In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s right to paid work was a central concern within socialist and social democratic movements in Europe. Debates over the issue did not follow a simple trajectory from resistance to support. Some activists supported women’s entry into the labour market, whereas other activists within the same movements resisted it, invoking concerns about the social and economic impacts on male workers and the traditional family structure. Many people tended to ignore the fact that most working-class women had no other choice but to enter into wage labour.

As part of this trend, during the second half of the nineteenth century, many socialist thinkers in Central and Eastern Europe opposed women’s – particularly married women’s – employment. In the Czech lands between 1860 and 1880, socialist men argued that women’s paid work was a threat to the working class as a whole. They claimed that women’s lower wages undercut male workers; that industrial labour endangered women’s health, particularly during pregnancy; and that domestic roles were more natural for women. A socialist speaker in 1880 even received applause for calling for a ban on factory work for women and children, affirming the widely shared belief that women belonged in the home.

Participants in the Fourth International Women’s Conference of the LSI in the Vienna Concert Hall, 23–5 July 1931 (Source: Verein für Geschichte der ArbeiterInnenbewegung, N19/1)

However, by the early twentieth century, perspectives began to shift due to changing economic conditions and the increasing visibility of women in factory work. In Romania, socialist activist Ecaterina Arbore acknowledged that women’s economic participation had become unavoidable. She argued that rather than resist women’s labour, socialists should recognize its political implications. She insisted:

If they earn their own living, then it is only fair that women should be asking for the same rights men are calling for.

This line of reasoning, linking women’s economic activity to their political rights, became increasingly influential in socialist and social democratic circles.

After World War I, trade unions and labour movements often remained ambivalent or even hostile to women’s employment. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought renewed challenges. Across Europe and in the world beyond, governments proposed or implemented restrictions on married women’s employment, particularly in the public sector. These proposals were often justified by the idea that married women were “double earners” whose income was less necessary for their family than the wages of unemployed male breadwinners. It was during this period that social democratic women began to mobilize more explicitly in defence of women’s right to work. One significant moment in this transnational activism was the 1931 Fourth International Women’s Conference of the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in Vienna. Delegates attending the event discussed how to respond to efforts to curtail women’s employment and adopted a resolution affirming that women had an equal right to work.

Fanny Blatny, a representative of the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party in Czechoslovakia, played a central role in shaping this response. She spoke out forcefully against the dismissal of married women on the grounds that they contributed to a dual-income household. Challenging this logic by pointing to the financial realities of working-class families, Blatny noted that working women in two-income households might be repaying debts, supporting sick relatives, or covering the costs of setting up a home.

The conference resolution, finalized in a committee chaired by Blatny, framed the right to work as part of a broader set of demands including equal pay, shorter working hours, and the protection of motherhood. This approach reflected an effort to integrate gender equality into wider socialist goals rather than treat it as a separate issue. In sum, the struggle for women’s right to paid work within socialist and social democratic movements was shaped by both economic necessity and political ideology.