In 2009, it is the women of Iran that have been the most courageous fighters. They have been a large part of the mass protests against Ahmadinejad’s dictatorial regime, even uncovering their heads and marching loudly in demonstrations of both sexes. Decades of anger against oppression is bubbling up in Iran and the movement is far from over, but to overthrow the regime more class-based workers’ struggle is needed.

by Elin Gauffin (CWI Sweden) is from the new Spring 2010 issue of the Chinese socialist magazine Shehui Zhuyi Zhe (社会主义者)

From the beginning, International Women’s day (8 March) was a day of struggle for working women. Nowadays it has largely been hijacked by the capitalist establishment as a ceremonial and sometimes highly commercial affair. Much has happened over time, providing welcome proof that women’s oppression can be fought and pushed back, but despite this, the oppression rooted in society continues. Indeed, in the past year many earlier conquests for women have been lost as a result of the crisis of capitalism. There are also important lessons from women’s struggle in Chinese history that should be studied again.

“We did it!” exclaimed an editorial in The Economist magazine on 2 January 2010. In some way this business journal wants to celebrate that in 2010 women will account for half the labour market in the U.S. This does mark a step forward, but since when did “we” include The Economist? The rising proportion of women in the workforce is neither the result of increased welfare spending or greater male responsibility for household work. The US has the lowest level of investment in childcare and parental leave in the western world, and the state has not even signed the UN Declaration on Women’s Rights. It is rather that the economic crisis has foremost knocked out jobs in industries such as motor vehicles, so that male unemployment has risen to 11.2 percent while the female rate is 8.6 percent.

It is true that most of the new jobs in recent years have gone to women. In Europe, these account for six million of a total of eight million new jobs since 2000. But this reflects a form of increased exploitation of the working class as a whole. Most of these are insecure, part-time, temporary jobs involving unsocial work hours etc. that typically mean lower hourly rates of pay but more stress and illness. Capitalism has always made use of and had an interest in preserving sex discrimination, with low wages for women meaning more profits.

The last thing women’s rights activists around the world can do for the 2010 Women’s Day is take a rest. The situation is very serious and the events of the last year call for an answer to the question: which way forward for women’s struggle?

For the first time ever there are over 1 billion suffering malnutrition in the world, one in six of the human race. Women have for a long time accounted for 70 percent of the world’s poor. The Asia-Pacific region has most of the world’s hungry; 642 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The children’s rights organization PLAN identifies the following effects of the crisis:

• Young women, millions of workers in the informal and export-related sectors, are the first to lose jobs. Seven of ten workers sacked in the formal sector in the Philippines are women.

• The sums sent home by migrant workers – remittances – have fallen sharply and migration has been reduced. The World Bank estimates the flow of remittances to developing countries fell by 7.3 percent in 2009.

• Loan facilities from “micro-financing” and other projects has decreased

• When crisis hits parents’ finances it is first and foremost girls who are taken from school and thrown into housework, domestic work, or child labour. Over 100 million girls are working as child labourers worldwide (ILO).

• Infant mortality rates are increasing, which affects more girls than boys. An estimated 50,000 more African infants died last year due to the crisis.

• More women and girls are trafficked and forced into sex trade. This was the tragic outcome for many women who lost their jobs during the Asian crisis of 1997. The first “industry” to bounce back was the sex industry. In Jakarta, two to four times more women became sexworkers in the year after the crisis. Capitalism knows no boundaries when it comes to inventing new markets for its business. Everything is turned into “goods”, including bodies and emotions. A form of sex trafficking is the trade in brides. In some countries the drastic consequences of women’s oppression mean that part of the female population has gone “missing” due to gender selective abortions. This is the case with the so one-child policy in China, where 118 boys are born to every 100 girls. 50,000 women from poorer provinces or countries are sold for marriage each year in China – more than 10,000 Vietnamese women are sold to China for marriage or prostitution (pbs.org). Whatever there is a shortage of becomes a luxury under capitalism. Paradoxically, the phenomenon of polygamy is recurring among rich men. It happens that businessmen from Hong Kong, with constant trips to Guangdong take a second wife among that province’s poor migrant workers.

Women also suffer most from that other major crisis of capitalism – the climate crisis. Atmospheric warming as a result of 150 years of industrialisation, carbon emissions and pollution, will be an important theme for this year’s 8 March demonstrations worldwide. According to the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation, women and children run fourteen times the risk of dying from natural disasters than men. In the tsunami of 2004, 70 to 80 percent of those who perished were women. With few resources, poor women have less chance of getting compensation after earthquake disasters, and are at greater risk of subsequent infections when caring for the elderly and children. Already global warming is causing a significant additional burden on women who must walk farther and farther in search of drinking water, while farm work becomes more onerous in the areas affected by drought or floods.

