[Marxistindia] On International Women's Day

[news from the cpi(m)]

On International Women’s Day


Brinda Karat


International Women’s Day, a day celebrated throughout the world to
express solidarity with women’s struggles for equality has a special
significance this year in the context of the global financial crisis and
the added burdens on the working people. If women’s emancipation is
linked to women’s economic independence through productive work, then
the current economic recession will badly impact on the gains made,
however slender in this direction. The 53rd Commission of the United
Nations on the Status of Women currently in session in New York is
slated to discuss in a special session ‘Gender Perspectives on the
Financial crisis.’ Preliminary reports from almost all developing
countries where in the last decade new employment avenues have been
linked to export oriented industries show the disastrous impact of the
crisis on women’s employment with lakhs of women in these industries
laid off or retrenched. In India women constitute 40 per cent of the
agricultural workforce and 75 per cent of all women workers are involved
or linked to agriculture. Certainly the deep agricultural crisis and the
consequent agrarian distress has hit these women workers badly. The UPA
Government’s failure to factor in the deep rural indebtedness to private
money lenders in its debt waiver schemes has particularly excluded these
women. According to National Sample Survey data among a total of 18
million urban women workers around 6 million women are involved in
textile, garments and leather industries, precisely those that have been
the worst hit by the recession and where women’s jobs are under threat.
A recent survey of home based workers by the Delhi unit of the All India
Democratic Women’s Association showed that thousands of women employed
in outsourced trades linked to manufacturing units like garments or shoe
manufacturing are working at home at extremely low piece rates which
have been further depressed due to lack of orders. But this reality is
invisible to policy makers. The fastest growing avenue for employment is
domestic work with 3 million women estimated in this work which in any
case is a gross underestimate. There are few protective legislations, no
job security and sometimes inhuman conditions for domestic workers/
maids. 

Thus for women in India and worldwide, a key issue in the Women’s Day
observance and celebrations this year will be women’s protest against
the utter failure and unsustainability of imperialist globalisation and
for the global demand for gender sensitive bail out packages for women
workers in the organized and unorganized sectors. 

Another most important issue which the UN is discussing is that of equal
decision making rights for men and women. Almost 15 years after the
Beijing declaration was ratified by most Governments, including India,
to ensure better participation of women in decision making bodies
including elected posts, The most recently released global figures show
that women’s representation in Parliament and local Government has
increased, but only to around 18.4 per cent. 24 countries have
representation of women over 30 per cent. In India patriarchy and
shortsighted political leadership reigns supreme with just 8 per cent of
women in Parliament which is not only 10 percentage points below the
global average but is responsible for actually bringing the average
down. India is ranked 98 on a gender development index for 140
countries. The UPA Government had the historic opportunity to enact the
Women’s Reservation Bill which would have ensured 33 per cent seats to
women in parliament and State Assemblies. Because of the pressure of
Left parties the Bill was introduced in parliament. But this was not a
Government priority. In violation of its own common minimum programme,
the UPA preferred to protect its Government by sacrificing the Women’s
Bill in a deal within the deal to get the support of the Samajwadi
party, the most vocal opponent of the Bill. 

Thus on this Women’s day, women in India as well as across the world
will demand the accountability of Governments in redeeming their pledge
to women to ensure adequate representation in elected bodies. In India
women will condemn this Government for its betrayal on the Women’s Bill.

The UN however does not have a very important issue on its agenda, but
one which deeply affects women. That is the war being waged in different
parts of the world in the name of eliminating terror. This war, under
the self proclaimed warrior leader the United States of America has left
in its wake the bloodiest of trails, led to ravaged countries, homes and
families. The terrible aggression by Israel on the 1.5 million
inhabitants, of the Gaza strip to destroy the Palestinian struggle for
their homeland has exposed the inhuman and savage nature of US
imperialism which has backed the aggressor country Israel to the hilt.
The attacks on civilians including women and children, the maimed and
bloodied bodies of countless women and children of Gaza the continuing
blockade of essential items is an issue which has agitated people the
world over. The conditions of women and children in Iraq after the US
occupation continues to be grim. The issue of national sovereignty,
peace and security are crucial for women in all these regions afflicted
by imperialist aggression in different ways. All over the world women
will raise their voices in solidarity. In India too, the demand will
rise against war, for peace and for the Government of India to stop
being a subordinate to those who wage war against sovereign countries.

It is indeed a twist of history that almost a hundred years after the
declaration of an International Women’s Day the issues which moved
Socialist women under the leadership of the revolutionary Clara Zetkin
to give the call to observe a day as International Women’s Day should
once again take centre stage. In 1910 at the Second Socialist
International Congress of Working Women, 100 women from 17 countries,
including the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament
endorsed Zetkin’s proposal. There were three main issues on which the
day was to be observed. The first was the demand of working women. The
second the demand for women’s right to vote and the third was that of
peace. 

The origin and history of the observance of the day and the importance
of the issues raised is tellingly related in an article published in
1920 by Alexandra Kollanai who was the first woman member of the
Bolshevik party led by Lenin. The origins lay in the militant actions of
working class women in the United States and Europe. She recalls the
leading role played by women workers in the textile and garments
industry in New York who had organised a huge march in 1908,
commemorating yet another march of women workers of 1857, demanding
better wages, working conditions and an eight hour day. The slogan was
“It is better to starve fighting than to starve working.” The 1908 March
was brutally attacked by the police and scores of women were seriously
injured. Women’s strikes and marches erupted repeatedly in America as
well as in different countries in Europe. This was also a time when
women across social classes were fighting for the right to vote in
America and in Europe. The right to vote had led to militant struggles
including in Britain. Kollantai wrote ” The question of making
Parliament more democratic, that is, of widening the franchise and
extending the vote to women was a vital issue”.The third issue was that
of peace with women demanding that aggressive moves by their respective
Governments against others should cease. 

At that 1910 Congress the actual date of observance was not decided. The
following years demonstrations and marches were organized in America and
across Europe, some in February, some in March. In Germany it was
observed on March 19, as Kollantai relates it, this was linked to
observance of an anniversary of an earlier rebellion on March 19, 1848
against the then Prussian king. However in 1913, International Women’s
Day was transferred to March 8. This was the year when Russian working
women first observed Women’s day. Only four years later, in 1917, on
March 8 the sea of Russian women who came out on the streets of
Petrograd against the imperialist war, for bread and for peace, marked
the beginning of a revolution which would end with the historic
Bolshevik revolution and the establishment of the first Socialist State.

What started as a call by Socialist women echoed across the world with
country after country accepting the day as Women’s Day and finally the
United Nations in 1975 gave the call for International Women’s Day on
March 8. Women across classes, regions, and communities raise the
demands of women’s emancipation on March 8.

But if today in 2009, the issues of women workers, of “making Parliament
more democratic” and of ensuring peace and national sovereignty resonate
across history with an immediacy and an urgency, it is not a coincidence
but a consequence of the failures of capitalist systems to meet even
these minimum requirements. In 100 years capitalism has not become any
less rapacious and savage than it was. The inequality between nations,
social classes, the rich and the poor and between men and women has
intensified, making the lives of the mass of people, particularly women
ever more difficult. 

On this Women’s Day, it is therefore necessary to renew the pledge made
all those years ago in that brave Copenhagen conference to fight for a
better world where working people and in particular working women can be
free from exploitation and all women free from gender based
discrimination. 
end