In my answer I will be concentrating on the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in the 1920s; hope that is OK and what you were looking for.

CPGB was the largest Communist Party in Britain, and existed from 1920 to 1990. Women’s involvement in CPGB appeared to be understudied for some time, and I believe that the best account of women’s involvement in the party comes from S. Bruley’s book Leninism, Stalinism, and the Women's Movement in Britain, 1920-1939, which you might find interesting. It is the main source for my answer, too.

Historians have called the CPGB a ‘young man’s party’; throughout its existence, men under 30 made up the largest proportion of members. Women, at their membership peak in 1926, made up 21% of the party (Hunt and Worley), but their regular membership was at about 14-16% (Bruley; Thorpe). For context, at this time, the Labour party was made up of about 40% women – suggesting that CPGB’s women’s membership was quite low even in the context of recent enfranchisement. Another thing to keep in mind is that most members had ‘manly’ jobs; the party was largely made up of engineers and miners.

I would argue that argue CPGB was reluctant to give a significant amount of energy to recruiting female members in the 20s.

It appears that the young CPGB never grasped the specific concerns of women. One reason proposed for this is that it was the type of a party which had inherent ‘Masculinism’ (Damousi). To the CPGB – women were workers, and thus worker problems applied to them the same way as they did to men, which, we can now appreciate, was not necessarily the case. CPGB’s ideology was that of crude economic determinism – it was largely centered on the need to overthrow the capitalist mode of production with little consideration for any related social factors. The emphasis was thus on things like Trade Union struggle, rather than the struggle within the family or community. Therefore gaining some women’s interest may have proved difficult – these are the concepts on which their propaganda relied on.

The 1922 Party Congress saw the statement that it is the men’s job to bring in women into the party (i.e., bringing their wives). The same year, an admission was made that the party has done little to bring women into their ranks in the 18 months of their existence. After this followed some minor progress, for example, in 1924, along the Party Congress, there ran a Conference of Party Women. However, in 1929, there were still complaints of women not being mentioned in the 10th Party Congress. A member of the party, Katy Duncan, figured this was because members were scared of talking about women’s issues in case they’re perceived to be separate from that of the broader class struggle. Overall, the goal of the party was that of overcoming fragmentation, as with every party. This hope for homogeneity meant that the biggest group, young men in male industries, were the ones best represented.

Those women not put off by the rejection of the existence of women’s issues, may have been put off by party structure. As suggested earlier, women in the party were largely ‘party wives’. They had most of the secretarial jobs, like organising events or fundraising. The promised equality within the party was not really there – the jobs women did were often just extensions of their domestic duties at home. Additionally, the incredibly centralised party structure meant that future prospects were unclear; there is little evidence of a well-functioning inner party democracy.

As the CPGB stated in 1922, they considered their members to be ‘disciplined soldiers’. The party was a vanguard for the working class. Thus the membership was a lifestyle most suited to young unmarried men, a group with few domestic commitments. There is of course some evidence that women nonetheless found this exciting and did not shy away, but we need to recognise that women were the least likely to be able to throw away their domestic commitments and take part in such a full-on membership as CPGB expected.

As I believe you alluded in your question, societal factors were largely against women, especially the poorer women which were the targets for CPGB. The women’s domestic duties were even more time consuming than they are now – no washing machine, no hoover, etc. Thus a working woman would only rarely be able to commit to both the party and the household. Women’s domestic work was rarely relived by the men of the family; as Bruley put it, they often found it ‘unmasculine’. Some of these social divisions were entrenched further by the labour movement itself, e.g., campaigning for a ‘family wage’ which would mean that women could (should?) stay home. And on even simpler terms, party meetings often took place in places like pubs or similar establishments which arguably prevented some women’s attendance. And once this was overcome – it is true that some women just did not see politics as their sphere of interest.

So, I would say, that the young CPGB was indeed a young man’s party, and thus largely ineffective at attracting women at the time. There was a lack of interest in women-related problems, and the Bolshevisation of the party meant that the party structure was nightmarish for all members. But it is also important to remember that it was not always necessarily the fault of the party – wider societal factors were not particularly on the side of working women.

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Andrew Thorpe, ‘The membership of the Communist party of Great Britain, 1920-1945’, The Historical Journal, 43 (2000).

Joy Damousi, Women come rally: socialism, communism and gender in Australia 1890-1955 (1994).

Karen Hunt and Matthew Worley, ‘Rethinking British Communist Party Women in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 15 (2004).

Sue Bruley, Leninism, Stalinism, and the Women's Movement in Britain, 1920-1939 (2012).