En Marcha: We claim March 8 as Working Women's Day!

En Marcha 2039 March 8-14, 2023  

Central organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador  

We claim March 8 as Working Women's Day  

 

Each year, on March 8, the day of working women is commemorated, a date on which women demand the recognition of their rights that reactionary governments and capitalist society seek to systematically eliminate. This day is the recognition of the struggle of working women against capitalist exploitation and is the vindication of their class character.  

March 8 was instituted as a tribute to Chicago textile women protesting for better wages who were brutally murdered by police in 1857. It also remembers a group of workers who, in 1911 in New York, were locked in a factory during a fire to prevent theft. Similar stories have occurred over the years, which account for actions in which women were the protagonistic force.  

At the Second World Meeting of Socialist Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin, German communist leader, proposed the institution of a day commemorating working women; the following year, in 1911, the first International Women's Day welcomed as demands the right to vote, professionalization and non-discrimination. We can say then that it is communist thought that gave rise to the commemoration of International Women's Day. Years later, women in various parts of the world protested against World War I. Finally, in 1917, the protests initiated by the women's movements on February 23 (March 8 in the Gregorian calendar) against the war and the deaths of several million soldiers, led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II thanks to the joint action of women and the workers' unions. In 1975, the UN recognized and instituted March 8 as Women's Day.  

The mobilization of 2023 in our country is of particular importance due to the formation of the neoliberal and reactionary government of Guillermo Lasso, who has used the state apparatus to enrich the bourgeoisie and abandon working women and their families, denying them decent health, education and work. The insecurity and incompetence of the State to provide conditions to develop life are issues that concern women's groups, so they will also demand the attention of the authorities. The acts of corruption and the link with narco-criminal mafias that involve President Lasso and his inner circle deserve the rejection of the organized popular movement that demands his departure from Carondelet [the presidential palace in Ecuador].  

Given the importance of the mobilization this March 8, women who participate in the organizations of the Popular Front, such as Women for Change, UNE, FESE, FEUE, UGTE, Cucomitae [National Union of Educators, Federation of Secondary Students of Ecuador, Federation of University Students of Ecuador, General Union of Workers of Ecuador, and Unitary Federation of Retail Traders and Self-Employed Workers of Ecuador, respectively] and others, will participate in this mobilization to demand from the government the budget for the prevention of violence and for the protection of its victims,  the right to comprehensive health care and medicines for the people, access to health care and quality education; demand reparation and justice so that there are no more femicides; They will march against the government's neoliberal policies and against corruption that fosters inequality. On March 8, 2023, the women of our country will gather under the slogan "for the emancipation of women and a life of equality", which summarizes the demands of Ecuadorian women for a better life.  

[This is the 702nd post on Durham Spark.]