Labour Women (EKA, Türkiye)
Dear women comrades, representatives of the anti-imperialist struggle from different countries of the world,
We greet you in the name of Working Women, with the strength of the women’s struggle and in a comradely spirit.
It is very important for us to hold the second conference of the Women’s Platform, proclaimed in Caracas on October 21, here in Turkey together with you, our valued comrades. Discussing together, producing together, drawing conclusions, and most importantly putting our common word into practice across different geographies of the world are of great importance for women’s anti-imperialist struggle.
Welcome, all of you!
As we come together within the scope of the Women’s Conference organized by the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, we face the reality that humanity is passing through a historically critical period. While imperialist wars continue in many parts of the world, economic crises deepen, and fascist-reactionary movements continue to attack all humanity, the consequences of this process affect the working peoples, the working class, the youth, and especially women in the harshest way.
Today the women’s question must be evaluated not only through the inequalities women face, but as an integral result of the imperialist-capitalist system. The poverty, insecurity, war, violence, and oppression experienced by women are not isolated individual problems independent of one another; they are the consequences of the same system appearing in different forms.
The imperialist-capitalist system has been in a structural crisis for many years. The policies capitalism applies in order to increase rates of profit are driving millions of people into greater poverty. Inflation, unemployment, the rising cost of living, and the liquidation of social rights are worsening the living conditions of working peoples in almost every country of the world. But this process affects women far more severely.
Women are employed more intensively in precarious jobs, condemned to low wages, and are the first section to be discarded in periods of crisis. In countries like ours, in addition to this, domestic care labor and responsibility for the care of children, the elderly, and the sick are largely loaded onto women’s shoulders. While capitalism exploits women’s paid labor power, it also benefits from their domestic labor.
This reality experienced by women is not merely economic. Today, in many parts of the world, femicides, sexual assaults, child marriages, and systematic violence against women are increasing. While bourgeois states speak of women’s rights, they are at the same time liquidating the mechanisms that would protect women, encouraging reactionary ideologies, and developing policies that seek to imprison women within the family.
It is not possible to think of this picture apart from imperialist wars.
Today in Palestine, Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and different regions of the world, millions of people face the destructive consequences of wars. The great majority of those forced to leave their homes are women and children. Wars are waged not only with bombs and weapons; they are also sustained through hunger, migration, poverty, and domination established over women’s bodies.
Imperialists and Zionists, who have opened war on humanity with the lie that they will bring freedom and democracy to peoples everywhere in the world, are today increasing their attacks even more recklessly in order to prevent their own collapse. Peoples, women, youth, and workers are in a great global uprising against these attacks.
Women, with their ceaseless struggles, are one of the most dynamic forces of the struggle being waged against wars, inequality, and oppression, above all against the imperialist-capitalist order of exploitation. For this reason, the struggle for women’s liberation is at the same time an inseparable part of the struggle against imperialism and imperialist wars.
At this point, NATO’s role must be addressed in particular.
From its foundation to the present, NATO has operated as the war organization of the imperialists, protecting the economic and political interests of the imperialist countries. Although it tries to legitimize itself with discourses of “peace” and “security,” when one third of the world was passing into the socialist camp, the imperialist states and their collaborators, through NATO, both engaged in open military conflicts and occupations and began to wage war with a common mind and unity against socialism and the revolutionary movements developing around the world.
The NATO summit being held in Turkey today also serves not the interests of the peoples, but the interests and needs of the imperialists. As revolutionary-socialist women, conscious of the necessity of struggling in the most effective forms against NATO, the murderer of peoples, we would like to state that the international women’s movement must be expanded.
The policies NATO pursues under the name of security do not bring security to women; they impose slavery. NATO is an especially severe destruction for women. In every conflict it fuels, provokes, and starts, women become the harshest target of death, sexual violence, rape, and enslavement. They lose their homes and families; in refugee camps they are among the most unprotected social sections.
Dear comrades,
Feminist approaches render invisible the fundamental causes of the oppression women experience. They often address the women’s question only formally.
We argue that women’s oppression is not only the result of male domination, but also of the emergence of private property, the birth of class societies, and private property relations in production. For this reason, the struggle for women’s liberation cannot be confined to reforms within the system. Women’s real liberation will be possible only in a social order in which exploitation has been abolished, the means of production have been expropriated on behalf of the working class, and human beings do not exploit other human beings, that is, under socialism.
The experiences of peoples struggling against imperialism show that women are not only participants in struggle, but are also among the fundamental forces that transform the struggle and stand in its front ranks. Women’s demands for freedom must be made an inseparable part of the revolutionary struggle.
For this reason, strong relations of solidarity must be built between the women’s movement and the struggles of other social sections.
Workers’ actions, peasant struggles, youth movements, environmental struggles, and anti-fascist struggles cannot be thought apart from the women’s movement. Women’s struggle must join together with all the progressive and revolutionary forces of society. In this respect, the formation of a united front in the struggle against imperialism, capitalism, war, chauvinism, and reaction is a historical necessity.
Today women are in the front ranks in many countries of the world. The role of women in strikes, resistances, popular uprisings, and anti-fascist struggles is growing steadily. But organization is necessary for this struggle to become a lasting force.
Real political empowerment is possible when women create their own organizations, participate in decision-making processes, and become active subjects of social transformation.
For this reason, expanding women’s organization in factories, neighborhoods, universities, villages, and unions is one of our fundamental tasks.
Comrades,
Imperialism is international. The struggle against it must also be internationalist.
Although the problems faced by women living in different countries of the world may appear different from one another, their roots lie in the same system. For this reason, sharing experiences, common campaigns, solidarity networks, and international mechanisms of struggle are of great importance.
The World Anti-Imperialist Women’s Platform emerged precisely as the product of this need. The task of our platform is not only to organize conferences. Our task is to expand women’s role in the anti-imperialist struggle, develop solidarity among women’s organizations, strengthen the common struggle against wars and fascism, and build the revolutionary unity of women on a world scale.
Today history places important responsibilities on us.
In a period when wars, fascism, exploitation, and misogyny are increasing, it is not possible to remain silent. As socialist women, we are determined to raise the struggle against imperialism, capitalism, the patriarchal system, and every kind of religionist-reactionary current.
Against NATO, imperialist war, occupations, misogyny, labor exploitation, hunger, and poverty, the struggle of women from all corners of the world will continue to spread and grow wave upon wave. Women’s slogans for freedom will echo everywhere in the world. Our struggle for women’s freedom will expand beyond borders.
Let us not forget: there is no revolution without women, and women will not be liberated without revolution.
Long live the international solidarity and struggle of women!
Long live the anti-imperialist struggle!
Long live women’s struggle for freedom and socialism!