This 8 March, neither the streets, nor the alleyways, neither the dirt roads nor the paved ones, will feel the impact of the firm steps of black women, female peasant workers, fisherwomen, indigenous women, female domestic workers, female residents of city peripheries and all the other women who every year mobilize to denounce injustice and demonstrate the political force of women.
The hustle and bustle of trade will not come to a halt in the face of the drumbeats, the music of the struggle, the words of (dis)order and the cries of women for a life free of violence and injustice. The COVID-19 pandemic, powered by the historic inequalities of class, race and gender and the federal government’s death project, has already killed more than 250 thousand people in Brazil and will not permit the presence of women on the streets.
However, it would be wrong to think that women remain immobile in the face of the daily attacks on their rights. In all the rural and urban communities, in every quilombo and in every village, in every settlement and on every hillside, women are mobilizing to guarantee their collective livelihoods and for the dignity of each and every one. In every coalition in defence of health, for universal basic income or for vaccinations, women are working intensely. In every gesture of indignation and in each proposed policy to confront domestic violence and femicide, religious fundamentalism, racism and police violence, LGBTphobia, the genocide of indigenous people and the black population, and political violence, women are there, organized in collectives, networks, unions, movements. Despite the empty streets, if we attune our senses, we can feel in our hearts the vibration of these millions of women, fighting for life.
What the Women’s Forum of Pernambuco says, in posters all around the city, is really true: “with or without the pandemic, women are on the frontline!” And it is in recognition of this that CESE reasserts its commitment to the defence of rights and aligns itself with the struggles of women, working harder than ever to be present in every corner of the country, joining forces, alleviating pain and nurturing the dream of “the days of women” which, yes, will come.
