International Working Women’s Day 2025: Statement by the European Communist Action

March 8 was proclaimed as International Working Women's Day by the Second International Conference of Communist Women held in Moscow in June 1921.

Working-class women live in a world of exploitation and inequality, expropriated labour, low wages and precarious and socially devalued work. They face, poverty, discrimination, harassment, problems in accessing healthcare, and are forced to confront the harsh consequences of repeated attacks on social security protections and the absence of free proper childcare facilities.

International Working Women’s Day 2024: Statement by the European Communist Action

Statement of the European Communist Action (ECA) on the International Working Women's Day:

"International Working Women’s Day symbolises the process of emancipation of working-class women. It is inseparable from class struggle and the fight against the ever-worsening conditions of inequality experienced by women, which cannot be decoupled from the capitalist system in which we live.

European Communist Action Conference: We intensify the struggle for women's emancipation, against the EU and the system of capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars

The European Communist Action (ECA) held a conference titled "We intensify the struggle for women's emancipation, against the EU and the system of capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars" on the occasion of International Women's Day (March 8). You can find below the contributions of 11 Communist Parties on the issue:

The Opening Speech of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE): 

Capitalism has nothing to offer working women except exploitation, oppression and poverty

The Secretariat of the European Communist Initiative (ECI) sends warm greetings to all the working women. The Secretariat wishes all women good health and strength in the coming struggles.

Marx and Engels were already studying the social situation of working women under capitalism. They focused on the exploitation of wage labour but also on additional forms of inequality and oppression, exclusion and discrimination in a number of aspects of social life, such as legislation, family and interpersonal relations. 

International Working Women’s Day 2023: Equity and Equality – Say no to wars

Statement of the Working Women Committee, adopted by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) 2023 Precedential Council Meeting:

International Working Women’s Day 2023

WFTU Women demand Equity and Equality – Say no to wars

Now is the time for the spark to ignite again. Just like in the 19th century, when women workers rose up against the exploitation of early industrial capitalism, now again the time has come to take up the cudgels against the most barbaric system that boils in the cauldrons of neoliberalism.  Imperialism sacrifices the lives of the workers of the world for the sake of profit. Women workers are enslaved and subjugated within the working class which is already marginalized to the point of deprivation.

Women's Day 2022: Statement by the World Federation of Trade Unions

In a statement about the Working Women's Day, the Secretariat of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) stresses out:

8 March 1857 – 8 March 2022: 165 years later

165 years ago, when the women workers in the New York textile mills, on March 8, 1857, went on strike and demonstrated for “ten-hour work, bright and sanitary workrooms, wages equal to those of male textile workers and tailors”, they certainly did not imagine that in 2022 all these demands would still be demanded.

International Women's Day 2021 — Statement by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

On the occasion of the 2021 International Women's Day on March 8th, the Secretariat of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) issued the following statement:

Women’s equal rights in health and safety at work and in society

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the oldest trade union international representing 105 million workers in 133 countries on the five continents, offers a warm internationalist greeting to the working woman, the female trade unionist, the female militant of each country and continent on this International Working Women’s Day, March 8, 2021.

International Women Day, a symbol of struggle — WFTU Declaration

On the occasion of this year’s March 8th anniversary, the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU) addresses a warm militant greeting to every woman all over the globe, working or unemployed, self-employed, in the city or in the countryside, young mother, student, retiree, refugee or immigrant, life fighters of the everyday.

We all, stand on the side of the women who struggle with the WFTU and the international class-oriented movement, and strongly believe in the necessity of the organization of the women’s fight for real equality and do not limit our militancy and struggles just in one day a year.

WFTU honors the International Women’s Day - against all forms of inequality and exploitation

The World Federation of Trade Unions honors the International Working Women’s Day on 8th March 2019, under the slogan:

“The WFTU against all forms of inequality, against all forms of exploitation”.

162 years after the first uprising of women textile workers in 1857 in New York, claiming the increase of their miserable salaries, the reduction of working hours, equality in payment and social rights, the situation for the working, unemployed and young women, is extremely harsh: unemployment, flexible work, lack of free and high quality health services and healthcare for them and for their children, psychological pressure and violence mainly inside but also outside the workplaces.

Turkey: Women call for March 8 protest in Istanbul - No to exploitation, reactionism and sexual abuse

As soL international reports, women from the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) have issued an invitation to people for a protest on March 8th in Istanbul. 

"We are calling on every woman to strengthen the struggle for socialism for a life in an enlightened Turkey where women will be equal parties right from the beginning, instead of a life in capitalism that is the origin of inequality, reactionary oppressions and threats" reads their statement for March 8 demonstrations.

KKE: Women's liberation is connected with the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism

With a political and cultural event held at the Party's headquarters in Perissos, Athens on Saturday evening, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) honoured the International Women's Day (8th March). 

Hundreds of women and men of all ages attended the event which had the slogan "With the KKE in the struggle for the equality and the contemporary needs of woman".

The major speaker at the event was the General Secretary of the CC of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas. Secretary Koutsoumbas hailed the 8th of March as a "milestone day for the participation of women in the struggle for the equal rights between men and women in labour, education and social life". 

In his address, the KKE GS said that during the 100 years of the KKE there are numerous examples of communist women who have demonstrated extraordinary heroism in their activity.