This issue of the Fifth Estate, appearing on the 61st anniversary of International Women’s Day, is dedicated to all our sisters around the world. It is the product of the Fifth Estate staff, women from the Women’s Media Co-op and women involved in other activities around the city.
When we started work on this paper, many of us didn’t know each other. Most of us had few newspaper skills and some of us had never written before. But we decided to pool our skills, energy and time-we were determined to put out a good newspaper.
We are also women who are beginning to love each other and to feel good about ourselves. We are finding a lot of strength in sisterhood as we try to fight the oppression and exploitation that confronts us every day of our lives.
Because we are women, we are expected to give up our own interests in order to follow the lives of our husbands. If we don’t have a man, we are pitied. We are told that to be complete, a woman has to be a devoted wife and mother.
We want to destroy that image and make our own definitions for woman, mother, wife, and friend.
We want to come together with sisters and brothers to build a revolutionary movement for a new society. And we must create a strong women’s movement to insure that our liberation will be a conscious part of the change that’s coming.
—Fifth Estate #126, March 4-17, 1971
Women’s Issue produced by women staff members and others from women’s groups. The largest selling issue of the Fifth Estate in its history.