World March of Women in 2015:
Liberate our bodies, our world, our territories
– Issues Paper –
In 2015, we, the women of the World March of Women, will once again take to the streets to
call for a more just world. Thousands of us will march in the cities and towns of Québec and
the world, in a vast popular feminist movement. We will unite our resistance to
capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism, which attempt to control our bodies and our
territories. We invite the entire population to follow suit by committing to the well-being
of women and communities here and around the world.
Our bodies are occupied territories
Our body, our original territory, the one through which we discover the world, confronts
inequalities and injustices.
Our bodies are territories occupied by various forces. Inequality teaches us that our
bodies do not belong entirely to us. As feminists, we resist this dispossession. We are
struggling to be, to become, to live in freedom and equality.
Our sexuality, our reproductive system, our decision to give birth or to have an abortion,
our birthing, our clothing, our body shapes, our spiritual practices should not be dictated by
anyone.
We reject norms of beauty that only value youth, thinness and whiteness, imposing models
on women at the expense of diversity. We want to be able to be ourselves without
having to obey the diktat1 of the nation, religion, family, work, the economy or
advertising.
We rise up against the control of women’s bodies expressed through all forms of
violence against women. As long as we have not put an end to domestic violence, to the
traffic in women for sexual exploitation2, to sexism (especially on the Internet), to rape
culture3 in the media or in schools and universities, to the threat of harassment on the
street and of sexual assault, women will not be free to go where they please, nor will they be
free to live their lives as they see fit – in their families, at school, at work, on the street, or
within their communities.
Diktat: see glossary on p. 9.
Traffic: see glossary on p. 9.
3 Rape culture: see glossary on p. 9.
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We denounce the disappearance and murder of so many Indigenous women, targeted
both as women and as Indigenous persons. We will march against this attack on women
who are attempting to survive the still very real impacts of colonisation. This situation is
one of the many forms of ‘femicide’4, like those that our sisters in Mexico and Guatemala are
struggling against.
We denounce the fact that certain people take advantage of the vulnerability of disabled or
elderly women to sexually assault, exploit or control them.
We are outraged by the violence of the immigration system that shamelessly deports
migrant women who are victims of domestic violence or who are living in extremely
precarious situations.
When some women are targeted, the freedom of all women is at stake!
Our sexuality is also an occupied territory. It is dictated to us from childhood through
advertising and by the entertainment, sex and fashion industries. Our bodies are used to sell
an image, to promote a fantasy – but above all, to control us. We denounce this
commodification of women’s bodies5, used to sell a product and particularly to promote an
unequal vision of relations between the sexes. We are fighting for women to be free to
define their identity, their preferences and their sexuality by and for themselves, and
we defend all women’s dignity by respecting every woman’s choices.
Our society locks us into rigid and hierarchical models of masculinity and femininity.
Stereotypes imprison us! Society continues to attribute different roles to each category as if
this was natural, whereas we want all options to be open. We reject the insults, violence and
intimidation levelled at lesbians and women who do not fit into the so-called ‘ideals of
femininity’. We want to be able to create our gender identity beyond the models
dictated by patriarchal and heteronormative society6.
We refuse to live in a society that belittles and excludes women who face functional,
physical or mental limitations. We seek to radically transform society so that the
burden of adapting or integrating does not rest on the shoulders of those who have
been excluded from society, but becomes a collective responsibility. The struggle of
women living with a disability is that of all women.
We are committed to challenging racism, which constrains freedom, justice and
equality for women of colour. On the one hand, we undervalue and neglect the knowledge
and contributions of immigrant women and of racialized women. On the other hand, we
overvalue and generalize those of white women. We reject this hierarchical relationship
that translates into under-representation of racialized women in almost every sphere of
Femicide: see glossary on p. 9.
Commodification: see glossary on p. 9.
6 Heteronormativity: see glossary on p. 9.
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social, economic and political life, and their over-representation in underpaid and underrecognized work.
We reject the idea that women must live at the bottom of the social ladder. We know
that to abolish this hierarchy, we need a better understanding of the history of slavery and
racism, and the way in which this history continues to influence our societies and
institutions.
