RW ONLINE: The Challenge of International Women's Day

The Challenge of International Women's Day

Revolutionary Worker #1142, March 10, 2002, posted at http://rwor.org

The oppression of women is a great outrage and a hindrance to the all- around development of human beings and society. And for the first time in the long history of class society, human beings now have within their reach the ability to overcome the age-old divisions that keep women in a subordinate position. WOMEN HOLD UP HALF THE SKY!

The class-conscious proletariat won't stand for anything less than the complete emancipation of half of humanity.

"The Proletarian Revolution and the Emancipation of Women."from the Draft Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

International Women's Day, March 8, 2002: a day of celebration and struggle...a day when we reaffirm our commitment, our passion--to fight for a world when women no longer walk this earth facing inequality, rape, beatings, pornography, domestic servitude, and the thousand and one ways this system downpresses women. This is a day to celebrate the great contribution of women to bringing about a whole new realm of freedom for human beings as a whole.

IWD 2002 comes at a time of big challenges, but also great promise for women around the globe. We don't have to live in a world where women are treated as things, raped and abused, working fingers to the bone in the sweatshops of the modern global economy, struggling against religious fundamentalists who would deny our most basic rights, battling superstitions that keep women down, oppressed by male dominators who have been taught by society that they have the right to `be this way,' running from bombs and begging for handouts in refugee camps.

All this misery and irrationality are completely unnecessary. But this promise can only be realized if we are clear on the source of this oppression and the path forward.

Right now we confront a system headed up by lying arrogant creatures--on a rampage. They are making war on the planet and posing as the liberators of women in Afghanistan!

Liberators? Look at Thailand or the Philippines or Okinawa--where the lives of tens of thousands of women and young girls are destroyed in the sex trade wherever U.S. armed forces are stationed--and you can see that this talk of liberation by imperialist troops is a lie. Or, look at the whole history of the U.S. role in Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or Kuwait--and you can see that, whenever it served their interests, the U.S. government never hesitated for one second to back regimes that have turned women into invisible prisoners.

And on this International Women's Day, we need to reach out and stand with the people of the world. We need to send a message that women are not going to be a party to the unjust wars and interventions and roundups of immigrants that are being waged in the name of "stopping terrorism." We need to let the people of the world know that these brutal acts being carried out by the U.S. government are not in our name.We need to do all we can to build a powerful movement to stop this U.S. war campaign. And through this kind of resistance, right within the U.S.,we can help give "air to breathe" to movements in other countries that can really help liberate the people--where women can really rise up and break the chains of tradition.

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From the highest mountains to sea-level deltas, rain forests to deserts, crowded cities to isolated villages, women are the poorest of the poor. Women confront beyond-words suffering: beatings and assaults, most often by family members; rapes and sexual enslavement; death from childbirth or unsafe abortion; mutilation of both body and spirit. From fundamentalist-ruled societies where women must live inside tent-like body veils and locked houses, to the democratically ruled U.S. where a woman suffers every nine seconds from physical abuse and every two minutes from rape or attempted rape--the situation calls out for drastic change.

Together we confront a global system where ages-old oppression co-exists with "advanced" capitalist forms of subjugation.

Here in the belly of the beast responsible for so much of the world's suffering, we have a great revolutionary task ahead of us. And we need to help the people get clear that this global empire will never bring about the emancipation of women.

Here where things are so "advanced," the president and his allies plot to make reproductive choice impossible by making abortion increasingly inaccessible and by declaring that fetuses have political rights, while the rights of women are denied. Christian fascists are unleashed to kill doctors and spew lies--denying women precious resources, spreading superstition, and reenforcing the chains of male domination. Women in need are denied assistance, child care, and decent jobs and then blamed for all the problems of the youth. Women grow up with the threat of rape and violence burned into our consciousness, and an intense hostility towards women infuses the popular culture.

Women are looking for answers. How can we break the chains of inequality? How can we tear up the old division of labor in society that keeps women--and all of humanity--down? How can we end the ways of male domination and build new relations between human beings, based on respect?

From the first call for IWD in 1910-- inspired by the fierce struggle of women garment workers on New York's Lower East Side -- International Women's Day has been closely linked with the proletarian revolution. The subjugation of women arose and goes hand-in-hand with class divisions, the exploitation of the many by the few. And it can only end, finally, when the many overthrow the few and come to power, bringing to birth, through great struggle and sacrifice, a new world free from all oppression and exploitation.

The promise of International Women's Day 2002 is this: such a new world is possible! It was begun in the achievements of socialist societies in the past and especially in revolutionary China under Mao. And hope for such a world is taking shape today in the course of People's Wars being waged under the leadership of Maoist parties like those in Nepal and Peru. These People's Wars are attracting great numbers of women as fighters and political and military leaders because the liberation of women is an integral and critical part of Maoist revolution. And by their participation these women are breaking centuries of tradition's chains and pioneering new liberating relationships.

Women worldwide are crying out for liberation--and are finding ways to act to bring it closer.

Our resistance is flowering in the midst of war.

Break the Chains!Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!

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