Women at work in rural India. A woman’s work continues long after she leaves

the fields – cooking, cleaning…

Photo: Community Aid Abroad.

Part 2 — Analysis and Reflection

81

I am woman

This poem is reprinted from Magdalene, a Sydney (Australia) Christian feminist journal. The September 1984 edition focused on women and work.

I am mother

I am sister

I am wife

I am woman.

A woman who, from the beginning,

has worked to the limits of her capacity

in the paddy fields, in plantations and factories;

Woman, who sows, weeds, harvests for meagre daily wages

wherever work is available; who in periods of economic

growth is used as reserve and cheap labour, who in periods

of crisis is the first to be retrenched and victimised.

Women, eighty per cent of whom work in agricultural operations, and who

besides being exploited in terms of wages, are also subjected

to marked wage differentials for the same work.

Woman, who works in dimly lit factories,

who strains in long office hours; who must bear the greater brunt of poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy; for whom there is no maternity leave, no child care facilities.

I am woman

I am worker

A worker whose hands turn

the great machines of the factory

which, each day, tears my strength;

Women, who are nurses, teachers, clerks, typists, working long hours together with the additional burden of housework.

I am woman

raped, abused, violated, murdered in the fields, on the

streets, in detention houses;

I am woman

awake, in struggle.

Women, who recognise that the struggle must be directed

against a system that exploits and degrades the

majority of our people;

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Women, who understand that the brunt of increasing

repression is borne by the people: a state that must

legitimise itself, using elections, the armed forces

against them, in the name of "National Security"

any movement of protest is met with arbitrary arrests,

detention, torture, "encounters", killings.

Women, who know that the women's struggle can only be won

in the larger struggle. For a people cannot be free,

until the women are free.

We want to add our strength and our vision to the movements

that struggle for the right to live as human beings

in freedom, dignity and equality.