The history of march 8 and the feminist movement has been profanated, violated, colonised and distorted in a way to mischaracterize its reason for being.
In 1910, Clara Zetkin proposed the creation of an International Women’s Day at the II International Congress of Socialist Women, in Copenhagen. Several demonstrations by workers in Europe have followed since the proposal to create the date. The most famous demonstration took place on March 8, 1917, when Russian weaving workers went on strike and asked for support from metalworkers.
International Women’s Day is a political date, created by women’s movements around the world at the beginning of the 20th century, demanding the right to vote, better working conditions and citizen emancipation, as well as combating sexual abuse within factories by employers. Therefore, this date symbolises the resistance of women and their struggle to guarantee their rights and liberate their class from the system of male domination.
It was through the struggle for the basic recognition of their right to citizenship that women were able, very recently, to enter universities, participate in politics and begin to dispute patriarchal hegemonic narratives about History, Culture and Science as a whole. Thus, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Women’s Studies and the Feminist Movement or Women’s Liberation Movement emerged, demanding the recognition of women as a class exploited through reproductive and domestic work, denouncing the sexism that translates into in the domination of the male sexual class over women, and highlighting patriarchy as the historical root of class society and all systems of exploitation.
Generally, March 8, International Women’s Day, is associated, both by the media and by the public and private sectors, with a commemorative date with commercial appeal. We emphasise that the importance of this day transcends celebration and tributes, being, above all, a day to promote sexual class consciousness among women and the fight to end the system of male domination.
What we wish for the 8m
We wish that girls and women can develop and choose their paths without limitations and sexist and dehumanising social impositions. We wish that their work be recognized in all spheres: domestic, reproductive and productive. That they can express their voice as citizens and political subjects, without suffering retaliation for doing so. That their basic rights are guaranteed, without being systematically victimized by countless misogynistic violence, such as sexual objectification and exploitation, harassment, rape, obstetric violence, reproductive exploitation, femicide, genital mutilation, hate speech, among other material and symbolic violence.
We hope that 8M will be a date to rescue and strengthen the historical agendas of feminism, among them:
- the denunciation of patriarchy as the founding system of all known forms of structural violence, such as colonialism, ecocide, racism and homophobia;
- denouncing male violence and combating feminicide;
- the fight against sexual violence, harassment and rape culture;
- the fight against pornography, prostitution and surrogacy;
- the fight for reproductive autonomy, sexual education and the right to abortion;
- the fight against domestic violence and femicide;
- the fight against obstetric, legal and institutional violence against mothers and their children;
- the repeal of the Parental Alienation Law in Brazil, abolition of the term “parental alienation” and its correlates;
- the implementation of public policies to generate work and financial autonomy for women mothers, especially solo mothers;
- combating racism and strengthening black and indigenous women’s organisations;
- the protection of children and denouncing the culture of pedophilia;
- the liberation from sexist social roles;
- the recognition of reproductive, domestic and care work as effective and fundamental work for the economy;
- the demand for physical, intellectual, sporting and political spaces exclusive to women, therefore protected from male domination and violence;
- the fight against lesbo hatred and the strengthening of lesbian women’s organisations;
- denouncing and combating male hegemony and masculinist and neoliberal theories in spaces of intellectual production, including universities, parties and mixed social movements;
- women’s right to self-definition;
- the recovery and appreciation of the History and Culture, past and present, of women;
- the strengthening of artistic, intellectual and political creation initiatives by women, with a feminist perspective;
- the transformation of social, political and economic organisation from a perspective centred on women and children;
To achieve these objectives, from which we derive a more just society, with free people, without systematic oppression and exploitation, we must combat patriarchy, the system of male domination, which has been imposing violence and war as a mode of social organisation for at least 5 thousand years.
What the 8m is not
8M is not a date created to celebrate “feminine characteristics”, beauty, delicacy, determination or any other stereotype of so-called femininity. It was a date created to mark the working class exploitation of women and our struggles for emancipation. However, it is common for right-wing groups to use this day to reinforce sexist stereotypes and perpetuate the patriarchal narrative about “women’s place”.
The prof. Eva Blay, from the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences/USP states that
Decoupling March 8, today considered a festive and capitalist day – in which bosses and companies insist on “giving” employees makeup, flowers and services in beauty salons – from the workers’ struggle for better working conditions, is a way of erasing the protagonism of women in their own social and political history.
The emptying of the political meaning of International Women’s Day, promoted by conservative wings and largely supported by industry and commerce, which benefit from it, resulted in great demobilisation around the fundamental agendas of 8M and deepened the distancing of ordinary women from feminist debates to which date sought to give visibility.
