By Margarida Corral Sánchez, Confederal Secretary for Women and Training for Employment of the Confederación Intersindical Galega (CIG)
On 8 March 2019, Galicia was one of the territories that participated in the international women’s strike, successfully focusing the debate on the issue of care and discrimination suffered by women both in and outside the workplace. This historic day of demonstrations paralyzed a large part of our country.
The Galician Interunion Confederation (CIG) has called, for the second time in its history, for an all-women strike. While last year we called for two-hour work stoppages, facilitating women’s participation in the more than 40 rallies organized, this year we decided to extend the call for the entire day, calling for picket lines and demonstrations throughout the day. Women have therefore occupied the public space that for centuries has been denied to them.
We are aware that feminism must be a priority for the Galician national popular movement, just as we believe it is necessary to integrate class discourse into it. At a time when the feminist movement enjoys great support and participation, however, it seems to be quite devoid of any revolutionary class ideology.
It is no coincidence that the United Nations has eliminated the suffix "workers" from the commemoration of the 8M. With the designation of International Women’s Day, they have definitively eliminated from the collective memory the class content that gave rise to the commemoration. Indeed, the governments are not interested in the existence of organized women who maintain a combative and confrontational attitude with economic powers, those who exploit and discriminate against us as women and oppress us as a nation.
Colonial capitalism prefers a homogenized, light and superficial discourse. By using our symbols, by appropriating revolutionary dates, the system only shows what is apparent, it tries to make us invisible and marginalize us with a uniform discourse. Even when we use revolutionary tools such as strikes, the system turns it into an instrument of advertising and not an instrument of combat and confrontation with the government.
As far as we are concerned, we are betting on a union model of assembly, aimed at building awareness, mobilization, activation and dynamization of women workers in this country. We are fleeing the convocations that seek to ritualize March 8, from those who want it to remain a festive date and without critical discourse against employers, governments, capitalism and patriarchy.
We encourage the women’s strike, because it is the instrument for working class women to improve their living conditions.
Refusing to do the work entrusted to us, we show that this system discriminates us, attacks us and makes us precarious. In this way we become aware of the invisible work of women. We demonstrate that our role is not subsidiary, but fundamental to the development of society. We identify and denounce the inequalities imposed also in the field of education. We are participating in the consumer strike to denounce a savage capitalism that exploits human beings and nature. We denounce an economic system that uses our free work at home and puts us in a social and economic disadvantage.
The 8M 2019 demonstrated the strength and mobilization capacity of Galician women workers. We stopped to remind society that we are half of humanity and therefore half of everything belongs to us. We stop to demand justice. We are not going to allow our rights to be curtailed, while we still have so many to conquer. The future is ours!
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