Excerpts from Speeches by Clara Zetkin 1. For the Emancipation of Women - (from the speech at the International Worker's Conference in Paris on 19th July 1889) 2. Education of Children as the Common Task of Parents (from a speech made at the Mannheim SPD Party Congress in 1906) 3. Fascism must be Fought Down! (from the opening speech by the president by age of the German parliament, August 1932) Further information:  Portrait of Clara Zetkin

For the Emancipation of Women
(taken from the speech made at the International Worker's Conference in Paris on 19th July 1889)

"The Socialist Party needs to know that women's work is necessary in the face of present economic development; that the natural tendency for women's work either takes the direction that the working hours which each individual has to dedicate to society become less, or the riches of society grow; that it is not women's work per se which forces down wages by competing with men's work, but the exploitation of women's work by capitalists who appropriate the same.

All those who have written on their banners of freedom what is carried on the human countenance should not be allowed to condemn half of the human species to economic dependency and social slavery. As the worker is subjugated by the capitalists, so if the woman subjugated by the man; and she will remain subjugated if she continues to remain economically dependent. The essential condition for economic independence is work. If women are to become free human beings and equal members of society like men, it is neither necessary to do away with work for women nor limit it, except in certain wholly individual and exceptional cases.

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Education of Children as the Common Task of Parents
(from Clara Zetkin's speech at the Mannheim SPD Party Congress in 1906)

"Just as men and women belong together as begetters, they also belong together as educators of their children, because education is the second creation of the child, and many respects often enough the most important creation. This is why is it important in education to join harmoniously in free development the spiritual and moral force, which the man on the one side and the woman on the other have to provide. For this reason we declare that the work of education should not be just the work of the mother on the one side, but the common work of the parents together [...].

Through the way in which the parents relate to the child, they can firmly plant the opinion even in the most delicate of children, that for social valuation there exists only one type of work, that is socially necessary, socially useful work. In this relation I would like to make very special reference to the responsibility of the parents, not to raise their boys and girls in the prejudice that there is work for which men are unworthy but which is suitable for women. Boys and girls should be able to perform all work which domestic life brings with it with the same level of skill and joy."

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Fascism must be Fought Down!
(from the opening speech by the president by age of the German parliament, August 1932)

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