On last year’s International Women’s Day (2009), the militant women of the farm workers’ network Via Campesina put their foot down against imperialism’s deforestation and the threat to Brazil’s biodiversity. In Brasilia, hundreds of women occupied the Department of Agriculture. In Rio Grande do Sul, 700 women occupied land belonging to the paper company Votorantim Cellulose and eucalyptus plantations were sabotaged. In other places mining companies, sugar cane plantations, paper multinational Stora Enso and large estates were occupied. In Espirito Santo thousands of women took over the harbour in Portocel and sabotaged a large amount of pulp exports. Deforestation is responsible for 20 percent of increase in global greenhouse gas emissions and the forests must be protected immediately. But the failure of world leaders at the UN summit in Copenhagen means there isn’t even a binding climate agreement.

For decades, the “solution” to oppression and poverty routinely served up by the world’s politicians and economists has been more market economy, more capitalism. If only the poor countries open their economies up to international capital, then in time they’ll reach the same living standards as in the West – such is the mantra of neo-liberalism. Nothing could be further from the truth.

With its crises, capitalism has condemned itself as a system. Global financial agencies such as the IMF and World Bank, with a decisive role within the international capitalist system, continue to demand deregulation and spending cuts in healthcare and education as conditions for providing loans to countries hit by the crisis. As if it wasn’t deregulation that increased the exposure of these countries to the international financial crisis. It is estimated that foreign investment in developing countries fell by a third last year. Similarly, continual reliance on market-based “solutions” such as the trade in carbon emission rights has only resulted in greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise. New attacks on already downsized welfare systems mean that the crisis is hitting ordinary people even harder. In Ukraine, the IMF suspended its last loan payment in protest against the country’s parliament deciding to raise the minimum wage by 25 percent. In most countries of course “the minimum wage” means women’s wages. In Latvia, the government has obeyed the dictates of the IMF and foreign creditors, with the result that the government sector wage bill has fallen by 40 percent, and half of the country’s hospitals have been closed.

The biggest question for women in many parts of the world in coming years will be the struggle against truly historic cuts in welfare that governments are planning. Publicly funded health care, elderly care, childcare, pensions, parental and sickness insurance, student grants etc., have all been – to the extent that they exist – very important gender reforms. Unpaid domestic work has partially been taken over by society, enabling women to take employment and become less economically dependent on men. But never before have the world’s politicians been forced to go in with such massive rescue packages as last year, to save the capitalist financial system from collapse. The trillions of dollars in aid to the banks must eventually be paid back and, as long as capitalism remains, we can be sure the directors who caused the crisis will not be the ones to pay. Instead, the burden of payment will be placed on the shoulders of women, workers, the elderly, the young and the sick.

Any idea that capitalism leads to sexual equality is easily disproved by looking at the countries with 150-200 years of capitalist development. In Sweden, which ranks as one of the most equal countries and is considered to have a relatively well developed welfare sector (although this has been scaled back sharply over a period of more than two decades), women in full-time work do not earn more than 83 percent of men’s wages. The labour market is extremely gender-segregated with women mostly in the public sector, where wage growth has been slowest. Sweden also has the highest proportion of notified rapes per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe, and together with Britain tops the league for the lowest proportion notified of rapes that are prosecuted (only 13 per cent). These are clear examples of how the capitalist state perpetuates women’s subordination.

The oppression of women has its origin in class society, and has existed therefore for about 5,000 years. It is rooted in the structure of the family, which was an institution for men to exercise power in society and control property. The word “family” comes from Latin “familia”, and means “the whole number of slaves belonging to one master.” In China, for example, the binding of women’s feet that was a common practise among the families of the privileged, was as the proverb went: “not to make them beautiful as a curved bow, but to restrain women when they leave the home.”

Capitalism is also a class society that has developed and continually adapted the gender system (men’s subjugation of women) to suit its needs and the demands of modern production. In today’s family, male dominance is still manifested. Women account for the vast majority of unpaid housework. This covers cooking, cleaning, laundry as well as emotional labour: the care of children, the old, partners. The four walls of the home are often an arena for men’s violence against women. Amnesty International has estimated that at least one in three women worldwide are beaten, forced into sex, or exposed to abuse during their lifetime.

The gender power structure runs across the whole of society. Children are brought up differently as girls or boys because of social pressure and surroundings. This even became a business idea of modern capitalism already when the department store was born in the 19th century, and the bourgeois ideal of womanhood was created, with woman made into an object. Fashion, beauty and advertising are mega industries that have a huge economic stake in perpetuating gender roles. You are not a “real” woman with anything less than a considerable amount of time and money spent on “improving” your body.

