Women Celebrate International Women's Day by Rallying for Peace

For Immediate Release
Contact: Lisa Bennett, 202-628-8669, ext. 123; cell 202-641-1906

Women Celebrate International Women's Day by Rallying for Peace

Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy

Today, on International Women's Day, women and men across the globe are celebrating women's social, political and economic achievements and honoring the gains women have fought for as activists, advocates, mothers, workers and citizens of their countries. Michelle Bachelet, a feminist, will be sworn in as the president of Chile this week, but unfortunately women in the United States and around the world have more to lament than to celebrate this year.

Here in the U.S., George W. Bush's war on women have brought us a budget that takes money away from family planning and public assistance programs that help women and single mothers escape the plague of poverty. The radical right has pushed through a heartless law in South Dakota that would ban nearly all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, and similar bills are being spearheaded by conservatives in several other states. And as the Bush administration presses war in Iraq and rewards the richest in this country with more tax cuts, it ignores women and children, whose education and healthcare needs are suffering because of these reckless priorities.

In the border town of Juarez, Mexico, hundreds of young women have been raped and murdered on their way to or from their jobs at sweatshops. The Mexican authorities say it is random violence, and the U.S. corporations whose clothes are made in these maquiladora factories have done nothing. The National Organization for Women's march from El Paso, Texas to Juarez in December brought more attention to their plight, but it will take government action to end this plague of violence. NOW Executive Vice President Olga Vives is in Venezuela today with an International Women's Delegation to learn about the struggles women face in that country, and build our international dialogue.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Bush administration has turned an ill-begotten war into a disaster with global costs, women are suffering. The fight against terrorism has only ensured that more women abroad will be drawn into a cycle of violence, war and destruction. Afghani women have been forced back into the burqa, and girls' schools are burned down almost as quickly as they can be built. Countless Iraqi women have died as a result of the war and the insurgency, and the number grows. Women in U.S. military are dying as well, fighting in a war designed not to make us safer but to settle a score.

On this day of honoring women and calling for them to be equal participants across the world, NOW is marching in Washington, D.C., shoulder-to-shoulder with Iraqi women, calling for peace, an end to violence, reproductive choice for every woman and equal rights for all. We ask women and men who support equality, peace, justice and democracy to mobilize with us and March in New York City on Saturday, April 29, when we will send a message to the world that millions of us do not support this war and are demanding a change in the direction of our country. Women have spoken: Enough is enough.