International Woman’s Day
Long Live the Arab Revolution!
Long live the struggle of all the proletarian women in the world!
Greetings for all the working women in the world, especially those who have been – and still are – the protagonists of the Arab revolution.
When mass media refer to women in those regions, they only speak of the terrible abuse they suffer: lapidating and genital mutilation. But they say nothing about the struggle these women have been carrying out for a long time now in defence of their rights- Today, in the heat of the revolution, we can see them in full splendour, participating in the confrontations, not as a separate entity but as comrades with the men who rebel against the totalitarian regimes of Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gadafi.
It was a group of women who began to protest against the regime of Ben Ali. These women, among whom we must mention Radhia Nasrauoi (Chairwoman of the Tunisian Association of Struggle against Torture), had to pay for their bravery by putting up with death threats, persecutions of Secret Police and even accusations of sodomy based on fraudulent photomontage and fake videos that were broadcasted by Internet.
And in Egypt, women were in first line during the ousting of Mubarak. Amel Said, an Egyptian woman worker explained to the La Vanguardia periodical of Barcelona, that her family – including her husband – encouraged her to participate. And she said that she hoped that now women would have their say on the issues of Egypt. Egyptian women remained in the streets from the very first moment of the protest. Old women provided water for those who suffered from the effects of tear gas. Mothers, wives and sisters held up the pan cards, took their children to the demonstrations or prepared food. Arm-in-arm with the relative men or workmates, they conquered the Liberation Square, they slept there and, walked with their children in their arms and chanted their demands for freedom and democracy. It was the 3 000 women workers of the greatest public textile factory Hilaturas Misr, in Mahala, who – in December 2006, visited the entire factory (24 000 workers) to begin the first great strike that shook the Egyptian workers’ movement. It was that same factory that organised the strike on 6 April 2008, which gave the name to the movement that began the demonstrations that ousted Mubarak.
This participation of the working class women and poor women was no coincidence. The same as their sister in the west, they suffer the consequence of the capitalist policies.
“I only feel safe when I am in Tahir (The Square of the Liberation),” many women said. “During these days of the revolution nobody touched us, nobody has harassed us. We feel just one more.” And this was the produce of the revolution, very important highlight for it has nothing to do with their everyday life. According to a survey of the Egyptian Centre for the Rights of the Women, 83% of local women and 98% of foreign women are sexually harassed and there is a case of sexual abuse or rape every 30 minutes, producing 20 000 victims a year.
These women, who have been suffering centuries of oppression, are now setting a great example for us. But they are not the only ones to fight. Working women and young students in France, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and England have been participating actively in the resistance struggles that shake the old continent. We can see them fighting for jobs, wages, working conditions and in defence of the human rights in the Latin American countries, Cuba included. And they are also protagonists of the arousing of the American proletariat as we can see in the Wisconsin demonstrations.
Women and the capitalist crisis
The epicentre of the crisis is in Europe and the USA and affects the most fragile sectors of the proletariat: women and immigrants.
The cuts on health and education makes unemployment among women accrue and they also suffer the dwindling of services for maternity. A similar situation takes place in the USA, where women are in most positions in education, and where, in 2010, the Secretariat of Education estimated that the cuts in the budget jeopardised about 300 000 jobs at state-owned schools. And that is all about an environment where a third of the American women are heads of families.
And this reality becomes even more serious where the immigrant woman is concerned. She is discriminated as a worker, as a woman and as immigrant. Immigration laws turn the lives of immigrants (men and women) into hell. The bill known as the “law of shame” passed by the European Commission in June 2008, allows for paperless women to be jailed for 18 months.
Doctors without Frontiers highlight the sexual violence suffered by Sub-Saharan women arrested in Morocco when trying to get to Europe. Between May 2009 and January 2010, one out of every three women seen by Doctors without Frontiers in Rabat and Casablanca admitted having suffered one or more sexual harassing while out of their country. The report concludes that, “So the use of sexual violence has become one of the most habitual violent practices against women against the migratory background.
Violence against women increase
Economic crisis, unemployment and lack of perspectives make violence against women even more acute. The survey, “Invisible crisis?” reveals the increase of the numbers of victims of domestic violence in Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Holland and United Kingdom and increase of prostitution and attacks against prostitution in Germany and United Kingdom.
In 2010, 43 women died of domestic violence in Portugal. It is estimated that in France a woman is murdered every three days in cases of domestic violence. In Italy it is estimated that 6.7% of women have suffered physical and sexual violence in her lifetime.
These numbers accrue in Latin American countries. In Brazil a woman is victim of violence every 15 seconds and the rate of women murdered 3.9 every 100 000 inhabitants. In El Salvador this rate reaches 12.7. This violence is even greater where lesbian and indigenous women are concerned for they suffer sexual attacks by military men, smugglers and dealers. And the highest rates stem out of Latin American countries, where authorities insist on refusing to legalise abortion, they doom a great number of working women and poor women to death or mutilation.
Why do women fight?
Millions of women die every day, victims of domestic violence, clandestine abortion, rape, hunger and poverty. Millions of women workers suffer discrimination at work, they are paid less even if they do the same work, and they are sexually harassed and are ruthlessly dismissed when they become pregnant. Millions of women become pariahs when they have no education and no job, many do not even have documents. It is against this reality that women fight. That is why they participate in the Arab revolution, in the European resistance and the different struggles of the toiling masses in Latin America.
May all the Arab women and all those women workers who are challenging capitalist policies and fighting for their democratic rights such as legalization of abortion receive greetings in solidarity from the IWL-FI.
These struggles are very important and extremely necessary, but they are not enough. In order to reach the real women’s liberation, it is necessary to put an end to this society where a few thrive on the exploitation of the great majorities. We must replace this unjust society by an egalitarian one based on solidarity, a socialist society that we can only begin to build when workers (men and women) will seize political power in the entire world and definitely defeat imperialism.
From the IWL-FI we call all the women workers, all the young students and poor women in the cities and in the countryside to join the struggle for this new society and the task of building a new world revolutionary leadership that will enable us to reach this aim.
Women’s International Secretariat
International Workers’ League – IV International
March 8th, 2011