Alice M
March 8 marks the
International Working Women’s Day. On
this day working women pay tribute to the hard won achievements and struggles
of previous generations of women and assert our determination to defend the
gains and continue the fight for real equality and emancipation of women. We hold
that genuine equality between women and men cannot be realised without ending
the capitalist system of double exploitation of working women and liberating
the whole of the working class and the oppressed.
On International Working Women’s Day we honour
the millions of ordinary working women of the past and present in their long
and hard struggles for improvements in their immediate conditions of life and a
future free of exploitation and oppression of all humanity.
On this day we honour the
struggles of many generations of women in their workplaces and communities for
equality, a better life and against capitalist and imperialist exploitation.
We pay tribute to millions of
women around the world engaged in revolutionary struggles for national
independence and socialism. We are
greatly inspired and encouraged by the revolutionary women of Palestine, India,
Philippines Latin America, the Middle
East and Africa fighting imperialism and fascism.
International Working Women’s Day was born in 1911 in
Europe and US out of bitter battles by working women for improvements to their
low wages and harsh working conditions.
IWD came out of working women’s fight for social and political equality,
women’s right to vote, for peace and an end to capitalist exploitation of the
working class. They were truly momentous
mass struggles led by communist and socialist women and drew wide support.
Communist and socialist women
were thoroughly active in the struggles for immediate improvements to working
women’s lives within capitalism, and at the same time they argued strongly that
real equality and the emancipation of working women cannot be realised under
the exploitative capitalist class system.
As long as the capitalist class of a tiny super rich minority holds the
economic and political power the double exploitation of working women cannot be
changed fundamentally. The capitalist
system of class relations is the main barrier to achieving real and permanent
equality and rights for women.
Capitalism doubly exploits working women
Capitalism commodifies women and condemns
them to unpaid domestic labour and cheap labour in the paid workforce. The economic exploitation and inequality of
women in the capitalist relations of production institutionalises social
inequality, gender discrimination,
sexual harassment, and sexual and domestic violence against women.
Today, international capital is driving savage
attacks on people of the world. More of
immense global wealth, created from the exploitation of workers and the
environment, is sucked out by multinational corporations and banks.
Imperialist wars, savage
capitalist austerity and the restructuring of national economies by global monopoly
corporations and banks are throwing millions more into poverty.
Women make up 70% of the world’s poor
The world has not seen the scale and depth of global poverty and
suffering of hundreds of millions, that
contrasts sharply with the obscenity of massive profits seized by a tiny
handful of monopolies striding the globe.
Women carry the heavy burden of the
onslaught by capital and imperialist wars. Savage imperialist wars for control of world’s
natural resources and economic and political hegemony are wreaking suffering
and horrors of death, poverty and displacement on millions. In developing,
semi-colonial countries more women are pushed into deeper poverty. In
developed countries, harsh imperialist and capitalist austerity is killing off the
few social and economic achievements and concessions won by working women in
the mid and later 20th Century .
In both the developing and industrially developed countries more women and their families are
now living in poverty.
Australia’s Aboriginal women
On International Women’s Day we
acknowledge and pay tribute to the lives and struggles of Australia’s Aboriginal
women. The oppression of Aboriginal
women that began with the 1789 colonial occupation and dispossession continues
today under the tyranny of the Northern Territory Intervention administered by
both Liberal and Labor governments. The
Intervention has reinforced the colonial dispossession, poverty, unemployment
and oppression for the overwhelming majority of Aboriginal people. More Aboriginal women are being incarcerated
and their children continue to be taken away.
Aboriginal women are the bed rock
of their people’s resilience and dignity, holding communities together,
organising and leading the resistance to occupation and oppression and showing
the way forward.
Capitalist austerity hits working class
women hard
Working women in Australia won
concessions from the capitalist state in the mid to late 20th
century. Many of these incremental achievements in equal pay for work of equal
value, more accessible and affordable
child care, laws against gender discrimination and sexual harassment, maternity
leave, funding for women’s community, health, education and support services,
superannuation, had been won over many years through persistent struggles by
women and their unions.
Today many of these important
achievements are now being rolled back.
No real and lasting equality for working
women under capitalism
Important as these achievements
have been in alleviating some of the inequalities with men and for improvements
to women’s lives generally, women workers are still concentrated in low paid, insecure,
casual and part-time work, on individual contracts, heavily dependent on
penalty rates to make ends meet. Child
care fees are sky rocketing. Gender
discrimination and sexual harassment continue, often covertly, with most women
reluctant to report for fear of reprisals whilst the laws are rarely enforceable.
Working women’s measly wages are supported
by the minimum wage. The gap between
women’s and men’s earnings has widened to 19%, with women on average earning $300
per week less than men.
Working class women carry the heaviest
burden of the present LNP government’s harsh austerity budget rolled out on
behalf of global finance capital and its monopoly corporations. The present wave of attacks on workers’ wages
and conditions, privatisation of publicly owned assets and community services,
deregulation and cuts to health, education and welfare services were started by
the Hawke-Keating government 35 years ago.
These have continued to be implemented incrementally by both Liberal and
Labor governments. Many earlier gains
made by women have now been eroded, at first gradually by successive Labor governments
and now with force by the LNP government.
The removal of single parents women from their pensions to lower NewStart allowance by the Gillard government
is just one of acts of betrayal of working class women by Labor governments.
Organise, mobilise and fight for a
better world – the only way forward for working women
Equality and improvements to
women’s lives can only be achieved through struggle. In the present struggles and mass
mobilisations by unions and communities against the LNP government budget cuts,
attacks on workers and union rights, destruction of the environment, women stand
as equals with their male comrades in unions and communities.
As long as this movement is held
in the hands of rank and file unionists and workers, and in the grass roots of
communities, working women will win their place as equals in struggle and for a
world free of exploitation .
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