The Exemplary Struggle of British Women Miners
In Britain, women miners took an active role in the year-long miners' strike, serving as a model for women's and the labor movement's struggles across the world. The efforts of the women miners were an important factor in supporting and uniting the strike as a whole. Not only did the Tory government's expectation that women would escort their husbands across the picket lines and break the strike fail, but in the course of their struggles the miners fundamentally challenged other traditional images of women.
Even in previous miners' strikes, such as the General Strike of 1926 and the miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974, women had organized and taken an active supportive role, but most of them had been confined to working within the precincts of prestige, or collecting food. In the present strike, apart from the above, women played a very important role in organizing themselves independently throughout the strike, staging demonstrations, marching and speaking in various places, liaising with other women's movements, organizing women's pickets, etc.
Many women have organized themselves in a number of ways.
Many women said that they had been influenced by feminism, and that they had been inspired by the example of the anti-nuclear women's struggle on Gresham Common. A more significant reason is the impact of the transformation of women's lives over the last decade: more women in the mines are coming out to work, even if it is only part-time or low-level work. In addition to becoming more independent, there has also been a major shift in their thinking, to realize that women can do what men can do, and in some cases work harder than men. The experience of the strike is a good example and an inspiration for the women miners to continue organizing.
Another important lesson that women learned from the strike was that they were subjected to police brutality from the very beginning. A number of mining areas were effectively occupied by the police, similar to cities in Northern Ireland. Women experienced police violence first hand on the picket lines and recognized their political role and that of the entire repressive apparatus of the state. Their attitudes towards the police have changed dramatically, or at least they are no longer teaching their sons and daughters to trust the police.
The miners' women's struggle inspired other women. This inspiration was even more important at a time when women's rights were under attack by the Thatcher government. The women miners were the catalyst for Labour women, anti-nuclear women and other women's organizations to join the marches and to organize women's groups against the closure of the pits, encompassing a broad spectrum of the women's liberation movement. Women miners have played a leading role in the reorganization of the women's movement, an influence that will show its significance in the coming years. The miners' women were preparing to organize a national women's liaison committee, which would seek to organize women in other industries, such as dockers, railroad workers and truck drivers.
The active mobilization and struggle of the women miners was a powerful demonstration that the labor and trade union movement could not stand alone against the bourgeoisie, and that a strong and independent women's movement was an important force.
Bolivian women support general strike
Bolivian miners' women, like British miners' women, played an important role in the two-week general strike in March this year. They provided much-needed food and other assistance to more than 10,000 miners who walked from the mines to the capital to sleep rough in protest. This was no easy task in the context of Bolivia's collapsing economy and extreme scarcity of goods.
The Women's Organization of Miners has been around since 1946, and is now a permanent organization with a national leadership structure engaged in organizing women's struggles over food and prices. Over the past few years, this national organization of women miners has met regularly and has links with trade unions throughout the country. They are represented at the Congress of the Bolivian Trade Union Confederation.
As the economic crisis in Bolivia gets worse and worse, and inflation reaches an unprecedented record of over 10,000%, the role of women, and especially women's organizations of miners, in the struggle becomes more and more important. The National Confederation of Trade Unions (CNT) called on all women to follow the example of the women miners, to organize and take on the work of organizing and distributing food, proposing that women's organizations take over private and state-run food warehouses and sell food at the legal price.
The trade union movement has recognized the importance of organizing women. In the past, women have also organized against campaigns such as the forced sterilization campaigns promoted by U.S. aid programs. On the other hand, although Bolivian women are less likely to come out to work, they have begun to organize among women workers. The country's law prohibits government employees from organizing in trade unions, but largely because women defied this prohibition, the union succeeded in organizing. They have even led the union, taking a leading role in the struggles of the last year.
The heroic struggle of Bolivian women has pushed women to the forefront of the labor movement, in favor of making their own demands. The self-organization of women, both locally and nationally, was an important factor in this process.
Growth of the Women's Movement in Mexico
Within the grassroots of the Mexican masses, women are gradually organizing themselves around the problems they see, quite a bit differently from a few years ago, when they would not have gathered to discuss them. The economic crisis in Mexico is the objective reason for this development. This process is characterized by the convening of national and regional congresses by women from the favelas, peasants, left-wing political organizations and movements for the defence of political prisoners and the "disappeared".
