On the Liberation of Women in Albania

On the Liberation of Women in Albania is a pamphlet combining a speech by Comrade Enver Hoxha and a report by Ramiz Alia, both to the 2nd Plenum of the CC of the Party of Labour of Albania in June 1967. At that time, a great upsurge of the masses was raging for the elimination of outdated views, most of all those associated with religious and patriarchal bondage, which went hand in hand. Having been delivered after centuries of feudal and bourgeois foreign yoke, the new Albania immediately sanctified equality of the sexes into law. According to certain pseudo-socialists, such as those in the former people’s democracies, enshrining laws of equality was all there was to be done. But the PLA, with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, remained vigilant and pointed out that it wasn’t enough for the new state power to proclaim equality — it had to be imbued in the mentality of the people. By 1967, despite much greater successes in the emancipation of women than the pseudo-socialists, the indispensability to eradicate prejudices keeping women out of the Party, weighing down their ability to be educated on a par, burdening them with a life of housework, enforcing the reactionary customs of the Church, the Sharia and various Canons, setting up dowries and other negative phenomena reared their head. The PLA subsequently set up an entire Plenum to deal with this question, working out the solution as one of widespread education and moulding, to create a society of complete equality between men and women, with no sphere of life precluded. The whole Party and people immediately showed their enthusiasm for this work and cast all that was backward into the flames, proving such a society is more than possible — it is a necessity.