GABRIELA NETWORK STATEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN'S DAY AND WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH
8 March 2007 Reference: Dorotea Mendoza, Secretary General, GABRIELA Network USA Tel: 1 212 592 3507; Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ONE WOMAN'S STRUGGLE, ALL WOMEN'S STRUGGLE On this year's International Working Women's Day and Women's History Month, GABRIELA Network, a Philippine-US women's solidarity mass organization, calls on all women around the world to reaffirm our interconnectedness and reassert our right and duty to unite. Women's lives are devalued more than ever. When a 22-year old woman is raped by US military in the Philippines and her plight ridiculed by her own government, when a 14-year old is raped, killed and burned by US military in Iraq, when thousands of women survivors of systemic sexual enslavement by the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII are denied a pardon and redress, when up to 2.5 Filipinas are exported into life-threatening work, when sex trafficking in the Philippines increases at an annual rate of 10%, when every year sex traffickers prey on half a million Filipino women, the whole of womankind is further dehumanized. Such dehumanization perpetuates the objectification and sexualized image of women. Such dehumanization impacts how we women see ourselvesobjects whose sole purpose is to satisfy someone else's sexual, political, economic, social needs and desires. On a global scale, such dehumanization feeds the machine of patriarchal imperialist globalization. A dehumanized woman has no political voice; she is dispensable; she is a commodity. A dehumanized woman is further entrenched into a conditioned role as a mere thing that replenishesi.e. sustenance, entertainment, rest and recreation, procreationdaily and generational labor. Whatever rights we women in developed countries may think we have are fleeting or, at worst, illusions. And whatever privileges we women in developed countries may enjoy are also impermanentwhether it be having the capacity to work because you've hired a woman from the Philippines or the Caribbean to take care of your children or affording inexpensive clothing or foodstuffs because of a woman's cheap labor in Saipan or at a plantation owned by Dole in the Philippines. At the end of the day we women in developed countries still fear and are still at risk of being harassed, molested, raped, groped in a crowded Subway train; we still experience gender-based discrimination; we still are susceptible to the psychological, political and economic oppression brought about by the devaluation of women's lives. This is what it means to be dehumanized. We women can not accept such victimization. We must refuse to be agents in a global system that pits one group of women against another, that gives a false sense of empowerment to a group of women by disempowering another. We women in the US and other developed countries have a duty to support our sisters in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, the Philippinescountries where our own governments have instigated and perpetuated the oppression and exploitation of women ostensibly for our benefit. We women in the US have much to gain and learn from women abroad. When GABRIELA Philippines, a national women's alliance with 250 affiliated women's groups and thousands of members, continues to flourish after 23 years, the image and role of the whole of womankind becomes human. When Gabriela Women's Party Rep. Liza Maza, a parliamentarian genuinely fighting for women's rights, wins a seat in the Philippine Congress, the whole of womankind becomes human, our issues voiced. In countries like the Philippines, where 834 activists (83 women) have already been murdered, women are putting their lives on the line. We must take inspiration from their unrelenting militancy; stand on the grounds they've gained and contribute to the advancement of a genuine global women's movement. The only real way to a life of lasting freedom and peace is to reclaim our collective humanity. And we can only do so as an organized force that recognizes and acts in the context of our inherent interconnectedness. # # # ------------------------ Yahoo! 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