Adelheid Popp and Working-Class Feminism in Austria

Abstract

The development of the feminist movement of the late 1960's provided many women with the impetus to study their own past. Such inquiry soon led to the dismaying discovery that many of the same discussions and demands which concerned them, such as legal and economic discrimination, child care and family planning, had occurred nearly a century ago, without permanent or even noticeable resolution. The earlier movement, to be sure, lacked consciousness or theoretical discussion about the significance of social roles and cultural-psychological influences on the emancipation of women. Their historical studies also made feminists in the current movement aware of the need to reach beyond middleclass and professional women to those of the working class, and to grapple with the relationship of the feminist movement to other social movements and ideologies, especially socialism. The case of Adelheid Popp, who was a working-class socialist leader and feminist, may be useful in thinking about all these issues. Popp was called the awakener of Austrian working women, active in founding socialist women's organizations and newspapers in the 1890's. She remained the leader of a movement of approximately a quarter million socialist women in Austrial in the 1920's until the destruction of democracy in Austria in 1934. Active in the international socialist movement as well, Popp succeeded the more famous Clara Zetkin as the leader of the women's movement in the Socialist International after Zetkin had become a Communist. Both Zetkin and Popp were influential leaders in the general socialist movements of Germany and Austria; both were energetic organizers, passionate speakers and wide-ranging publicists. Zetkin in Germany and Popp in Austria participated in parties which were mass organizations, and which were associated with