DECLARATION
22/11/2021. 25 November is the world day to fight against gender-based violence. They established the date in 1981 during the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting held in Bogota in homage to the Mirabal sisters: Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa. The Dominican Republic dictator Trujillo kidnapped, tortured and murdered them in 1960. In memory of the Mirabal butterflies and homage to all victims of patriarchal violence, we renew our commitment to fight and say #NiUnaMenos; the governments are responsible.
The Dominican government today is responsible for racist, sexist and xenophobic state violence, through the deportation of pregnant Haitian women, detaining them even while in hospitals, preventing them from obtaining medical care and separating them from their families. In Mexico, in the middle of the pandemic, femicides per day passed from 10 to 11, and it is estimated that rape has increased by up to 30 per cent, while 90 per cent of sexual crimes against women go unreported. There is no access to justice, and re-victimisation is the common denominator. In Spain, too, the situation is dire: in cities such as Barcelona, there are at least 3 reports of sexual assaults every day, which is alarming considering that it is estimated only between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of cases are reported because of institutional impunity.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro’s openly chauvinist government strengthens discourses that encourage violent and misogynist practices in the country. The existing data is alarming. During social isolation, the country registered 1,350 cases of feminicide, one every six and a half hours. The lack of investment and public policies aggravates this situation. Minister Damares invested only 44 per cent of the scarce budget that corresponds to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, while they paid billions for the public debt.
In Venezuela, a woman is murdered every 36 hours for gender-related reasons. The government, which claims to be feminist, still refuses to give figures and it is women’s organisations that monitor the situation. There is no respite for women workers, dissidents and women from popular sectors, at the same time as the male chauvinist violence, precariousness or the austerity package that imposes starvation wages.
Meanwhile, in Chile, the far-right candidate Kast, who questions women’s right to vote, wants to ban abortion even under specific circumstances and give subsidies only to married families, among other misogynist atrocities, is in the runoff.
In Argentina, we counted a femicide every 20 hours last month and yet the budget allocated to the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity to combat male violence is still insufficient. Meanwhile, the Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez allocates millions of pesos to pay for the foreign debt.
For all these reasons, and in the heat of the fourth feminist wave, the fight against male violence continues to be one of the fundamental demands of the women’s movement and dissidents all over the world. We say that governments are responsible for gender violence, which has been growing amid a pandemic, because of the impunity and complicity of institutions. We demand the urgent enactment of public policies with budgets to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women, including women workers, peasant women, migrant women, racialised women, trans women and all those who suffer from the combination of racist and sexist oppression and exploitation.
Women and dissidents are the most affected by the current economic and social crisis because we are the heads of the poorest households, the most precarious workers and those who take care of others and clean because of the sexual division of labour. According to an ECLAC study (2021), in just one year of the pandemic, we women have lost a decade in our share of the labour market. Faced with this situation, women workers and women from the popular sectors say that the bosses and the capitalists should pay for the crisis because they caused it.
This 25N, the International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) will be part of the international day of struggle, joining in the united mobilisations of women and dissidents against male chauvinist violence. By promoting the #GreenTide that travels across Latin America for the right to legal, safe and free abortion. Standing up to the governments that apply austerity plans, demanding decent wages, full employment and the reinstatement of laid-off workers, most of whom are women. We also confront the reactionary churches and other institutions that sustain this capitalist, racist and patriarchal system that violates us. We do so from our revolutionary, feminist, anti-racist and socialist perspective, convinced that only a working-class government will end oppression and exploitation on the road to building a socialist society.
International Unit for Workers and the Fourth International
(IUW-FI)
