The Communist Women's International was launched as an autonomous offshoot of the Communist International in April 1920 for the purpose of advancing communist ideas among women. The Communist Women's International was intended to play the same role for the international women's movement that the Red Peasant International played for poor agrarians and the Red International of Labor Unions played for the international labor movement.
Operations of the Communist Women's International was directed by a body known as the International Communist Women's Secretariat. This body was renamed the Women's Section of the Executive Committee and made a subordinate department of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) and its magazine terminated in May 1925.
While the Women's Department (Zhenotdel) of the Russian Communist Party had some success in mobilizing Soviet women for administrative tasks in Soviet Russia, the Communist Women's International and the Communist Women's Secretariat ultimately proved a failure outside the borders of the Soviet Union. The Women's Section of the Executive Committee was terminated by ECCI in August 1930, as was the Russian Party's Zhenotdel, ending the Comintern's employment of a specific structure for propaganda to women.
The Second International, which predated the Communist International by nearly three decades, was founded upon the principles of political and social equality between men and women. The various national socialist parties included the participation of women despite their being denied the right to vote in many places and women's suffrage was made an important programmatic goal of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century radical movement. A special conference of socialist women was convened in Berne, Switzerland in 1915, bringing together such key international socialist leaders as Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, and Clara Zetkin to share common experiences and set common agendas.