Every year on March 8, people around the world celebrate International Women's Day. Last year, women in Uganda marched for three days to celebrate with women globally. In India, 5,000 women held a demonstration at the country's capital. In Peru, domestic workers marched with trade unionists, and in Argentina, hundreds of housewives demonstrated. In Spain, thousands gathered in Barcelona's central square for a two-hour strike, and women in Ireland picketed.
International Women's Day didn't receive much attention in U.S. media, which is ironic because International Women's Day was founded in this country. In the early years of industrialization, women worked long hours in dirty and dangerous factories for half the pay of their male counterparts. On the last Sunday in February of 1908, the female garment workers decided to fight back against exploitation. Socialist women organized massive 30,000 strong demonstrations calling for the right to vote and equal economic rights for women.
While women of the world have fought and won many battles for equality, they still face many injustices. One could blame men for these inequalities, but the founders of International Women's Day were socialists and they blamed capitalist greed for their exploitation.
We are now in a unique situation; never before has there been so much wealth in so few hands. Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries. Even in the face of mammoth profits, corporations want more. Through International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs, they have cut basic health services and welfare benefits.
Women do two thirds of the world's work'worth at least $11 trillion'and most of their effort is unpaid.
Corporate globalization has further suppressed the poverty level wages for women working in the sweatshops of the underdeveloped world. For this reason, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the IMF, World Bank, World Economic Forum, Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and all corporate trade undermining national economies. Instead of slashing the basic essentials of life, we should work to provide clean water, sanitation, basic healthcare, nutrition, literacy and a livable income for all.
President Bush has been the first among those who would suppress women's rights. One of his first acts as president was to cut state offices that advised the White House on women's issues. He now wants to renew the welfare cuts, and his paternalistic solution to child poverty is forcing women to get married. I've got news for Bush: All mothers are working mothers! Raising the next generation is the most valuable work that anyone can perform; yet mothers are expected to take on another job to support their families. And even in the United States, the gap between women's and men's wages is between 25 and 50 percent.
In the Bush administration's new \War Against Terror,"" women and children will be the ones terrorized. In all wars, women and children make up the majority of those killed and wounded, and women comprise 80 percent of those living as refugees. Bush is spending $400 billion annually to bomb starving people in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, when just a fraction of that would provide food and clean water to the suffering children of the world. On the day that 3,000 people died in New York, over 35,000 children died'and die every day'of malnutrition.
International Women's Day is about fighting for a world that values all women's work and women's lives. At this crucial moment in history, women must make their voices heard and their collective power felt. All too often women bear the brunt of policies that value war and profit over human rights and equality. Today we lie at a crossroads where the most powerful players of the world order are deciding that military power is more important than peace. It is up to every woman and man to demonstrate that democracy will not be delivered via air missiles, but instead must be fostered through ensuring civil liberties and equal rights for all.