The issues discussed at these congresses were mainly the everyday problems faced by most Mexican women: how to face the austerity policies of the bourgeoisie, how to fight for public services, how to defend their work, how to defend the land, and how to face the specific oppression of women. This is a far cry from the past, when women's issues were the concern of a small group of women intellectuals and students, isolated from the majority of women.
Women working on the border between Mexico and the United States discuss the working conditions they face and their right to unionize, coordinating their struggles. Women in the service sector, faced with the government's campaign to drive them home and plans for mass layoffs in the business world, began to organize and network with each other, among other things, by publishing a monthly magazine discussing women's problems in the various occupations and seeking a wider national movement of resistance.
Women in the slums held national congresses to discuss their problems, especially the struggle for water and electricity supply, and the struggle against high prices and for the state to set up people's stores. The Congress also discussed the need to increase women's participation and political education. The women of the slums were the mainstay of a demonstration demanding that women's views be taken into account in the population control program.
Peasant women have also started organizing. At the National Convention of the Yayara National Liaison Committee in November last year, peasant women discussed organizing their national convention, which they are preparing to hold in the middle of this year.
In addition to all these organizational actions and congresses, trade union women belonging to these mass liaison organizations and political groups are discussing the creation of a national women's organization to be able to respond to the bourgeois government's attacks on women, mobilizing working women, slum women, rural women, and so on. The parliamentary campaign in July this year will be an opportunity to reach out and mobilize women's struggles.
The mobilization of women in Mexico has faced a lot of resistance. Women have been pressured by their husbands to oppose their political participation and have not been helped by the traditional trade union leadership. Until now, women's organizations have developed independently, with little connection to the unions and, at best, some support from them. But the working women's movement is beginning to grow, as the organizations of women working on the borders and in the service sector show. The struggle against high prices and regime repression, as well as the struggle to defend reproductive and contraceptive rights, became the center of gravity of the Women's United Front.
The Anti-Imperialist Women's Movement in Northern Ireland
The focal point of the women's movement in Northern Ireland against British imperialist oppression was centered on Yarmah Prison in Northern Ireland. The women political prisoners incarcerated in this prison epitomized the entire history of resistance to British rule in Northern Ireland and the intensification of repressive persecution by the British Empire.
Before 1969, there were no women political prisoners in Northern Ireland. With the start of the civil rights movement against British rule in 1968, MP Devlin (McALISKEY) was the first woman to be imprisoned. Since then, more and more women have been imprisoned in Yama Prison. Initially, they were treated as political prisoners, but after 1976, when Britain intensified the persecution of political prisoners, their situation became very bad, and the 1980 non-cooperation and hunger strike movement was a struggle against such inhuman treatment. But Britain did not relax its persecution.
Now Yama Prison is packed with young women accused of taking part in resistance to British military activities. This reflects not only the role of women in the armed struggle against the British Empire, but also the anti-imperialist political activity of the last 15 years. 15 years of regular repression and persecution have made for a huge revolt within the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, especially after the hunger strikes. The Irish nationalist movement has given up the illusion of political improvement within the Northern Irish status quo, and resistance has taken many forms and levels.
Women were at the forefront of these struggles. Behind every female political prisoner are hundreds of political activists and thousands of supporters, providing assistance, participating in protests and demonstrations, providing shelter, caring for prisoners' families, and so on. Women have achieved equal status as fighters in armed resistance organizations over the years. More importantly, women have sustained and deepened the resistance movement in their communities.
British-occupied Ireland is one of the poorest and worst economically and socially in Europe***s homogeneous market. Unemployment in Northern Ireland is 27% for men, reaching 60% in some areas, and 20% of workers have only part-time jobs, of which women make up 80%. The cost of living is much higher than in the UK, social benefits are minimal, abortion is banned and there are few childcare centers, and there is the added burden of occupation and abuse by the British Army and pro-British militia. The women of Northern Ireland were the most directly affected by these conditions and were the basic reason for their mobilization.