We rise against the strong tendency to depreciate women’s work. Precarity and poverty
are gendered! We condemn the ‘walmartization’7 of our workplaces. Productivity at all
cost is not healthy and affects working conditions. Caring, service or educational work
cannot be carried out as on an assembly line. Accounting logic has an impact on our
physical and mental health, and on the health of those receiving care. Patriarchal
capitalism promotes the dehumanization of our work at the global level.
We denounce attacks on the social safety net imposed by successive governments
and employers! Employment insurance, social assistance, old-age pensions, access to
retirement – all of these measures have been steamrollered by the logic of capitalism and
neoliberalism. Not to mention the cuts to education, hospitals and homecare programs.
When the choice is made to cut jobs or to privatize public services, women are the
first to be affected – particularly those who are already in a more precarious situation:
low-wage workers, single mothers, single seniors, migrants, and young workers.
These measures increase the invisible work performed by women, which is so necessary to
society’s survival. What would happen if women stopped ensuring the collective well-being
provided by childcare, care for loved ones and volunteer work in the community? This
labour is free for society, but it is not free for women who expend their time, their wellbeing, their health and economic independence.
Too many of us are bearing the brunt of a system that uses our bodies and souls while
generating ever greater inequality between women, between men and women and between
peoples. Faced with this dispossession of our bodies and souls through work that
enriches only the few, we resist!
Our territories are marked by inequalities
Relations of power and dominance are also at work across the territory.
We oppose the dispossession of indigenous peoples by our governments who do not
negotiate in good faith, or nation to nation. We will not stay silent faced with the devaluing
of Indigenous cultures and knowledge. As feminists, we are committed to contributing to
decolonisation of minds and to improving relations between Indigenous and nonIndigenous8.
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Walmartization: see glossary on p. 9.
Non-Indigenous: see glossary on p. 9.
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As a democratic space, our territory is ailing. Everyone does not have equal access to
democratic spaces. Important obstacles continue to limit women’s access to decisionmaking space. More broadly, we denounce the takeover of our democracy to meet economic
interests at the expense of the majority, in particular those groups most impacted by
poverty. We reject a political system in which the population has no control over collective
decisions, a democracy reduced to the logic of the market. We denounce the dispossession
of peoples’ right to define their collective future, and all attacks on the right of peoples to
self-determination, here as elsewhere.
We rise against the privatization of so-called ‘public’ spaces and the control exercised
by institutions over these spaces. We reject the growing repression of social movements
through anti-protest regulations, the excessive deployment of police, and more broadly the
use of a security apparatus that increasingly monitors citizens’ activities. We want to regain
control of our democratic spaces!
We reject the gradual obliteration and devaluing of our symbolic territories. Think of
the threats faced by Indigenous languages and cultures, the invisibilisation of deaf culture9
and the non-recognition of Québec sign language, or even the lack of knowledge of the
history of black people in Québec. We denounce the erasure of women’s history, regardless
of their birthplace, and the invisibilisation of their role in struggles for freedom and social
justice. Just like our physical spaces, our cultures and our diverse memories are
territories that should be protected because they shape our visions of the world.
Our territories are also our living spaces, our neighbourhoods, our towns, our
communities. Inequalities run through them; certain people or groups are welcomed,
while others aren’t. We do not want our living spaces to replicate inequalities and exclude
individuals or groups. We reject gentrification of neighbourhoods, which drives people out
of their living spaces due to lack of resources; we rise up against the growing eviction of
people in precarious housing and the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness.
Our world is under threat
We rise up against the race for mining extraction, for hydrocarbon10 drilling, transport and
exploration, and their impact on our waterways and communities. We defend the right to
free and informed consent of First Peoples on these unceded ancestral territories11. It
is inconceivable that our governments should continue to pursue this life-destroying model
of development.
By commodifying the earth and its resources, capitalism produces wars and displacement.
Our climate is warming dangerously and biodiversity is threatened. We are extremely
concerned by the inability of States to take meaningful action to protect water, which is so
Deaf culture: see glossary on p. 9.
