WFTU’s Declaration on International Women’s Day
On the 8th March 2020 International Women’s Day anniversary, WFTU conveyed warm militant greeting to every woman all over the globe, working or unemployed, self-employed, in the city or in the countryside, young mother, student, retiree, refugee or immigrant, life fighters of the everyday. WFTU stands by the side of women’s struggle for real equality.
Year 2020 also marks the 75th anniversary of the WFTU’s struggle and action since its founding in 1945 fighting for the true equality of women, for a system that will free them from the double repression of their gender and class, for a system without man-to-man exploitation.
In this struggle, men and women are allies and walk side by side in social and political action, claiming a life for their families without wars and refugees, with constant and full-time work, with decent salaries and full insurance rights, with state infrastructures providing free public health, education, social welfare for all.
International Women Day is a symbol of struggle, sanctioned with the suggestion of socialist Clara Zetkin in 1911. It is a day dedicated to the strike of the New York women garment workers in 1857 demanding equal pay with their male colleagues, reduced working hours and human working conditions, and stood up to their employers and their State.
163 years later today, all these are still demanded. Job intensification has increased; flexible forms of work tend to become the norm; in many countries women are still paid less than their male colleagues for the same job.
Today, in 2020, with such development in science and technology, women still die during childbirth due to lack of medical care; they do not go to school because of their gender; become victims of trafficking and are forced into prostitution; are drowning in the sea, with their children in their arms, trying to avoid the bombs.
WFTU rejects all these policies serving the large multinationals to continually increase their profits. This is the real reason behind every war, every anti-insurance law, every cut in wages and benefits, the shrinking of the social state. And finally, this is the real causality of inequality of the woman in every expression.
WFTU believes that the best way to honor International Women’s Day is to continue struggles against these policies and their perpetrators until the complete emancipation of every woman in every corner of the planet.
‘We will not stop until we do it’!
– This extracts are from the official communique of WFTU on the international women’s day.
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