Women workers’ March 8 rally to demand economic freedom

Labour leaders said on Wednesday women workers in Pakistan were facing immense problems on social, economic and political fronts, and they were not getting equal wages for equal work.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club in connection with their ‘Mehnatkash Aurat Rally’ of March 8, Home-based Women Workers Federation leader Zehra Akbar Khan said that on International Women Day this year, the women workers had decided to stage a huge rally under the slogan of ‘peace, bread and equality’, as per the spirit and ideology of the great day.

“This rally will march from Fawara Chowk to the Arts Council at 3pm. A cultural programme will be held at the end of the rally. Besides thousands of women workers, Haris and home-based women workers, a large number of female students, transgender persons and other workers will attend the rally,” she said.

“The question of gender and economic emancipation of women is the question that is directly related to the independence of society. If a woman is demanding gender equality and economic freedom, she is in fact demanding to free the society.”

If the half of the population faced the worst social, political economic, cultural and gender-based discrimination, then the degradation and fall of the society was inevitable, Khan remarked.

Karamat Ali, convener of the National Labour Council, said that when poverty, deprivation, disease, joblessness, homelessness and environmental changes were hitting the society hard, the worst affected people were women and children belonging to the working class.

“In this economic crisis, women are rapidly becoming a part of the production process as hired slaves, where they are deprived of all their basic rights,” he said. “A cruel economic system is formed in whose major part women are working as unpaid slaves.”

Nasir Mansoor of the National Trade Union Federation, Zainab Nasir of the Alternate Youth Group; Ruksana, member of the All Lady Health Worker Employees Union; Shakeela Khan, president of the Home-Based Women Bangle Workers Union, Hyderabad, Sabhagi Bheel, leader of the Hari Workers, and others also spoke.