Anyone turning on the TV or looking on social media today can come across misogynist, LGBTQIA+phobic and racist content. Sexism and other forms of discrimination rage on, with political leaders and public figures feeling free to engage in hate speech with impunity. The rise to power of the extreme right only encourages these phenomena. Its nationalist and reactionary rhetoric directly attacks the rights of the most vulnerable sections of the working class, especially women, migrants, refugees and LGBTQIA+ people.
They want to drag us backwards
Although there has been increasing awareness of gender-based violence in the last five years, thanks to the denunciations of the #MeToo and Non Una di Meno movements, it remains omnipresent and is only increasing. On average, a woman is killed every three days in Italy, mainly in the domestic and family sphere. Abuse, physical and psychological violence are part of the daily life of working-class and poor women. It is a silent epidemic that is constantly exacerbated by the multiple crises (recessions, climate crises, wars, etc.) generated by the capitalist system. By forcing millions of families to isolate themselves at home and disproportionately affecting women’s employment, the pandemic has led to a significant increase in cases of domestic violence and further reduced access to victim support services.
In addition, the measures promised by previous governments against gender-based violence, often symbolic and poorly implemented, are being pushed aside. The fight against gender-based violence has been taken out of the post-Covid recovery funding and the National Strategy for Gender Equality and relegated to the Strategic Anti-Violence Plan 2021–2023, thus disconnecting it from the main economic and social policies that are applied. The anti-violence centres, already insufficient to take care of the growing number of victims, are constantly at risk of closure due to the lack of funds allocated to them or threats of eviction. The right to abortion, which in Italy is already severely hindered by conscientious objection, whereby doctors and medical staff can refuse to provide abortion services if it goes against their beliefs. This reaches peaks of 90% in some regions and access to abortion is still under further attack with the limitation of public funding for family planning centres.
The nuclear family and capital
These attacks are justified by appealing to the lowest forms of conscience, old prejudices, and ‘family values’ with which they try to keep women in ’their place’. But behind this rhetoric lurks an anti-social and austerity policy, intent on defending the interests of the bosses and putting the burden of social crises on the shoulders of women. The nuclear family is in fact a fundamental unit of the patriarchal capitalist system. It allows capitalism to lower labour costs by imposing a double working day on millions of female workers, and guarantees it a constant source of young people to exploit. Moreover, restricting women to the domestic hearth poses a major obstacle to their ability to organise collectively to defend their rights.
In a country where there is no minimum wage and poverty affects women disproportionately, the decision to leave an underpaid job to take care of the family is for many not a free choice but a matter of survival. The absence of adequate public services to care for children or the elderly, a consequence of decades of austerity policies, only exacerbates isolation in the domestic sphere. Today, one in two women in Italy is unemployed and those who work are over-represented in part-time or precarious employment. In 2020, women accounted for almost 80 percent of ‘voluntary’ resignations of people with a child up to the age of three. These trends increase women’s economic dependence on family and partners, a breeding ground on which gender-based violence is rampant.
We will not be divided!
This government, like previous ones, is incapable of dealing with crises. In fact, while young people and workers end up in misery, it is busy giving gifts to Confindustria (the main bosses federation) and increasing military spending. To distract from this reality, they seek scapegoats against which to direct popular anger. Far from being new, this phenomenon represents the continuation of decades of reactionary politics pursued by the Italian ruling class, most strikingly expressed by the rise of Berlusconismo and other forms of right-wing populism. Thus, to avoid having to point the finger at Italian and foreign shareholders responsible for the country’s deep crises, right-wingers focus their fire on women, migrants and LGBTQIA+ people — especially trans people — with tragic consequences. The accumulation of different oppressions results in a higher risk of violence, and social marginalisation makes it even more difficult to escape abusive contexts.
