Women raise their voices against oppression and injustice

A one-day conference highlighting the oppression of women under the present system and the struggle for their emancipation was organized by the Mahila Shakti Sangathan, on March 18 in Kanpur. Nearly 400 women from different women’s organisatons and mass organisations, such as Purogami Mahila Sangathan, Jaagte Raho, Jeene ka Adhikar, Vanangna, Vikas Sadhana, Sankalp, Sagar Shahidi, and others participated in the conference. They represented women from Delhi, Allahabad, Ramgarh, Lucknow, Agra, and many other parts of Northern India.

The Mahila Shakti Sangathan was born out of the struggle of the working women and residents of Vidyarthi Market, Govindnagar, Kanpur, against their exploitation and for the assertion of their rights. Working women from different sectors spoke at the conference about the humiliation and atrocities they have to face at the place of work and in the society. The social pressures that girls in our society have to face, the lack of proper education and health facilities, collapse of the public distribution system as well as the poverty and hardships faced by the women in their homes were important topics of discussion. Many women’s organisations roundly condemned the state for not fulfilling its responsibility of providing a dignified existence and rights to the women in our society.

The activists of Purogami Mahila Sangathan addressed the conference and clearly explained that the main roadblock to the emancipation of women lies in the present political system, in which ordinary women and men do not have the political power to change their conditions. Political power in this system, they pointed out, is in the hands of the big capitalists, who rule through their political parties. While the masses of working women and men have no mechanism by which they can determine the course of the economy or what kind of development they need, the ruling class imposes its agenda on the people through its political party representatives, an agenda that only helps to increase manifold the profits of the exploiters. They pointed out that in the forthcoming Municipal Corporation elections in Delhi, residents in many localities were selecting their own candidates from amongst themselves and rejecting the party candidates. The movement to select and elect Jan Pratinidhis was aimed at bringing people forward to participate directly in governance and challenge the domination of the agenda pursued by the political parties of the big capitalists. Only with political power in our hands can we hope to change our conditions and those of millions of our toiling sisters and brothers all over the country, they asserted, much to the appreciation of the audience.