WAIL Statement: Liberation of women and humanity

WAIL Statement: Liberation of women and humanity

The Women’s Anti-Imperialist League (WAIL) takes pride in reiterating its primary guiding principle in commemoration of International Women’s Day, 8th March, and of Women’s Month. No better strategy exists to achieve women’s liberation than to oppose imperialism, for the roots of women’s oppression lie in the concept of private property that enables multinational corporations to loot the wealth of nations, expropriate social surplus, dispossess entire peoples and deprive working women and men of just returns on their labor.

We affirm that at no time in modern history is this strategy truer and more urgent, as US-led imperialism unleashes a world culture of violence, chaos and pillage, remaking with exquisite cruelty, the world in its own ruthless image. It is fitting that the Global Day of Action against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan should be held this month, as hundreds and thousands of women have perished in wars not of their making; hundreds and thousands more have lost rights and freedoms just so global capitalism can continue to make profit.

Elsewhere, middle-level civil wars persist, inspired and encouraged by US-led imperialism. Haiti remains in the convulsions of an invasion by so-called UN “peacekeepers” soldiers drawn from equally impoverished countries subservient to imperialism.

Palestine continues to bleed day by day and Iran is now in the cross hairs of those who own and control most of the world’s weapons of mass destruction.

Indeed, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse tread the footprints of imperialism.In the Pacific region, a young woman is raped by 6 US marines; another woman, a new immigrant to the US, is killed in Iraq as a soldier in her adapted country’s military. The sole congressional representative of organized women, one who authored the country’s anti-trafficking law and the law on violence against women, is charged with rebellion and threatened with arrest and incarceration, if not the death penalty.

Meanwhile, in steady streams through airports and wharfs, 700,000 women are exported to the international labor and sex trade markets.

The fate of the women of the Philippines may be extreme but it is a fate truly symbolic of what happens to propertyless women under global capitalism: sexual slavery, silence, violence, death and relentless exploitation. While some women may escape this fate, majority of the women of the world are poor and propertyless. Indeed, women the world over own or control less than 1% of the world’s resources, though they constitute more than half of the world’s population.

The depth of women’s exploitation under global capitalism can be gleaned from the mega-brothel being constructed in Germany. This mega-brothel is designed to house some of the 40,000 prostitutes, drawn from who knows where, who are expected to be part of the entertainment at the World Cup Sports Fest. Not even a shred of shame attends this bald-face commoditization and exploitation of women, which is justified and excused by an endless prattle about “choice” and “proactive sexuality.” As if the choice between intolerable poverty and sexual slavery is a choice at all! As if pleasure had anything to do with prostitution, as far as the sex slave is concerned!

WAIL therefore calls on all the women of the world, especially working women, to remember that the first to become private property were women and that the roots of women’s oppression are entwined with the very concepts of class and private property. WAIL calls on all women to continue to struggle against their oppression, to dismantle imperialism which maintains, strengthens and exacerbates the root causes of women’s exploitation. WAIL calls on working women, and women who believe in genuine equality and true women’s rights and freedoms to forge an iron solidarity, to come to one’s another’s aid, in an alliance against imperialism and reaction. WAIL calls on all our revolutionary brothers to lend their support and aid, and to march hand-in-hand with us, not only for women’s liberation but for the liberation of all humanity.

Join the women’s anti-imperialist front!

Solidarity with the Embattled Women of Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Palestine and the Philippines!

Onward with the Struggle Against Imperialism!

Raise high the banner for Women’s Liberation!