MARCH 8 – INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN’S DAY
STATEMENT
internationalwomensalliance@gmail.com
www.internationalwomensalliance.wordpress.com
Women Resist Crisis and War! Fight for National and Social Liberation!
The current economic and financial crises of the crumbling capitalist system hit women the hardest. The economic and ecological repercussions of these crises increased the vulnerability of women to the different forms of oppression, discrimination and violence inside and outside the home.
Women of the working class were the first to suffer the brunt of the crises. They were the first to be laid off when factories closed down or went bankrupt and had to suffer lower wages and difficult flexible working conditions when hired. Peasant and indigenous women who are the world’s number one food producers have become the world’s poorest facing unprecedented hunger and poverty as transnational corporations, local landlords and governments rush to steal away millions of hectares of lands for corporate farming, mining, infrastructures, dams, tourism and military use. They are dislocated and dispossessed from their lands, communities and way of life.
Unemployment, lack of social security, and budgetary cuts for social services put women in dangerous positions: they were forced to leave their families to work as domestic or factory workers in other countries where they face exploitation and abuse, in addition to discrimination and xenophobia immigrant workers are subjected to in host countries. Many poor women were also forced into prostitution or become victims of trafficking.
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