 On March 8, International Working Women's Day, the feminist movements of Latin America are gearing up to commemorate a year of struggle and prepare for the battles to come. The feminist movement in the continent is vast and diverse and has been fighting against the structures of patriarchy and right-wing repression for decades. Some of the key issues the movements are dealing with are struggles for their economic rights especially in light of the pandemic, violence in a number of spheres including the feminicides and the fight for reproductive rights. Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch talks about the challenges before feminist movements in Latin America. Hi and welcome back to another episode of Dispatches from Latin America. Today we're going to talk about women and feminist movements in Latin America ahead of March 8, International Working Women's Day. What are the primary issues that women are mobilizing about? What are the primary issues affecting women in the region? And what are they doing to fight this? So first, employment. Latin America was one of the hardest hit regions by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was estimated that over 26 million people lost their jobs in one year in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. This is a report by the International Labor Organization. Many of these jobs were lost in the informal sector and women specifically in this context were some of the most impacted. Women lost their jobs at a higher rate than men during the pandemic. This has many factors that contribute to this. Of course, the fact that women had to take on the extra challenges of taking care of the home and taking care of their families during the lockdown. But the actual decrease in participation of women in the workforce during the first year of the pandemic was 10.4% compared to 7.4% of male decline in the workforce. This is really important to highlight because today it's about to be two years since the start of the pandemic. And many of those women have not been able to recover their jobs and are still out of work and facing the economic challenges of losing their economic stability, losing their ability to provide for themselves and their family. And so this once again is a very, very central demand for women's movements, for feminist movements that see the economic challenges faced by working class women as intrinsically tied to the feminist movement. And this is going to be a very strong demand of movements across the continent who are really facing the challenges of this pandemic induced economic crisis, the political crisis, but is really being felt by the working class in many of these countries and especially by women. Another very important aspect which continues to bring women onto the streets throughout the year and of course is going to be a central point of struggle in this March 8th is of course the scourge of violence against women. Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the regions which faces the highest levels of femicides, which is the crime of killing a woman on the basis that she is a woman. There's many different estimates of the numbers of women who are murdered, oftentimes by their partners, people they know or strangers. There is a number that's very hard to track due to how these crimes take place. In 2019 it was estimated that across the region, 5,432 femicides were committed, 5,432 women were murdered for being women. In 2020, this number, according to Mundo Sur, this number was 4,580. 2021, the number apparently dropped to 2,000 and in this year there's already been over 100 femicides. Some of the most impacted countries are Mexico, Brazil, a lot of and also in Argentina. It's very important to consider though that these numbers are very underestimates of the actual number. Many of these crimes, as I mentioned, go unreported. There's not reliable information and access to the numbers, but it continues to be one of the crimes that really is mobilizing women. They're demanding an end to femicides, demanding safety, demanding an end to violence and men to gender-based violence, and also for their governments to take action to protect them, to ensure their safety, and to take action against those who commit these crimes. In many cases, in countries such as Honduras, very, very, very few cases are reported and when they are reported, there's an even lower number of cases that actually end in a conviction of the person who committed the crime. This March 8th, another key rallying point for women's movements, for feminist movements, is going to be demanding end to femicides, greater protection from governments, and an end to the misogynist violence that kills women every day. The feminist movement in Latin America is one of the strongest across the world, and this is also tied to the movements that have emerged against femicides. The Neuna Menos movement, Not One Less, which emerged after the brutal murder of Chiara Baez in Argentina in 2015, has become a global movement at this point. There's Neuna Menos in countries across the world, and it really speaks to the importance of this struggle and the determination of women to really put an end to this. Femicides will be another key issue that people are mobilizing on, and the final one is the access to the fundamental right of abortion. Latin American Caribbean, again, is one of the regions that has extremely strict legislation on this fundamental right. There are several countries in the region where abortion is not only inaccessible, but is also criminalized. And so there are women who are in prison for attempting to get abortions, for having miscarriages, or for having an abortion. There are a handful of countries such as now Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico, and Cuba, as well as Uruguay that have passed legislation to open up this right of abortion. In other countries, abortion is accessible, but only in very, very specific cases. For example, if the health of the mothers is at risk, if the health of the fetus is at risk, or if the pregnancy resulted from sexual violence or rape. And so in this sense, for many feminist movements, it has become a very important rallying cry to demand abortion access, because when it is only available in these very specific conditions, this of course bars the right to many working-class women across the world. And then there are also several countries in the region that have completely criminalized abortion. And so this is really a cause that unites feminist movements across the continent, from as far north as Mexico to as far south as Argentina, continues to be a very, very important rallying cry. And so I think this March 8th, we're going to see, despite the pandemic conditions, I think people are once again going to raise these demands of an end to violence against women, no more feminicides. It continues to be such a existential threat to the survival and to the dignity of women in countries across the region. Demanding employment as women have been some of the most impacted by the economic crisis in during the pandemic, and demanding the expansion of access to abortion rights in countries across the region, this is not a moral issue. It is a public health issue, as that is the slogan for many of these movements. And so this is going, this is kind of the perspective with which we're looking at March 8th, International Working Women's Day in the region. I'm sure that we'll be covering these mobilizations. The landless rural workers movement are calling for national mobilization, calling for land, work, the right to exist. And these are very important slogans at a time where the far right in the region is continually growing. There are progressive advances, of course, but women are still at the crux of this far right advance and the economic crisis that's being faced by the in the region. So we'll be sure to come back to you with reports on what happened on March 8th, the mobilizations, and all of that and more. Thanks for watching People's Dispatch.