Hydrocarbon: see glossary on p. 9.
11 Unceded Aboriginal territories: see glossary on p. 9.
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fundamental to sustaining life on Earth. What will we do if our waterways, watersheds and
farmlands can no longer feed us?
We need to radically transform our modes of production and consumption. Our bodies
absorb pesticides and toxins from the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.
Development models based on extraction of natural resources imperil ecosystems
and communities, in several regions of Québec and in many communities. Confronted
with these destructive practices, several regions now describe themselves as at risk. They
are being drained of their resources, jobs, services and youth.
We raise our voices loudly and clearly to say: stop this death economy!
Our bodies are territories of resistance!
We are struggling to free our bodies and our territories from the inequalities
produced by mutually-reinforcing and interrelated systems of domination: racism12,
sexism13, lesbophobia14, ageism15, classism, colonialism16 and ableism17.
As feminists, we are and always have been a source of resistance and transformation!
To the Allumettières, the match factory workers in the Outaouais who went on strike in 1924
to protest their employer’s arbitrary decisions.
To Madeleine Parent and textile workers who, in 1947, stood up to intimidation by Duplessis
and the clergy.
To Anne Cools who along with her fellow students occupied Sir George Williams University in
1969 (today a part of Concordia University in Montreal) to fight against the racist abuse
suffered by Black students.
To the Common Front of Québec women who demonstrated illegally in 1969 by chaining
themselves to each other to denounce the municipal anti-protest bylaw enacted by the city.
To the activists of the Women’s Liberation Front who, in 1971, chained themselves to the court
to protest the exclusion of women as jurors.
To Chantal Daigle who, in 1989, stood up to a controlling man, and to the women who helped
her obtain an illegal abortion.
Racism: see glossary on p. 10.
Sexism: see glossary on p. 10.
14 Lesbophobia: see glossary on p. 10.
15 Ageism: see glossary on p. 10.
16 Colonialism: see glossary on p. 10.
17 Ableism: see glossary on p. 10.
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To Ellen Gabriel and to the grandmothers who occupied the Pinery at Kanehsatà:ke in 1990 to
stop the conversion of their ancestral land into a golf course.
To the many strikes by women workers throughout the 1990s: telephone workers,
housekeeping workers, nurses and teachers.
To the activists of the World March of Women in Montérégie who took over the Jacques
Cartier Bridge in the struggle against poverty and violence.
To Pussy Riot whose bodies incarnate anti-religious, anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist
rebellion.
To the women students who chanted, “Forward, forward, we’re not going back” even when
faced with truncheons.
To Marie Barile and disability activists who took over the street to force action on universal
accessibility of buildings, businesses and transportation.
To lesbians of all backgrounds who daily adopt strategies to defeat all forms of lesbophobia
and sexism that persist in Québec and elsewhere around the world.
To deaf and hearing-impaired women who are at the forefront of struggles to ensure that
social movements and political and cultural communities provide sign language
interpretation.
To Egyptian women activists at the heart of the Arab Spring who demonstrated despite the
prevalence of sexual assault on the front lines.
To Indigenous women in Peru who are preventing Canadian mining machinery from
extracting resources without their consent.
To all Palestinian women who struggle to defend their lands, their rights and their dignity,
playing a frontline role in popular resistance in the face of colonisation and violation of
Palestinian people’s fundamental rights.
To the women who organize anti-rape patrols in Indian cities, in the absence of any support
from the police.
To the activists of Idle No More who have shaken an entire country to protect the territory and
rights of Indigenous women and peoples.
They are us, we are them. We are as strong as all of these women who came before us
and who surround us. Be inspired by their courage, take to the streets and reclaim
our territories occupied by systems of oppression.
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We will march until our bodies, our world and our territories are free!
We will march to regain possession of our bodies, souls, desires and lives. We will
struggle to free our bodies from all forms of violence against women. We will take care of
our bodies, which make it possible for us to live, relate, feel, learn and get involved. Our
bodies and ideas are a territory of resistance and of creation. We can take action
against the dominant ideology that erases our voices – and we will.
