International Women’s Day 2013

Women and Austerity

On 8th March 1857 women garment workers marched and picketed in New York City demanding improved working conditions and equal rights.

In 1908, women marched again in New York to honour the 1857 march, demanding the vote and an end to sweatshops and child labour. In 1910 a conference of Socialist women established an International Women’s Day. Demonstrations in Petrograd marking International Women’s Day in 1917 sparked a revolution, which overthrew the Tsarist dictatorship. Women went on to play a leading role in the October Socialist Revolution in Russia.

Now, almost a hundred years later, women are still struggling for an end to oppression and exploitation. As capitalism goes through its worse crisis since the 1930’s the rich and big business look to maintain their wealth and profits by attacking the living standards of ordinary workers. 

Across the globe it’s the same story – workers are being forced by their ruling classes to pay the price of the economic crisis. Greek workers have suffered a massive onslaught of austerity, Spanish workers are facing unprecedented cuts in jobs and services, and so the list goes on across Europe and the world.

In the UK, the Con-Dem Government is pushing ahead with the cuts agenda decimating jobs and services. Attacks to the NHS, to education, and cuts in benefits means misery for millions. In Scotland brutal cuts are being passed on by the SNP at Holyrood and by all the local councils, with no hint of protest from any of the main parties.

With 80% of the cuts still to be made, the savage attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable are set to continue as the Government presses ahead with austerity.

We know that all sections of the working class are under attack as the onslaught of cuts continues. But in all aspects of their lives – women are hit particularly hard by the crisis of capitalism.

Girls and Women hit hardest by the crisis

“The world is failing girls and women”. So said a recent report by child rights organisation Plan International. They found that the current crisis has sent girls infant mortality soaring and seen more females abused or starved. As the crisis deepens across the globe- girls in underdeveloped countries are taken out of school to look after younger children at home, because their mothers have to work longer hours – for less pay- to keep the family from starving.

Some poverty stricken families are forced to marry off their daughters as they can’t afford to keep them at home. Others have to send their daughters out to work as child labourers, sometimes as sex workers.

Women often go without food in order to feed their children – so more women suffer from malnutrition and ill health. The report blames “entrenched gender inequality” and says the gap between women and men must be closed.

In countries like Europe and the US, layers of working women have fought for equality of pay and opportunity. In the UK, equal pay legislation has been in place for decades, but discrimination still exists. Legislation has not put an end to the struggles of women for equal pay and a fairer society.

The myth of equal pay

More than 40 years after the Ford Dagenham machinists went on strike, in a move that triggered the Equal Pay Act, women still earn less than men and the pay gap is actually widening. The pay gap in the public sector stands at 13.2 % while in the private sector the gap is 20.4 %.

Research recently found that young women apprentices get paid less, find it harder to get a job and receive lower pay once they are in work. Female apprentices in the UK earn 21% less than male apprentices. And once they’ve completed their training – their wage will increase by 4% – as compared to an increase of 20% for male apprentices.

Women under attack at work

The Con-Dem’s assault on the public sector means redundancies, pay cuts, and attacks on public sector pensions all have a greater effect on women because they make up the majority of the public sector workforce. In April 2012, women’s unemployment stood at 1.14 million – the highest level for 25 years. This will only get worse as public sector jobs are cut to the bone. With the average pension for a woman public sector worker just £60 a week, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of pensioners living in poverty are women

Benefits and services slashed

But even outside the workplace women are bearing the brunt. Cutbacks in public services and benefits hit women hardest because they rely on benefits and services more than men. Women are more likely to be lone parents and suffer more from cuts to tax credits, housing benefit, and nursery closures. 66% of those affected by the benefit and tax credit freeze and 98% of those hit by the changes to child benefit are women.

Unpaid Carers

Women are more likely to be the main carers for the elderly, and sick and disabled relatives. So as well as cuts to their jobs and benefits , women shoulder a further burden when care services are axed and day centres are closed as women family members have to step in as unpaid carers. And funding cuts to services such as Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis centres have a devastating impact on vulnerable women.

