Capitalism keeps women enslaved
From a talk
by Kathy Durkin at
the Dec. 2-3 Workers World Party
conference.
Globalization has ushered in more hardships for
women, children and men in many countries, increasing
poverty, unemployment and hunger. Many women and children
work for pennies a day and live in terrible conditions to
benefit vast corporate empires. There are more sweatshops,
piecework, terrible wages, long workdays, no benefits and
child labor.
Karl Marx predicted that as wealth is concentrated in the
hands of fewer capitalists, workers' living standards would
be pushed down. The international feminization of poverty has
grown. Much of the world's cheap or unpaid labor is done by
women and children. The resulting megaprofits are taken by
imperialist corporations.
Women are the poorest of the world's poor and account for
70 percent of the 1.3 billion people who live in abject
poverty. Nine hundred million women earn under $1 a day.
In the last 20 years, as globalization has intensified,
the number of rural women living in poverty has risen by 50
percent. Indigenous women's small businesses, such as
craft-making and vending, have been wiped out by the
onslaught of transnational corporations.
Women are often forced to choose between terribly paid
work, no work, or are forced into prostitution, including in
the former socialist countries of the USSR and Eastern
Europe.
Most migrant workers who leave their homelands are women.
When they arrive in the metropolitan imperialist countries,
they face exploitative jobs with no rights and very low
pay.
Worldwide there are 20 million unsafe abortions performed
annually. There are 750,000 maternal deaths. And 580 million
women are illiterate. Only socialism can provide decent
health care and education for these women and their
children.
We know that capitalism and imperialism cannot be
reformed. This system has to be overthrown. For the sake of
women, children and men everywhere, we have to get rid of
this terrible system and replace it with a humane one.
Women need socialism and a revolutionary party that will
fight for women's rights with women in key roles. Women in
India, Mexico, Haiti, Africa, the Middle East and Europe need
it. And we need it right here.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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