International Women’s Day 2013

Women Fighting Back

20 years after the Timex dispute, we’re again being told to accept pay cuts and job losses, and women in particular are being forced to pay for the capitalist crisis

But while women are at the sharp end of the attacks, they’re once again in the frontline of the fight-back. The public sector strikes of the last 2 years saw millions of workers take action in defence of their pensions, many of them low paid women workers. Left-led unions like the PCS – in which the Socialist Party plays an important role – are prepared to take action and have the confidence of the union membership.

In stark contrast- the leaders of the TUC and unions like UNISON and the GMB have done their best to hold their members back. Women workers were disgusted at the sell out over pensions and angry at the right-wing leaders who betrayed them.

Critical of the failure of their trade unions to continue the fight, more and more women are looking for action and a leadership willing to lead. Women will have to join the battle to rebuild and transform the right wing bureaucratic trade unions and turn them into democratic fighting organisations with leaders who are prepared to take on the bosses and the government.

Women have shown they are ready for the challenge, as happened in the Unite union branch at the Rudoplph and Hellman logistics firm. At the beginning of 2012, only 37 of the 200 shop floor workers were union members. One woman member took the lead launching a recruitment campaign, which tripled the membership in only 2 months and overturned a pay freeze. The workers won a 3% increase – the biggest pay rise in years – when management backed down in the face of a unanimous vote for industrial action. The idea that women find “macho” talk of strikes threatening –an idea fostered by right wing trade union leaders like Prentis in UNISON – couldn’t be further from the truth.

Women will also play a crucial role in the anti-cuts campaigns. In past struggles like the anti-poll tax campaign, they have proved to be the fiercest fighters in defence of their communities. Once again we see women fighting to defend facilities against cuts and closures – as in the fight to stop the closures of nurseries at HMRC workplaces, and the current struggle in Glasgow against day centre closures for people with learning disabilities

Young women too have been in the frontline of a new generation prepared to fight against education cuts and the axing of college and university courses, as part of the major student protests across the UK.

The ‘Slut-walks’, demonstrations against rape and sexual violence, for abortion rights in Ireland show an increasing preparedness of women to demonstrate on the issues of social inequality.

These struggles are just a taste of the explosive movements that will develop in the future with women at the forefront- fighting back against oppression, cuts to education and benefits and to defend their jobs, services and local facilities

But to be effective – these struggles need to be linked to the wider fight against a bankrupt system that puts big business and the drive for profits before everything else. Exploitation and oppression are at the heart of the capitalist system where profit and competition reign

The exploitation of women will not end until we change the way society is structured. Capitalism and genuine women’s rights are incompatible because capitalism will always use women as cheap labour in the workplace, and as unpaid carers in the home. But the fight to end discrimination against women and for the services needed to free up women from unpaid labour can’t be left to women alone. It needs the organised movement of the working class as a whole – and a political party that speaks for the mass or ordinary people. All of the major political parties represent the interests of the bosses and big business. Parties which workers have traditionally looked to, such as the Labour Party, no longer speak for working people. They’ve been completely transformed into capitalist parties who will not lift a finger to challenge the attacks we face on a daily basis. We must fight for a new mass party that can give a political voice to working women and men and galvanise opposition to the parties of the rich and elite.

Time to Fight for Socialism!

The lesson of past governments, in particular the Thatcher government and the ConDems today, is that no amount of sacrifice will satisfy big business and the markets. There’s no way out of this crisis within the bosses bankrupt system. This is a system that’s based on the anarchy of market forces – and the pursuit of profits for the privileged few – for the 1% not the 99%.

The arguments we constantly hear for dealing with budget deficits provides cover for attacking wages and benefits- and the butchering of the welfare state. But austerity is just code for the transfer of wealth and power into even fewer hands. For a capitalist system that’s continually in crisis, this means we’ll always be living in a world blighted by unemployment, poverty and misery. And women will always bear the brunt of the horrors of capitalism.

We need a system that will invest society’s wealth and resources in public services, like childcare and care for the elderly, and remove the burdens on women that capitalism imposes. In a socialist society the means of producing wealth would be transferred from the unelected elite, who only want to make profit, to the democratic control of ordinary working people. Society could be planned to meet the needs of us all, not just a few. Poverty, inequality, violence and oppression could be eliminated.

The fight for women’s rights is an integral part of the struggle for a socialist society. This can only be achieved through the fight of men and women together in opposition to the bosses and their system. Ordinary working people, young and old, men and women must fight together for a system that puts the needs of society first. That system is socialism. A socialist future -that would allow women and men real equality of opportunity and maximum choice in every aspect of their lives.