Gains always under attack

While the Con-Dems are the current agents of the rich and big business – women have been oppressed and exploited by this rotten system for generations. But from the moment women went into factories and workplaces, they recognised the need to organise themselves.   Women workers helped form the earliest trade unions. Over the years improvements have been won through campaigns and struggles in the workplace. In many countries across the world, including the UK, capitalism has been forced, by the pressure of these struggles, to provide health care, education and nurseries. And in the workplace -a layer of working women have been able to insist on equal pay, equal opportunities and flexible working hours.

But under capitalism, those gains, hard fought for, are always under attack. Nevertheless – women have shown a fierce determination to fight back against attacks to their jobs and their communities.

Past struggles show the way forward.

• Rent Strikes

As working class men were sent to war in 1914- women were left behind struggling to feed and clothe their children and pay the bills and rent. Landlords, hungry for more profits, increased rents and threatened to evict anyone who did not pay up. This was fiercely resisted by the women of the housing schemes who organised themselves. Whenever landlords’ agents came to carry out evictions, word quickly spread. Pots and pans were banged together, flour bombs, bricks and anything else that came to hand were used and the invaders were driven out. •Anti-Poll-Tax Movement

Echoes of the rent strike could be seen in the magnificent struggle against Thatcher’s Poll Tax. The ranks of the anti-poll tax unions were filled with working class women who mobilised in their communities and led from the front, stopping sheriff’s officers in their tracks when they tried to carry out warrant sales. Women were the lifeblood of the campaign and they -more than anyone- put the “uncollectable” into the poll tax and helped defeat the hated Poll Tax. •Miners Strike

Women played an inspirational role during the miners strike of 1984-85.The strike saw thousands of miners wives come into their own. Not only did they organise practical support such as giving out food parcels to striking families but they also went on picket lines and travelled throughout Britain, and the world, explaining the miners cause.

•  Lee Jeans

When the American owners of the Lee Jeans factory in Greenock threatened to close the factory in 1981, the mainly female workforce barricaded themselves into the plant, beginning a sit-in. For seven months the women organised themselves into shifts to keep the occupation going. The women got support from the local community, and fellow trade union members. At one point thousands of shipyard workers attended a rally at the Lee plant when it was rumoured that the sit-in would be ended by force.

• Timex

In 1993- workers at Timex in Dundee refused to accept job losses and massive cuts to their pay and pensions and started all out strike action. Timex locked-out and sacked the entire workforce, mainly women, and brought in scab labour. Mass pickets were organised together with a mass boycott campaign of Timex products and those shops that sold them -as well as any local business that supplied goods to the scab factory. Women strikers went to speak to workers across Britain and all over the world. They came back with messages of support and much needed financial aid. The struggle transformed the Timex women “from lambs to lions “in a very short space of time.

In all of these struggles, women did not fight in isolation, but with the support of their communities and the wider trade union movement.

Socialist Party Stands for:

At work

• For the unions to take immediate action to implement legal minimum wage of £8 an houas a step towards £10 an hour .
• Equal pay for work of equal value.
• Full-time rights for part-time workers. Employment protection from day one of employment. •Paid maternity leave for at least twelve months on full pay, with the right to return to work part time if required.
• Paid parental / carers’ leave.
• Scrap the anti-union laws.
• A united mass campaign against all cuts, including a 24 hour general strike.

Benefits

• A minimum income linked to the minimum wage for carers, students, pensioners and all those unable to work.
• Restoration and uprating of lone parent benefits.
• No to compulsion in Welfare to Work. For the right of women to choose whether to work or stay at home with children.
• Maternity and child benefits to reflect real costs.
• Scrap tuition fees. Reinstate the grant. Free education for all.
• For a fair and flexible maintenance system that benefits lone parents and meets all children’s needs.

Services

• A network of good quality, publicly funded childcare, including pre-school, after school and holiday schemes, accessible to all parents who want them.
• Stop privatisation. For a massive increase in spending on housing, education, health and other public services.