[CNT] Working women are overwhelmed. And we are fed up

Tired of fully and without resources bearing the responsibility of care.  Fed up with the sexual division of labor that feminizes sectors, making them more precarious and invisible (cleaning, food, socio-health, education, etc.), despite being essential to the workings of this system.

It’s already been 2 years of managing the Covid-19 pandemic, and in this time it has been shown over and over again that each crisis hits women hard.

We are overwhelmed and fed up because we still do not see any change that ends the salary gap, because the precariousness and lack of hiring of women continues to worsen.  It is a fact that women take more unpaid leave to take care of care and that we are the ones who, in extreme cases, decide not to join the labor market to care for the people who depend on us.  Since the start of the pandemic, the number of women in the latter situation has increased by 150,000.

All this, in addition to overflowing, impoverishes us.

 Telecommuting, which seemed like the solution in the workplace in the face of the pandemic, has taught us the other side of the coin, given that we assume it more than men and this accentuates our work as caregivers and affects our promotion.  It is important to see that here there is not only a labor gap, but also a class gap.  And this also overwhelms us.

Partiality in contracts is much greater in women than in men.

 We are the ones who carry most of the work related to care and we find ourselves in the need to reduce our working hours to take responsibility for unpaid work.  In addition, of the total number of employed women, the highest percentage (29.0%) corresponds to the occupation of restaurant, personal, protection and sales services.  Socially, it is known that these occupations are not only feminized, but are also subject to fraud in hiring: partial days that are effectively full days, etc.

The majority of resident migrant women are unemployed or do not have a regular employment contract, and many are in an irregular administrative situation.  We must put an end to the labor exploitation to which these women are subjected, who do not report for fear of being expelled, and demand that the Government regularize them.

The Special Scheme for Domestic Employees is a slave, without the right to unemployment benefit, without access to the law of labor risks.  The dismissal is without notice or compensation, not to mention the impossibility of requesting leave or permission for fear of dismissal.  There is also no right of readmission, as is the case in other sectors.

We cannot forget the mistreatment and abuse suffered by female employees in some workplaces.

 What to say about the robbery of our pensions.  The achievement that the “most progressive government in history” sells us, together with the union ministries, is nothing more than the scam of the revaluation of pensions and one more step in the privatization of the public pension system.  When millions of households barely subsist on a woman’s pension, whether retired, widowed or disabled;  instead of using the year-on-year CPI (5.6%) for the revaluation, they take the average CPI (2.5%).  And not only this year, let’s forget about recovering the level lost in recent years.

The same is done in the agreements: that we accept octopus, as a pet.

 They do not plan to increase the coefficient of the widow’s pension, which should be 100%, but many do not even recognize 60%, which is to continue in misery.

 The other attack on the public pension system is the private company plans.  They are equivalent to lowering the agreements, but worse: they weaken our negotiating capacity, they escape public control, they could be corrupted and the income in the system decreases.

We all are or will be pensioners.

 To have a decent pension we must start today, fighting for our collective rights, against discrimination that hinders economic independence and denouncing that this labor ordeal translates into a worse pension.  Moving forward is becoming aware that the problem of female workers’ pensions is linked to the rest of the working and living conditions that are supported.

And, as if that were not enough, the straw that breaks the camel’s back: a new “labor reform” in which nothing changes for us: temporality remains unresolved, despite the fact that they want to make it up, calling “indefinite” contracts that remain tied to a temporary nature, and without touching the causes of dismissals or compensation.  Nor is the issue of subcontracting and outsourcing of workers resolved, the consequences of which are going to be suffered by sectors as precarious as that of the Kellys.

The inequalities and discrimination that women suffer are structural and are a direct consequence of the current capitalist and patriarchal system, which uses violence and all the resources at its disposal to maintain the imposed social order, and thus ensure that the structures of the system and its power relations remain intact.

 We are overwhelmed, we are fed up and, above all, we are organized.

 To face the inequalities that we must face every day, we become strong with CNT.

We are aware of the reality that surrounds us, we know of the difficulties we face to survive within the current system;  survive or live badly, because for many women, day to day is pure survival.

 We want to have lives worth living, and for that we need each other.  And not only in this State: we cannot forget that throughout the world millions of women fight every day to change things.

From here, we send an enthusiastic and fraternal greeting to all the dreamers and fighters who suffer the rigors of tyranny around the world: the factory workers of Myanmar, Bangladesh, Morocco… The Kurdish comrades, the Zapatistas, the Afghans… and all those that we do not name here but remember every day.

 From our diversity and circumstances we are the same class, and we stand together.

We are diverse and that is why we put on the table a proposal to end all kinds of social, labor and educational oppression, because we are all equally valuable;  We will add our experiences and knowledge to face all the inequalities that we suffer and achieve a fairer society.

 We are organized women who fight against exploitation, giving importance to care, and supporting each other to build a new world.

An anarchist world but above all, a feminist one, in which the fundamental contributions that women make in society, today and always, are recognized.

 Faced with the overflow, anarcho-feminists in struggle.

Source: www.cnt.es

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