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On March 8th women and their supporters around the world celebrate the International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day commemorates the struggles and achievements of women for equality, peace and a world free of exploitation and oppression.
International Women’s Day pays tribute to women’s long and hard fight for equality, justice, economic security and peace. We pay tribute to women’s vast contribution to the economic, social, scientific, political and cultural life in the progress of humanity and the environment.
On this International Women’s Day the entire world is on a brink of severe capitalist economic crisis. Already millions of women in the developing countries are struggling against grinding poverty, imperialist wars and capitalist exploitation.
We honour the courageous women of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, Latin American and African continents, who continue their long resistance to imperialism in most difficult and harsh conditions. We draw our inspiration from the socialist women of Cuba, China, Vietnam, Nepal, North Korea and Venezuela who are building socialism in their own countries. We honour the millions of women around the world who selflessly take care, support and protect children, families and communities in most cruel conditions whilst never ceasing the fight for the liberation of their nations and people. We pay tribute to all ordinary women of the world who are the lifeblood of their people’s struggles for social, economic and political liberation and freedom from oppression. The world has never seen the scale and depth of present global poverty in contrast to the obscene, massive profits grabbed by a tiny handful of rich monopoly corporations.
In Australia, the Aboriginal women continue to shoulder the heaviest burden of their country’s occupation by British colonialism, more than 230 years ago. Colonial dispossession has thrown Aboriginal people into a life of poverty, homelessness, ill health, unemployment and alienation. Aboriginal women spearhead their people’s fight for ownership of their land, decent housing, health care, education and meaningful jobs. Without let up, the Aboriginal
women fight to keep their people, families and communities united and resilient. They mobilise and organise their people to oppose the new cruel
colonialism of NT Intervention rolled out by the Liberal Howard government and
shamefully continued under the Rudd Labor government. NT Intervention is a
naked grab by the multinational corporations for rich mineral resources on
Aboriginal land.
For Australia’s working women, the long battle for equal rights, pay equity, free child care, paid maternity leave, decent pay and working conditions, job security, union rights, health, education and community services never ceases. It continues today as capitalism winds back the few social and economic concessions women won over 30 years ago.
The shameful continuation of WorkChoices under a Labor government and the imminent economic crisis will bring more economic hardship, loss of workplace rights and unemployment for women in Australia. Working class women face the full blast of the Rudd/Gillard government’s Unfair Dismissal Laws that will leave many workers with few job protection rights. WorkChoices’ Right of Entry Laws that shackle workers’ and unions’ rights in the workplace remain virtually intact under a Labor government, whilst the right to strike is virtually banned.
Concentrated in low paid and casual jobs, intimidated and threatened by anti-union bosses, often on individual contracts and always in need of affordable child care and community services, working class women carry the main hardships during the capitalist economic crisis. Paid maternity leave has been a long held goal, still unrealised and still being fought for by working women and their unions.
Capitalism exploits women doubly: at work where women workers create profit for the boss, and then at home as society’s unpaid primary carers of children, the elderly and the sick. Women still do most of the unpaid house work and keep the family life ticking day-in-day-out, 24 hours round the clock.
On average, most women in Australia spend more than 30 hours per week on unpaid domestic and family work, on top of their paid work in the workforce. Women’s unpaid work at home re-produces and maintains present and future generations of workers at no cost to the exploiting capitalist class. Women look after society’s elderly and the sick with little financial or material support from the state. Ordinary women are a majority in the army of tens of thousands of volunteers supporting and maintaining our communities, schools, cultural activities and sports clubs. They are the collective glue in all vibrant communities. The main responsibility of caring for children, elderly parents, people with disabilities and housework continues to fall most heavily on women.
More than 70 percent of part-time workers are women. Being primary carers of children and families prevents many women from realising their capacity and desire to participate in full employment that can give women economic independence and equality.
The true and lasting equality for women and a life free of exploitation and economic insecurity can only be realised when the social system of capitalism, based on the economic exploitation of people and the natural environment, is finally dispatched to the dustbin of history, for ever. |
