to fight, the general trend was to put the women in the kitchens. The CP had the strength to challenge the family in the neighbourhoods, but instead they merely adapted to it.
I think that the RCG was the only force to intervene around the women's question. Women in the RCG were trying to organise and discuss with other women in order to relate the struggle to the problems of women. We always had a section in our publications on the situation of women in the Lebanon. We met as women together as this avoided certain problems - for example that of the family. When you meet with other women and are trained with other women it's easier than going to a HQ where the majority are men, and where the women wouldn't feel at case.
As you can see, there was a conscious integration of women into the tasks of the RCG, an understanding of the role of women in the fighting and in the political work. Women involved systematically, like men, at were all levels. This doesn't mean complete equality was achieved, but that there was at least a conscious attack on the problem.
There was not a qualitative change in the situation of women in the civil war. This a barometer for the situation as a whole. This is why we can speak of an experience of women's struggle but not a real step on the road to women's liberation and revolutionary struggle.?
The call for a conference of socialist tendencies in the French women's movement — the Elisabeth Dimitriev Circle and Les Pertroleuses. The idea of a Conference which would bring together socialist women from all over Europe was seen as especially important in the wake of International Women's Year - a year used by bourgeois governments internationally to put forward their policies concerning women's rights. Lavish amounts of resources and money were doled out by these governments in the wake of the growing movement for women's liberation. At the international recession has prompted some of the most savage attacks on women's rights.
The idea of such a conference was therefore to exchange about how socialists in the women's movement have confronted both the attacks levied against women as well as the undoubted by-product of the designation of 1975 as Women's Year. In Britain this by-product cannot be underestimated: the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act and the full implementation of the Equal Pay Act has in fact stimulated growing numbers of struggles among How have we as socialists in the women's movement responded to this increased awareness among larger sections of women?
And what lessons have we drawn from battles we have fought — against closures of nurseries, against attacks on women's abortion rights, against unemployment Just as important, what can we learn from the mobilisations undertaken by women in other countries, so that we do not have to repeat their errors?
These were some of the questions that were to be raised at the conference. To date, three planning meetings have taken place to discuss the Conference — in Paris, in Zurich, and in London. In London a sharp, though unclear political debate took place project of an international conference was in jeopardy. Four points were In November the third planning meeting for the European Socialist Feminist Conference was held in London. Representatives from the women's movement in Britain, Spain, Germany, France and Holland attended. Women from almost every other European countries have expressed interest in this project. DODIE WEPPLER, a member of the British Planning Group reports on the London meeting, calling for setting the date of the proposed Conference so that the debates that have been opened can continue, and so that European co-ordination and exchanges can begin in a more efficient feminists was first put out by two First, whether the appeal for central to the differences that emerged.
the conference drafted by the French women was restrictive and would fail to attract many women who consid. ered themselves to be socialists. Second, if the Conference was to be action-oriented or more theoretically biased. Third, whether the proposed session of the Conference on *Women and Work" (although specifically described as including both domestic and waged work) would fall into the old trap of seeing women's oppression and exploitation as flowing solely from her relation to the productive process.
Finally, the exact nature of the relawomen's liberation and the struggle tionships between the struggle for for socialism.
Many sisters at the planning meeting in London argued that these kinds of debate should be held at the Conference itself. However, the meeting was divided almost exactly down the middle (the French sisters' appeal was carried only by a majority of one vote). The Dutch sisters - who had previously offered to organise the Conference in their country - announced that in the light of the voting on the French appeal, they were no longer prepared to do so. The delegation from Britain, composed of sisters who had responded to the many appeals in the Columns of Spare Rib, Wires, and other women's liberation newsletters, was the only delegation where the votes cast were divided. This might be an indication that the delegation represented broad areas of opinion in the British movement, as well as the heterogeneity of the socialist current itself in this country.
Despite the lack of clarity in the debate, held under grave time pressures, it was unanimously agreed to meet once again in Paris on 11-12 December. Hopefully the Paris meeting will set the date for the conference - which could be a useful experience in taking the fight for women's liberation forward on a European scale.
With a firm date, even more sisters from Britain can be drawn into the vital debates raised only superficially which made it apppear that the whole in London. Further information about the Conference from Barbara Yates, 20b Batoum Gardens, London W6.