[asia-apec 376] (corrected version) March 8, International Women's Day: Reclaiming a History of Militance

[GABRIELA-Philippines]

(corrected version)



        MARCH 8, INTERNATIONAL DAY OF WOMEN: RECLAIMING A HISTORY OF MILITANCE
                                    



        March 8, International Day of Women --- a day commemmorated by
women's organizations and even governments worldwide as a day dedicated to
about one-half of the world's population - to those whose hands "rock the
cradle" but who have also rocked the world - to paraphrase a feminist
battlecry - with their militant assertion of women's rights and the urgency
of women's liberation.

        But unknown to many, the history of March 8 goes well before the
United Nations officially declared 1975-1985 as the World Decade on Women
--- a decade, which, undoubtedly, popularized the issue of women but which,
as many internationally-known feminists themselves --- left much to be
desired in terms of actually effecting changes in the lives of the world's
impoverished women.

        March 8 actually owes its birth to the militant actions of women
workers of the 1800s, notably in the US ad Germany.  This was a period of
great social upheaval in the west, being the immediate era of the great
industrial revolution, when the establishment of factories in the cities
gave rise to a mass of working class people.  But labor conditions were
appalling, particularly among women and children, whom capitalists of that
time employed to cut on labor costs.

        These conditions led hundreds of women workers from the garments and
textile factories in New York to stage a street demonstration in 1857
protesting low wages, 12-hour workdays, and generally inhuman working
conditions in the factories.  A glaring example of such conditions was a
fire which gutted down an entire garments factory where hundreds of women
were trapped and killed as the factory did not have any fire exits.  The
demonstration was, however, brutally attacked by the police and scores of
women demonstrators were hurt and arrested.

        But it was March 8, 1908 which signaled the first big wave of
women's protests.  Thirty thousand (30,000) women staged a march-rally
raising the same issues, in addition ot protesting against child labor, and
demanding for women's rights to vote.

        These and other actions by women industrial workers prompted the
then-International Labor Movement to declare March 8 as International
Women's Day.  The declaration, which was led by Clara Zetkin, a socialist
and German labor leader, was eventually adopted by socialist countries and
labor movements in the US and European countries.  It was then called the
"International Day of Working Women."

        It was much later, with the lobbying efforts of western feminists,
and more importantly, with the strength and momentum gained by women's
movements in Third World countries, that the United Nations adopted March 8
as "International Women's Day."

        In the Philippines, it is not known whether the women workers of the
1800s already knew or commemorated March 8.  What was certain was that women
at that time were already actively involved in labor protests and later on,
in the early stages of organizing labor unions.

        The establishment of the tobacco monopoly in 1782 marked the first
time in Philippine history when women were first drawn out of the confines
of their homes en masse with the establishment of the first cigar factories
which employed thousands of women whose ages ranged from twenty to thirty
years old.  By the 19th century, there were four factories in Manila and one
in Cavite.  The "Fabrica de Arroceros" had 1,000 to 1,500 workers; the
"Fabrica de Fortin," also in Arroceros, 8,000; the "Fabrica de Meisic,"
6,000; and the "Fabrica de Cavite," 2,000.

        But the conditions with which the "cigarreras" (female
cigar-workers) found themselves in would become the subject of their
protests.  Routinary body searches on the workers, adopted by the companies
to prevent cigar smuggling, led to abuses by "maestras" (lead workers of
cigar factories who conducted the searches).  In 1810, for instance, a
"maestra" by the name of Teresa Arenas was dismissed by the factory on the
basis of a number of complaints filed by women workers who decided to put an
end to Arenas' abuses.

        Other abuses eventually became the subject of a strike staged in
1816 by the "cigarreras" which forced the management to accede to their
demands.  These included the prohibition of the sale and usury, at
prohibitive prices, of items by the "cabecillas" through whom the factory
gave the workers their wages.  The workers also demanded that the tobacco
leaves be given to them ready for rolling.  Previous to this, the workers
themselves did the stretching, cleaning, and cutting of leaves before the
actual rolling.  They were not compensated for doing all these since their
wages depended on the number of correctly-rolled cigars.

        Available records on the first Filipinas to be members of a labor
union showed that they were part of a 40-member unit based in Carmelo ad
Bauerman printing house.  The unit would later become part of the "Union de
Impresores de Filipinas" that would, in turn, later become part of the
"Union Obrera Democratica (UOD)."  The four women were Celerina dela Cruz,
Fausta Bernardo, Margarita Pasamola, and Antonia Zamora.

