Declaration by EL-FEM, March 8^th, 2016

As the Feminist Network of the European Left we take International Women’s Day, a socialist tradition for 105 years, as the occasion to protest against the increasing deterioration of our societies, both in the countries where we live and on the planet which we inhabit. What Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin said 100 years ago, that the European bourgeoisies are bribing the working classes of their own countries into consent to war and an unfair economic world order by sharing the booty and the fruits of a global system of exploitation with them is as true today as it was then. Based as it is on the exploitation of people and resources elsewhere in the world, the wealth we enjoy in Europe must be redistributed, both on a national, a European and a global scale.

And it must be redistributed between the sexes. Everywhere in the world, women are the poorest members of their respective societies, although we work up to three times as much as men. But our work is not considered worth the same as men’s. Burdened by unpaid or badly-paid care work and considered as supported by the male breadwinner, women often cannot live financially independent lives of their own.

While the lives of ever more people on this planet and the relationships between us are structured by exploitation, violence and war, those who have established this system and who run it, continue to reap the fruits of our work, endanger the existence of our planet and try to fashion women to the image of men. At the same time as scarcity and need, hunger and death, war and civil war are increasingly becoming the characteristic modes of human existence, ever more people are left to fight for bare survival and made to turn against each other. This is not worthy of us as human beings. That is why we want to draw our attention to those who are responsible for this global condition, which is not only politicians, but also (financial) capitalists acquiring the profits and withdrawing from societies the resources urgently needed and, not last, withheld from women. Only politics can change that and if we want our vision of another Europe and another world realized we as activists must bring into power politics that reflect our desire for peace, social and economic justice and a caring co-existence of humans.

Both the over-work of those who are in paid jobs and the insecurities coming with precarious work and unemployment have to be overcome. We want work to be redistributed also among the sexes.

To secure the existence of the current system of madness, its propagandists in the media tell women every day, the more so since New Year’s night, that our safety is in danger at the hands of migrant men. Not only should we remain suspicious of voices who pay attention to sexist harassment and violence only when the perpetrators can be labelled ‘migrant’, we also refuse singing the same tune with feminists who claim that “the Other” (i.e. Muslim, immigrant) is responsible for the increase of violence against women. Because, as women we know that sexist violence is everywhere in our lives and comes in many shapes. This whole system of violence – structural, physical, psychical – has to be tackled, and not just addressed when the perpetrators can be identified as `men from another culture’. As left feminists we refuse to be exploited for racist discourse and politics. We deeply believe in the possibility of a co-existence of humans who are different, in the mediation of conflicts and in people’s capacity of learning to respect each other.

As feminists of the European Left we demand an end to all arms trade, to European military interference in other parts of the world. Instead of destabilising countries and entire regions by supporting war-mongering groups, we demand European foreign policies of peace making and peace keeping.

In the face of current military conflicts and gross economic inequality on this planet we demand a policy of open borders for people who flee danger to find refuge in Europe. We think it is a shame that most politicians, instead of providing the resources necessary for establishing a culture of welcome and a dialogue between people appreciating diversity and difference, leave to individual and civil society initiatives the task of providing support to and showing solidarity with those seeking refuge in our countries. We utterly condemn the politics of closing the borders to prevent free passage across Europe.

We stand in particular solidarity with the (in alphabetical order and definitely incomplete)

• activists of the World March of Women who have in an enormous effort tried to link up women’s struggles all over the world
• environmentalist activists who preserve seeds in India and elsewhere and defend food autonomy against Monsanto and other multinationals
• girls and women who are trafficked into rich countries for sex
• mostly young women in the sweatshops of this planet who are not paid a living wage by the transnational garment company they work for and who do not see their children grow up. To support their struggle, we will boycott buying the products of this company.
• refugee women who have been traumatised by the wars and civil wars raging in their countries and who are raped on their flight and find themselves without adequate care and permanent danger of being deported once they have arrived in Europe
• single mothers, who are worn down with worry because they do not know how to feed their children tomorrow since neither the children’s fathers nor the state pays them alimony
• women of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine and other countries torn apart by civil wars fuelled by NATO, the European Union and the US
• women who offer their support to refugees and migrants coming to Europe; especially the women of Greece who despite the problems they experience due to the crisis, are at the side of thousands of refugees arriving every day from the sea, by giving generously their assistance in rescues, in the reception centres and wherever needed, as their attitude is a strong answer to xenophobia and to closed borders policies by promoting in practice the principles of humanism and solidarity
• women of Kurdistan who fight a two-front-war or survival against attacks by IS and the Turkish army
• women of Palestine and Israel, whose efforts at making peace need to be supported by the international community
• women working in health and old age care who are forced to measure the care they give by the minute

As EL-FEM, we refuse to be part of this patriarchal and capitalist madness destroying ever more human lives – lives that were given by women –, natural resources and global solidarity.

As left feminists, we fight for a Europe of equality, social justice and solidarity.