Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM)

For struggle, Solidarity and Socialism in Nigeria

Committee for a Workers' International

Home

Join DSM

Contact DSM

About us

Our Manifesto

Statements

Socialist Democracy

Newspaper of the DSM

Campaigns

NCP

Trade Unions

Students

Women

International

Downloads

email

Socialist Democracy March - April 2005

Make poverty and inequality history

Fight the system of poverty and inequality

Fight capitalism

 

Over the last decade, the number of women in the global labour force has increased by 200 million. In 2004, women accounted for 1.1 billion of the 2.8 billion people officially in work. This means women make up 40% of the global workforce. But, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), women are less likely to hold regular paid jobs and more likely to be in the informal economy, outside legal and regulatory frameworks. Moreover, women generally earn less than men for the same type of work, even in female dominated occupations.

The vast majority of women today, no matter what part of the world they live in, are hit hardest by the neo-liberal attacks carried out against the working class as a whole. Mass lay offs, insecure working conditions, low pay, attacks on the welfare state, on pension rights, and on childcare facilities, as well as attacks on women's reproductive rights, will not only lead to an increase in women's poverty and suffering but, most likely, will also lead to an increasing political radicalisation of women and working class women, in particular.

The next period will undoubtedly see an increase in working class struggles across the world and working class women will certainly put their stamp on the struggles to come.

Women make up 60% of the world's workforce earning less than a $1 a day. This figure, and the level of poverty, in general, will undoubtedly increase once the full scale of the repercussions of the Tsunami disaster is revealed. The Tsunami, and the criminal neglect on the part of imperialism and of anti-working class governments in not installing early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, took nearly 300,000 lives. In addition, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 1 million jobs have been lost in Sri Lanka and Indonesia alone, as a consequence of the Tsunami.

Today, the ILO claims that between 50-60% of the affected people will be able to earn their own living again by the end of 2005, providing aid and support can be mobilised rapidly.

Given the bad record of capitalist governments in delivering promised aid and money, this development is very unlikely unless those governments come under tremendous pressure from below.

As a result of capitalist governments' corruption, bias, incompetence and unwillingness to substantially rebuild the lives of the Tsunami affected people, we will see many more dying from poverty related diseases. But we will also see, as always, that the majority of refugees and the most vulnerable victims of the disaster will be women and children.

It has been the re-introduction of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, and other countries in Eastern Europe, the slaughtering of all the advances of the planned economy, and the subsequent dramatic increase in poverty, that is primarily responsible for the increase in prostitution and sex trafficking in and from those countries.

Human trafficking is nothing else but the modern practice of slavery and the most brutal form of exploitation. It is the third largest criminal industry in the world today, following arms and drug dealing. It is the fastest growing criminal industry and is one of the most "lucrative" sectors of the trade in people, and involves prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and commercial sexual abuse of children.

Without disguise, sex trafficking exposes the brutal and greedy nature of capitalism, which strives to turn everyone and everything into commodities in order to make profits, no matter at what cost. Sex trafficking generates billions of dollars in profit at a very low risk for the traffickers.

Promises of a better life, an end to a life of misery, are some of the reasons women and girls get trapped into the vicious world of sex trafficking. Every year, an estimated 30-50,000 women and children are trafficked into the US alone.

Once in the US, a woman can earn from her captors an average of U$ 30,000 a week by being raped around 20 times a day, seven days a week. If women refuse, they are beaten and sometimes killed.

Allegedly in order to improve the situation for prostitutes, some countries have introduced so-called 'tolerance zones' or have even declared prostitution legal.

The bitter reality of declaring prostitution legal was recently revealed by a woman in Germany, where prostitution was legalised in 2002. Recent changes in the unemployment law can force people to accept almost any job that is offered to them. An unemployed woman, IT specialist, was offered a job as a bar woman by the job centre. The bar turned out to be a brothel and the unemployed woman was expected to work as a prostitute. Refusing to work there, she was threatened with having her unemployment benefit cut. Similar cases were reported in the Netherlands. While public outrage makes it rather unlikely that such a policy will be implemented in those countries, at this stage, those are the facts created by legalisation of prostitution.

The beginnings of International Women's Day go back to the middle of the 19th Century and in those days expressed a mounting pressure for women's rights in the US and Europe. In the early years of the 20th century, the campaign for women's suffrage was one of the central demands of the women's movement and International Women's Day. It sometimes took decades of struggle before general suffrage was achieved in most parts of the world. Even today, one century later, it is still not a basic democratic right for every woman in the world. Where women do have the right to vote, working class women, like the working class in general, find it more difficult to find a party to vote for that can defends their interests.