The male sex is considered by society to be above the female, regardless of which anti-discrimination laws exist. A boy learns early in life to be proud of his gender, while a girl learns to hold herself back. A guy who is interested in typically “girly” things risks being called a homosexual, and homosexuals understand early on that their orientation is of low status. Around the world, words derived from “woman” are used as swear words.

Sexual oppression haunts women in the world throughout their life and one of the most important requirements for women’s struggle wherever it takes place is “the right of women to their own bodies.” Rapists are driven by the idea that they are entitled to take a woman. Although most men distance themselves from such violent abuse, sexual harassment is very common and something most women have experienced. When the proportion of women falls in the workplace as a result of economic crisis, and when the pace of work increases, so trade unions report that even sexual harassment rises.

A woman’s right to her own body also covers the right to abortion. 70,000 women die every year as a result of unsafe abortions. And 40 percent of the world’s women live in countries where abortion rights are severely restricted. Even where abortion is legal, unsafe “backstreet” abortions continue to be carried out, for example in India, because for many women professional healthcare is too expensive. Free access to contraceptives and feminine hygiene are also important requirements. In Uganda, many girls are forced to leave school when they reach the age of 13, because they cannot afford menstrual products. Women are held back psychologically not only by feelings such as fear of being raped, a sense of shame over their body, physical suffering during pregnancy and labour etc., but are often also denied real sexual pleasure, which also has an adverse effect on their health – in rich and poor countries alike.

Another side of the same coin can be seen in China where the state exercises control over women’s bodies, even to the extent of forcing abortions. While law forbids this practise, it happens that local authorities in enforcing birth control policies carry out forced abortions even during the late stages of pregnancy. Under the Chinese government’s ‘one-child policy’, women are not allowed ‘unauthorised’ children.

According to the WHO, China is the only country in the world where more women than men commit suicide. Every year a staggering 1.5 million women try to take their own lives and 150,000 succeed. This is especially the case in the countryside where women face grinding poverty, the highest school dropout rates, and the burden of caring for elderly relatives. Woman belongs to man; this has been the pattern of women’s oppression for ages around the world.

Rapid industrialisation over many years, with China becoming the world’s factory, has obviously transformed living conditions for many women. Despite miserable conditions, migrating for work and being able to support themselves, and sometimes even becoming the family’s main breadwinner, has inevitably shaken up the older patriarchal structures. The most important change in becoming a wage labourer is leaving the isolation of the home and working under similar conditions to thousands of others. In this lies the possibility to organise and act collectively.

In November 2009, 3,000 women workers in Hainan province employed by the German lingerie giant Triumph went on strike. They demanded the bosses’ withdrawal of a 700 yuan (US$ 102) bonus must be stopped. Wages in the factory were between 500 to 600 yuan per month. This multinational company closed two factories in the Philippines last summer in an attempt to crush the predominantly female trade union. The Chinese Triumph strikers got results, and the bonuses were paid out even though the women’s demand for wages to match the legal minimum was not met. In Shanghai, one year earlier, there was another example of the growing power of women workers, with a strike by 1,000 mostly young women at an electronics company also demanding their bonuses be paid. Although these strikes have so far been defensive in character, this is an important sign of nascent organisation.

On 18 October last year 2,000 women in Hong Kong celebrated the 10th anniversary of the IMWU, Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union. Chinaworker.info was on the spot. “We are workers, not slaves” was one of the slogans. The 250,000 migrant women in Hong Kong work mainly as domestic workers. One in four Indonesian migrants earn below the monthly minimum of 3,580 HK dollars ($462). Half are working 15 hours a day without a single day off per week. “We want the Hong Kong government to include us in its new minimum wage legislation. They want to exempt us, this is discrimination,” said one of them, a young woman called Muthi.

She and millions of women around the world need March 8 to be commemorated in the way it was intended from the very start.

The decision to hold a yearly International Women’s Day in order to strengthen the fight for all women to vote was taken in 1910. The call came from the Women’s Conference of the Socialist 2nd International in Copenhagen 1910, with 170 participants from 17 countries. The initiative came from Clara Zetkin who was active in the German and international labour movement. She had already for many years been the chief editor of the Socialist Women’s Association’s journal Die Gleichheit (Equality) with a circulation of 112,000. She tirelessly campaigned for women to organise themselves, and for male party colleagues she explained, “only in conjunction with the proletarian woman will socialism be victorious”. Zetkin said that while socialists supported the bourgeois women’s demands for justice, working women must organise themselves in their own organisations along class lines. This proved to be completely right. To win women’s suffrage (the right to vote) required working class methods of struggle.

