HENRY FOWLER, assistant general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), reports on Day 2 from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at the Workers’ Retreat, Quorn Grange Hotel
INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day (IWD) has become a corporate event reflecting the now mainstream ideology of “corporate feminism.”
This year its theme is #BalanceforBetter. The anonymous organisers of IWD events assert that “balance” is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue and thus their “flagship events are backed by significant corporate and/or government sponsorship.”
Sponsors include Amazon, Rio Tinto, McDonald’s, Vodafone and a host of other robber barons.
Socialists, feminists and trade unionists gathered in Manchester to launch a network committed to evidence-based activism with a renewed emphasis on class and collective struggle. ANNA BARRETT reports
Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
Half a century after transformative laws reshaped Britain, women’s rights are again contested. This International Women’s Day is a call to remember how change was won, and to organise to defend it, says KATE RAMSDEN
The legacy of socialist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai challenges us today to confront an uncomfortable truth: framing prostitution as empowerment lets the abusers of the Epstein class off the hook, warns HELEN O’CONNOR


