International Women’s Day: Build struggle against capitalist oppression

Sinead Daly

Every March, International Women’s Day comes around with a wave of slogans, glossy campaigns, and corporate spin that bears no resemblance to its historic roots.

This year’s slogan is an eye-rolling “Give to Gain – Together, let’s help forge gender equality through abundant giving.” A day that was built by working-class women fighting exploitation is now cloaked in corporate slogans and empowerment jargon.

We’re told to celebrate women breaking glass ceilings, whilst working-class women are left sweeping up the shards – living on low pay, in insecure work, and holding together families and communities under constant pressure.

The language of “giving” sounds harmless enough, but rings hollow when you look at reality. Women, particularly working class women, already give – and give too much.

Globally, women do the majority of unpaid care work and are more likely to live in poverty. In Scotland, women are still concentrated in the lowest-paid sectors and are far more likely to work part-time, which affects lifetime earnings and pensions.

The gender pay gap may narrow on paper, but women still retire with less, save less and shoulder more unpaid labour. At the same time, cuts to public services push even more responsibility onto women’s shoulders.

When public services are decimated, and social care or community supports reduced, it is women who fill the gap. The problem isn’t that women don’t give enough – it’s that too much is taken.

collective struggle

International Women’s Day was built on collective struggle. In 1908, women workers in New York protested for the vote and the right to organise. A year later, 30,000 shirtwaist makers struck, helping form the first lasting women’s trade unions.

Clara Zetkin then called for an annual Women’s Day to fight for suffrage and workers’ rights. In 1917, women textile workers in Petrograd went on strike for bread and peace, protesting hunger, war and exploitation.

Their action on International Women’s Day sparked mass strikes and demonstrations that grew into the Russian Revolution. It is no exaggeration to say that working-class women were the spark that helped ignite the Russian Revolution.

That spirit is not confined to the past. In Scotland, the Glasgow City Council equal pay strike in 2018 saw thousands of women care workers, cleaners, and catering staff win one of the largest equal pay settlements in UK history, affecting over 12,000 women.

It was won through organisation and strike action, not slogans or goodwill. The scale of the economic crisis and continued attacks on public services will place women at the epicentre of struggle in the years ahead.

Women make up most of the workforce in care, health and education – the sectors most exposed to cuts and pay cuts. When these services are squeezed, it is women’s jobs, wages and conditions on the line. And when pushed, working-class women organise.

We see it in pay disputes, in union campaigns and in resistance to cuts. These struggles rarely feature in polished International Women’s Day messaging, but they are far closer to the day’s real history.

socialism

If International Women’s Day is to mean anything, it shouldn’t be about asking women to give more. It should be about ending the system that exploits and breeds inequality and fighting for a socialist society that puts human need before profit.

The women who built this day understood this and that rights are not handed down – they are won through struggle. Socialist Party Scotland stands in solidarity with all women fighting oppression, but solidarity must be matched with action to change the system that drives that oppression.