Haiti: International Working Women’s Day and Class Struggle

Haiti, March 8—Progressive Labor Party organized a conference and cultural activities on the occasion of International Working Women’s Day in a city in Haiti. Despite driving in rain and flooded streets, several dozen people participated: high school students, women, men, children, and women from many local women’s organizations.
A worker at the Ministry of Women’s Rights and the Status of Women gave an overview of the situation and the struggle of women, pointing to both progress and limitations of women’s movements since 1950 when women in Haiti won voting rights and since 1986, with the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship.
One of the leaders of a women’s organization remarked several times how extraordinary it is for a non-feminist organization to organize such an activity to mark this date.
Feminism Is A Ruling-Class Assault on Working Women
The other speaker, a PLP member, exposed the main cause of sexism: the capitalist system which is based on social inequalities and social division. They made it clear that in order to have equality among all workers, we must end the current economic/political system. They gave examples that prove that the feminism was invented and fueled by bourgeois ideology.
There was a lively debate on the necessity of fighting to end the super-exploitation of working class women in the context of class struggle. One person denounced hypocrisy in the feminist organizations in which there are inequalities between the women members. A young leader of a women’s group agreed when a comrade pointed out that the struggle for the liberation of women should not be reduced to asking for mercy from the bourgeois state.
At the end of the conference, she said: “I agree with what you are saying, we can do things together.”
Several proposals were put forward to continue discussions for further action.
The PLP comrade called on the participants not to be fooled by the idea that all women have the same experiences. “The conditions of existence of rich women are not those of poor women, and peasants. Therefore, they do not have the same consciousness and the same vision of the world.”
Indeed, class struggle is primary. As the speaker pointed out, the entire working class has the same interest. Our fight must be for equality in all aspects of life, from home to school to work. Women must fight against their exploitation alongside their class brothers, and men must welcome women as fighters and leaders of their common struggle.
Let us join PLP to build for communist revolution so that everyone, women and men, can fight side by side for the liberation and well-being of our class. Onward to May Day!