• DOI:10.1086/493681
• Corpus ID: 144762827

Socialism and Feminism in Imperial Germany

@article{Honeycutt1979SocialismAF,
  title={Socialism and Feminism in Imperial Germany},
  author={Karen Honeycutt},
  journal={Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society},
  year={1979},
  volume={5},
  pages={30 - 41}
}

• Karen Honeycutt
• Published 1 October 1979
• History, Economics
• Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Germany before 1914 was the home of the largest, best-organized, and most militantly class-conscious socialist women's movement in Europe.' Although the percentage of women employed in German industry was smaller than in Austria, Great Britain, or France,2 it was in Germany that the organizational model for all socialist women developed. Ultimately, however, the German socialist women's movement was no more successful than its counterparts elsewhere in sustaining a balanced commitment to both sexual and class emancipation. The chief reasons for this can be found in the dependence of German socialist women on the powerful, male-dominated German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and their failure-largely an outcome of this dependence-to deal with woman's oppression in the family. The women's socialist movement in Germany was founded and maintained as a women's auxiliary to the SPD. Therein