Another article about International Womens Day from Lusaka. I think the following excerpt from the article shows what women face in todays society. Generally speaking, women are the most marginalised, oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in our country.
Women’s Day
Posted to the web March 8, 2002
As we commemorate the International Women’s Day that started on March 8, 1857 when a group of New York cloth industry workers, all women, demonstrated against poor working conditions, let’s struggle to ensure that discrimination against women should rank the same as those of a racial or ethnic nature.
And like all other injustices, the marginalisation, discrimination and oppression of women should make us tremble with indignation whenever and wherever they are committed. And as we honour this group of New York women workers, let’s not forget that the greatest enemy of life is an unjust social system that places profit over the satisfaction of basic human needs.
We shouldn’t forget that there can be no sustainable development if the intellectual capacities, creative potential and leadership abilities of women are ignored or suppressed. And how can we seriously talk of democracy in a system where the majority of our population are so lowly represented in the leadership of state institutions? We are talking about the low number of women elected or appointed to positions of authority.
This matter of the number of women elected is very important, and it cannot be denied that the number of women elected to important decision making bodies in our country is painfully low, especially if one considers that women make up over half of the population and that women are enthusiastically in support of deep democratic transformations in our country.
And moreover, women have a high degree of those qualities deemed necessary in a leader. We know that there are certain theories being bandied around alleging that women don’t like to be led by women. But we don’t believe that. If there’s a jot of truth to it, it will serve to show that a hard struggle has to be waged among women themselves; that they must overcome their own prejudices against equality, aside from the struggle that must be waged among men.
But the fight against the marginalisation and discrimination of women demands, as a first step, the clarification of our ideas. There’s need to get to the heart of this marginalisation and discrimination.
The fight against the marginalisation and discrimination of women requires action on several essential levels. First of all, a political line of action must be laid down. For women to successfully fight their marginalisation and discrimination there must be a conscious political commitment.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means, firstly, that the line must be laid down by a progressive political organisation which, defending the interests of the poor, marginalised and exploited masses as a whole, leads them into the fight against the status quo.
Only such an organisation will be in a position to formulate national strategy for this type of struggle. What this means in concrete terms is that in order to effectively fight their marginalisation, women must internalise the women’s movement’s political line and live by it in a creative way.
Otherwise they will throw themselves into sterile and secondary battles which will exhaust them uselessly and to no effect. And to internalise and live by the women’s movement’s line requires involvement in the tasks laid down by the movement. Just as a plant needs to strike roots in the ground in order to grow, so does the political line take root in progressive practice.
Progressive practice destroys the discriminatory and exploitative society, unleashes the internal struggle, demolishes our erroneous ideas and releases our critical sense and creative initiatives. In this context women must be mobilised for struggle and they must be organised.
They will then be able to start the offensive. They must be involved in the political education of the next generation and in the battle for the large-scale mobilisation of the masses - leading them to take part in making decisions affecting the country’s future.
The fight against the marginalisation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude - it is a fundamental necessity for the development of, and harmony in, our country, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its prosperity.
Generally speaking, women are the most marginalised, oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in our country. A woman is even marginalised and exploited by a man who is himself marginalised and exploited.
How can our country prosper without the removal of all this marginalisation, exploitation and humiliation of women? Will it be possible to get rid of the system of marginalisation and exploitation while keeping one part of the nation marginalised and exploited?
One cannot only partially wipe out marginalisation and exploitation, one cannot tear up only half the weeds without even stronger ones spreading out from the half that has survived. How can one make progress without mobilising women? If more than half the marginalised and exploited people consist of women, how can they be left on the fringe?
To make progress it is necessary to mobilise all the marginalised and exploited, and consequently women as well. Moreover, if we also consider the basic need for progressive ideas and practices to be continued by the new generation, how can we ensure the progressive education of the generation that will carry on our work if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the process? To say that women do not feel the need to get rid of their marginalisation and exploitation is a paltry argument which cannot stand up to analysis.
Women feel their subjection, they feel the need to change their situation. What happens is that the domination imposed by society, by stifling their initiative, often prevents them from expressing their aspirations, often prevents them from thinking of how to wage their struggle. …