A study by Griffith Business School reported that the new workplace laws have cut wages, stripped overtime penalties and removed award protections for workers. Professor David Peetz analysed workplace data following the introduction of the new laws and found real wages for full-time adults fell by 1.1 per cent in the six months to August.
By Samantha Ashby, Socialist Party Newcastle (more…)

Reviewed by Sarah Mayo, Socialist Party
FEMALE CHAUVINIST PIGS is a witty and fresh book that is frankly long overdue. It examines ‘female chauvinist pigs’ (FCPs) – US women who have embraced ‘raunch culture’. According to Levy, FCPs are women who love porn, see Paris Hilton as a role model, and will wear a Playboy bunny with pride. FCPs delight in making other women into sex objects (and themselves too). (more…)

On the 8th of March CWI supporters in Auckland helped organise an event for International Women’s Day (IWD). A public forum was held and it focused on making the women’s movement relevant for working class women. In particular the meeting discussed the conditions for women working as cleaners, laundry workers, kitchen workers and fast food workers.

By Nicki Jonas, Services and Food Workers Union Organiser, Auckland, New Zealand (Personal Capacity) (more…)

On China’s highly automated assembly lines, the capitalists prefer to use female labour and even child labour. This way they get around the soaring price of the male worker, who is mainly used to perform technical tasks.

By Huang Xin, CWI correspondent in China (more…)

To mark International Women?s Day (8 March) this year, the Committee for a Workers’ International is publishing a collection of nine articles contributed by members of our sections across the globe.
By Clare Doyle, CWI (more…)

Alexandra Kollantai is probably the best-known woman among Russian revolutionaries, the first woman elected as a full member of the Bolshevik central committee and the first female commissar (minister) elected after the October 1917 revolution.

By Christine Thomas, 2003 (more…)

Will Thorne of the Gasworkers’ Union, writing in 1925 about Eleanor Marx’s suicide on 31 March 1898 said: “But for this tragedy, I believe Eleanor would have still been living and would have been a greater women’s leader than the greatest of contemporary women.” (more…)

Rosa Luxemburg was born in Poland, 1871 - the year of the Paris Commune. In her short lifetime she experienced three major revolutions and participated in the most important debates amongst socialists internationally. (more…)

As socialists we argue that it is always the right of a woman to make decisions about her own fertility. This includes the right to choose to terminate her pregnancy and to have access to a safe accessible public health system.

By Samantha Ashby, SP Newcastle, NSW (from latest issue of The Socialist) (more…)

In 2005, socialists celebrate the revolutionary events that swept Russia one hundred years ago. Russia, in 1905, saw mass political general strikes and the creation of the first soviets or elected councils of workers? deputies - the most democratic, fighting organisations in the life and death struggle against autocracy and against the exploiting classes. (more…)