In a colourful and militant display, 8000 women from all over Chiapas, Mexico, converged on San Cristobal de las Casas on March 8 for the International Women's Day (IWD) activities. Wearing traditional dress plus ski masks or handkerchiefs on their faces, Zapatista women led contingents representing indigenous people from different parts of the embattled state.
Arriving in more than 60 trucks, the demonstrators took over the large courtyard of the cathedral in the city centre and held a five-hour rally. They were joined by many non-indigenous men and women from the city. Zapatista sympathisers also peacefully took over a radio station.
Speakers denounced the Mexican and Chiapas governments. The Zapatista women condemned the militarisation of the state and the presence of state-sponsored paramilitary groups that have created a "climate of fear". The Zapatista women also condemned domestic violence and the undervaluation of women's work, and attacked the state-sponsored sterilisation of indigenous women all over Mexico.
As suddenly as they appeared, the demonstrators boarded their trucks and returned to the countryside.
In South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) pointed out on March 8 that "Women and girls worldwide do two-thirds of the world's work for only 5% of total income". Women's annual unwaged work amounts to about US$11 trillion, COSATU spokesperson Kim Jurgensen said.
Statistics from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, to which COSATU is affiliated, showed that in Africa, women and girls grow 80% percent of the food consumed on the continent, and in Asia they spend up to five hours daily gathering firewood. In industrialised countries, women earn only half of what their male counterparts earn.
COSATU demanded that women throughout the world should receive: affordable and accessible housing and transportation; equal pay for work of equal value; wages for caring work, whether raising children or caring for others; and paid maternity leave, breast-feeding breaks and other benefits that recognised women's biological work rather than penalising them for being women.
In Geneva, more than 1000 Kurdish and Afghan women used the day to stage a silent march of protest against discrimination and violence against women. In Kuwait, women activists filed a court case against the interior minister and parliamentary speaker demanding full political rights, and in Iran, hundreds of women and men, organised by the Worker Communist Party of Iran, joined the first ever IWD march in their country to demand justice and equality for women and all Iranians.
Sex workers in London's Soho red light district staged a one-day strike to coincide with IWD to protest against attempts to evict them from the area.