8th of March: Just another day within our struggle for equality
March 8th, 2010 by iusyuser85

The International Women’s day is a crucial day for the socialist movement all over the world. It was founded as an initiative by famous socialist woman Clara Zetkin and the Socialist Women International. Throughout the history of 8th of March it has always been a fighting day to underline and make the struggles which women worldwide are finding themselves in more visible. The meaning of the day has not changed, but is more and more suffering from commercialisation. The International Women’s day is changing to another Valentines or Mother’s day; flower and chocolate shops smell the big business of another gift day.
For us as Socialists it must be clear that we have to re-establish and continue to use the International Women’s day as a platform for political fights. But it is not enough to fight on just one day per year; we need the International Women’s days to be 365 days a year.
In 2010 the International Women’s day is celebrated while the 54th Commission on the status of Women and the 15th anniversary of the famous Beijing Conference on women are taking place in New York. The progress achieved by establishing the Beijing platform for action will be evaluated and discussions about the feminist politics in the future are taking place.
The launch of the Beijing platform in 1995 was a great effort made by Social democratic, socialist and progressive women. The outcome of the fourth World Conference on Women was a further step to real equality between men and women. The Beijing platform for action was created to take measures to protect and promote the rights of women and girls as an integral part of universal human rights. The goal of the Beijing Declaration was the equality of women and men - not only in economic and political terms, but also in the field of personal and social rights.
Fifteen years after Beijing the situation seems more difficult and a lot more unclear than in 1995. In the last 15 years feminist and progressive movements had to face an enormous conservative backlash especially in the field of women rights. Eight years of the conservative Bush administration in the USA have left their marks. Conservative governments in Europe and also the growing influence of the Catholic Church in some parts of the world did their job. Women rights as universal human rights are far away from becoming a common vision for the future. In fact the goal of universally accepted women rights is again an open battleground and feminists have to fight to stabilize and save what has been achieved years ago.
The 15th anniversary of the Beijing conference is more than evaluation and celebration. It is one more step towards the goal: “Women rights are human rights!” Fifteen years after the launch of the Beijing platform it is necessary to formulate this as a common goal again. But Beijing+15 should not only maintain the already achieved, it should also be a step forward. We are facing the biggest economic crisis since 1929 and women are - in the long term of this economic development - suffering most of it. We have to urge the fight for real equality and can’t allow the crisis to endanger women rights and equality issues.
We are far away from our goal to create a society in which everybody could live emancipated and equal to each other. The 8th of March is a good day to reflect our struggles for equality and to gain energy and motivation for our future fights. The main slogan for our activities as young socialists must always be: There is no socialism without feminism.
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