Women’s Rights

This International Women's Day falls at a time when the environmental and economic crises of global capitalism are making life even harder for most women and the communities they live and work in.

Capitalism's crisis is hitting hard in the US and across Europe. It is particularly dire in Greece where school teachers and other essential service workers are being thrown out of work or being forced to take pay cuts of between 40-50%. Working-class women are being hit especially hard.

As essential steps towards complete gender equality, the Socialist Alliance campaigns for:

Equality and justice in the workplace

1. Real equal pay for work of equal or comparable value.
2. Automatic wage indexation that corresponds to real cost-of-living increases.
3. Increase the minimum wage to enough to support a family.
4. Abolish the youth wage because it damages the wellbeing of young women, and especially that of young mothers and their children.

Women who wear the hijab, niqab or burqa are bearing the brunt of the rise of racism against people of Muslim faith or those from a Middle Eastern background since the terrorist attacks in the US on September 1, 2001.