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Home > IV Online magazine > 2021 > IV554 - March 2021 > 8 March: all on strike!

International Women’s Day

8 March: all on strike!

Sunday 7 March 2021, by NPA - Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste

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8 March 2021 is taking place in the context of a global crisis in the system that particularly affects women. The jobs that they occupy overwhelmingly, particularly in the care sector but also in the public services, have often been in the front line in the face of the Covid crisis19. And as women are also the ones in the most precarious jobs (70% of part-time work, 3/4 of low wages), they too are now the first to suffer the effects of the economic crisis. And while they have found themselves the first to suffer, the violence has not stopped, since the various phases of lockdown and curfews have only increased intra-family violence, the domestic violence against which the feminist movement has risen to such an extent in recent years.

At the same time, the strengthening of the family structure (encouraged by the health crisis) is accompanied by a reactionary offensive which had already been underway for several years. The retreat around MAP [1], to maintain moral order and the traditional family, is the latest proof of this. It is difficult to build collective strctures because of the pandemic, but above all because of the authoritarian state. The law on separatism further accentuates the attacks against Muslims, but also, as we have seen in recent days, against the university and in particular against progressive currents of research. [2] Meanwhile, the extreme right is rising in the polls.

Since the 2010s we have seen the rebirth of a extremely combative mass feminist movement, which puts the question of structural violence at the heart of its struggle, but also the question of the capitalist system as a whole. Starting in Latin America, relayed in Poland, in the Spanish state... this movement puts the question of the feminist strike at the centre and advances the need for a feminist struggle on an international scale. This summer, Zapatista activists will come from Chiapas - a region of Mexico - as part of an international tour to meet “all the people who are struggling on the five continents”. Their delegation is mainly composed of women and their concerns are also ours: “The survival of humanity depends on the destruction of capitalism”.

As has been the case for several years now, the call for a women’s srike is being built internationally, to show that without women the world would not turn. With the Covid-19 crisis, it is even more visible today that it is women who overwhelmingly occupy the jobs and functions necessary for social reproduction. There is a challenge to keep alive a massive and popular feminist movement, but also a movement that is able to make the link with anti-racist, antifascist and LGBTI movements. The date of 8 March must be the beginning of a response that is equal to what is at stake: everyone in the street and everyone on strike on 8 March!

National Feminist Commission of the NPA

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Footnotes

[1] The rejection by the French parliament of a proposal to open access to medically-assisted procreation to all.

[2] The law on separatism claims to crack down on online hate speech and foreign funding of religious groups but is seen as an attack on Islam in particular.

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