Pretty boots will kick you just as ugly ones

Judging from actual media coverage, you might get the impression that the major gender inequality issue in Denmark today are the lack of female CEO’s. You might also think that exclusive networks of career women are the vanguard of women’s liberation.

Not in my world. I agree with the words of Bertolt Brecht (in my inept translation): “Pretty boots will kick you just as ugly ones. We don’t want new masters – we want no masters”.

The women, who declared the 8th of March the international women’s day was in no doubt, that gender inequality and social inequality had to be struggled against simultaneously. The delegates of the second international socialist women’s congress, held in Copenhagen in august 1910, declared:

In accordance with the class conscious political and trade union organisations of the proletariat, socialist women in all nations takes steps to organize a yearly women’s day, primarily aimed at propagating women’s rights to vote. This claim must be seen in the light of the socialist viewpoint.

The Workers Museum has a brilliant web-site (Danish only) on the history and the women behind the international women’s day.