March 8 belongs to the working class. It was forged through struggle by socialist women who organized within the international labour movement and the revolutionary parties of the early 20th century. The date itself became historic when women textile workers in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) launched strikes on March 8, 1917, helping ignite the Russian Revolution. International Working Women’s Day therefore carries a clear political meaning: it is a day of working-class struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and all systems that sustain exploitation.
More than a century later, working women remain a decisive force within the global working class. Across the world, they continue to hold up half the sky. Third World women workers stand on the front lines of the imperialist division of labour—from the garment sweatshops of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Guatemala1 to the emerging digital sweatshops training artificial intelligence in India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda2; from the frankincense warehouses of so-called Somaliland3 to the palm oil plantations of Liberia and Ghana4 and the abaca plantations of Ecuador.5 It is their labour that sustains the machinery of global capitalism. They stitch the garments that fill the racks of Western brands like GAP and H&M. They annotate the data that trains the algorithms of Silicon Valley giants like Meta. They sort frankincense destined for luxury essential oil markets. They harvest and process the crops that circulate through global commodity chains. Poverty wages, relentless production targets, repression of union organizing, the absence of basic labour protections, and unsafe workplaces are the norm. On top of this economic exploitation, women workers are routinely subjected to sexual harassment, coercion, and rape at the hands of supervisors, labour contractors, and employers who wield enormous power over their lives. The wealth accumulated in imperialist centers is built upon this super-exploitation.
In Canada, women workers are exploited under capitalism and concentrated in low-paid and precarious sectors such as care work, food production, and service work. Within this system, migrant women occupy some of the most vulnerable positions. Through programs such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, women from the Philippines, the Caribbean, and other Third World countries, are recruited into agriculture, food processing, domestic work, and the care sector under closed work permits that bind them to a single employer who controls both their job and their immigration status.6 Under these conditions, workers report 70- or 80-hour workweeks, wage theft, unsafe workplaces, overcrowded housing, racist abuse, and gender-based violence, while the constant threat of deportation silences many from speaking out. These conditions reflect the imperialist organization of labour: the wealth of countries like Canada is sustained not only by the exploitation of workers at home, but also by the super-exploitation of migrant labour drawn from the Third World.
While women workers bear the weight of this system, they are also organizing against it. In Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Cambodia, garment workers are fighting for living wages and the right to organize, facing retaliation and dismissals for speaking out.7 On rubber plantations in Liberia owned by the French-Belgian agribusiness giant Socfin, women workers have exposed sexual coercion and land seizures tied to global rubber supply chains.8 And in Kenya’s flower industry, women harvesting roses for European markets have spoken out against sexual harassment and poverty wages.9 When workers organize, they often face intimidation, dismissal, and violence—repression that in some struggles has even cost workers their lives. Despite the risks, across factories, plantations, and export zones, women workers continue to resist the global supply chains built on their exploitation.
Women have played decisive roles in revolutionary movements across history, from the Russian and Chinese revolutions to anti-colonial struggles throughout Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Standing on the shoulders of revolutionaries such as Queen Nanny, Clara Zetkin, Nadia Krupskaya, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Claudia Jones, Vilma Espín, Djamila Bouhired, Titina Silá, Josina Machel, Leila Khaled, and so many others, we salute the working women who continue to organize, strike, resist, and fight across the world today. From Palestine to Venezuela, Iran to Cuba, the liberation of women is inseparable from the liberation of the international working class and peoples under the boot of imperialism. On this March 8, we affirm our solidarity with women on the frontlines of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle.
Long live the struggle of working women.
Long live proletarian internationalism.
- “Global Garment Industry Profits from Denial of Right to Unionize.” Amnesty International, November 27, 2025. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/11/garment-industry-profits-from-denial-of-right-to-unionize/.
Anoushfar, Stefano Pozzebon, Ladan. “The Truth behind Your Clothing’s ‘Made in Guatemala’ Label.” CNN, October 18, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/18/americas/made-in-guatemala-working-conditions-as-equals-intl-cmd.
↩︎ - Graham, Mark, Callum Cant, James Muldoon, and Mark Graham Callum Cant. “Meet Mercy and Anita – the African Workers Driving the AI Revolution, for Just over a Dollar an Hour.” Technology. The Guardian, July 6, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/06/mercy-anita-african-workers-ai-artificial-intelligence-exploitation-feeding-machine.
Behal, Anuj. “‘In the End, You Feel Blank’: India’s Female Workers Watching Hours of Abusive Content to Train AI.” Global Development. The Guardian, February 5, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/05/in-the-end-you-feel-blank-indias-female-workers-watching-hours-of-abusive-content-to-train-ai.
↩︎ - Fobar, Rachel. Somaliland’s Frankincense Brings Gold to Companies. Its Women Pay the Price. The Guardian, January 7, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/07/somaliland-frankincense-female-workers-exploited-abuse
↩︎ - Luxembourg Times. “Luxembourg-Based Palm Oil Producer Socfin Changes Sexual Violence Policy.” August 14, 2025. https://www.luxtimes.lu/businessandfinance/luxembourg-based-palm-oil-producer-socfin-changes-sexual-violence-policy/83671953.html.
↩︎ - Herrera, Diana. “Unveiling Modern Slavery: Ecuador’s Landmark Case against Corporate Abuse.” OpenGlobalRights, December 12, 2025. https://www.openglobalrights.org/unveiling-modern-slavery-ecuador-landmark-case-against-corporate-abuse/.
↩︎ - “Canada Temporary Visa Program Enables Abuse Migrant Workers, Treating Them as Disposable, Report Finds.” Amnesty International, January 30, 2025. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/01/canada-tfwp-abuse-migrant-workers/
↩︎ - Al Jazeera. “Bangladesh Garment Worker Killed during Pay Protests | Fashion Industry News | Al Jazeera.” November 8, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/8/one-killed-as-garment-workers-clash-with-police-in-bangladesh-over-pay-rise.
Bonnar, John. “Cambodian Garment Workers Killed, Dozens More Injured and Arrested – Rabble.Ca.” Rabble, n.d. Accessed March 8, 2026. https://rabble.ca/labour/cambodian-garment-workers-killed-dozens-more-injured-and-arrested/.
Business and Human Rights Centre. “Myanmar: Over 1,000 garment workers protest demanding wage increase.” Accessed March 8, 2026. https://www.business-humanrights.org/my/latest-news/myanmar-over-1000-garment-workers-protest-demanding-wage-increase/.
↩︎ - Mukpo, Ashok. “At a Rubber Plantation in Liberia, History Repeats in a Fight over Land.” Mongabay, January 17, 2023. https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/at-a-rubber-plantation-in-liberia-history-repeats-in-a-fight-over-land/
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