We strike together!

On the 8th of March, International Women’s Rights Day, voices will be raised around the world to remind us of past, present and future struggles. We, women of the Party of the European Left, show our solidarity and support all the mobilizations called by feminist movements in Europe.

Today, facing the recovery of extreme and conservative rights, we must be vigilant and combative. In addition, the patriarchal culture is still maintained by the school system and by the cuts to those public services which facilitate our emancipation. We must fight against this capitalist and patriarchal system which deprives us of our rights!

Today, the Feminist Strike goes beyond the unequal pay gap strike. This strike puts the care work in the spotlight: daily, unpaid and invisible, but still the engine of the economy. So let’s prove that when women stop, the world stops!

What is the point of living in a society that normalizes the instability of the condition of women?

We reaffirm our rights to freely dispose of our bodies, to control our fertility, to decide on our sexuality and on our relationship to motherhood. We demand, for all, access to free abortion, as well as its withdrawal from the penal codes. #MyBodyMyChoice

We demand effective mechanisms to fight against all gender-based violence #MeToo, listening to the voices of victims #YoTeCreo, and the recognition of the term feminicide by making it effectively punishable by law #NiUnaMenos.

We demand decent wages and working conditions, the end of the dismissal to devalued part-time jobs and the end of poor pensions. We refuse to take over domestic work and caring for others, which neither States nor men take in co-responsibility. We demand a strong welfare state that supports families.

We demand the end of a neoliberal system which destroys our life and the planet. The first people affected by the climatic and ecological crises are the most precarious and are women. There will be no climate and social justice without true equality.

We call for an end to austerity and wars that endanger the lives of women, from trafficking to migration. To all our ills, the same culprits!

It is time to build an internationalism based on solidarity, equality, justice, peace and the defense of the life of all women! We follow the path drawn by courageous women like Rosa Luxemburg, in order to converge and build "a world where we are socially equal, humanly different and totally free".

originally published at the website of the Party of the European Left