Western journalists flocked to Gdańsk to cover the uprising (the communist regime, in a rare concession, allowed some foreign press in), and many early reports highlighted Walentynowicz – the fired woman whose cause had lit the flame – even before they mentioned Wałęsa en.wikipedia.org . As she stood at the shipyard each day, a humble figure in a simple dress and glasses, rallying her comrades, Walentynowicz symbolized the moral authority of the workers’ cause.
By the strike’s second week, the communist government – alarmed by the scale of the unrest – sent a delegation to negotiate in Gdańsk. They made rapid concessions: the authorities agreed to reinstate Walentynowicz and Wałęsa to their jobs, granted raises, and even consented to build a memorial for the workers killed in 1970 encyclopedia.com encyclopedia.com . These partial victories led Wałęsa and some others to consider ending the strike on August 16, thinking they had won enough. But Walentynowicz and several militant colleagues (notably another woman activist, Alina Pienkowska) were not ready to stop en.wikipedia.org . They knew many of the boldest demands – free unions, free speech, releasing prisoners – were still unmet and that other factories were counting on Gdańsk to hold the line. As Wałęsa prepared to announce the strike’s end, Walentynowicz and Pienkowska famously intervened to keep the strike going en.wikipedia.org . According to numerous eyewitnesses, it was these women who shut the shipyard gates to prevent workers from dispersing and passionately argued that they could not abandon fellow strikers across Poland en.wikipedia.org . Walentynowicz implored the wavering men to think of the jailed activists and repressed citizens who had no voice. “Our aim should not be just a slightly thicker slice of bread for ourselves,” she had earlier told her co-workers. “We must consider the needs of others… Your problems are my problems” en.wikipedia.org . Her moral clarity carried the day. The strike continued, broader than before – no longer just for one woman’s job, but in solidarity with an entire nation’s aspirations (indeed, “Solidarity” (Solidarność) soon became the official name of the newborn movement).
On August 31, 1980, the regime capitulated. The government’s negotiators signed the Gdańsk Agreement, acceding to all 21 demands encyclopedia.com . For the first time in postwar Eastern Europe, a Communist government recognized the right of workers to form independent unions and agreed to sweeping reforms. It was an unprecedented victory for a non-violent popular movement – one that would have seismic consequences far beyond Poland. Yet in the flush of victory, there were signs of the struggles to come. Tellingly, when it came time to formally sign the agreement, neither Walentynowicz nor any other woman was at the table – the accord was signed entirely by male delegates, reflecting a tendency to sideline women even in a movement they had done so much to propel encyclopedia.com . Walentynowicz, who had risked everything to speak truth to power, now watched as others took the spotlight. Still, she had helped awaken a spirit that would not be easily extinguished. In the months after the strike, nearly ten million Poles – more than a quarter of the country’s population – joined the new Solidarity trade union, making it the largest independent labor union in the world encyclopedia.com .