Greetings from Denmark to the International Women’s Conference Caracas, Venezuela, March 4-8th 2011
Dear Comrades, Dear participants in the International Women’s Conference -
Your Conference in Caracas is of great and worldwide importance. Unfortunately I’m not able to participate in person, but I send you the warmest greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark, where the world historical decision about the realization of the international women's day of struggle was taken.
This happened at the Second International Socialist Women’s Congress, held on the 26th and 27th of August. Representatives from 17 countries participated in the Conference, and the following year the first international women’s day was held, when more than one million women took part in demonstrations and manifestations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark.
That is why we this year may celebrate the 100th anniversary of ‘Our day’ – and now in most countries and on all continents. Your Conference, that will assist in defining the tasks of today for the struggle of the working women and the broad masses of women, is itself a proof of how alive and how necessary this struggle and this day is.
Clara Zetkin, the revolutionary German champion of women’s rights, formulated at the Congress in Copenhagen the resolution on the international women’s day with these words:
“In agreement with the class-conscious, political and trade union organizations of the proletariat of their respective countries, the Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women's Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women's suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women's question according to Socialist precepts.
The Women's Day must have an international character and is to be prepared carefully.”
Of course, the right of women to vote has been victorious in almost all countries. Except for a few that enjoy the support of the present day centre of global reaction – US imperialism.
But the women’s day of struggle has preserved and even strengthened its international and world wide character.
The fate and future of the working class, the working women and the broad masses of women are insolubly interconnected in the same struggle. Everywhere in the world they are rising against the same enemies: Imperialism and its lackeys and wars, capitalist exploitation, and reaction that will keep the women and everything progressive in eternal bondage.
These forces of reaction are seeking to shift the burdens of the economic world crises on to the backs of the workers and popular masses, deeming them to poverty and ever greater misery. And those who suffer most from the consequences of the crises are the women and our children.
Therefore they stand up against poverty, against the global increases in the price of food, against unemployment and underemployment. We are with enthusiasm witnessing the victorious strength of the masses of Arab women who side by side with their youth and their men have risen in popular revolutions to change their basic conditions and put an end to the despotic and repressive regimes. With great hopes we see the movement for liberation of the broad masses of women in Latin America, who are struggling for real social change.
The revolutionary fire is spreading throughout the world. We live again in revolutionary times, and a new surge of revolutions – democratic, anti imperialist and socialist – have seen their beginnings. When the broad masses of women join them, the victory of the revolutions will be assured in the end!
We have in Denmark a woman minister, who believe that the women’s struggle has been won with a couple of female ministers, some more female CEO’s in the capitalist enterprises or more women soldiers in the imperialist armies. Minister of Gender Lykke Friis has told the media, that 8th of March after one hundred years should not be celebrated any more, but should be closed.
But in Denmark as in all other countries there is a need of the women’s day of struggle, as long as true equality does not exist, as long as equal pay for equal work is an utopia, as long as the double work of the women still is there and ideological suppression is preventing us from realizing our possibilities.
That our liberation only an be won in the joint class struggle for a new society without exploitation and suppression – a socialist society – is also a part of the heritage, that Clara Zetkin and the revolutionary women a hundred years ago gave us as a perspective and a concrete goal.
Long live The International Congress of Women 2011!
Long live the International Women’s Day! Dorte Grenaa
former chair person of the Workers’ Communist Party of Denmark (APK), member of the Central Committee,
former chair person of the Women’s Front of Denmark