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Women and Communism

By John Parkyn

Women are increasingly playing a more active role in political, scientific and cultural affairs in the East than in the West. The present U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet has 366 women members—a figure well above the total for the parliaments of all the capitalist" countries put together. The United States 86th Congress, for example, had only 17 women in it. In China, women make up 12.23% of the deputies to the National People's Congress, and were 20% of the deputies at the third session of the local congresses held in 1958; one of the vice-chairmen of the People's Republic of China is a woman; one of the vice-chairmen of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and four of its members are women; seven Ministers and vice-Ministers (an expression peculiar to China) in the government are women.

How does this compare with New Zealand? Our present Parliament has only Miss Howard (Sydenham), Mesdames McMillan (Nth. Dunedin), Ratana (Western Maori), and Tombleson (Gisborne) to represent the fair sex, a total of "four out of the 80 scats, five per cent, representation. This is disturbing, to say the least; women deserve a better fate than social extinction.

The number of women scientists also. is rapidly increasing in the Soviet Union. In 1950 I here were 59,000 and in 1958, 111,000. The Academies of Sciences of the U.S. S.R. and the individual republics in 1959 had 13,300 women researchers, which included 4,600 holders of the higher scientific degrees. More than half the university and secondary school graduates are women. From 1959 figures, women in China make up: one-fifth of the doctors of Western medicine, and over one-third of the total professional health workers; 20.2 per cent, of university lecturers and 18.2 per cent, of secondary school teachers; 22.6 per cent, of university students and 31.2 per cent, of those in secondary schools; between 40 and 45 per cent, of the young and middle-aged adults who had successfully completed literacy courses by the end of 1958.

Statistics can be misleading, agreed, but the main abuse of statistics is in their interpretation, not their method or form. The most interesting point, though, is whether or not the large-scale female participation in Communist countries, taken proportionately of course, is a direct result of that Communist system. It is my belief that it is because female equality is an integral part of Communist doctrine, that women have obtained and advanced their status in the Communist State to such an extent. However, a complete swing to the Left by Western democracies would not necessarily carry in its wake the immediate social emancipation of women. On the other hand, there is a strong tendency to suppress the advance of women in our "democracies." One only has to observe the struggle New Zealand women are having to obtain equal pay for equal work. And do not believe the "we musn't have our family life disrupted" argument; much as I hate to admit It, the inferiority complex of men toward women is the true explanation.

What a lot of people do not realise is that the Communists are the only pressure group fighting continually for women's rights, because the success of Socialism must depend on the support of working women. This is a very necessary part of their World Communism plan which should not be overlooked. Realising this, Lenin, at the Seventh Congress for International Communism in 1907. championed the demand for equal suffrage for the working man and woman. Bringing women into the class struggle was essential, and, for Lenin, more than just an ideal.

Ignoring the grossly commercialised "Mother's Day" of the West, what have we got to compare with Communism's "International Women's Day?" In 1910, at a socialist convention in Copenhagen, a woman socialist member of the German Parliament moved that March 8 be designated "International Women's Day," for on that day in 1908, women textile and clothing workers of New York demonstrated under such slogans as "an 8-hour day," "better conditions," and " the right to vote." Later, in 1917 Bolsheviks organised women to demonstrate against tsardom and war on March 8, and in 1948 several thousand French women (the Communist estimate is 100,000) demonstrated in Paris demanding "bread, milk, work, liberty and peace," a change in government and various other assorted complaints. Emily Pankhurst and her fellow key-swallowing suffragettes by no means had the party all to themselves. The most important development in recent times, however, is the involvement of the Trade Unions. This is especially evident in Australia. In Newcastle a Trade Union International Women's Day Committee has been formed, consisting mainly of men and women trade union representatives. One of their aims is to organise more March 8 demonstrations and to send deputations to employers, factory managers and M.P's about special problems of women workers, thus involving Trade Unionists, men in general, and ultimately, the Communist Party.

But these women have a definite goal for their fight, they have something worthwhile attaining, and they are not content to sit back complacently in their hire-purchase furnishings with the majority of apathetic females. With the added power of Trade Union organisation supporting them, questions of rising prices, rents and even maternity problems can be brought forward.

In all fairness, there do exist in New Zealand the Housewives' Associations and, more recently, Consumer Associations. Culturally. we have the Women Writers' Association and many other commendably active and progressive groups. But the fact remains that in political and educational fields, Western women are far behind the Chinese and the Soviets, the fault lying not so much in the failure of our women and our system but rather in the remarkable success of their system.

Would our women be better off under Communism? In most respects, my answer would be a definite "yes," provided, of course, they were prepared to sacrifice such things as freedom of worship, the right to be idle, and the Western conception of democracy.

And no politics could ever deny a woman's freedom of speech.

[Which is Mr Parkyn plugging? Feminine emancipation or Communism?—Sub. Ed.]

Christmas Capping: At a Student Council meeting in Dunedin the motion that capping be transferred to Christmas was defeated after a spirited discussion. "Let's combine Capping and Christmas— get all the binges out of the way at once," was successfully opposed, by "Capping is our tradition—let's ensure that Capping remains in May."

Auckland anti-apartheid: In a burst of anti-apartheid fervour Auckland University executive passed a motion by the majority of five to four banning Pall Mall cigarettes from the cigarette machine in the cafeteria. Rothman's Pall Mall cigarettes have South African interests, and as one supporter of the motion stated "It's putting money into the pockets of people who are oppressing the blacks." On the other hand of course there was the unsympathetic opposition who said that the whole thing was rather childish—well, wasn't it?