What made women's labour particularly attractive to the

The words of Clara Zetkin strike with the force of iron against iron: “What made women’s labour particularly attractive to the capitalists was not only its lower price but also the greater submissiveness of women.” In this fierce cry, she unmasks the hidden cruelty of her age. Women were drawn into the mills and factories not because they were valued, but because their toil could be bought for less, their endurance exploited, their silence presumed. To the rulers of industry, their suffering was not tragedy but profit.

Zetkin, a fiery leader of the socialist and feminist movements in Germany, spoke from the crucible of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Industrial Revolution had transformed the rhythms of life. The factory floor became the new battlefield, and there, armies of women bent their backs beside the machines. Their pay was a fraction of men’s, their voices stifled by the threat of dismissal. The owners believed women easier to command, less likely to rebel—until, through leaders like Zetkin, their voices rose.

History records the tale of the Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888 in London. Young women, some barely out of childhood, worked long hours with phosphorus that poisoned their bodies. Their wages were meager, their conditions deadly. Yet when they rose in protest, their strike shook the nation, forcing the factory owners to concede improvements. The capitalists who thought them submissive were proved wrong, for in the fire of injustice, even the humblest laborers discovered their strength.

The quote also speaks to the ancient chains of patriarchy. For centuries, women had been trained to obedience in the household, their roles confined, their wills subdued. When capitalism expanded, it seized upon this social conditioning, twisting submission into profit. The lower price of their work was not merely economic—it was the echo of centuries of diminished status. Zetkin’s insight is that exploitation rests not only on wages but on the weight of cultural subjugation.

So let the children of the future remember: when one group is deemed weaker, quieter, or more submissive, there lies the seed of exploitation. The story of women’s labour is not one of weakness, but of strength discovered in struggle. What was once sought by capitalists as cheap and pliant became, through resistance and unity, a force for transformation. True justice in labor comes not when profit dictates worth, but when the dignity of every worker—man or woman—is honored in full measure.