We need to talk about the Girl-Boss-It-Girl-ification of International Women’s Day.

Does it make your skin crawl too to see a day of feminist power and revolt against the multiple ways we are oppressed be used to sell us stuff?

Here we bring the antidote to that. The only thing we’re pushing? Liberation through organising!

Zehra Khan, HBWWF

As a student, Zehra learned about revolutionary theory and workers organising to reclaim power.

Then, she went ahead and put her reading to practice. Together with other committed women organisers, she knocked on doors, spoke to countless women and built bridges of sisterhood and solidarity among some of the most marginalised workers in Pakistan. Economic exploitation was intersecting with patriarchal norms and lack of basic welfare provision to keep women isolated in their struggles. But through determination and powerful community organising, the Home-based Women Workers’ Federation was born.

20 years later and Zehra Khan is still the general secretary of Pakistan’s first trade union for home-based women workers. Read more about her work.

Kalpona Akter, Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity

Kalpona began working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when she was only 12.

She knew nothing of her rights or of the law. All she knew was endless hours of work in order to help her family. But when a manager told her she’d be paid less for overtime, something snapped and she said ‘No’. Workers don’t need to be told about injustice, they feel it keenly. They just need to be empowered with the tools to fight it.

And then, Kalpona discovered organising, as she herself says, ‘I learned something beautiful, that I had the right to organise’. And for over 30 years she’s done it tirelessly in the face of multiple threats. Kalpona and the workers she organises have been key in ensuring support for the International Safety Accord, as well as a vocal campaigner for living wages for workers across the industry. Watch Kalpona talk about the Accord.

Rukmini, Garment Labour Union

Rukmini started work as a garment worker in 1991.

Soon after, India’s export market boomed – and conditions in the industry worsened. One day she got a workers’ rights leaflet, and for the first time she understood that as garment workers, she and her colleagues have to fight back.

After joining a union for garment workers, she threw herself into organising. But sadly misogyny exists in our movement too. Rukmini would not suffer abuse from her bosses – and neither would she take it in her union.

Together with other union members, in 2012 she founded Garment Labour Union, India’s only women-led union. Listen to Rukmini talk about her work in this podcast.

Share and inspire other women

And that’s what International Women’s Day is all about!

We still don’t have true equality anywhere. Women belong in a trade union – so today, whatever your job and wherever you are, share the stories of women organising, look up the union for your sector, and join.

In solidarity,

Alena

Labour Behind the Label is an NGO supporting garment workers worldwide to defend their rights. We are a workers’ co-operative and not-for-profit company registered in England, no. 04173634. The Labour Behind the Label Trust is a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1159356. 
 
Please visit our website at www.labourbehindthelabel.org.

Donate to our cause at www.labourbehindthelabel.org/donate.

NOTE: This is reproduced here with thanks and with the permission of Labour behind Label.