8M Manifesto: we become more when we are united. Together we are more.
Source: hacialahuelgafeminista
Every March 8th we honour the women’s alliance to struggle for our conquered rights. In the past, It was because of many women fighting together that we succeeded and got some of the rights we have today. A long genealogy of activists, suffragettes and unionist women has fought before us. Among them, those who brought the Second Spanish Republic (an alternative to the Monarchy that was abruptly ended by the Civil War in 1936 and the consequent fascist regime), those who fought in the Spanish civil war, those who stood up against colonialism and those who took part in the anti-imperialist struggles.However, we know it is not enough yet: there is still a lot to do so we keep fighting!
Sorority is our weapon, and the massive response of the feminist movement what keeps up moving us forward. The 8th of March is our day. It is an international and revolutionary day, with a clear political message.Today, 8th of March, all the women of the world are invited to join the FEMINIST STRIKE.
Our identities are plural: we are diverse. We live in rural and urban settings, we work both in the labour market and at home. We are gipsies, migrants, racialized. We are all ages old and we are lesbians, trans, bisexual, intersexual, queer, heterosexual… We are even those who aren’t here today: we are the murdered women, we are the imprisoned. We are ALL THE WOMEN. Together we stop the world today and we scream out loud: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!To all the violence inflicted upon us!
STOP the aggressions, the humiliations, the marginalization and the exclusion.We demand more resources and means for the Spanish National Agreement to fight Violence against Women (which is not enough, anyway) to enable the development of actual efficient policies that allow fora society freeof violence against women and girls.We denounce the repression currently going on against those who struggle for social justice and reproductive rights.
STOP The everyday sexism! A frequently overlooked kind of violence that all women suffer at every age and condition. WE WANT to circulate freely everywhere at anytime. We pinpoint and denounce the sexual violence as an exemplary expression of the patriarchal appropriation of our bodies. This affects especially the most vulnerable women, like migrants or domestic workers. It is urgent to make our slogan NOT EVEN ONE LESS (Ni una menos) come true.
STOP the oppression based on our sexual affective identities and orientations! We denounce the LGTBIfobia that many of us suffer at a social, institutional level and in the workplace, as another type of violence against women. We are all women, and we are diverse.
FREE WOMEN IN FREE TERRITORIES!
We are the ones who reproduce life.We are those who are currently making possible the conditions for the reproduction of life. The domestic and care work we make is essential for maintaining life. The trap of capitalism makes it look like something unworthy. We are obliged to provide care for free or under humiliating work conditions. The care strike today is meant to make visible a set of daily tasks that nobody wants to acknowledge, neither as free work at home,nor as an undervalued employment. We claim that the care work should be recognised as a social good of first order and we demand the equal redistribution of these kind of tasks.
Today, we demand a society free of oppression, of exploitation and violence against women. We call for rebellion and struggle against the macabre bond between patriarchy and capitalism that wants us to be obedient, submissive and silent.
We don’t accept worse labour conditions and lower wages than those of men for the same work. That is another reason why we go on a workers ́ strike today.
We strike against the glass ceilings and the precarity in the work market. The jobs we get to have (when and if we do) are usually temporary, uncertain and underpaid. We are the ones having undesired shorter working days. We are the ones making the unemployment rates grow. Many of the jobs we do are not guaranteed or even not regulated. And when we actually do have better jobs, we find out that the best positions, with higher salaries and responsibilities are always taken by men. Private companies, the public sector, institutions and politics keep reproducing the gender gap.
STOP wage discrimination only because of being women. No more despising and sexually harassing us in the workplace.
We denounce that being a woman is the main risk factor for impoverishment. We are punished for our diversity. Precarity actually deepens when we grow older, when we migrate and/or are racialized, when we have functional diversity or a body image that challenges what is considered normal. We demand working conditions that allow us to develop a life project with dignity and autonomy.
We demand that employment adapts to the needs of life. Pregnancies or child care shouldn ́t be accepted reasons for worse work conditions or dismissal. They shouldn’t actually compromise at all our personal and professional expectations.
We also demand the pensions we have earned, enough is enough of miserable pensions that force us to poverty in our old age. We want the possibility to have pensions with two holders. We also demand the inclusion of the time that we invested in care or agricultural tasks in the total calculation,as much as the regulated work. We stand for the ratification of the Agreement number 189of the International Work ́s Organisation that regulates domestic work.
We shout strongly against the savage neoliberalism that is imposed as the only way of thinking in the whole World, but at the same time, destroys Earth and our lives. Women play an essential role in the fight against the climatic change and the preservation of biodiversity. For this reason, we defend the food sovereignty of all communities and support the efforts of women who take the risk of losing their lives to protect their territories and their crops. The protection and defence of life should be the main focus of economy and politics.
We demand to be protagonists of our lives, our health and our bodies, without any kind of aesthetic pressure. Our bodies are not merchandise nor objects, therefore we will also do a consumer strike.
Enough of being used as a claim!
We also demand the depatologisation of our lives, our emotions, our circumstances. We are against the excessive medicalisation that responds to the interests of large pharmaceutical corporations,disregarding our bodies and our health. Stop treating our natural and life processes as diseases!
Primary and secondary education are the stage in our lives in which we build our sexual and gender identities. Therefore the students, the teachers, the educational community and all feminists demands our right to a public, secular and feminist education. We want an educative system free from heteropatriarchal values, from the very first years of education (where most teachers are female) to the University. We also claim for our right to anaffective-sexual formation that teaches us sexual diversity, without fears, complexes or taboos.We don’t want to be reduced to mere objects. And we won’t accept any aggression in the classrooms, neither against women, nor against LGTBI people.
We demand a progress in the coeducation, in all educative fields and all levels. We don’t want women to be missing in the school books, or our History (rather Herstory) to be marginal. Gender perspective should be transversal to all disciplines and fields. We, the women,are not an exception, but a constant,which has always been silenced!
LONG LIVE OUR STRIKE IN ITS FOUR DIMENSIONS(CARE, CONSUMPTION, WORK AND EDUCATION). HURRAH TO THE FEMINIST STRIKE!!!
No woman is illegal. We say ENOUGH to racism and exclusion. We shout loudly: NO to wars and NO to the manufacture and selling of weapons and war material!We consider war a product and extension of the patriarchal and capitalist system to control lands and bodies. As a consequence of wars, millions of refugee women around the world become victims and are violated and then forgotten. We demand the asylum of every migrant. We are free women in free territories!
We denounce the economical cutbacks in the fields that most affect women: the health system, the social services and the education.
We denounce the corruption, as an aggravating factor of the crisis
We denounce the patriarchal justice that do not consider women as subjects within our full rights.
We denounce the repression and rights cutbacks that we suffer every day.
We demand a complete equality in rights and life conditions and the complete acceptation of our diversity.
WE WANT OURSELVES FREE, ALIVE, FEMINIST, COMBATIVE AND REBEL!
March 8th is not the last day of the feminist strike:
WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING UNTIL WE GET THE WORLD THAT WE WANT!