By Grupo de Trabajadores Socialistas – Impulso Socialista – International Socialist League.
What do socialist women believe?
Historically, we women have participated in and promoted the most important struggles for the rights of the majorities. In recent years, the feminist wave has taken on an international aspect with what has happened in Iran, where after a teachers’ strike, there were large protests against the murder of a young Kurdish woman by the morality police. At first, women took to the streets against strong repressive policies that deepened their oppression, but faced with the reactionary role of the Iranian ruling class, they joined the marches and protests of the working class. This reveals that the struggle is not only to reverse oppression but to also overthrow the authoritarian regimes that sustain capitalism, a task that requires the participation of working women, the working class and the popular sectors as a whole. Women and the LGBT community, even in less authoritarian regimes, have carried out confrontations with bourgeois states to conquer democratic, political and economic rights within the framework of capitalist society, and although we have managed to conquer some rights, there is no doubt that, without fighting to destroy capitalism, these conquests are in danger of being rolled back. An example of this has been the recent setback regarding the right to abortion in the U.S. where the imperialist bourgeoisie decided to criminalize the right to decide after almost 50 years since this right was won.
But is it possible to remove the class issue from the struggle of women and LGBT community? Capitalism has turned us women of our class into wage slaves while maintaining the socially imposed roles of housewives, caregivers and mothers (double burden). As long as capital and private property domination exists, the liberation and real (not formal) equality of women and LGBT people is impossible. This equality is only possible after the defeat of the capitalist system and the construction of communism, it requires a regime in which the working class is the owner of its instruments of production and distribution, that is, socialism.
March 8 and its revolutionary origin
Although reformist and bourgeois feminism together with the capitalist ruling class as a whole have wanted to erase the historical role of the socialist revolutionaries and their struggle for the liberation of women and the working class, and despite the fact that other feminist sectors claim it as a separatist and identity date for women, even bourgeois women, today we remember the reason why March 8 is classist and revolutionary.
1908: Delegates to the National Congress of the Socialist Party of the United States proposed that the last Sunday of February 1909 be designated as Women’s Day and that events be held to launch the campaign for the right to vote for women.
1910: Second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen where the main debates were on women’s suffrage, social protection for mothers and the need to establish a more constant relationship between socialists.
1917: Russian women workers commemorated 8M with demonstrations, strikes and riots for bread, peace and against the tsarist regime, in the midst of the hardships of the First World War: “It was International Women’s Day. The social democrats intended to celebrate it in the traditional way: with assemblies, speeches, manifestos […] “It did not cross anyone’s mind that Women’s Day could become the first day of the Russian revolution” that would triumph under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Thus begins one of the chapters of the History of the Russian Revolution.
The Struggles and Challenges of Women and the LGBT community in Colombia
The most recent achievement of women in Colombia was the decriminalization of abortion up to 24 weeks. However, although it is a democratic right that has been won, it is not a real solution for working people and people from the popular sectors because there are still different barriers that limit access to it, for example, barriers to access to the health system, the hegemonic morality that assumes abortion in a punitive way in the state and private institutions in charge of the procedure, the conscientious objection of the professionals that can delay the time and generate complications and even the death of the pregnant woman, added to the difficult access to abortive drugs due to their high cost, a profitable business for the pharmaceutical companies.
We claim the autonomy of pregnant women to make decisions about their bodies, so we are aware that many of these people resort to abortion not by a genuine decision but because economic, social and labor conditions prevent a decent upbringing with guarantees, so we not only need guarantees for abortion but also for maternity. The capitalist crisis in Colombia falls on working women. According to DANE, the unemployment rate for women is 12.6% compared to 7.8% for men, and 27.5% of women have no income of their own, compared to 10.5% for men.
If we compare women’s and LGBT community rights today with what was achieved during the Russian Revolution in 1917, we can measure how far behind we are. At that time, the right to free abortion in Soviet hospitals, promotion of pregnancy planning, equal pay, paid pregnancy and maternity leave, free medical service and breastfeeding facilities, and menstrual leave, among others, were achieved… In addition, the simple equal division of household labor between men and women was questioned, suggesting that it was necessary to separate these tasks from the individual family unit and transfer them to the public sphere, socializing labor in new branches of production, which led to the creation of nurseries, crèches, canteens, literacy centers and other initiatives. Today, 100 years later, progressive governments such as Petro’s are raising policies such as the Ministry of Equality, officially created on January 4 of this year without a clear budget and which proposes measures such as returning paid domestic work, recognizing it for pensions, this leaves intact the gender roles and the double burden, as it is still the same women who continue with domestic and care work. In addition to measures in the capitalist logic that women are holders of property and subject to credit for entrepreneurship. And a silence in the face of the increase of macho violence, femicides, transvesticides and hate crimes against the LGBTIQA+ community throughout the country.
Faced with this serious situation it is necessary to build a movement that represents women and the LGBTIQA+ community of our working class and its banners, our rights cannot be separated from a revolutionary process that is why March 8 is a day of struggle, which implies a strong dispute within the feminist movement that under a reformist leadership, seeks to reduce the tasks of the movement to reforms within the framework of the status quo and identity struggles, which ends in separatist and divisive methods of the movement making it lose its revolutionary force.
As socialists we dispute a March 8 where the workers’ unions call for a general strike for women’s rights, where the organizations of the peasantry, the indigenous and Afro movement act, where our demands as women and sexual dissidence are reflected in a priority and not secondary way. We do not share the idea of symbolic mobilizations of women only, because we understand that our liberation depends on deepening the struggles against capitalism. That is why we propose to fight for:
Equal work, equal pay, which must be dignified, equal to the family basket without precariousness, discrimination, or labor flexibility.
Construction of canteens, laundries and quality community geriatric centers to socialize domestic and care work.
Comprehensive, secular and scientific sex education with a gender-related approach throughout the educational system.
Access to health care with a gender-related approach for women and LGBTIQA+ people.
Public production, distribution and free access to contraceptives and abortion medication.
Total decriminalization of abortion: free, legal, safe and free. No bureaucratic barriers to prevent it.
Popular election and revocable mandate of judges and prosecutors that contemplates the obligation of training with a gender-related approach to address gender-based violence-GBV.
Dismissal of officials who cover up and protect rapists and femicides.
Public budget for the attention of GBV and control by the organizations of our class and popular sectors, with decent wages and tools of accompaniment and protection with national coverage (separation of victims and complainants, shelters for victims and their children).
Let us fight together with our class for a socialist revolution!