March 8 was proclaimed as International Working Women’s Day by the Second International Conference of Communist Women held in Moscow in June 1921.
Working-class women live in a world of exploitation and inequality, expropriated labour,low wages and precarious and socially devalued work. They face, poverty, discrimination, harassment, problems in accessing healthcare, and are forced to confront the harsh consequences of repeated attacks on social security protections and the absence of free proper childcare facilities.
Violencein every aspect of life, including interpersonal relationships or relationships within the family, subjects women and girls to physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering whilefemicide is a daily reality facing women. Millions of women are forced to live without protection of maternity and the female body or under laws severely restricting or prohibiting completely reproductive rights. Women continue to die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth which are entirely preventable by proper care.
Imperialism has a devastating impact on women’s lives and rights. Globally, sanctions, interventions and war, violence, displacement, migration, climate crisis and environmental destruction, poverty, economic exploitation, forced and unpaid labour, flexible labour relations, sexism, racism, lack of access to education, healthcare and the means to sustain a proper life, blight the lives of poor and working women.
Millions of people are forcibly displaced or rendered refugees by war.In Gaza, of the recent massive death toll inflicted by Israel’s genocidal war, approximately 70% of the dead are women and children.
While men and women can be victims of human trafficking, women and girls are disproportionately affected and make up the vast majority of the victims trafficked for sexual exploitation. The causes of trafficking arise from conditions of capitalist exploitation and include poverty, war and displacement.
We express our solidarity with women who experience the consequences of state violence, obscurantist views, anachronistic practices, economic and social discrimination, who live in countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, but also as refugees and migrants in EU countries. These unacceptable practices and the righteous indignation that they arouse in women are being used to promote imperialist plans.
The October Socialist Revolution gave rise to a new vision and prospects for the emancipation and independence of women. The early communist women were clear in their understanding that working women can only win liberation by fighting for socialism and that the struggle to achieve political equality for proletarian women is an inseparable part of the overall class struggle of the proletariat.
From the beginning communist women spoke out strongly against imperialist war for the peoples to live in peace.
International Women’s Day remains an opportunity for communists to assess the contemporary challenges facing working women and to remember their struggles and achievements.
The fundamental contradiction between those who own the means of production and those workers, male and female, who produce wealth by selling their labour remains a defining characteristic of capitalism. The oppression and exploitation of women cannot be abstracted from the material reality of class in a capitalist society. Class struggle remains the engine of social change and only socialism offers the prospect of emancipation for humankind, including the liberation of women.
The reality declared at the Moscow Conference in 1921 remains valid. Only socialism-communism can save humanity, only socialism-communism guarantees women and the working-class emancipation from their age-long enslavement and oppression.
