Theresa Serber Malkiel (1 May 1874 – 17 November 1949) was an American labor activist, suffragist, and educator. She was the first woman to rise from factory work to leadership in the Socialist party. Her 1910 novel, The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker, is credited with helping to reform New York state labor laws. As head of the Woman's National Committee of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), she established an annual National Woman's Day which was the precursor to International Women's Day. In 1911, while on a speaking tour of the American South, she called attention to the problem of white supremacism within the party. She spent her later years promoting adult education for women workers.
Early life
Theresa Serber was born in Bar, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Bar, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine) on May 1, 1874, one of seven sisters. Serber and her family were Jewish, and persecuted in Russia, so they emigrated to the United States, settling in Lower East Side of New York City in 1891, and seventeen-year-old Theresa went to work as a cloakmaker in a garment factory.
Activism
Soon after her arrival in New York she joined the Russian Workingmen's Club. In 1892 she organized the Infant Cloakmaker's Union of New York, a group of mostly Jewish women, and became its first president. Over the next few years she represented her union in the Knights of Labor, the Central Labor Federation, and the United Hebrew Trades. Her exposure to the radicalism of the latter two groups reinforced her socialist beliefs, and in 1893 she joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). She was an active member of the SLP for six years, representing her union at the first convention of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
In 1899 she left the SLP and joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA). Malkiel believed that only socialism could liberate women, and that socialism, in turn, could not survive without the full participation of women. In theory, the Socialist party was committed to equal rights for men and women, but in practice, it made no effort to reach out specifically to women workers and showed little interest in their concerns. Malkiel concluded that socialist women would have to fight their own parallel battle for equality. Her 1909 essay, "Where Do We Stand on the Woman Question?" expresses her frustration with this state of affairs:
For the workingwoman of today finds herself between two fires—on the one hand, she faces the capitalist class, her bitterest enemy; it foresees a far-reaching danger in her emancipation and with all the ability of its money power tries to resist her eventual advent into the civilized world. In her anguish the workingwoman turns towards her brothers in the hope to find a strong support in their midst, but she is doomed to be disillusioned, for they discourage her activity and are utterly listless towards the outcome of her struggle.
In 1905, Malkiel organized the Women's Progressive Society of Yonkers, which became a branch of the Socialist Women's Society of New York. Although the socialist party was officially opposed to separatism, Malkiel believed a women's organization was necessary to attract women to the party, and as a practice ground for women activists. Women were tired of their limited positions in the party as "official cake-bakers and money-collectors," she said. Meanwhile, she wrote socialist propaganda leaflets and published numerous articles on socialism and the woman question in journals such as the Progressive Woman, Machinists' Monthly, and the International Socialist Review. She also contributed to the New York Call, a socialist journal she co-founded with her husband.
Woman's National Committee
Malkiel was elected to the Woman's National Committee of the Socialist party in 1909. She served as a delegate to several conventions, campaigned, wrote pamphlets, and, like Rose Pastor Stokes, helped raise awareness of immigrant women's concerns. She established suffrage clubs designed to appeal to working women and bring them into the party. She also established an annual National Woman's Day, starting on February 28, 1909, which was observed by several European socialist parties as well as the SPA. Woman's Day was the precursor to International Women's Day which is celebrated each year on March 8.
In 1909, she worked closely with the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) to support the New York shirtwaist strike with publicity and fundraising.