Nothing can erase the intersectional, militant protest roots of International Working Women's Day

Today Abigail passed a motion recognising the staunch protest roots of International Working Women's Day.

Abigail moved:

(1) That this House notes that:

(a) Saturday 8 March 2025 was International Working Women's Day, which has become recognised across Western countries and by corporate entities as International Women's Day;

(b) International Working Women's Day emerged from early twentieth‑century activism and organising of working‑class women fighting for women's suffrage, workers' rights and class liberation, culminating in the first International Working Women's Day rallies held in the early 1900s across North America and Europe;

(c) Australia's first International Working Women's Day rally was held in Sydney's Domain in 1928 and organised by the Militant Women's Movement, demanding equal pay for equal work, an eight-hour work day, fully paid annual leave and a universal basic income for those without employment;

(d) despite continued attempts to sanitise, depoliticise and sugar-coat International Working Women's Day with cupcakes, hashtags and business brunches weaponised to advance corporate credentials on gender equality, nothing can erase its radical, feminist, militant protest roots and the strong working‑class women it represents;

(e) in 2025, corporatised International Women's Day represents a far more palatable and marketable feminism that quashes attempts to confront the reality of misogyny and sexism under capitalism, and this has increasingly meant the exclusion of First Nations women, women of colour, disabled women, transgender women and migrant women because they challenge the heteronormative Western status quo; and

(f) in marking yet another International Working Women's Day, it has never been more important to grasp onto the roots of intersectional and working class feminism which protests the tangible and continuing inequalities facing all women and oppressed communities across the globe.

(2) That this House affirms the central role of union women in the ongoing fight for liberation and equality of all people, everywhere, and calls on the government to act with the urgency required to dismantle the systems that prevent women from achieving true liberation, justice and equality.

Motion agreed to.

Check out the Hansard here: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-98888/link/2257

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Nothing can erase the intersectional, militant protest roots of International Working Women's Day

A UNIVERSAL WELLBEING PAYMENT FOR NSW

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