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Below is the text of a speech given by a Chilean woman exiled in Britain. It was given to a meeting organised by Sheffield Trades Council's Charter Sub-Committee on International Women's Day. She points out the gains that were made in the position of women under the Popular Unity Government and the importance of international struggle for women's liberation was not fully integrated into its practice. For example, while the Mothers' Centres set up by the Popular Unity Government gave-for the first time- housewives a measure of independence and a practical focus for organisation, they operated within the framework of the family and the responsibility of women for childcare, etc. From this starting point the Mothers' Centres offered advice to women on how they could most easily and efficiently organise these tasks. And although in theory the revolutionary left was committed to women's liberation, in practice, it failed to offer a revolutionary perspective to the reformist one of the leadersolidarity now to the resistance against the military junta. ship of Popular Unity.
Friends, we would like to thank you for your invitation to this meeting. and to greet you fraternally, and to tell you about our experience in the fight for the liberation of women and for real knowledge of women in society:In our underdeveloped country. with a high percentage of illiteracy. the Chilean woman has found herself set aside in capitalist society, as just one more object that can be bought on the market. She has been forced to work without laws protecting her in pregnancy, pushed out to work in the brothel of domestic employment, and in any job which has no important role to play in society. It was only through trade unions that we could get laws passed to protect our health, and nurseries set up at work, for our children.
### DEMANDS
For the last 30 years, all women's demands have been taken up and supported by the socialist movements of our country. Comrade Allende, in Parliament, was the creator of laws continued from page 22 ression is being overcome in the context of the struggle for liberation. No matter how backward a country may be in its treatment of women, once it enters upon a revolutionary struggle, the position of women becomes transformed. There has been some documentation of this process in the case of Vietnam, Cuba and China, but very little in the case of the African countries. This book is a useful beginning in unveiling the wall of silence.
The Alternative White Paper on Ireland will be of interest to the women's movement especially in light of the controversy aroused at the Edinburgh National Conference over this question. It was pointed out there that few groups have discussed this subject, although women's groups are usually represented on Troops Out demonstrations -and However, even when the revolutionary movement was at its height in Chile the to protect the Chilean working women, and, it was under the Popular Unity Government that most was achieved for the independance of women, and their participation in society.
Under Allende, a Ministry for Women was created, as well as Centres to defend the legal rights of women.
These Centres took on the job of discussing their problems, proposing the necessary solutions: they participated in the distribution of food, and called for a criticism of the Chilean educational system.
### MILITARY COUP
With the military coup, which assasinated our President, the women's movement has lost all that it had won over the years, in street demonstrations and struggles with the police. Today the military junta has gone back to considering women as an object to serve, like a machine, to be exploited. In spite of that, what Chilean women, mothers, students and peasants have learnt and won is not something they are prepared to lose.
Now there are many resistance coma number of conferences and meetings specifically on the subject of women in Ireland have been held. It is quite clear that what is happening in Ireland affects us all. This pamphlet shows that the State is using Ireland as a testing-laboratory for the class struggle in England; can anyone doubt this after the use of the troops in the Glasgow dustmen's dispute. This pamphlet is written from the point of view of those who are struggling in Britain to get British troops out of Ireland. But it is written by an Irish organisation.
British Strategy in Northern Ireland on the other hand is written by an Irish organisation. Both of these above pamphlets detail the events over the last few years in a clear, simple way, helping to make sense of a situation that is so distorted in the bourgeois press. Both also spell out some of the steps necessary to begin to change that situation. mittees of the Chilean people in which women play an important part, through agitation and promoting the struggle for Chilean liberation. This is shown by the many women in concentration camps. The military gorillas hold many women in prison, and beat and rape them.
### MILITANT
Comrade Laura Allende, the sister of the assassinated President, a Socialist Party deputy in Parliament, is imprisoned-no one knows where, Some months ago, comrade Laura Videla, a militant of the MIR (the Revolutionary Movement of the Left) was arrested, beated and murdered -they threw her body into the garden of the Italian Embassy, saying she died there in a fight between political exiles.
Carmen Castillo, wife of the Secretary General of the MIR was arrested in October in a confrontation with the military in which comrade Enriquez died. She was six months pregnant, and these apes used psychological torture on her.
### WOMEN WORKERS
This comrade left Chile thanks to international solidarity especially of w. men workers and the women's movement of England. We, as Chilean women, are sure that the liberation of women also goes with the struggle to replace an unjust society with another more progressive in which women's social position is recognised, and in which women will find opportunities to realise themselves as human beings. We give our support and thanks to English women who are fighting at this moment for their just reward, and especially to the women of Sheffield who have helped us find a new home in exile.
armed with one or preferably both of these, a woman's group could start the necessary self-education needed to understand the complexities of the Irish "question".
Equal Pay and How to Get it By Ruth Lister & Marion Low, 20p Women Factory Workers By Anna Coote, 15p Battered Women By Tess Gill and Anna Coote, 30p All from NCCL, 186 Kings Cross Rd., London WCIX 9DE Women of the Rerolution, CEMAG Topics No. 3, 15p. from CFMAG, 12-13 Little Newport St, London WC2 Alternatire White Paper on Ireland, Troops Out Movement, branches all over the country. British Strategy in Northern Ireland Revolutionary Marxist Group (Irish section of the Fourth Internatioonal) from IMG, 97 Caledonian Road, London NI.
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