Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 3 March, 2025
The 8th of March, International Women’s Day, is the occasion to celebrate the courageous struggles of women all over the world for their dignity and rights. It is the occasion for all women and men to reaffirm our commitment to the cause of the liberation of women from all forms of exploitation and oppression.
Women in our country are fighting for the right to education and healthcare, the right to secure livelihood and a dignified living wage. They are demanding safety at the workplace, in schools and colleges and in public places. Lakhs of Anganwadi and ASHA workers are demanding the recognition of their rights as workers, including their right to legal minimum wages. Women working in the informal sector, construction workers, gig and platform workers, health and sanitation workers are all fighting for security of livelihood, just remuneration, social security and safe working conditions. Women workers are agitating against their cruelly long working hours. They are demanding an 8-hour working day. They are demanding maternity benefits and child care facilities.
Lakhs of kisan women are braving heavy odds and persisting in their struggle for a guaranteed remunerative price for their produce.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India hails the fighting spirit of our women, who are defying the heavy challenges that our society has placed before them.
The Prime Minister and other government spokesmen talk about Viksit Bharat (Developed India) but the conditions of women show how backward our country remains even in this 78th year since independence. About 60 percent of women of working age are still confined to household work. The remaining 40 percent who are in the labour force are victims of super-exploitation and sexual harassment. The rape and murder of a young woman doctor in Kolkata last year is just one of numerous such cases which show the extremely high level of insecurity which working women face. Women continue to be victims of domestic violence, dowry-killings, and honour killings. Female foeticide is rampant despite the law against it. Women are deprived of an equal share in family inheritance. All this is a stark exposure of the hollowness of slogans such as Viksit Bharat and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao.
In every incidence of communal and sectarian violence, women are the worst victims. This was clearly visible in the terrible crimes against women in Manipur over the past nearly two years, and in the deliberate targeting of women during the communal carnage in North East Delhi five years ago.
Through long years of struggle, women in our country have forced those in power to enact certain laws to safeguard the rights of women. However, such laws have not been effective. Crimes against women have continued and are on the rise, right under the eyes of the law-enforcement agencies. The criminals are in most cases well connected with those in power. Justice is denied to women at every step. Leaders of political parties that claim to represent the people have themselves been guilty of some of the most monstrous crimes against women.
The root cause of the continuing discrimination and oppression of women lies in the nature of the state and the social system it maintains. It is a system of capitalist exploitation which preserves the remnants of feudalism, the caste system and all the backward ideas and customs that justify the restriction of women to an inferior and subordinate position. The subordinate position of women in society helps in maximising capitalist profits through their super-exploitation. The super-exploitation of women workers serves to push down the level of the entire working class.
The institutions of the state, including the bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary at every level, openly discriminate against women. They hold the victim herself responsible for the crimes committed against her.
The political system of parliamentary democracy is designed to keep the capitalist class in power. Periodic elections serve to perpetuate the illusion that ‘people are choosing their government’. However, the reality is that super-rich capitalists determine the outcome of elections, through their money power, their control over the media and the Election Commission, as well as manipulation of voter lists and EVMs.
The masses of women and men are excluded from decision-making power. The parliament and state assemblies make the laws and the governments decide the policies, all for the benefit of the capitalist class. There are no mechanisms for people to make laws or amend them. People have no mechanism to select their candidates for election, to hold them accountable or to recall them. Elected representatives are accountable not to the electorate, but to the high command of the political party they represent.
The notion that the problems of women will get addressed if more women occupy official positions, is an illusion. Increase in the number of women in official positions has not led to any reduction in the discrimination and oppression of women. The class in power remains the same. The state continues to maintain the same exploitative system and trample on the rights of the working people. The political process continues to exclude the majority of women and men from decision-making power.
The only way forward is for women to build and strengthen their fighting organisations, and strengthen their unity with the working class and all other exploited and oppressed people. We cannot rely on the state or any of its institutions to defend the rights of women. Organised self-defence, in unity with all the working and oppressed people, is the only way!
In the face of the growing struggles of women, the political parties of the ruling class are all competing with each other to promise all kinds of subsidies and money transfers to women. However, what women are fighting for is not merely some more sops but liberation from all forms of exploitation and oppression.
The history of the past 100 years and more shows that the struggle for the liberation of women made the greatest advance precisely in those countries where the working class in alliance with all the exploited and oppressed overthrew the capitalist system and began building the new socialist society, free from all forms of exploitation and oppression. Ending the rule of the bourgeoisie is the first and necessary step to open the path for the profound revolutionary transformations that will lead to the emancipation of women.
On International Women’s Day 2025, the Communist Ghadar Party of India calls on all women and men to unite and step up the struggle for an end to all forms of exploitation, oppression, and discrimination against women!
Origin of International Women’s DayIn 1910, at the International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, the German socialist leader Clara Zetkin had proposed the observance of an international day of struggle of women for their rights and their emancipation. This proposal was enthusiastically accepted by the Conference. For several years before this conference, women workers in various sectors and different cities of the world had been waging many courageous and organised struggles against their exploitation. The 8th of March came to be chosen as International Women’s Day in commemoration of a heroic struggle by women garment workers in New York on that day in 1857. The first celebration of International Women’s Day in numerous countries was in 1911. International Women’s Day began to be celebrated at a time when capitalism was developing rapidly, and millions of women were entering the work force. Capitalism, far from bringing freedom to women, only enslaved them in factories, broke up their families, and increased the burdens on them as women, as workers and as homemakers, while denying them any rights. Women workers came together and brought their protests out onto the streets, showing enormous courage and resolve. Through their fearless struggles, they were able to wrest some victories from the exploiters and the ruling classes. It is this tradition of struggle and sacrifice that International Women’s Day has always celebrated. Over the last century, the struggle for the rights and emancipation of women has grown in strength to the point where the exploiters and oppressors of women themselves have had to make a show of celebrating 8 March as International Women’s Day. In the process, the real character and history of International Women’s Day – as a day which originated in the militant struggle of working women against capitalist exploitation, and which was integrally linked with the movement for socialism – has been sought to be covered up. As we march forward in our struggle for liberation, it is important to reaffirm the significance of International Women’s Day, as a commemoration of the struggle of women for more than a hundred years, for a society free from all forms of exploitation and oppression. |