The Illusion of Equality

ByLídice Guerra

This column by Lídice Guerra originally appeared in the March 8, 2026 edition of El Sol de México.

Mexican working women have far more in common with working-class women around the world than with the oligarchic ladies of our respective countries. Despite geographical differences, the daily reality of working-class women worldwide is similar because capitalism shapes our living conditions.

Waitresses in Spain, farmworkers in India, migrant workers in the United States, unemployed women in Germany: we all struggle to make ends meet so that money is enough to feed the family, pay the rent or support a household: only 47 percent of women have a stable job, even though they are 75 percent of heads of household.

Being a mother puts us under greater economic, social, and psychological pressure: the burden of childcare and caregiving—the work that keeps society functioning—is an individual rather than a collective responsibility, because we do not have access to social security or the socialization of care, and we are forced into informal or part-time jobs and economic dependence on our partner—when we have one.

The superstructure of capitalist society perpetuates our conditions of oppression, discrimination, and violence: low-paying jobs, no right to retirement or pensions, and constant threat of sexual violence, human trafficking, and femicide. But in this particular era, monopolies are the executioners of the proletariat worldwide.

Agribusiness giants like Driscoll’s, Nestlé, and Monsanto exploit farmworkers, drive up the price of fertilizers and seeds, and suffocate farmers and small producers with ridiculously low purchase prices; supermarket chains hoard and speculate on the prices of basic products.

Extractive monopolies— mining, oil and gas pipelines—dispossess women in rural communities by devastating their territories and natural resources; they cut down forests and pollute rivers, destroying nature in their insatiable thirst for profit. For resisting this dispossession, more than 2,200 women defenders of the land and the environment have been murdered or disappeared worldwide since 2012.

Disputes over resources and trade routes erupt between monopolies and imperialist states, causing more than 61 armed conflicts worldwide and diverting public budgets toward exorbitant military spending—which reached a new global peak of $2.7 trillion in 2024—instead of allocating funds to social needs such as health, education, and pensions. Nearly 700 million women and girls live directly within the sphere of influence of these conflicts, where they suffer death, mutilation, rape, torture, and unspeakable suffering. This is the case of Israel’s war of extermination against Palestine, which, according to a study cited by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, has caused 680,000 deaths, 79.7 percent of whom are women, girls, and boys.

The superstructure of capitalist society perpetuates our conditions of oppression, discrimination, and violence: low-paying jobs, no right to retirement or pensions, and constant threat of sexual violence, human trafficking, and femicide.

Unemployment and poverty, environmental destruction and wars caused the migration and forced displacement of 60 million women and girls, with a high risk of suffering extreme violence and human trafficking, deaths, abuses at the hands of immigration police.

In stark contrast to the hardships and suffering endured by working women, every country boasts its list of the richest men and its list of the most powerful women, and the profits of the monopolies they head continue to grow obscenely, while our rights regress and our living conditions deteriorate. Equality is an illusion under these circumstances.

On March 8th, we, the working class, must respond decisively to the war declared against our rights and our lives by the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, the USMCA, by monopolies, and by governments that serve their interests, not ours. Let us unite against the root of inequality and the perpetuation of all forms of oppression and violence, both old and new— that is, against the capitalist system, which sacrifices the needs of the majority to sustain the enrichment of a few. Let us say no to exploitation, no to violence, no to war, no to barbarity; because it is either their profits or our lives.