Zehra Doğan/JINHA

AMED – Catalan feminists Maria Rodó and Marta Jorba, of the Gatamaula feminist collective, say that as they struggle against capitalism and patriarchy in the Catalan countries, they are among many Catalan women closely following the resistance of Kurdish women in Kobanê.

Maria and Marta spoke to JINHA while in Diyarbakır as part of a Catalan delegation visiting Kurdistan to support the reconstruction of Kobanê. The women represented a feminist perspective on a delegation of 19 Catalan civil society members, which also included representatives from Engineers Without Borders, as well as members of the Catalan Parliament, architects and humanitarian workers.

Marta said that the Kobanê resistance has become a real symbol of resistance and of the struggle of women in the Catalan countries. The Catalan feminist movement had a history of contact with Kurdish women in Northern Kurdistan, but recent events in Rojavamoved the two women to come observe the changes with their own eyes.

Marta said it was difficult to say how the transformation ongoing in Rojava would conclude, as the changes will have a "processive nature" dependent on local social contexts, but that changes like the co-presidency system (in which men and women share important positions in different areas of society) were already making women visible and central in all areas of life.

The Catalan women's movement has been recently engaged in its own struggle of women's rebellion against state policies that oppress women, especially in the movement Vaga deTotes ("strike for all"), which mobilizes for the power of women to shut down the economy based on their role as the unacknowledged support of capital through unpaid care work.

In Spain, women have borne the heaviest consequences of recent austerity policies since 2009. The privatization of basic services has pushed women to take on more unpaid care work and the extremely high unemployment rate has changed family relations across Spain.Meanwhile, the conservative government has attempted to roll back abortion rights "to 20 or 30 years ago," says Marta.

These social and economic changes have corresponded with a rising femicide rate. 12 femicides took place in the Catalan countries alone in the previous year, a rise relative to previous years.

"Violence against women is something that has been there forever," said Marta. However, Catalan feminists see state inaction as encouraging femicide. Many of the women killed had, as it turned out after they died, reported the violence they experienced to state institutions—which took no action to stop the violence. "So we see that institutions are not working."

Under the rubric of Vaga de Totes, Catalan women have been engaged inrebelling against the attack on women that has intensifiedsince the economic crisis began. A broad coalition of feminist groups and collectives has spent the last year raising social consciousness about the fundamental reliance of capitalism on women's unpaid care work.

"We want to focus on how the economy works based on care work," said Maria. "Women who are only working at home, students, and the unemployed can also be part of a strike, stopping the normal working of the economy." The campaign has been engaged in consciousness-raising activities and mobilizations in the streets of the Catalan countries.

Now, as Catalan people begin seriously discussing the possibility of independence, women are raising the issue of bringing the 40-year experience of the Catalan women's movement to these public discussions. Women like the writer, Communist Party member and pro-independence advocate Maria Mercè Marçal have long been part of the movement for Catalan liberation, but Maria says that in the period since the 1990s, "it has been hard work" to bring a feminist perspective to anti-capitalist pro-independence groups, which tend to see feminist issues as secondary.

"Everybody is talking about how we want to build this new country, but it seems that women don't exist," Maria said, discussing the recent independence process. Gatamaula has been focusing on advocating for women's role in the process. "It's not just that we want to be present, but all that we know as women, all our experiences, all that feminists have been doing during the last forty years, can give to this process."

At the same time, according to Marta, many Catalan women are closely following the struggle of Kurdish women in Kobanê to build their own new society after long oppression by the capitalist nation-states of the Middle East.

"We were interested in whether the reconstruction can have all the revolutionary power that has been there all this time, with the resistance and before the war," said Marta. "It's a very radical change that the women's movement is proposing. We think this is really important—and a challenge for all women in the world."

(cm)