[1] On 13 November 1883 Emma Ihrer founded the socialist and feminist Frauen-Hilfsverein für Handarbeiterinnen ("Aid Society for Women Manual Workers").

The garment workers were particularly active, and it was through their influence that the Reichstag decided in favour of an official survey of wages in the lingerie and clothing industry.

[3] They presented a motion against discrimination against female employment that ensured that women had equal rights in the trade union movement.

Ihrer insisted that the statutes allowed for female membership,[a] and was elected the sole women in the seven-person board of the General Commission.

[1] Ihrer found that decades after the SPD had been formed there was still no mass movement of proletarian women, a result due to male supremacist assumptions within the party as well as to legal barriers.

[4] Ihrer founded the weekly newspaper Die Arbeiterin (The Woman Worker), whose first number appeared in January 1891, but it had little success.

[6] By January 1892 the sheet was facing financial ruin and was placed in the hands of Clara Zetkin by the SPD-affiliated Dietz-Verlag.

[1] At the 1900 SPD conference Ihrer demanded that the Social Democratic principle of equality should not remain theoretical but should be put into practice.

Emma Ihrer was active in the Free Religious Congregation in the 1870s and 1880s, as were other founders of early socialist women's organization in Berlin such as Ottilie Baader and Agnes Wabnitz.

Gertrud David, Helma Steinbach, Henriette Fürth and other socialist feminist leaders also supported Braun's position.

"[12] Ihrer attacked the article, strongly disagreeing with Fischer's characterization of women as primarily wives and mothers.

In her view Fischer's ideal of a stable family life could be achieved not by "the woman's renunciation of her job and the devotion of her mental and physical energy to the household alone ... but rather the cooperation of all elements, including above all the man, especially in raising the children."

Clara Zetkin saw in her "the implacable hater of all prejudice, the ruthless advocate of full equality of the female sex, the courageous fighter against all enslaving powers".