115 years of International Women’s Day For Women’s Liberation and Socialist Revolution!
by Imogen Xavier
In Copenhagen 1910, a women’s conference of the Socialist International launched International Women’s Day. In 1978, Trotskyist parties, including the predecessor organization of Socialist Action / Ligue pour l’Action Socialiste in the Canadian state, re-launched the annual IWD.
Women’s systemic subjugation, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of socioeconomic oppression are rooted in capitalism’s relentless pursuit of profit. Ultra-conservatives and religious fundamentalists seek the further subjugation of women to uphold their archaic patriarchal power structures.
Trans women are women! Our most vulnerable community members must be defended not shunned; leaving sisters behind serves only to divide us! Gender diverse people, however they identify, suffer too under the yoke of misogyny. The struggle for women’s liberation and queer liberation will be fought together and won together.
- This year we honour again the Palestinian women and children victims of genocide and condemn the Zionist state’s campaign of brutal sexual violence. In conflicts around the world, including those in which the Canadian state is complicit, women are objectified and forced to suffer rape as ‘collateral damage’ in war.
- Ruling class claims that women have ‘achieved equality’ are nothing but a sick joke. On average, women in Canada are paid 12 percent less than men, who in turn have seen their wages stagnate, or decline. The wage gap is highest for disabled women of colour. In 2025,economic precarity disproportionately hits women’s quality of life and
access to basic necessities, as mothers, caretakers, and subjects of passive discrimination in the workplace.
- The latest Sustainable Development Goal 5 data shows that the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. At the present rate it will take another 286 years to close the gender gap.
- Globally one woman dies by intimate partner violence every 10 minutes; in Canada, every 6 days.
- Aboriginal women and girls suffer shameful economic and social conditions. They are systemic victims of racism, inequality, physical assault, disappearance and murder.
While trillions of dollars are wasted globally on corporate bail-outs and the military, women and girls are denied adequate education, economic opportunities, clean water, health care, women’s reproductive choice and personal security. From Canada to Palestine to Haiti, from the USA to Syria, from Europe to Congo, billions of women are denied access to contraception and abortion, pushed into and punished for engaging in sex work, denied autonomy in marriage and divorce, trafficked, assaulted, abused, and killed. All because of their gender.
To transform society and change these conditions permanently, capitalism must be
overthrown. Our demands are simple:
Enforce equal pay and employment access. Mandate better maternity/paternity leave, sick leave, and childcare sick leave for all workers. Provide universal child care and pharma care. Fund women’s social justice organizations. Decriminalize sex work. Fund emergency shelters and legal aid. Develop transformative anti-homelessness programs and build quality social housing. Fund health care, education, and social services. Legislate a $25 per hour minimum wage. No money for war. Tax the rich. For workers’, Indigenous, and community control of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Capitalism can’t be fixed!
Feminism through socialism! No socialism without feminism!