HAITI, March 19—Working class women are in a precarious condition in Haiti. Despite the fact that the government has a minister of women’s affairs, and there are many organizations who “fight” for the rights of women, against discrimination between men and women and against domestic violence perpetrated against women—nothing has really improved in the lives of working women in Haiti.
International Women’s day is a holiday with communist origins, March 8 is celebrated in many ways around the world. In Haiti, there are conferences or educational meetings, yet none of them tackle the day-to-day demands of working women and students, who do not enjoy real parity/equality with men.Organizations fighting for women’s rights are already engaged in an unequal battle, since in a class society there are bourgeois women and working class women and their needs, demands, and struggles are not the same.
In fact, ruling class women who exploit other women or who benefit from the precarious condition of other women. These contradictions cannot be resolved until class society is destroyed with communist revolution and we live in a truly egalitarian world.
It is with this in mind that we gathered to commemorate International Working Women’s Day. About 30 people met in a conference room in a small provincial town to discuss the role of women in the fight for change in Haiti and around the world on Sunday, March 10. A presentation, using in part the article that previously appeared in CHALLENGE, summed up the story of March 8. It inspired many of the young women present to take control of the future by participating in the struggle against the established order. They understood that gender inequality, exploitation and all sorts of discrimination are all fruits of the capitalist system, and it is only by overthrowing this system that we will have a fair society.
Two of the participants believe that the situation that women face is not by accident. Women are trained and educated to believe they are the weaker sex and should be subordinate to men, that there are studies and jobs that should be reserved for men, that they shouldn’t make the effort needed to aspire to equality, or that they should depend on the men they marry, that they should not make decisions as equal partners.
These young women think that it is the obligation of women to fight for the collective well-being, that it is horrid to see women forced to prostitute themselves in order to get a bite to eat for themselves and their families, or be resigned to violence out of fear of losing whatever livelihood they may have.
We wanted to give full value due to women in our struggle and to recognize their courage. There was a general consensus among the participants in this conference that women have to become equal partners in the struggle for equality and to end the system of exploitation that engenders it. And even more, become leaders in the struggle, both in the day-to-day struggle and in developing the communist ideology. And that our class brothers in struggle have to welcome their participation and their leadership!
To end the day on a social note, we had pizza and drinks while we watched a film called “Black November” about a volatile, oil-rich Nigerian community that wages war against their corrupt government and a multi-national oil corporations in order to protect their land from being destroyed by excessive drilling and spills.
The end of capitalism will be the end of all sorts of inequalities. Let’s fight to end capitalism!