On the eve of International Women’s Day (IWD) our comrades and friends played a revolutionary role to bring poor working-class women to the celebrations all over the country. Rich feminist, liberal and progressive women activists organized processions in big cities while playing our active role there.  We concentrated to bring more and more women to celebrate the IWD in the areas which were devastated in floods. 
As communists in Progressive Labor Party (PLP), we are striving to eliminate every form of exploitation like inequality, gender-based violence, religious hatred and injustice. Organizing women workers hit hardest by the system, and bringing them to the celebrations was a positive step forward in that direction.

From Afghanistan to Pakistan working class women need communism classless society where their safety, dignity and prosperity are guaranteed not bankrupt liberal feminism. They need a society based on equality, justice and freedom. They desperately need shelter, free education and free healthcare facilities. We cannot expect change in our society without organizing working-class women in the movement for an international communist revolution under the banner of PLP. 

 PL’ers celebrate leadership of women workers under attack

In rallies, organized in different cities to celebrate IWD, our comrades explained that in a country where poverty is about sixty percent, inflation is about 32 percent, unemployment is almost 10 percent, fascism is on rise and fundamentalist are getting more space how can we imagine that poor working-class women or even men can attend conferences and celebrations held in five-star hotels. 
In Pakistan and all over the world feminism is a bout capitalism and women bosses. That’s why feminists take up the issues which are related to ruling class women they talk about women rights but never utter a single sentence against the capitalist system which is exploiting poor women vigorously. 

When our comrades asked them to celebrate the IWD by singing and dancing they started to cry and scream while saying that “we are still living without proper shelters, medicines, food and clothing. How can we sing a song or dance with joy?” Our comrades gave them courage by giving some examples of optimism from the history of the poor working class and explained that it is the capitalist system which sucks our blood to survive. Bosses will never bring ease in our lives because they need more and more exploitation of the poor to become richer. We come to know that bosses have looted what was sent by different international charity organizations for the displaced population which shows that bosses will keep us deprived of every right until we fight back and get our rights.

We also helped brighten the mood with revolutionary poetry, songs and cultural dances in appreciation of the women in the class struggle for a communist revolution and  revolutionary change.

Pakistan is a country with 49.2 percent of women of the total population of 241 million but most of them have no right to give their opinion in family matters or even go to market without permission of their elders. They live like slaves and are treated brutally. They do hard work at home, in the fields or at the workplace from dawn to dusk without recognition of their labor. They always have been facing cruelty of their husbands, fathers or brothers at home and harassment at schools, markets or wherever they work. Poor working class women are humiliated and tortured by the landlords and supervisors at work.

Sexism, racism, and oppression—all fruits from the rotten capitalist tree

Domestic workers like women and young housemaids are more vulnerable, almost every day we hear the terrible stories of domestic workers about how they have been sexually, physically, psychologically and verbally abused. Housemaids are easy target of brutal attitude of the people they are working for.

According to a recent report girls aged ten to fourteen; one in every four homes is being abused sexually or physically. Same happened with the girls from Christian and Hindu community more easily. Most of the victims are kept silent by threatening them that if they try to expose savagery, they are facing their parents being killed.

During the celebrations PL’ers and our working class sisters had many lively political discussions. A PL’er  explained that we are living in a country where the gender gap is increasing day by day. According to the Davos index, we are standing at 142 out of 146. It is our duty to spread class consciousness among the working-class women to fight against exploitation, poverty and illiteracy. We condemned the gender-based wage disparities at the workplaces and emphasized that women are suffering because of the rotten capitalist economic policies of the bosses so we need to build a strong movement against all these capitalist policies and we are striving for. Women workers and PL’ers discussed important demands we are fighting for such as:

•Rejecting the proposed amendments in the constitutions attacking transgendered workers. 

•Demanding provision of shelter, food and healthcare facilities to the displaced workers  still living in horrible conditions

•The recognition of unpaid women’s labor in the home.  

Only communism can liberate women workers

However a PL’er  reiterated that reform cannot bring change in the society except to give some relief to the working class people and we know that bosses can go for the reform which can help them to sustain their bloody capitalist system but they will not allow making a communist revolution because communist revolution will end their exploitative system. They ended by saying that if we want to get rid of exploitation, gender based inequality, fascism and fundamentalism we must build a revolutionary international communist party.

PLP is the only hope for the working class people to establish a society based on “from each according to his/her abilities to each according to need”. We are building an international revolutionary communist PLP to get rid of all the miseries working class people are facing all over the world. PLP salutes the fightback and leadership of women workers for a bright revolutionary future of communism in this dark night era all over the world.