On the other hand, when it comes to progressive social movements, the emptying of March 8 is due to the ideological co-option of the feminist movement by neoliberalism, which propagates a “feminism” without depth and commitment to the real issues that affect women’s lives. These movements have contributed to the erasure of women as political subjects and perpetuated sexist impositions, such as the idea that women should accept and prioritise the agendas of other movements and relegate their own issues to the background. We can draw a parallel with what happens every day to millions of Brazilian women in their homes, forced into “invisible” reproductive, domestic and care work for children, the elderly, husbands and the community, being deprived of attention to themselves and their basic needs.
Even more serious are self-proclaimed “feminist” or leftist movements defaming, coercing, attacking and even criminalising women who stand for a feminism centred on women, for spaces exclusive to our sex and for the fundamental right to define ourselves. This type of political persecution is brutal, undemocratic and anti-feminist, and constitutes political violence against women and masculinist reactionism.
8M is not about “welcoming the world”, as this apparently “nice” maxim constitutes a self-boycott of the movement and corresponds to the expectation that we be submissive to the demands of groups other than women. Feminism, like International Women’s Day, must be about putting girls and women at the centre, aware that, historically speaking, the struggle for liberation of women, mothers of all humanity, is the mother of all struggles.
Women of the world, unite!
“Maybe early, maybe late. It will be, however, when there is enough culture and solid independence among women for them to consider themselves individuals. Only then do we believe there is a better civilization”, stated Antonieta de Barros (1901-1952). The contributions of feminist women to the recovery of women’s history and to the dissemination of sexual class consciousness have allowed us today to see that the struggle for women’s liberation holds the key to a world with peace, social justice and the reintegration of human culture with living ecosystems.
However, the lack of knowledge about the cultural and political history of women causes women to remain oblivious to their own reality and submissive to patriarchal culture. Therefore, March 8th is a day for us to turn our attention to the extensive work developed by women intellectuals, artists, activists, thinkers, who came before us or who exist today, and who contributed to the women’s movement in practically all areas of knowledge.
Sign the manifest
BIBLIOGRAFIA FEMINISTA
Below is a list of bibliographies of women who have profoundly impacted feminist thought through their work. Let’s make the most of it. For a women’s day that truly belongs to women.
BRODRIBB, Somer. Nothing mat(t)ers: a feminist critique of postmodernism. 1992.
BROWNMILLER, Susan. Against our will. São Paulo. Cassandra, 2023.
COREA, Gena. The mother machine: reproductive technologies from artificial insemination to artificial wombs. HarperCollins, 1985.
DALY, Mary. Gyn/ecology: the metaethics of radical feminism. 1990.
DWORKIN, Andrea. Pornography: men possessing women. 1981.
EKMAN, Kajsa Ekis. Being and being bought: prostitution, surrogacy and the split self. 2014.
FALUDI, Susan. Backlash: the counterattack in the undeclared war against women. 1991.
FEDERICI, Silvia. Caliban and the witch: women, body and primitive accumulation. São Paulo: Elefante, 2023.
GIMBUTAS, Marija. The living goddesses. 2001.
GONZALEZ, Lélia. For an Afro-Latin American feminism: essays, interventions and dialogues. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020.
LERNER, Gerda. The creation of patriarchy: history of the domination of women by men. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2019.
LERNER, Gerda. The creation of feminist consciousness: women’s 1,200-year struggle to free their minds from patriarchal thinking. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2022.
JEFFREYS, Sheila. Gender hurts: a feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism. 2014.
LORDE, Audre. Outsider sister: essays and conferences. Autêntica, 2019.
MIES, Maria. Patriarchy and accumulation on a global scale: women in the international division of labor. São Paulo: Ema Livros: Editora Timo, 2022.
MIES, Maria; SHIVA, Vandana. Ecofeminism. São Paulo: Luas, 2021.
MIYARES, Alicia. Trans delusion and misogyny: from the transgender subject to transhumanism. 2022.
OYEWÙMÍ, Oyèrónkẹ́. The invention of women: constructing an African meaning for Western gender discourses. Bazar do Tempo, 2021.
PATOU-MATHIS, Mary Lène. O Prehistoric man is also a woman: a story of the invisibility of women. Rio de Janeiro: Rosa dos Tempos, 2022.
PERROT, Michelle. My women’s story. São Paulo: Contexto, 2007.
RODRÍGUEZ, Rosa María. The woman molests: postgender feminisms and sexual transidentity. 2019.
ROTANIA, Alejandra. The celebration of fear: biotechnologies, reproduction, ethics and feminism. 2001.
SAFFIOTI, Heleieth Iara Bongiovani. Women in class society: myth and reality; preface of. Antônio Cândido de Mello & Souza. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1976.
SJOO, Monica; MOR, Barbara. The great cosmic mother: rediscovering the religion of the Earth. HarperOne, 1987.
STOCK, Kathleen. Material girls: why reality matters for feminism. São Paulo: Cassandra, 2024.
VALCÁRCEL, Amelia. Now, feminism: burning questions and open fronts. 2019.
We provide #8MdasMulheres graphic material for women who want to organize and take to the streets on March 8
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