Just in time for International Women’s Struggle Day (as they call it in their letter), the Kurdish Women’s Movement has published an open letter demanding a global struggle for women’s freedom in the twenty-first century. Read an excerpt from the letter below, or the full text here.
We are in the midst of a historic process. The patriarchal system, as the age peer of statist civilization, is undergoing a deep structural crisis. As women, we must diagnose this systemic crisis with its causes and consequences, establish strong analyses and develop perspectives that will accelerate our struggle. For, just as the system’s structural crisis constitutes great threats to women around the world, this situation also offers opportunities to guarantee women’s freedom, opportunities that perhaps only come once in a century. We even say: we can turn the 21st century into the era of women’s liberation! This is not a dream or a utopia. It is a reality. But in order for it to come true, we must create a women’s liberation program for the 21st century.
For this, we must first of all fully grasp in their entirety the fundamental contradictions and attributes of the era we live in. What possibilities and risks do these contradictions and attributes constitute from the perspective of women’s liberation? What sort of responsibilities must we shoulder in this regard, as global women’s organizations and movements?
Image of soldier from Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) via Sputnik News.