Break the Chains of Poverty and Destitution, Build the Common Fight of Women Workers Across Asia and the Pacific!

Statement of the ILPS Asia and Pacific Regional Committee on the Occasion of International Working Women’s Day

The ongoing severe economic crises are making life unbearable for women across Asia and the Pacific. Working women face alarming levels of joblessness, with unemployment for women more pronounced in South Asia. Conservative estimates peg unemployment in the Asia and the Pacific region to be at 4.2% for men and women, but youth unemployment, for young men and women is thrice of the rate for adults, around 13.7%. More than 100 million young women aged 15 to 24 years are either out of school and or cannot find jobs. 

Two out of three workers are in informal employment, and the percentage is even higher for women, with own-account and family work comprising 42% of those in the informal sector. Millions of women workers are migrant workers, also in jobs which are deemed as dirty, dangerous, and demeaning, with no job security and social protection, including home-based jobs, street vending and various odd jobs. Real wages continue to fall despite the continued increase of labour productivity in the region. 

The average prices of goods and services continue to rise, 17% higher in 2023 as compared to 2020, and continues the upward trajectory. The numbers are more deadly for South Asian economies, with an average price rise of 64 per cent in the same period. This has led to massive hunger and poverty for working peoples families, with conservative estimates pegging more than 72 million workers in Asia and the Pacific in extreme poverty.  

Rural working women conditions continue to deteriorate as backward agrarian conditions deepen, and the drive of the imperialists and trans-national corporations (TNCs) for resources intensify. In India, Dalit women are mired in the poorest living and working conditions. In Chennai and Manipur, farmers and indigenous communities are intentionally displaced – left to scramble for food and shelter – by numerous state projects for the benefit of the TNCs. Indigenous tribes are evicted from their traditional lands to make way for plantations. In Maharashtra, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Island, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa, Chattisgarh, West Bengal and Kerala, women are brutally harassed by military and paramilitary forces.

In Pakistan, farmers are impacted by anti-small farmer government policies favoring foreign investments as part of the IMF deal. Neoliberal policies on agriculture are meant to rely on the big corporations and foreign capital intervention, worsening the private monopolies of agricultural seeds and inputs.  In Southeast Asia, agriculture and rural lands remain concentrated in the hands of landlords, bureaucrat capitalists, and TNCs via agri-business ventures entered into by the state. 

The ongoing economic crises hits women in multiple layers and levels. Working women in the cities suffer higher levels of unemployment, and jobs available are mostly informal work, with lower  wages, none or very little social protection. Women in rural areas are displaced by TNCs and State forces, denying them of livelihood, pushing the women, children and their families to  destitution and deeper poverty.

The working women have shown the world that during times of intense crises, the only way out is to fight. March 8 and its commemoration was born out of working women striking hard against exploitation and oppression, led by garment workers in the latter part of the 19^th century. Inspired by the militant fighting stance of the garment workers, women across the globe organized actions to deliver telling blows to the exploiters and oppressors and break the chains and yoke of destitution and poverty. 

In our time of severe economic crises it requires all working women to deepen understanding of the interconnections of the economic and political life, and be able to identify fundamental problems that requires our solutions. We must study the ways of fighting against the imperialists and the TNCs, and put the learning to direct actions.

In our time of economic crises, we must forge ahead with building solidarity among working women and other democratic forces in our countries. We must also build solidarity with working women of  other countries, to build a common front against women exploitation and oppression by the imperialists and TNCs, and to further strengthen our local and national movements.

Signed,

ILPS Asia and the Pacific Regional Committee