Women at the Forefront of the Fight for the
Rights of All and to Safeguard the Future of Society
International Women’s Day 2017 was marked by women throughout the world fighting to safeguard and guarantee the rights of all and to build a new society based on placing the human being at the centre of all considerations. Women around the world are taking a stand to affirm their rights and are taking their place at the front and centre of the struggle against imperialism, war, oppression and exploitation, as a necessary condition for the establishment of the New. As a consequence, women are at the forefront in the struggle for democratic renewal where the rights of all are recognised simply by virtue that all are human, and where the only guarantee of establishing women’s dignity, security and future lies in taking up the fight for the rights of all.
Whilst the society is attempting to destroy all that has been established in terms of social programmes and the protection of basic human rights, women are playing a crucial role in fighting this anti-social agenda and are establishing the conditions for them to take their place in all spheres of society. It is becoming clear that women are very much doing their own thinking and are intent on becoming the decision-makers. In the areas such as health, education, and the anti-war movement, women are becoming more political and are exposing the status quo and fighting, not just against the dismantling of the NHS or the privatisation of education, but for a vision of a new society, one which demands a change in the direction of the whole society, and where they have a decisive say in the running of society.
At this point, with the society in the hands of the most backward elements, and the intensification of the attacks against women in all spheres, and indeed, against the whole of society, it is all the more important that we affirm the role and the stands that women are heroically taking today in Britain and around the world.
Women as a collective are a force in society who are taking up and leading the fight to defend the rights of all. Women lead the fight to defend the NHS, women are at the forefront of the anti-war movement and in fighting for an anti-war government, and women are demanding that social programmes be defended and placed centre stage. Women are showing what it means to be political by being at the forefront of the various struggles being waged. Women are at the forefront and the centre in all aspects, and women are taking their place as second to none.
Women are at the forefront of fighting the ever greater privatisation and the attempts to implement stringent austerity programmes. So whilst women bear the brunt of these programmes, they are also the ones who are fighting for a change in the direction of society to stop these programmes in their tracks and to organise for an alternative. Whilst more women are working part-time, and jobs held by women are more likely to be paid less than the minimum wage, whilst the cost of renting and mortgages have gone up from between 20% and 30% in the last three years in Britain, resulting in a marked increase in homelessness and poverty amongst women, it is also a feature of the growing consciousness of women throughout the society that this is not acceptable in a modern society, that they must demand their say and their place at the table of decision-making. They are coming to the conclusion that a better world is possible. At the same time, they are becoming ever more conscious that as a vital and pressing step to achieve this better world, they must also be at the forefront of the struggle for empowerment. How to hold the government and the powers-that-be to account is demanding new forms, and women are putting this development on the agenda, as the people’s movements strive to remove the blocks to the progress of society which the ruling elite is placing in the way of women in common with the working class and people’s movement as a whole.
Women are fighting for a just society and in all areas they are taking a just stand. Women are showing what their right to be actually is, and are showing that it is consistent with opening the door to progress, to a new society. They are declaring that once the rights of women are guaranteed, only then it will be possible to celebrate the emancipation of the whole of humanity!
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