The women's movement in Ireland, like society as a whole, was polarized over the issue of Armagh Prison, and in particular the question of feminist attitudes to the anti-imperialist movement: was it all about women's issues at the expense of the national question? In practical terms, more women are realizing that their problems are inseparable from the whole of imperialist colonial oppression.
At a women's conference last June, which included the whole of Ireland, there was for the first time an anti-imperialist majority, recognizing that the struggle for women's freedom required a break with the status quo of imperialist control of Ireland. From this foundation, Irish women have been able to continue to build a strong anti-imperialist force and to organize an independent and self-determining women's movement.
The Cuban Revolution and Women's Liberation
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 opened a new phase in the struggle for women's liberation in Latin America. Between then and now, the status and role of Cuban women in society has transformed considerably, demonstrating that the abolition of capitalist private ownership has allowed women's emancipation to make great strides forward. However, even in today's Cuban society, there are still a lot of male social ideologies and styles, showing that the socialist revolution only provided the conditions for women's emancipation, and that the real emancipation is still to be achieved by the subjective struggle of women and the whole society, which is also very much related to the process of the socialist revolution.
In the early years of the victorious revolution, women participated in the militias and in work within their communities to defend the revolution and to help repel the American invasion. These activities helped women to move away from family and patriarchal social life.61 The literacy movement of 1961, moreover, brought tens of thousands of young women out of their homes and into the mountains to serve as volunteer teachers, to make independent decisions, to learn about the outside world, and to gain experience and greater confidence in themselves, laying the groundwork for their gradual entry into a new status of paid work.
The destruction of the social system of private ownership of women's labor was the starting point and cornerstone of the ability to integrate women in production, scientific and technological activity, and political activity. Women's labor and dignity were liberated from domestic servitude and private ownership. The social revolution brought about the structural transformation necessary for women's liberation.
From 160,000 working women in 59 years to 10.4 million in 84 years. 3 9 percent of the working population, reflecting the fact that Cuban women, fueled by the revolution, achieved in two decades what women in Europe and the United States had taken a century of struggle to achieve. In contrast to capitalist societies, more Cuban women are in highly skilled jobs, accounting for 5 3% of skilled workers. Some 60 per cent of the new professionals were women, and in some professions, such as medicine, and in some university departments, women accounted for the majority. As society provides more nurseries, schools, canteens, medical facilities, etc., more women are allowed to continue working after marriage.
Women's participation in trade union activities has also been increasing. In 1980, 42 percent of union leaders and 33 percent of union employees were women. In the basic units of the Revolutionary Defense Committees (RDCs), half of them are women, but the percentage of women in the leading bodies of the committees is still low, only 22%.
Similarly, the percentage of women in the Cuban ****production party was low, at 19 percent in 1980. Cuban leader Fidel Castro explained this situation partly by the fact that housework and childcare responsibilities naturally fell to women.
The fact is that within Cuban society, women have been the center of power since the Revolution, although their status has been significantly improved since then. Although women's status has improved significantly since the Revolution, a sense of male superiority and the persistence of some traditional consciousnesses, customs, and ideas have helped to maintain the gender division of labor, especially in the unpaid work of housework and childcare. For example. Grandmothers help to take care of children, removing the responsibility of men and society in this regard. Men are still resistant to such work. This, together with dissatisfaction with women's political and social activism, is the source of some family disputes.
But the high level of collective and social awareness among Cuban women, especially among the younger generation, has made them more aware of the value of their work to society and of the dignity of women, and has made them more active in the struggle for the emancipation of women and for an egalitarian society.
Cuban family law gives women full equality in public opinion. Divorce is permitted by law. Abortion is no longer illegal, which has claimed the lives of many Latin American women, but is free and performed in well-equipped laboratories, although it is not encouraged. Health and sex education is emphasized in schools, so that women are more aware of their bodies. Contraception, etc.
These laws and measures do not guarantee the emancipation of women, nor can the real emancipation of women be independent of the progress of the socialist revolution. But like other social, economic and political transformations brought about by the Cuban Revolution, they can provide the awakening Cuban women with better objective conditions to continue their struggle for female emancipation.
