Theresa Malkiel
| Theresa Malkiel | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Theresa Serber May 1, 1874 Bar, Vinnytsia Oblast |
| Died | November 17, 1949 (aged 75) Yonkers, New York |
| Occupation | Labor activist, author |
| Spouse(s) | Leon Malkiel |
| Children | Henrietta |
Theresa Serber Malkiel (1874-1949) 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 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.
Theresa Serber was born in Bar, Russia (now Ukraine) on May 1, 1874, one of four sisters. The family moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1891, and seventeen-year-old Theresa went to work as a cloakmaker in a garment factory.
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:
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