The elections in Afghanistan, held in September 2004, were trumpeted by the pro-capitalist media and used as one reason to legitimise the invasion of the country after the horrific 9/11 attacks.

Special attention was given to the fact that 40% of the registered voters were female. This was presented as a huge step forward for women's rights in Afghanistan. While we welcome the fact that women were entitled to cast their vote, the situation for women in Afghanistan is still largely determined by feudal traditions and by remnants of the anti-women legislation previously introduced by the reactionary Taliban regime. The same is true for other parts of the world.

In Baluchistan, a province in Pakistan that is still dominated and ruled by tribal and feudal leaders, women are hardly visible in public life. Education for women is non-existent because it is not allowed by tribal law. Women are barely allowed to leave their homes. Honour killings, forced marriages, and other cruel, inhumane customs and traditions, are widely practiced.

According to traditional 'customs', a woman who meets a man she is not acquainted with needs to sit down on the ground and turn her back to this man. She has to remain in that position until the stranger has passed by.

While reactionary and feudal laws like this will not disappear over night, it is also a fact that capitalism is offering no way forward, economically and subsequently also culturally, to develop these countries. This is to a large extent why women stand no chance to break out of these horrific conditions.

The Socialist Movement in Pakistan, which is affiliated to the CWI, pays particular attention to the situation facing women. Last year, they held public meetings and special workshops on the question of domestic violence. The Socialist Movement comrades are also involved in a campaign to abolish the 'Hudood Laws', which are completely discriminatory and anti-women. For example, under these laws, a victim of rape needs the evidence of four males to prove the rape took place otherwise she will be prosecuted for 'adultery'.

As a consequence of speaking out against this repression, activists from the Socialist Movement campaign received threats from religious fundamentalists.

A very important part of the work of the campaign, however, is devoted to unionising women in the informal working sector, and to campaign for a mass working class party that would be at the forefront of campaigning for women's rights.

On a world scale, only 15.2% of representatives in national parliaments are women. At the same time, women are searching for parties which they believe will represent their interests. This is reflected in the discussion around the possible setting up of a Women's Party, initiated by a woman who has been an ex-leader of the Left Party in Sweden. In opinion polls, up to 20%- many of them low paid women workers- have indicated that they are considering voting for this party. As socialists, we do not believe that a higher representation of women MPs will automatically improve the situation of working class women. Their interests are not represented by female MPs, ministers or presidents, such as US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, Germany’s Minister for Health, Ulla Schmidt, the British Minister for Education, Ruth Kelly, or the Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, all of whom introduce policies that attack the working class. The two Belgian ministers that have most viciously attacked strikes by the largely female dominated health sector are female.

Nevertheless the low number of females in parliaments is an indication of the patriarchal character of politics today.

There can be no doubt that socialists welcome and, in fact, strive for a greater participation of working class women in politics and political activity.

The CWI campaigns for the building of new mass parties of the working class across the world. Wherever there are signs of the establishment of genuine formations created by the working class, the CWI is engaged in building those forces and campaigning for those forces to adopt a socialist programme.

In the last year, the formation of P-SOL (Party for Socialism and Liberty) in Brazil, and ASG (Work and Social Justice- the electoral alternative) in Germany, has marked a decisive step towards the building of such new workers' parties.

While the character of these new formations is not absolutely clear at this stage, their success and future development will also depend on what programme and campaigns they will put forward to fight and improve the living standards of working class women, to defend women's rights, and to what degree they will be able to involve working class women in struggles.

In order to improve the lives of working class women, socialists in these new parties need to fight for a programme that:

· rejects the neo-liberal attacks of the bosses and their governments

· organises resistance against redundancies

· fights for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay

· campaigns for full time jobs for all

· campaigns against low pay and for a decent minimum wage

· organises joint campaigns with the trade union movement to help unionise non-unionised work places

· fights for free and decent childcare facilities for all age groups

· defends the right of women to decide when and if they want to have children · campaigns against domestic violence, sexual harassment at work and all forms of discrimination in society.

Ultimately, for women to live life free from poverty and oppression of any kind, it is necessary to overthrow the profit ridden, capitalist system.

This can only be achieved by a mass movement of the working class that will nationalise and take into public control the big corporations and companies which have accumulated enormous wealth by exploiting the working class internationally.

Working class women will be vital in this struggle that will eventually lead to the emancipation of humankind and to true equality between men and women.

At the first 'All Russian Congress of Working Women', in October 1918, Lenin argued that "The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much women take part in it".

This is still relevant today, and the success of building new strong mass parties of the working class depends on how much they manage to welcome and integrate working class women into their own ranks.

Socialist Democracy March - April 2005