women of colour
On
every continent women of colour, particularly those of us in countries of
the South, have the least resources and work hardest for the longest
hours. Yet we are the most
invisible workers. Most of us
spend our lives growing and cooking the food and collecting the water and
fuel that keeps most of the world alive.
Women of colour have given birth to and cared for most of the people of
the world during centuries of exploitation: through colonialism and every
form of slavery. Racism has
always been combined with sexism so that global capital gets our labour
for cheap or for free: if we are lucky enough to get wages for our work,
we are the lowest paid everywhere. Usually
the darker we are, the poorer we are. As mothers, daughters,
sisters, wives, grandmothers, aunts . . . we raise the children of our
communities only to see them forced into the hardest jobs for the least
pay, imprisoned unjustly, used as cannon fodder for the military, and
having to confront every form of discrimination and indignity every minute
of the day. We women of colour have been on the front line of
defence of our families and communities, but our work of defence and
survival, in the face of various apartheids, of war and of other forms of
genocide, has got little recognition even from our own communities and
organisations.
We
are demanding social and economic compensation for what we have been
forced to contribute to the wealth of the world through unwaged and
low-waged work.