Soviet Women and Family Issues
Within modern Soviet urban society, men and women play nearly equal roles in work and society. More women are working outside the home and have independent financial means and values. However, traditional family relations have not changed, and women are still responsible for all the household chores and the raising of children.
Women's income from work is often necessary to support the family. They also tend to be more educated than men. Husbands who resented their wives' busy schedules and refused to share household chores, and the stifling atmosphere of bureaucratic domination that prevailed in society, led many husbands to turn to alcoholism. In addition to being a serious social problem, alcoholism is often a factor in the breakup of families, and it is usually the wife who cannot tolerate her alcoholic and chauvinistic husband who initiates divorce. They try to keep the family together, though. They usually get custody of their children after the divorce.
Divorce became a serious social problem. The divorce rate in Soviet cities was as high as 50 percent. Every year there were 900 thousand divorces. Many women did not get married after divorce. As a result, a new phenomenon emerged in Soviet society: the mother-only family. And children are more often than not exposed to female teachers at school. Because they were in the majority. So a lot of children in their formative years can not be balanced by the influence of both sexes, and some experts blame this factor for some of the problems of adolescents and young people, ignoring the main factor of the whole society at all levels of the distortion of bureaucratic domination, suffocation, and despair, and the lack of a way out.
The Soviet bureaucrats have always paid little attention to the quality and quantity of the people's life consumption, the formation of many social problems. For example, there is a serious shortage of housing, especially in the cities. The lack and poor quality of daily necessities and other consumer goods is another factor that strains family relations. Under the influence of various factors. Many women did not want to have children, and the population growth rate in the Soviet Union was much lower than the demand for power.
Thirty years ago, two-thirds of the Soviet population was in the countryside. Now the ratio has just reversed, with more than two-thirds living in cities. The traditional patriarchal family traditions and rituals of the countryside are gradually being lost, while new concepts have still not taken shape and stabilized, leaving both men and women*** with the same responsibilities for household chores, child rearing, and so on. This is undoubtedly one of the contradictions of Soviet society and the family. In the midst of this contradiction, Soviet women were the main victims, bearing most of the stress before and after the breakup of the family.
El Salvadoran Women and the Struggle for National Liberation
The revolutionary women's organizations in El Salvador carried out many programs and efforts to organize women in areas controlled by the liberation movement, such as sewing workshops, day-care centers, handicrafts groups, and people's stores. They were not simply to meet regional needs, but were part of the overall liberation struggle.
In the case of the small workshops, in addition to meeting the needs of the liberated areas, women risked their lives to transport the products to government-controlled areas to sell and exchange them for other goods back to the liberated areas. This is dangerous work. Women who are arrested are thrown into prison.
The people's stores, managed and run by the women's movement, sold daily necessities at a uniform price and also forced the private stores in the area to match the prices in the people's stores. This was the people's way of controlling prices.
The day nurseries organized by the women's movement provided free, safe and reliable child care for women who participated in the revolutionary struggle and work.
In addition to mobilizing women to work together, the women's movement organized various courses and seminars for women, ranging from childbirth and contraception to cultural issues and the economic, political and military situation. The economic, political and military situation. The main purpose was to educate women who had not been politically awakened or who had not participated in revolutionary activities. The main objective was to educate women who had not been politically awakened or who had not participated in revolutionary activities, and to point out the role of women in the existing society and the role of women in the new society for which the liberation struggle was aimed. By discussing the problems faced by women, many women realized that they were doubly oppressed, and as a result of the discussions, women united to join the struggle.
After women joined the women's movement and the liberation struggle, they underwent a major transformation. Later (read "before") most of them had prejudices about women's own tasks in society and life made by traditional ideology and unconsciously accepted that women were doubly oppressed by the family and society. After joining the liberation struggle, there was a significant change in women's attitudes, recognizing new values and social perceptions and fighting for a change in ideology and social roles. Even the men who joined the revolutionary work in the liberated areas still have a male-centered reaction, although their attitudes towards women have changed considerably. Therefore, the awakened women still have to struggle independently and resolutely.
Whereas in the past, women were mostly concerned with issues such as food and daily life, the awakened women have been discussing and participating in the national liberation struggle, taking a longer view of the prospects of the new society. This was the most important transformation of Salvadoran women who participated in the liberation struggle.