Every year on March 8, we are reminded that International Working Women’s Day was never meant to be a day of passive greetings or gift-giving. It was born in the streets, fueled by the fire of organized struggle against systems that profit from our labor and our silence.
In the early twentieth century, women workers—those who held the backbone of industry while enduring brutal labor conditions and poverty wages—rose up. In 1908, 15,000 women marched in New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay, and the right to vote. By 1910, socialist leader Clara Zetkin proposed an international day of action, cementing the role of women workers as political leaders in the fight for peace and social justice. Today, we carry that torch by confronting the modern forces that continue to wage war on women’s lives.
The Human Cost of Global Power Struggles
The system of oppression women resisted a century ago have evolved into a global machinery of conflict. Across the globe, U.S. imperialism and the drive for geopolitical dominance fuel proxy wars that treat the lives of women and children as collateral damage.
In the Gaza Strip, the relentless destruction is sustained by a continuous flow of foreign military aid. In Sudan, regional powers aligned with global interests have prolonged a 1,000-day war, creating the world’s largest hunger crisis. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the global hunger for minerals drives a carnage that has lasted decades, displacing millions. In Myanmar, foreign-backed interests manipulate instability to maintain a foothold in Southeast Asia, while the junta uses sexual violence as a systematic weapon of war.
On 28 February 2026, this violence reached a horrific peak when strikes hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, Iran, killing more than 165 people, mostly young schoolgirls. These are not “accidents” of war; they are the predictable results of a global policy that values strategic territory over human life.
War: The Frontline of Imperialist Aggression
While war devastates entire nations, it is a tool of imperialist misogyny that weaponizes the multiple crises of monopoly capitalism. Beyond the limited view of women as mere caregivers, they must be recognized as primary targets of fascist violence and war crimes.
The struggle of women workers is not a simple “double burden” of roles; it is a direct confrontation with a neoliberal system that imposes labor flexibility, privatization, and starvation wages. Because care is a public good, the disappearance of healthcare and maternal services is not a weight for women to carry alone, it is the criminal destruction of social rights of an imperialist policy that values territory over human life. War is the ultimate deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights of the working class.
From Global Frontlines to Local Resistance
This same imperialistic logic dictates the repression we face here in the Philippines.
As documented by the Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) and National Union of People’s Lawyers’ “Playbook of Repression”, the “War on Terror” framework has been localized to silence dissent. The Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020 and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act are weapons used to criminalize development workers and human rights defenders.
Many of those being targeted are women. Women leaders in grassroots organizations are the frontliners defending ancestral lands against grabbing and protecting the environment from extractive industries. Because they challenge the power of the state and its foreign masters, they are subjected to red-tagging, fabricated charges, and extrajudicial threats.
The pattern is identical from Minab to Manila: the systems that profit from war and poverty are the same systems that seek to crush the women who stand in their way.
Our Call to Action
To honor International Working Women’s Day is to commit to the total dismantling of the systems that produce war and state repression.
We stand in solidarity with the mothers in Sudan, the students in Iran, the survivors in Gaza, and the development workers in the Philippines. We reaffirm that the struggle for women’s rights is inseparable from the struggle against U.S. imperialism and for genuine social justice.
Kababaihan, magkaisa! Makibaka, huwag matakot!
Makibaka, Huwag Matakot!
Sahod, Trabaho, Lupa, at Karapatan, Ipaglaban!
Defend Women Rights Defenders! Stop the Attacks on Development Workers!