We will march for a free sexuality, where all are free to live their sexual orientation, to
embrace diverse practices based on equal and consenting relationships, free from the
abuses that rape culture and commodification produce.
We will march to challenge the writing of a hegemonic18 history by ruling class men.
We are here to share our memories and our perspectives on the world. Just like those
before us who used their bodies, their spirits and their intelligence as a political force, we
will take our rightful place.
We will march so that the Earth is recognized as source of life, subsistence and
teaching, providing us with all that we need for a good life. We will march to develop an
egalitarian and ecological vision of the common good, against the stream of capitalist
and patriarchal thought.
We will march to deconstruct colonialism and to build new relations between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to develop truly equal relations between peoples, and
for the respect of the right to self-determination of peoples19. We will march in support
of the use of names in Indigenous languages and for the recognition of Indigenous history
and languages.
We will march for a model of society that ensures equality for all.
We will march for borders open to solidarity, and for meaningful citizen
participation where all women living in Québec, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, from all
generations of immigrants, have access to the same spaces and rights as Québecoises and
Québecois as a whole.
We will march for local economies and local manufacturing, and for a meaningful
policy on food sovereignty.
We will march for an economy based on the values of feminism, ecology and
solidarity focused on the well-being of our communities.
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Hegemonic: see glossary on p. 10.
Self-determination: see glossary on p. 10.
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We will march for a development model inspired by the concept of “buen vivir”20
(“good living” or “well living”), which recognizes the interdependence of human beings, and
the dependence of human life on other life forms. A harmonious and balanced relationship
with nature is the very condition of our existence – not only must these life forms no longer
be pillaged, they must be restored, protected and managed sustainably.
***
We, feminists of the World March of Women, call on all of Québec to march21 with us
in 2015.
The World March of Women is a powerful force of resistance to different systems of
oppression, and a concrete space to build our alternatives. In the course of the next
WMW, which will take place in 2015, we invite all social movements to incorporate feminist
values and perspectives and to mobilize in solidarity with women around the world22. We
will not stop at imagining alternatives – we will put them into action!
We invite the population to resist with us and to participate in this permanent,
irreverent, unavoidable and irreversible movement.
We call for the active participation of popular organizations, unions, student associations,
immigrant groups, LGBTQIA23 groups, community networks, artists, professional
associations, affinity groups, environmental networks, alter-globalists, anarchist activists.
Inspired by the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity24, together we will establish the
foundations of this new society, of this feminist world that will prioritize justice,
equality, peace, solidarity and freedom!
Text drafted by the Coordinating Committee
and adopted by the Québec Coordination
of the World March of Women (October 2014)
Translated by the Toronto Federation of Labour
Concept used by feminist activists in Latin America.
The term “march” is used in this text as an image referring to mobilization in the context
of World March of Women actions. It is intended to be inclusive of all, including people with
reduced mobility who will mobilize without necessarily physically walking.
22 Excerpt from the call issued by the Women’s caucus during the Final assembly of social
movements at the Peoples’ Social Forum in Ottawa, August 24, 2014.
23 LGBTQIA: see glossary on p. 11.
24 Link to the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity:
http://www.worldmarchofwomen.org/qui_nous_sommes/charte/en
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Glossary
1.
Diktat: Refers to something that is dictated, imposed, demanded.
2.
Trafficking: Refers here to situations where women are transported across borders or
within a country to find themselves exploited and deprived of their rights though
forced labour. The victims may be compelled by threats, the use of force, kidnapping,
fraud, deception, or abuse of authority. Consent by a victim of trafficking is not
legitimate if it is not freely given – for example, when one of the above-mentioned
methods is used.
3.
Rape culture: Rape culture describes a social and media environment where sexual
violence is justified, excused, trivialized, indeed accepted. For example, it can be an
environment that blames women’s clothing or appearance, and makes women bear
responsibility when they are victims of sexual assault.
4.
Femicide: A term used to describe the murder of women based on their gender. These
crimes are perpetrated within a social, political and legal context that legitimizes
misogyny (i.e. hatred towards and depreciation of women).
5.
