Statement: International Working Women’s Day 2022 – Women of Diverse Origins
We are women of diverse ethnicities, religions, ages and sexual orientations, but we are united in our struggles against patriarchy, racism, capitalism, colonialism, fascism and imperialism! On this International Women’s Day of Struggle, we, Women of Diverse Origins, pledge to continue the fight for the world we want.
International Working Women’s Day takes place in a global context where the cumulative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are exposing the arbitrary and the authoritarian side of our democracies and the structural contradictions of capitalism. It is taking place just as Russia has invaded Ukraine, following months of provocation by NATO, including Canada. Women demand peace, an end to NATO provocations and the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine!
The international context is also seeing a rise of the right and its imperialist alliances which pose a real threat to democracy and people’s sovereignty. We are also witnessing the feminine face of fascism in many countries where right-wing parties are led by women.
Capitalism and patriarchy feed off each other and worsen inequalities.
Indeed, social inequalities based on gender and ethnicity have been brought to a peak by the pandemic, widening the gap between the wealthy and the disadvantaged in this system based on the over-exploitation of labour. Government mismanagement of the Covid crisis has heightened anxieties among the population, making the alt-right seem a plausible alternative to some. The crisis has also revealed the incapacity and obsolescence of hospitals and other health facilities after decades of neoliberal austerity policies. These policies are accompanied by xenophobic ideas that crystallize in restrictive, populist, and exploitative migration policies.
The international context is also marked by an acute economic crisis exacerbating the battle over markets. We are facing the spectre of war between the imperialist powers, with the United States in the lead, seeking to expand right to the doorstep of Russia. And we follow in the footsteps of the women of St. Petersburg who on Women’s Day in 1917 took to the streets for peace and bread and ushered in a revolution.
Meanwhile, Russia has attacked Ukraine, citing the right to security and integrity of its territory. Western countries, allied in a block with the United States, have unfolded a series of retaliatory sanctions against Russia. The spectre of an inter-imperialist war between nuclear powers is a major threat to the planet, especially to the countries of the periphery.
The imperialist powers do not hesitate to impose murderous sanctions on any country that does not follow their dictates. They leave other countries in destruction, like Afghanistan after 20 years of war and occupation. Washing their hands of some, while maintaining their hold on other vulnerable countries like Haiti, DRC (Congo), Mali, Senegal. All the while, they support reactionary regimes in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Philippines, and others. Meanwhile, ethnonationalists practice majoritarian tyranny with impunity; India today is on the brink of genocide against its Muslim minority population.
How does this global situation affect Canada, and more specifically Quebec?
Local context
The pandemic has highlighted inequalities in Canadian and Quebec society. The precarious jobs held mostly by women, especially racialized women, are essential to our society. Yet ironically, women have experienced a massive loss of employment. The federal government’s promised “feminist economic recovery” has yet to materialize, as women and families grapple with skyrocketing food prices and other necessities.
The pandemic has placed extreme pressure on the healthcare system, and the measures to fight the impacts of COVID will not fill the gap created by chronic underfunding and cutbacks.
Meanwhile, the housing crisis is placing a growing part of the population in a precarious situation. Without massive investment in the affordable housing stock, people will not be able to put a roof over their heads.
Domestically, we’ve also seen a rise of the right. The trend has been accentuated with discriminatory laws like Bill 96, penalizing indigenous populations, racialized people, immigrants and refugees and preventing them from accessing basic services. Bill 96 makes it harder, if not impossible for some Quebec residents to access public services if they do not speak French. While we recognize the historical oppression of French-speaking Quebecers in Canada, today, it is they who have become the oppressors in the effort to protect their language and culture.
Similarly, systemic racism and islamophobia are becoming more apparent with the discriminatory effects of Bill 21, the secularism law, which worsens the situation of already marginalized populations, especially women.
Another law, Bill 2 will put transgender people at risk as it requires “gender identity” to be indicated on ID papers.
As it becomes increasingly difficult for people to make a home in Quebec and Canada, Indigenous people still have to struggle to access basic services and to defend the territories they have occupied since time immemorial.
Resistance
But women are rising, and governments cannot stop them.
We salute the women devoted to the care of the hospitalized, the sick, the destitute, the women who teach school children, while caring for their own at home, taking on a double and triple workload during the pandemic, at the risk of their own health; many of these women are migrants, precarious workers, and without status.
Huge gratitude to the Indigenous women of Fairy Creek for fighting courageously to save the last virgin forests on the Canadian west coast, and the women of Wet’suwet’en
who have played a key role in blocking the LNG pipeline for months, standing up to the pressure of the oil companies and the military and police forces at their service. The women are fighting to defend their land, but their struggle is also to protect nature and the planet that we all share, even as we are reminded of the ravages of centuries of settler-colonial genocide and its legacy, most recently in the summer of 2021 as hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children began to be unearthed.
We salute the recent victory in Montreal of women of Chinese descent who defended the heritage of their racialized, discriminated community and who succeeded in stopping the destruction of Chinatown in Montreal!
We are inspired by the women in India who’ve stood up to the onslaught of the reactionary Modi government, to stop farmers being robbed of their land.
We salute their victory after months of struggle and sacrifice! Long live the Indian farmers!
We also salute the women who take up arms to liberate their countries, in the Philippines, in Kurdistan, in India, and build egalitarian and sustainable societies where equality, equity and justice prevail. We also salute the women defenders of their homelands who dare to take a different path from that dictated by imperialism, such as Cuba and Venezuela. This, despite threats of invasion, crushing sanctions and pressure from all sides, as well as hate propaganda against them.
We have everything to learn and to gain by building solidarity among ourselves.
Sisterhood and solidarity always!!!
Femmes de diverses origines / Women of Diverse Origins 