Unequal labour struggles continue to divide women globally, as lives are shaped by race, gender, class

The phrase “we are sisters under the skin” has often been a rallying cry for feminist solidarity, suggesting a universal womanhood that transcends race, class, gender and sexual identity, and geography.

International Women’s Day, celebrated annually on 8 March and officially recognised by the United Nations in 1977, seems to affirm this idea of global sisterhood.

But history – and lived experience – tells a different story. As Chandra Mohanty reminds us, “beyond sisterhood there is racism, colonialism and imperialism”.

International Women’s Day has its roots in the socialist and workers’ movements, a history that is often overlooked in contemporary celebrations. It is a day of resistance against exploitative labour conditions, against the undervaluation of women’s work, and for economic justice.

Yet the victories of women’s movements have never been evenly distributed. While some women fought for the right to work, others – especially working-class black women – fought for the right not to be exploited by work. Some women demanded entry into professional spaces; others were trapped in the most dehumanising forms of labour.

These divisions persist. Even within institutions of higher learning, inequality is structured into the very policies that shape women’s lives. Consider parental leave and maternity benefits. Academic staff – primarily middle-class professionals – receive six months’ parental leave with ease, their salaries continuing uninterrupted.

In contrast, administrative and support staff must navigate layers of state and institutional red tape, relying on the Department of Labour and the Unemployment Insurance Fund just to secure their full salaries during maternity leave.

The disparity is unmistakable: some women’s reproductive labour is prioritised over others. Motherhood is not supported equally – class and race determine whose care work is recognised, and whose is treated as an afterthought.

Patricia Hill Collins describes this as the “matrix of domination” – the interlocking systems of race, gender and class that shape women’s lives in radically different ways.

This is not an abstract theory; it is an observable historical pattern. The suffrage movement, often celebrated as a victory for all women, was primarily a victory for white middle-class women.

In South Africa, black women’s struggle for political rights could never be separated from the broader fight against apartheid. The iconic 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings is often remembered as a moment of feminist unity, but at its core it was an anti-apartheid protest.

The thousands of black women who marched that day – alongside white allies – were not only demanding gender equality; they were resisting a system that controlled every aspect of their movement, their labour and their right to exist in certain spaces.

The pass laws determined who could work where, who could move freely, and who could even claim the most basic rights of citizenship. The struggle for economic and social mobility was dictated by race and gender, making it clear that not all victories were shared.

This history continues to structure the present. Even within feminism, these patterns of exclusion persist. The global response to sexual violence offers a stark example.

After 7 October 2023, the alleged rapes (the widespread media claims were later disproven) of Israeli women were met with immediate international outcry, amplified by governments, media outlets and human rights organisations. Yet the ongoing rape, torture and killing of Palestinian women – documented for decades – are met with silence, denial or justification.

This is not about weighing one form of violence against another; it is about asking why some women’s suffering is treated as urgent and undeniable, while others are rendered invisible. The pattern is as old as war itself: black women’s suffering is always deemed collateral damage.

These dynamics of power, violence and selective recognition are central to my forthcoming book, Gender, Genocide, Gaza, Engaging Texts of Terror(ism) in the book of Esther (Routledge, 2025). The biblical book of Esther is often interpreted as a triumphant story of a courageous woman who saves her people from a planned genocide at the hands of an eternal enemy, Amalek. This narrative was weaponised – literally – by Benjamin Netanyahu in October 2023 when he declared war on Gaza, chillingly stating: “We remember Amalek.”

Feminist scholars have long recognised the gender-based violence in the text – the forced conscription of young women into the royal harem. Yet they have largely ignored a key aspect of the story: its ethnic violence.

The same narrative that acknowledges women’s subjugation under patriarchy simultaneously justifies the extermination of the “not chosen” ethnic groups under herem (divinely sanctioned genocide). My book argues that the harem and herem are not separate forces in the text; they are co-constitutive.

Gendered violence does not exist in isolation from racialised violence – it reinforces it. The same logic operates in contemporary political conflicts. When feminist discourse recognises gendered oppression but remains silent on racialised violence, it becomes complicit in erasure.

International Women’s Day must become truly international – not in name only, but in its commitment to global solidarity. As bell hooks reminds us:

“Women do not need to eradicate differences to feel solidarity. We do not need to share common oppression to fight equally to end oppression. We do not need anti-male sentiments to bond us together, so great is the wealth of experience, culture, and ideas we have to share with one another. We can be sisters united by shared interests and beliefs, united in our appreciation for diversity, united in our struggle to end sexist oppression, united in political solidarity.”

This means dismantling the hierarchies that determine whose struggles are recognised and whose are ignored. It means that the lives of Palestinian women – who continue to endure genocide even within a ceasefire agreement – must matter as much as the lives of Israeli women.

It means that black women’s labour, suffering and resistance cannot remain an afterthought in feminist movements that prioritise whiteness. It means refusing the liberal impulse to proclaim that “all lives matter” when history has shown us that some lives are grieved, protected and avenged, while others are disposable.

Solidarity is not about pretending all women are the same. It is about recognising the differences that shape our struggles while refusing to let those differences divide us.

If International Women’s Day is to be more than a symbolic gesture, it must be grounded in an ethic of radical solidarity – one that refuses to separate gender from race, class and colonial violence.

Otherwise, it remains a day of hollow celebration, masking the inequalities that continue to shape the world. DM

Professor Sarojini Nadar holds the Desmond Tutu South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and is currently acting as Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UWC.