By Trisha Reimers (Perth)
When women's right to control their bodies is under attack ... when sexist advertising surrounds us ... when 1 in 4 women is sexually assaulted by the time she is 18 ... when media commentators and politicians tell us that feminism has gone too far or that we have achieved our liberation ... when the gender wages gap is increasing again ... it more urgent than ever that supporters of women's rights take action.
If we want to stop the backlash against women's rights, the question of exactly what sort of action, campaigns and feminist movement can do the job is not just an interesting and abstract one; it is crucial. What exactly are we fighting for, and how can we achieve women's liberation?
It has become crystal clear over the last 30 years that when there is no large, broad, vocal, well-organised movement which mobilises public support for women's rights, the government and media offensive against feminism increases and public support for feminist demands decreases.
Before the 1970s, public support for abortion on demand was extremely low. But when the "second wave" of the women's liberation movement began public campaigning for abortion access, support for women's right to choose increased rapidly. Although a majority of people still favour abortion on demand, that support is declining again as the organisational strength and public campaigning of the anti-choice forces begins to outweigh that of the declining feminist movement.
As public consciousness shifts according to the strength of the progressive and reactionary movements, the conservative powers that be take every opportunity to change the laws and rewrite government policy and practise to force women back into the home, into the sweatshops, into the arms of backyard abortionists, and so on.
We must not allow those who oppose women's rights to set the terms of the debate. This means taking public action now.
A "don't rock the boat" approach only gives opponents of women's rights more confidence to push ahead. And simply getting a few more women into the ranks of the powers brokers — in the boardrooms and parliament — is no solution. Like their male counterparts, women parliamentarians and CEOs can be pressured to give some support particular demands of the feminist movement. But also like their male counterparts, women politicians and CEOs will retain their positions only if they carry out the economic rationalist dictates of the elite who pay their salaries and fund their election campaigns.
There are many examples: the Liberals' Jocelyn Newman has been responsible for cutting thousands of women off social security. Labor's Cheryl Kernot signed the anti-worker Workplace Relations Act. The Australian Democrats' Meg Lees supports the GST.
The feminist movement must campaign for and aim to involve the majority of women if it is to successfully challenge, and change, the whole sexist system. Such a movement would reflect the needs and desires of a diversity of women: working-class and professional women, indigenous and non-indigenous women, women of colour and white women, lesbians and straight women, young women and older women, etc.
Such a movement would link the experiences of different women, thereby strengthening itself and building mutually beneficial alliances with other progressive movements: against racism, workplace exploitation, homophobia, etc.
Feminism does have the numbers: people who support women's rights are to be found in all communities, workplaces, campuses and schools. To win those rights, these people must be brought together in campaigns around agreed upon demands. It is only through such unity in action that we learn from each other, gain confidence in ourselves and each other, and become an effective fighting force for change.
Of course, not all women support the aims of the feminist movement, and many men do support those aims. It is not people's gender, but rather their support for women's rights and their preparedness take action to defend and extend those rights, which should determine their involvement in campaigns. Excluding men from giving active support weakens feminism's ability to change public consciousness and force real change in society.
International Women's Day is one of only two nationally coordinated annual campaigning actions for women's rights (the other is the Reclaim the Night march each October). On IWD, millions of women and men around the world take to the streets in the knowledge, gleaned from a long history of struggle, that if you don't fight, you lose.
We want to win, and to do that we need to build a movement that will fight uncompromisingly for the full liberation of all women.