For example, migrant women are on average twice as likely to be raped, with the percentage of Moldovan, Romanian and Ukrainian women among the highest reported numbers. Anti-migrant policies leave women and minors without any support and in absolute misery, often at the mercy of organised crime, or to die at sea. Meanwhile, in Italy at least 60% of LGBTQIA+ people report experiencing discrimination in the family, at school or at work. Trans people are particularly affected, also thanks to the complicity of some proponents of liberal and radical feminism who oppose their rights to those of cisgender women. But any attempt to divide us by gender, origin, religion or sexual orientation weakens the movement, to the benefit of those who want us to be weak and obedient.
There is no capitalism without sexism!
Our enemies are not other poor and oppressed people. It’s the capitalists who profit from our oppressions and the exploitation of our labour, paid and unpaid. From attempts to sell rainbow products during Pride month to the ‘pink tax’ (higher value added taxes on tampons and sanitary products), our struggles and needs are commercialised to sell more and give big business a progressive facade. This only serves to exploit new markets and to conceal their support for political forces and regimes contrary to the interests of the working class, which directly attack the rights of women and other marginalised communities. Even when these forces present themselves with a female face, as in the case of Giorgia Meloni in Italy or Marine Le Pen in France, this does not give them a progressive character.
Having more women in institutions or elites does not mean improving the conditions of all women, especially not those of working women. Our liberation can only come through struggle. This is shown to us by the women in Iran who have been mobilising for months, together with millions of young people and workers, against the Islamic dictatorship under the cry of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’. To fight sexism, we must recognise how it is rooted in the very structure of the capitalist system, as a divisive tool designed to favour the control and exploitation of workers. This is why feminist struggles are not just about women, but must be part of a general mobilisation of the entire working class against oppression, economic crises and environmental destruction.
A woman’s place is in the struggle
The breaking of the taboo around denouncing gender based violence and the international wave of feminist mobilisations of the last decade have shattered the myth of gender equality achieved through equal rights. The continued oppression of women has been made visible on the public stage, but this is not enough to end this scourge or bring about meaningful change. The polarisation of society is increasing and reaction is advancing in institutions and on the streets. The attacks on bodily autonomy and LGBTQIA+ rights all over the world show the urgency to react. Achieving victories is possible, but we have to organise and we cannot win alone. Through mobilisations and mass strikes we can impose a balance of power in favour of our demands.
Women and LGBTQIA+ people have won the right to abortion in Ireland, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and South Korea. We have overthrown decades-long dictatorships in Sudan and Algeria and shaken tyrants from Hong Kong to Beirut. We have been at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement and led the massive struggles that are shaking the South American continent. In Italy too, we were among the first to mobilise against the new government, and the crises that accompany it, taking to the streets for the right to abortion on 27 September and against gender based violence on 25 November and 8 March. Our movement is part of an international feminist wave that is sweeping the world, challenging old stereotypes and highlighting the limitations and contradictions of the current system.
Socialist feminism, today more than ever!
To carry on our struggles it is not enough to denounce the current system. We need a perspective for change, long-term strategies to expand the movement and a programme that shows how we can achieve this. This is why the ideas of socialist feminism are more relevant than ever. Through class analysis, which focuses on the power relations in society, we are able to clearly identify the origins and dynamics of the oppressions we face. The working class, as the main producer of wealth in society, has a central role to play in breaking with patriarchal capitalism. But to fulfil this role it must be organised inclusively, independently and internationally.
That is why ISA launched ROSA International Socialist Feminists in 2020, following the experiences developed by our sections in Ireland and Belgium. We draw on the best traditions of revolutionary Marxism and the workers’ movement, with reference figures such as Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, to develop a programme capable of linking the concrete demands of feminist movements to the need for a socialist transformation of society. This means that we fight for every reform that can improve our conditions, but without deluding ourselves that it is possible to put an end to sexism and other forms of oppression within a system based on exploitation and inequality. Only through the liberation of all the exploited and oppressed is it possible to build a society free of discrimination and intent on defending the needs of the majority of people rather than the profits of a tiny minority of the ultra-rich.
