On IWD a global womens movement arises

Code Pink Poster for IWD

On International Womens Day 2009, a new transnational womens movement is emerging focussed on peace, equality and justice.  Code Pink the extraordinary feminist anti-war group in the United States is sending a womens delegation to Gaza.  It's obviously working since finally the Globe and Mail has a positive article about pro-Palestinian activists today www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090309.wgaza09/BNStory/International/home

In Toronto, where an  IWDdemonstration has been organized every year since 1975, the theme is ¨Women Lead the Fight Good Jobs and Dignity for All¨ Notice that it is not focussed on job for women but rather women leading the fight for Good Jobs.  The largest delegations at the event are likely to be  Tamil women protesting genocide and the Palestinian solidarity contingent.

The womens movement of my generation was mostly focussed on national issues of specific concern to women.  In Canada, of course, we had the extraordinary Voice of Women who bravely organized for peace even at the height of the Cold War but most of our efforts were focussed on demands of the Canadian state for equal pay, child care, abortion rights, adequate rape laws etc.  We made alliances with other social action groups like the labour movement on issues like free trade but our focus was specifically on womens equality.  That started changing in the 1990s when aboriginal women and women of colour fought to make the movement understand that the only way for all women to achieve equality was to link gender equality with economic, racial and cultural equality. 

Today the womens movement is transnational not only through global efforts like the World March of Women but also through the presence in the Global North of millions of women from the Global South who have been displaced by war and poverty caused by corporate globalization.  Feminism like other movements described in Transforming Power is global, diverse and bottom up.  Happy International Womens Day, getting more international by the day.