Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften

On July 19, 1889, as the representative of working women in Berlin, Clara Zetkin addressed the International Labor Congress in Paris on the theme of women's work (Frauenarbeit). In agreement with the organizers, Zetkin believed her primary task to be the clarification of the question of women's work. To this end, Zetkin did not give a lengthy description of the situation of women workers because she argued that their plight was the same as male workers. Zetkin asserted that women workers did not support the bourgeois women's movement because they sought to address women's emancipation as a part of larger social questions. The question of women's emancipation was a product of the modern era, Zetkin concluded, demanding the attention of business owners and men to the specific needs of women and their exploitation in the capitalist system. The speech was immediately translated into English and French.