Remembering Clara Zetkin on March 8

by Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | March 08, 2019

Clara Zetkin, one of the daughters of the working classes, is as bright as ever in the annals of working people’s struggles for rights – rights to life and dignity. Clara, an epitome of proletarian struggle, steadfastness and courage, always stood for the proletarian people, and never confused the women question with a bourgeois worldview.

Clara (July 5, 1857-June 20, 1933), one of the close comrades of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, organized the first international women’s conference against World War I. The Marxist politician was always staunch on the issues concerning women’s rights. Clara represented the Communist Party of Germany in the Weimer Republic Reichstag from 1920 to 1933.

On International Women’s Day, Women Across Spain Stop All Work in ‘Feminist Strike’

“If we stop, the world stops.”

by Julia Conley, staff writer

Common Dreams | March 08, 2018

Women in Spain staged a nationwide walkout on Thursday to mark International Women’s Day, abandoning all paid and unpaid work and bringing mass transit and other systems to a grinding halt. (Photo: @TheLocalSpain/Twitter)

With International Women’s Day events and protests planned around the world, Spanish women took the bold step on Thursday of staging a nationwide “Feminist Strike” under the rallying call, “If we stop, the world stops.”

Remembering Melba

by Lauren Céspedes Hernández

Granma | 09 March, 2017

During a visit to Laos in 1972, at the entrance of one of the caves where the people sheltered during the war: Melba (third from left to right) and Mirta (sitting on the right). Photo: Courtesy of Mirta Muñiz

She was from a family with a mambí heritage. She was one of those women who, in the 20th century, left her university title hanging next to her lawyer’s gown and devoted herself, body and soul, to the struggle against the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.

Melba Hernández del Rey’s strong character was in line with her decision to become a guerrilla of the Cuban revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro.

A Celebration of US Labor’s Women Fighters

IN PICTURES: The women who led some of the key struggles for social equality in the U.S. embodied working-class internationalism and militancy.

telesur | 08 March, 2017

Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons (1853-1942), labor organizer, socialist and anarchist: “We are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.”Photo:Public Domain

While a legacy of McCarthyism and right-wing ideology has clouded labor history in the United States, the U.S. workers’ movement has played a profound role in advancing social rights in the country.

However, what is often omitted from U.S. school textbooks and Hollywood-produced histories of social struggle is the key role played by women, who stood – and continue to stand – at the forefront of the fight for workers’ rights whether they be U.S.-born or immigrant, adults or minors, organized or unorganized.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791

by Olympe De Gouges

Olympe de Gouges was a French feminist activist, advocate of complete equal rights for women, freedom of divorce, the abolition of slavery, and of capital punishment. In 1791, she became part of the Society of the Friends of Truth; an association with the goal of equal political and legal rights for women; and “a mixture of revolutionary political club, the Masonic Lodge, and a literary salon. She advocated leniency toward King Louis XIV. She authored The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This ironically written document exposed the failure of the French Revolution’s promise of equality. It states that:“This revolution will only take effect when all women become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they have lost in society”.  Olympe de Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793 during the Reign of Terror for attacking the tyranny of the Jacobin regime and for her close relation with the Girondists.

‘Women United Will Never Be Divided’: Workers Rise for Labor Rights

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

“Women are powerful—that’s why they want to shut us down,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) told the crowd on Wednesday. (Photo: @LisMeyers/Twitter)

Women and allies gathered outside the U.S. Department of Labor on Wednesday, demanding fair wages, pay equity, paid leave, and labor rights while calling for an end to workplace violence and harassment.

International Women’s Day Posters Reveal IWD’s Militant Roots

IN PICTURES: Powerful posters advancing working women’s rights across the globe depict how “women in the struggle are women unbound,” as Lenin said.

telesur | 07 March, 2017

Cuban poster art marking International Women’s Day Photo:Oakland Museum of California

“Women may be bound twice in a nation struggling for freedom, but women in the struggle are women unbound.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Celebrated across the globe, International Women’s Day is rooted in the working-class struggle for women’s rights.

Year by year, the importance of March 8 grows as a day marking the fight to advance working women’s rights. Across the globe, women continue to face human rights abuses including sexual assault, forced disappearances, human trafficking, modern-day slavery and the denial of reproductive health access. Plus, a culture of machismo and misogyny leads to tragedies such as domestic abuse and femicide that often go uninvestigated or unpunished.

March 8: International Women’s Day

by Jesús Jank Curbelo and Julio Martínez Molina

Granma | 08 March, 2017

Yoandra Ramírez Romero Photo: Yander Zamora

Her little boy is three years old and called Yoan Ramírez Romero.
His mother, Yoandra Ramírez Romero, watches as a plastic bucket fills with water while she talks to me. It is already almost half full, and the sound of water falling on water makes an unbearable racket.

I want to ask her to turn the tap off, but I don’t.

I talk to Yoandra as she holds a mop in one hand, and stands on one leg with the other resting over the knee. The floor is damp and she watches it. She listens to me and answers me in a low voice, which the sound of the rushing water does not let me hear clearly.

“I was pregnant and I decided to have the child.”

International Women’s Day

by Alexandre Kollontai

International Women’s Day demonstration in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1917. (Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images)

A Militant Celebration

Women’s Day or Working Women’s Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women.

But this is not a special day for women alone. The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for the workers and peasants, for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out.^[2] It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution; it was they who first decided to raise the banner of opposition to the Tsar and his associates. And so, working women’s day is a double celebration for us.

Women in the Changing World of Work

FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

UN Women | 08 March, 2017

Source: Internet

Globalization, digital innovation and climate change, among other factors, continue to change the world in which we work — posing both challenges as well as opportunities in realizing women’s economic potential for a better tomorrow. Below, explore just some facts on where women stand today in the changing world of work.