Commodification: The ‘commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality’ refers to a
process where women’s bodies are to be judged, modeled, mutilated to conform to a
unified, racialized and eroticized model. It also refers to processes through which
women and girls’ sexuality is objectified and commodified. This is how women’s bodies
and sexualities are appropriated. [From the Program of Demands of the WMW in
Québec in 2010]
6.
Heteronormativity: A social structure in which heterosexuality is defined as the norm
for all. It is related to the idea that human beings are divided into only two distinct and
complementary categories: man and woman, who are supposedly connected by mutual
desire. Flowing from this, the idea that there must be men and women
(virility/femininity), as well as traditional gender models with defined roles.
7.
Walmartization: Refers to a model of work organization based on market
liberalization and the rise of precarious and atypical work (all forms of work that
undermine permanent, full-time and ongoing employment in good working conditions).
This model is characterized by a serious decline in employees’ working conditions and
reinforces the undervaluing of women’s work.
8.
Non-Indigenous: The term used to describe people who are not Indigenous.
9.
Deaf culture: Refers to the different elements of the culture, language and heritage of
communities of deaf and hearing-impaired individuals.
10. Hydrocarbon: Energy resource which is non-renewable and whose deposits are
running out or becoming very expensive and difficult to extract (for example, coal, oil,
natural gas).
11. Unceded Aboriginal territories: Describes the fact that the Indigenous peoples who
lived or still live on a territory never ceded, sold or exchanged it, nor did they transfer it
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in any way to the people who colonized it, and that no treaty applies to this territory
defining its use by different peoples.
12. Racism: A system that creates a social, political, economic and cultural hierarchy by
placing white people at the top of the pyramid (with a set of privileges) and brown and
black people at the bottom, in the name of white supremacy. This system expresses
itself at the individual level as contempt, fear and hatred, and in society as a whole as a
form of discrimination and oppression of racialized people.
13. Sexism: A discriminatory attitude towards a group or an individual, based on gender.
Sexism refers to discrimination based on gender, most often to the detriment of
women, denying the right to freedom and equality of human beings. It leads to
systematic discrimination within society.
14. Lesbophobia: The expression of hatred, disgust, contempt or fear by certain
individuals and institutions towards lesbianism, i.e. loving or sexual relations between
women. These attitudes accumulate and translate into discriminatory social practices
and the inferiorisation of lesbian women.
15. Ageism: A set of mistaken assumptions, beliefs, practices and policies – whether overt
or subtle – that target individuals because of their age, particularly young people and
the elderly. Ageism assigns a greater value to certain individuals based on their age. It is
based on acquired fear and contempt, and expresses itself in defamatory, threatening,
avoiding, discriminatory or violent attitudes, expressions or behaviour, at an individual
or institutional level.
16. Colonialism: Within the Canadian and Québec contexts, colonialism is a process that is
still operational, justifying the appropriation of the territories and bodies of Indigenous
people for the profit of the nations appropriating them. This process also operates
through assimilationist and genocidal policies and practices, and denies peoples’
sovereignty over their own territories. The process of colonisation is characterized by
violence in all its forms (physical, symbolic, economic) affecting every aspect of
colonized peoples’ lives (economic, cultural, religious, etc.)
17. Ableism: The organization of society in a way that excludes people living with a
disability. The ableist value system establishes able-bodied people without disabilities
as the social norm. Society expects people who don’t meet this norm to attempt to
conform to it. Society thus creates obstacles to social and economic equality for those
who don’t meet these expectations, and makes them disabled.
18. Hegemonic: Refers to the domination of one power, country or social group over
others.
19. Self-determination: The right of peoples to decide their fate, or right to selfdetermination. More broadly speaking, this concept refers to being able to decide for
oneself, either as an individual (e.g. individual life choices or definition of one’s
identity), as a social group (deciding which priorities or common interests are to be
defended as a social group) or as a people demanding the right to freely choose its
political and economic status.
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20. LGBTQIA: (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, Queer, intersex, asexual) – Term that groups
together people whose sexual orientation or gender identity does not ‘fit the norm’, or
does not conform to heteronormativity.
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