KMU Statement on International Working Women’s Day
March 8, 2013
Today, on the International Working Women’s Day, the Kilusang Mayo Uno labor center salutes all women from the ranks of the workers and toiling masses, who are resisting the exploitation, oppression and repression being caused by monopoly capitalists, financial oligarchs, imperialist governments and their allied reactionary governments.
The neoliberal policies that started more than 30 years ago have caused greater exploitation, oppression and repression for women from the ranks of workers and the toiling masses.
In the Philippines and other underdeveloped countries, women workers including migrants concentrated in the service, electronics and garments sectors are subjected to meager wages, denial of benefits, contractual employment, repression of human and trade-union rights and sexual violence by capitalist bosses and their underlings. Women from the peasant class are subjected to backbreaking work and exploitation, landgrabbing by landlords and mining and logging corporations, and militarization.
Poor women are evicted from their communities to give way to “development projects” of big capitalists, with the aid of governments representing the interests of the local ruling classes. They are made to pay for the rising costs of basic goods and services ushered in by the liberalization of trade and investments, the privatization of state assets, and the deregulation of price-and wage-setting. They suffer from rotting and expensive social services such as education, health, and housing.
The global and financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the eruption of which was accelerated by the implementation of the said neoliberal policies, is still intensifying. It is causing the worsening of exploitation, joblessness, poverty, homelessness, denial of social services, and overall suffering for the workers and peoples of developed countries. The situation is even worse for the workers and peoples of underdeveloped countries, as the downward spiral of the chronic crises besetting their economies are further accelerating.
Imperialism is rapidly being exposed to millions and millions of workers and peoples of the world as a rotten system, and more and more people are drawn to socialism, seeing the latter as the most feasible alternative. More and more people can see that the US and its allied governments, no matter who stand as their leaders, serve monopoly capitalists and financial oligarchs and reactionary classes and against the interest of the workers and toiling masses. Struggles against imperialism are bound to become the biggest and most militant since the onslaught of neoliberal attacks.
In response, imperialists and their reactionary allies are waging campaigns of fascist repression against the workers and peoples of the world. Protests and strikes both in developed and underdeveloped countries are being met with more brutal violence by the state’s police and military forces. In order to deflect the people’s attention away from the real causes of the crisis and divide the workers and people, the imperialists are promoting chauvinism, xenophobia, racism and religious fundamentalism. In countries like the Philippines, states’ counter-insurgency plans are attacking activists engaged in both legal and underground and armed resistance.
Imperialist-led and backed wars are intensifying in different global regions because of the imperialists’ competition for sources of raw materials and cheap labor and for dumping grounds of surplus products and capital is also intensifying. They are causing so much destruction in the lives, livelihoods and properties especially of the toiling masses and the poor while helping boost the imperialists’ already-huge superprofits.
Amidst intensifying exploitation and war, we call on the women from the ranks of the workers and peoples of the world to liberate their minds, unite, form organizations and struggle for genuine social change. The workers and peoples are called upon to struggle for national liberation, genuine democracy and socialism. Let us support the revolutionary struggles around the world.
Women from the ranks of workers and toiling masses, rise up!
Struggle against US imperialism!
Struggle for national liberation, genuine democracy and socialism!