The economic crisis that has coincided with the pandemic has had a serious impact on women in the workforce, leading to the popularization of the portmanteau “she-cession.” The wage gap affects all members of the working class, as an artificially low wage for gender-oppressed workers drives down wages for all workers. Rising inflation is increasing the gendered wage divide. Equal pay for equal work remains an important fight in the class struggle.

Attacks by the provincial and federal governments on public social services and workers that provide them are disproportionately affecting sectors with a higher portion of women workers; healthcare, education, and civil service administration. Throughout the pandemic, inflation, and now the threatening recession, women and workers have found ways to fight back. They have organized to demand better wages, paid sick days, and well-funded hospitals and schools. As young communists we need to agitate for a public monopoly on social services, with universal not tiered or qualified access. This is our answer to the ruling class demands for austerity measures.

It is clear to us as Young Communists that the main force sustaining patriarchy and male chauvinism today is capitalism. The drive to produce new generations of working people has always fallen on women, who, in modern capitalist society, are forced to work the “double burden” of both the regular work day and unpaid domestic labour, including cleaning, child-rearing, cooking, and other household duties. The patriarchy and the capitalist system rely deeply on each other and mutually reinforce one another. Communists have always taken up the call for increased gender equality, and have continuously fought for accessible childcare, reproductive healthcare, truly equal pay rates, and higher rates of education for women and gender-oppressed people.

Today and tomorrow, the YCL-LJC remains committed to the fight against all forms of oppression. Oppression strengthens and reinforces the exploitation of one class over another.

“Solidarity among the male and female workers, a general cause, general goals, a general path to that goal — that is the solution to the ‘woman’ question in the working-class.” —Nadezhda Krupskaya