Over the last decade, the 8M has been taking shape beyond the demonstration, establishing itself as a general strike that crosses the barrier from the workplace to the personal with what is known as the “care strike”. The Assemblea 8M, coordinator of the organisations organising the 8M protest, explains in its manifesto – read at the final act of the protest – that “household and care work, which sustains the world, is undervalued and made invisible by the cisheteropatriarchal, racist, racist, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal system”. They consider that the search for equality is also about fighting for this type of unpaid, feminised tasks, and for those who suffer persistent discrimination in feminised and precarious sectors: “the system exploits all those who care for life and at the same time makes us invisible and dehumanises us, separating us into carers and cared-for and denying the interdependence of this mutual oppression”, adds the communiqué. This is why organisations such as Sindihogar – an independent trade union of migrant women domestic and care workers – are in charge of the final reading.
The scope of the greatest possible transversality is something very present in the feminist movement, which is why disability discrimination has had a high visibility with the presence of activist organisations for the rights of people with functional diversity, organised through the bloc of anti-disability feminists who have been at the forefront of the demonstration. Another central struggle this year is anti-militarism. For Dones x Dones, one of the groups taking part in the protest, 8M is “in solidarity with women in countries in conflict who are sustaining life”. The Palestinian claim has been a protagonist both in the march and in the final readings.
Care, a central theme
The different waves and currents of feminism have their own particular characteristics and demands – depending on the time and context – but all of them have the same direction: to achieve women’s full rights. Some of them are more visible, others have been gaining relevance along with social awareness. An example of this awareness-raising phenomenon would be care, according to the EU Gender Equality Index, if you are Portuguese you are 30% more likely to do housework or cooking every day, compared to men. If you are Italian, 38% and if you are Spanish, 20%. Similarly, more women take leave of absence or reduced working hours for maternity or care of the elderly, something that gender policies have focused on in recent years. According to the EU’s Gender Equality 2023 report, “the gender gap in care is narrowing not because men are doing more care work, but because women are doing less. While technology and increased female employment may have played a role, technology alone cannot bring about the structural changes needed to go the last mile”.
What is the origin of 8M?
In 1975 the UN formalised International Women’s Day, since then it has been officially commemorated on 8 March. But its history goes back much further, all rooted in social uprisings.
Industrial Revolution, 1857, women workers in a New York textile factory protest because their pay and conditions are precarious compared to men. The demonstration ended with violent intervention by the police. This act lit a fuse that would be taken up again in 1911. Following in the wake of their predecessors, the women of another factory in New York called a strike with a tragic outcome: 129 of them died because the owner of the business set fire to the building. Legend has it that they sewed purple fabrics, and that the smoke that came out was of the same colour, which is why it was adopted as the standard-bearer of the movement.
Outside the American core, revolt was also brewing. In Stuttgart in 1907 a Socialist Women’s Conference led by Clara Zetkin fought for women’s suffrage. A few years later the activist proposed the establishment of a day as a symbol of their struggle, and in 1911, Women’s Day was commemorated for the first time in several cities in Europe.
