[SOCIALIST ORGANISER claims to stand for "equal rights…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-11-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 13 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
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SOCIALIST ORGANISER claims to stand for "equal rights for women". How does this correlate with your comment in the Editorial (November 3) that women were an "oppressed minority". Oppressed we may be, but a minority we are not. We make up 52% of the population and you would do well to remember it.
It is typical of the male-dominated left to make this sort of fundamental mistake. You pay lip service to feminism "abortion on demand" etc.... but how often is something concrete done to bring equality between the sexes, not just policy, but a reality.
It is bad enough when the women's movement has to listen to the Tories advocating Victorian values, pushing women out of jobs into supporting an informal welfare state at home (looking after the old, sick and young).
Socialist Organiser should realise that women are not impressed by a facade of concern for women's issues. One of the most important steps at the moment is Jo Richardson's Bill to fill the gaps in the Sex Discrimination Act. I hope you will support this with action rather than with condescending inaccuracies of the kind mentioned above.
FIONA SOROTOS LondonEC1 * The offending sentence formulated in haste and unfortunately not corrected before we went to press — called for 'support for the fight of oppressed minorities — including women, blacks and gay people" as a fundamental plank for left unity. We apologise for the slip: future coverage will look at the Richardson Bill.