Category Archives: Women’s Liberation
A Holy Triumvirate: Class, Caste and Patriarchy in Modern Indian Society
Anti-Caste Movement of India
The following is an essay by Sharmistha Choudhury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). It was published as part of their work in the Anti-Caste Movement in India. In this essay comrade Choudhury explains the role of caste and patriarchy in modern Indian class society, and the organic relationship that exists between class, caste and patriarchy (as well as indirectly traditional Hindu religion).
As usual though the posting of his essay should not be taken as an endorsement of the line of the CPI(ML).
(* Please read ‘lower castes’ and ‘upper castes’ as ‘so-called lower castes’ and ‘so-called upper castes’ for obvious reasons.)
Class, caste and patriarchy share an organic relationship, especially in the context of the Indian subcontinent. While the toiling classes have traditionally belonged to the lower castes, the trading classes and the propertied classes have generally corresponded with the upper castes. Read the rest of this entry
“Nobody Cared, Nobody Did Anything:” The Normalization of Violence Against Indigenous Women
In the summer of 2004, while working as a producer for CBC News Sunday, I undertook a road trip to research Traces of Missing Women. My intent was to gather memories of Indigenous women who had been murdered or disappeared and create a video collage of images and words spoken by mothers, daughters, aunties, sisters and other loved ones to bring some light to a subject that had yet to be worthy of headlines or significant media coverage at all.
My journey took me from Toronto to Vancouver and back. Zig-zagging from north to south through B.C. and Alberta, through the Prairie provinces and around the shores of Lake Superior, I put 17,000 kilometres on a rental car over a period of seven weeks. There was not one single First Nations or Métis community that I visited that didn’t have a story to share. In all, rushing to cover ground and make my deadline, I only had time to conduct 45 interviews — 45 heart-wrenching stories of loss, grief and pain.
It was evident from my first encounters that there would be a common thread: all of the family members and friends I spoke to who had lost a loved one. Not only had they all experienced the devastation of loss by violence of someone precious, but they had also suffered from the treatment they experienced at the hands of those they went to for help. Read the rest of this entry
PFLP Salutes Hana Shalabi and All Palestinian Women on International Women’s Day
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a revolutionary organization fighting for national liberation and socialism in Palestine.
On International Women’s Day, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saluted the courageous, strong and constant steadfastness of Palestinian women, facing down occupation and oppression and the backbone of the struggle for liberation and return.
The Front commended the historic role of the Palestinian woman, standing side by side with the Palestinian man at the forefront of the struggle for national liberation, democracy and social development within and outside occupied Palestine, as well as her heroic role in the preservation of Palestinian culture and national traditions and the preservation of the unity and resilience of the Palestinian social fabric, including the Palestinian family, and as part of the Palestinian national resistance under the harshest conditions of aggression, occupation, displacement, refugee status and deprivation of the most basic human, economic, social and political rights. Read the rest of this entry