International Women’s Day was originally known as “Working Women’s Day”, and was celebrated on a different date each year in the early spring. It was not until 1921 that the Communist International, once again on Zetkin’s initiative, decided the date should be 8 March each year. This was also to pay due notice to the fact that the 1917 Russian Revolution had broken out on International Women’s Day (23 February according to the old Russian calendar). On that day, 90,000 women textile workers left the factories in a spontaneous strike for bread and peace, which then grew in scale and did not subside until the Czar was overthrown. The revolution continued and in the workers’ and peasants’ seizure of power in October 1917 gave a fantastic boost to workers and women around the world. Revolutionary Russia was the first country in the world to give men and women equal rights within the family, women’s suffrage, the right to abortion, the right to civil (non-religious) marriage and divorce, the prohibition of sexual harassment, rights for LGBT people, and eight weeks maternity leave. The revolution introduced municipal childcare, laundries and public canteens even if resources were always too small.

In China, International Women’s Day was celebrated for the first time in 1924. By then growing workers’ and women’s movements were already developing. The Hunan Women’s League was formed in 1921. By the end of that year they had pushed through provisions on women’s suffrage and personal freedom in Hunan’s constitution. The Association for Women’s Rights in Zhejiang province issued an appeal for women to join the revolution to overthrow the warlords and introduce democracy. In Shanghai, 20,000 workers in the silk spinning industry went on strike in 1923 demanding a 10-hour day and wage increases. Chen Pi-lan, who became a Trotskyist, was one of the leaders of the Communist Party Women’s League in Shanghai.

In the book Woman in the Chinese Revolution (Kate Curtin) Pi-lan explained that when “the CCP formed peasant associations, women’s issues immediately came up. Some women went to the peasant unions and accused their husbands of oppressing them. Others accused their mothers-in-law of the same thing. In some parts of the countryside women’s associations were organised in order to sort out relationships within families. For the first time there were divorces initiated by women in the countryside”. When hundreds of thousands of workers fought battles against the police and army “the members of the Shanghai Women’s League stood to the fore waving their flags, and often they showed more courage than the men.” In the 1920s, the Communist Party gave its unqualified support to the women’s movement and stood at the head of the National Women’s Association, which in 1925-1927 had 300,000 members.

In 2009, it is the women of Iran that have been the most courageous fighters. They have been a large part of the mass protests against Ahmadinejad’s dictatorial regime, even uncovering their heads and marching loudly in demonstrations of both sexes. Decades of anger against oppression is bubbling up in Iran and the movement is far from over, but to overthrow the regime more class-based workers’ struggle is needed.

After the 1949 revolution in China, prostitution and infanticide was banned. A new marriage law gave women the right to property, inheritance rights and free choice regarding marriage, divorce and the care of children. The government stated that with the land reform 60 million women achieved equality with men in terms of land holdings in central and eastern China. But this movement was uneven. By the 1940s, the Communist Party was led by not by genuine Marxists but by an undemocratic Maoist bureaucracy, which wanted unquestioned control and saw a militant women’s movement as a threat. In 1952 they announced that women’s liberation had been achieved and dropped demands for independent struggle by women (Curtin) – a line that was then modified several times depending on what suited the regime’s interests. Maoism did not tolerate real workers’ democracy from below and for this women paid a high price. In Russia too the revolution had been betrayed and already by the early 1930s a large part of the reforms for women were withdrawn by Stalin’s bureaucratic dictatorship.

The main lesson from the century that has passed since the first International Women’s Day is that the pace of change is far too slow. We cannot afford to wait another 100 years. How many women will be raped, will starve, or die from natural or climate-related disasters and wars in the meantime? The most important lesson from the past year is that we cannot have any confidence in an economic system that implodes at regular intervals, and where many of the gains won through struggle are constantly being wiped out. We are not impressed that more women become directors or bigwigs, if this system based on huge class differences and a majority living in poverty continues.

Hence the need for a socialist programme for women’s struggle, pointing in a revolutionary direction, for the overthrow of capitalism. In a democratic socialist society where ownership and control over the economy and state power is in the hands of the workers’, the poor masses’ and the women, there would be ample resources to invest in effective measures against sexism and old fashioned gender roles. A revolution can only succeed if women are at the forefront – we can never accept that sexist attitudes among men are allowed to divide and weaken the struggle. Women make up at least half of the world’s working class, and workers everywhere need new socialist parties, fighting trade unions and radical women’s movements to take the struggle forward.

Despite the fact that one hundred years has passed and liberation has still not been achieved, it is inspiring that the revolutionary and socialist traditions of International Women’s Day survive and continue to exercise an important influence in bringing together and strengthening those who are fighting in various parts of the world. This is needed, and is ultimately the road to victory.

Source: ChinaWorker