Women have been struggling for centuries, with the burden of inequality and violence since the era of the division of society into classes, to serve the interests of exploiting slave owners, feudal lords, capitalists, who, over time, manage the production from the labor of slaves and workers.
The radical women’s movement reveals, on the occasion of the establishment by the UN in December 1999 of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25, the generative cause of women’s inequality and violence, which is class exploitation and illuminates the path of the collective popular struggle against the economic, political, social factors that devalue human life and sow havoc.
The women’s issue of inequality and violence is shaped according to the capitalist needs of each period for the profits of businesses and does not stem from the rivalry between the two sexes, as it serves to be presented in order to hide the real causes, which are the class exploitation of men and women.
In the political-economic-social system that governs the planet, violent behaviors develop among people who have the same social problems and practice physical and mental violence in forms of cyberbullying, sexual harassment and abuse, murder, prostitution rings and human trafficking. In this society, competition, selfishness, individualism are cultivated from childhood, which predisposes to vulnerability to the services of the system of barbarity.
It is the breath of capitalism that poisons human relationships.
But multifaceted violence is also the deaths of our fellow human beings, children, siblings, parents, relatives, friends from hunger and imperialist wars, poverty, destitution, unemployment, insecurity, starvation wages and pensions that cannot ensure basic social needs, exhausting working hours, the extension of the pensionable age in old age, punctuality, predatory taxation of the popular strata, the lack of time for entertainment, for sports, for cultural cultivation and for social participation, the commercialization of state social structures supporting the family, Health, Education, Welfare, the elderly, people with special needs, motherhood, natural resources and the food chain, the lack of protection from natural disasters, terrorism and the repression of assertive struggles for popular rights, the failure to find work due to gender or maternity, dismissal due to union membership, the barbarity of anachronistic perceptions and traditions, the threat of imperialist wars, the refugee crisis, the illegal trafficking of migrants and the hellish detention centers for migrants, the thousands of uprooted people drowned at sea, victims of imperialist wars seeking a better life.
Legislative adjustments to capitalism for female equality do not exempt women and men workers from the exploitation of the entrepreneur, nor from ideological and political manipulation and do not ensure the same opportunities for popular needs. They have also not taken into account women’s need for reproduction and care for the family. Formal equality promotes increased participation of women in paid employment and in the sharing of paternity and maternity, and at the same time greater exploitation of workers, such as by equalizing retirement ages upwards.
The presence of women in leadership positions in civic bodies has been used in the name of “equality”, but also to promote anti-people measures, anti-labor laws and imperialist wars.
In a recent directive from a leading body of capitalism, the European Union, to combat violence against women, the financial, advisory and legal support of abused women and children is oriented towards the economic interests of the member states, with the prospect of assigning them to Non-Governmental Organizations and private structures at an “affordable price”.
100 years ago in the country of socialist construction, the Soviet Union, women had the same rights as men and children, regardless of whether they were from a simple relationship or legal marriage.
Social and racial discrimination, anachronistic barbaric perceptions of the female gender, which were not eradicated, unscientific theories about the fluidity of gender, categorize people, breed coercion and disorient the popular fabric from the class claim of its rights.
Also, feminist movements that attribute the women’s issue and violence against women to “patriarchy”, detached from class exploitation, exonerate the capitalist system and weaken the collective struggle against the cause that gives rise to inequality and violence.
The stamp of the hypocritical exploitation of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by the supportive governments and parties of the system of barbarity is put by the anti-popular, anti-worker and anti-pension measures, the repressive mechanisms, the privatization of state structures for the protection of human life, the imperialist wars and deaths from hunger.
We fight collectively against all forms of violence and demand free social shelter structures with counseling and legal support, fully staffed with specialized personnel, to meet the needs of abused women and their children.
The massive participation of women themselves in the collective struggle to eliminate the multifaceted violence against the system of exploitation of man by man is of crucial importance.
Secretariat of Gender UIS of FSM
Mountaki Vaso