March 8th – International Women’s Day

After a major factory fire killed 140 women workers in New York City, for the first time women marched in the city on 8 March 1910 demanding shorter working hours and better pay. This was 97 years ago. In India, and elsewhere in the world we continue to be faced with the same issues that our comrades and sisters in New York marched against. We are faced with a very long working day, stretching to 10-11 hours, and very low wages alongside harassment at the work place, bad working conditions, lack of protection guaranteed by the law and lack of collective bargaining rights.
Women today are joining the labour force in even larger numbers than ever before. Women are employed in every form of work from domestic work to the IT sector. And the majority of these jobs are precarious. Most women are outside the ambit of unionisation and collective bargaining.
The basic demand for women’s employment is work with dignity. This means a living wage with an 8-hour working day and civilised working conditions. The majority of women workers do not even receive the minimum wage and are forced to work far beyond the 8-hour norm, very often without any overtime payment. And the minimum wage in most cases is less than half the living wage. Women are paid far less than men, even for the same job. And there is harassment at the workplace. Any complaint of harassment is dismissed as frivolous, with the blame often being put on the complainant! Self-employed women have no regulation of employment, and the work is valued at “market” determined rates. This forces women to make their children work with them and even then it is not enough to meet basic daily necessities.
The responsibility of taking care of the household unjustly falls primarily on women. In this situation only women understand the difficulties posed by life in houses with no amenities. Women take care of ill health, children’s education, providing food for the family while constantly facing patriarchy and violence at home. We have to face the brunt of price rise and the decline of public amenities. The Government has been promising a universal social security scheme that will provide a safety net. Successive governments for the past fifteen years have made these promises. The present Government in Delhi has once again announced a Social Security Bill. The government needs to spell out the real benefits it will provide under the Bill and when will it be legislated and implemented. No more can the working class be satisfied with just promises.
Women are a large and integral part of the working class of this country. However, women’s labour and presence in the workforce is, more often than not, invisible. It is important to recognise and understand the importance of working class unity and struggle for winning workers rights. The unity of the working class cannot be achieved by leaving out the rights of nearly half the class. Hence rights of women workers must be seen as core workers rights.
Uniting the working class also requires us to struggle against patriarchal oppression and violence against women both in public and in domestic spaces. The working class must unite to oppose all forms of discrimination based on gender, caste and religion. Working class unity can take roots in society only by eliminating it of all forms of discrimination and prejudices.
We therefore resolve on this International Women’s Day to take forward the message of working class solidarity based on equal and democratic relations between all sections of workers.

We demand:

  • Dignity in labour, to include:*
  • 8-hour work norm;
  • Equal wage for equal work;
  • Revision of the Minimum Wage to equal the living wage;
  • Regulation for home-based women to get fair returns for their work;
  • Strict enforcement of workplace regulation to prevent harassment.

Social security benefits, safety and civil amenities, to include:

  • Immediate enactment of a universal Social Security Legislation;
  • Immediate and proper implementation of the Domestic Violence Act;
  • Decent housing for all;
  • Public transport, to make travel safe for women and children;
  • Schemes for crèche, childcare and children’s education.