On the eve of the International Women’s Day (March 8th)

Letter from Rubina Jamil (Pakistan) and Christel Keiser (France) to the endorsers of the appeal for an International Conference of Working Women

Dear Friends and Comrades, 

We are proud to be able to inform you that, one month after we launched our appeal “to an international conference of working women” (see overleaf), over 300 women, working women, youth trade union and political activists, leaders of associations and community groups from 32 countries have endorsed the appeal. 

This first result already gives an indication as to the possible impact of the international conference of working women which we proposed to hold this year, if conditions make it possible, on the eve the World Conference against War and Exploitation, called by the International Workers’ Committee for the Workers’ International. 

In our appeal, we proposed that on the occasion of public meetings, demonstrations and rallies organised on 8 March, the initiative of the conference was proposed to the participants in order to form the first delegations. 

8 March 2021 is now a fortnight away. 

We have already begun to receive information on the initiatives proposed for that day by the signatories of the appeal, or those which the signatories will take part in (and will inform on at the proposed international conference). 

In Pakistan, APTUF is organising a women assembly on March 8th in Lahore in which 1000 women workers from formal and informal sector, brick kiln, domestic and home based workers participate. After women assembly we are holding women workers March from Nisbat Road to Lahore Press Club. 

In France, the Working-Women Commission of the POID is organising an “online” meeting on 6 March (“on-line” as all 

the venues for a public meeting were refused because of restrictions due to the pandemic). We envisage the meeting around a broad-based platform with numerous activists, workers, mothers (and also men activists) taking the floor about the various aspects of the women’s and workers’ struggle against the Macron government agenda. 

In the United States, an “online” meeting is organised for 7 March, with the 18 women activists who endorsed the appeal. 

In Italy, the working-women commission of the monthly working class newspaper Tribuna Libera, which was set up last year, is organising a meeting on 9 March. 

In Morocco, the endorsers of the appeal are organising a meeting on 6 March in Tetouan. 

In Mexico, an “online” meeting will be organised. Women working in maquiladoras, peasants, students and pro-choice rights activists from various states of Mexico will be speaking. 

We are taking organisational measures so that messages (including video messages) from activists who endorsed the appeal from different countries are available during each one of these initiatives so that each initiative “largeor-small-scale” can become part of the internationalist dimension which gives its robust character to our appeal. 

This in turn will help to form the first delegations to our international conference. 

Our thanks to every one of you for speedily informing us on the initiatives that have been taken in your country, whatever the form it takes. And also please prepare reports, interviews and photos on these initiatives so that we can report on them to all the endorsers on the international level.