        The UOD, then headed by Isabelo delos Reyes, issued an appeal on May
27, 1901, to the American colonial government for the regulation of working
hours, the sex and age of factory hands, and a "servants law" to guarantee
decent food and quarters, among others.  Around the same year, seamstresses
and dressmakers were among those who demanded for the establishment of their
own "seccion" in UOD, along with tobacco workers and tailors.

        The deterioration of the workers' economic conditions increasingly
led to more strikes centering on conditions of work and low wages.  In
Manila, four out of five families were on the poverty line.  Average wages
were one (Philippine) peso (P1.00) a day.  This was indeed meager when
compared to the price of food: one pound of pork costs P0.80; one piece of
bread costs P0.01; and one pound of fish costs P0.30.  Real wage rates were,
in fact, lower in the American period than in the latter part of the Spanish
period.  In copra production, women worked as part of the family work team,
doing the strenuous work of husking, opening ad drying of the coconuts, but
without receiving wages apart from their husbands or fathers were paid.
Work in factories were carried out, according to the Bureau of Labor itself,
in "sweatshop conditions" while outwork meant low-paid or unpaid family
labor and long hours, often continuing until late at night by the light of
the moon or a kerosene lamp.  One of the issues often raising during the
1913 strikes was the protection of women and child labor.  By 1925, the
colonial government was compelled to set up a separate section for women and
children in the Bureau of Labor.  By 1935, women were demanding for equal
pay for equal work.

        No doubt many similarities existed between the conditions of women
workers of colonized countries like the Philippines and those belonging to
the colonizing countries like Spain and even the US.  There is no doubt too
that the Philippine labor movement was somehow influenced by the historical
development of their counterparts in the more advanced countries.  It is
unknown whether women of that historical period (late Spanish or early
American colonial period) formally adopted the declaration of the
International Labor Movement.

        Available records point to pre-Martial Law women activists who
pioneered the commemoration of this date.  On March 8, 1971, the-then Manila
Times printed a statement signed by the KATIPUNAN (Katipunan ng Kababaihan
Para sa Kalayaan - Organization of Women for Liberation) entitled, "RP Women
Join Liberation Front." The KATIPUNAN was actually an alliance of MAKIBAKA,
a women students and urban poor mothers' association identified with the
national democratic stream; members of the Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic
Youth)-Women's Bureau, and those from the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan
(SDK) (Democratic Organization of the Youth).  The KATIPUNAN, while not
primarily composed of women workers, nevertheless declared the important
role of women in national liberation from the evils of "imperialism,
feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism" and extolled on the fundamental
necessity of forging the "peasant-worker" alliance in the women's movement.

        On the same date, the alliance led an all-women's march-rally
against poverty.  But the declaration of Martial Law in 1972 nipped the
growth of this movement in the bud and forced member-activists to go
underground.  A few years later, one of its primary leaders, Lorena Barros,
would be killed by the military.  Nonetheless, those who went to the
countrysides to continue with their revolutionary involvement managed to
hold very small and rather intimate commemorations of March 8 in areas where
they were helping to set up guerilla units in regions such as Central Luzon.

        The Marcos dictatorship's non-commemoration of March 8 then probably
does not come as a surprise.  The setting up of the National Commission on
the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW), following the UN declaration in the
early 70s could be seen as a political showcase rather than a genuine
attempt to address women's issues as the NCRFW then served no more than as
an implementing arm of government projects at the grassroots level without
any recommendatory nor executive powers even on issues relating to women.

        And while the Aquino government, in 1987, anchored its commemoration
of March 8 on the so-called "women power" that helped put Corazon Aquino in
power, the more militant section of the women's movement under GABRIELA
often focused on the issues of poverty and sexual violence in its March 8
commemorations.  While latter commemorations led by the NCRFW focused on
government efforts to address "gender issues" in the fields of law and the
bureaucracy, non-governmental women's organizations such as GABRIELA focused
on issues such as poverty and sexual violence and often exhorted women to
build on the important roles of women in various stages of Philippine
history and exhorting them to reclaim what it calls the "history" of
militance with which women workers, in different parts of the world, first
declared March 8 as International Women's Day.