A women's work is never

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2 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1990 Driving your car around the city at six or seven in the morning will open your eyes to women's burdens. Women are standing on the corners, waiting for the bus, with one or more children draped around them. Sometimes they are holding an infant child in their arms while holding the hand of a toddler.

All of them look tired and sleepy. They have probably been up since the crack of dawn to get ready for childcare and work.

Fixing breakfast, getting the clothes ready, waking sleepy children up, and seeing that they get dressed and fed, then trying to keep them awake while getting herself dressed and ready for work is the way a woman's day begins.

Sickness in the family is another burden. The boss doesn't want to know her problems with fevers, colds, and childcare. Baby sitters or childcare centers do not usually have facilities to separate a sick child from the others and will not allow the child with a fever or cold to come into the childcare group.

So the woman has to frantically search for a relative, friend, or acquaintance to drop her child off. Either that, or miss a day's work and a day's pay. Employers don't allow for chicken pox, measles, earaches, or the million other things that demand the mother stay at home to care for her children's health.

Women who make too many phone calls from their place of work to check upon their child's welfare are usually reprimanded and ordered to "place those calls on your lunch hour," not during working hours.

Who are these women?

Who are these women who shoulder this massive burden? They're usually single women who must work to pay the bills or married women who must work to help pay for the high cost of living, rent, food, etc. They're teachers, waitresses, nurses, pink-collar office workers, saleswomen, and those women who hold those jobs Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Asst. Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, May May M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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By with long hours and very little pay. They are not your bank executives, stock brokers, or rising stars of industry.

A recent New York Times article reported that women who hold second jobs (moonlighting) has increased from 2.2 percent of 28.9 million women workers in 1970 to 5.9 percent of 52.8 million who were working in 1989. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found, in a sampling of the workforce last year, that the number of women with two or more jobs had quintupled, from 636,000 in 1970 to 3.1 million in May 1989.

The number of men who were moonlighting rose more slowly in The following is written by Malik Miah, a former central the same 20 years, from 3.4 million out of the 48.7 million men who worked in 1970 to 4.1 million of the 64.3 million working men last year. (The percentage of moonlighting among men declined, from 7 percent in 1970 to 6.4 percent in 1989.

For both men and women, the survey showed that moonlighting the was concentrated among people 25 to 44 years old, the most able-bodied and the most likely to have children to support. The survey also showed that most moonlighting men were married, while most moonlighting women were divorced, separated, widowed, or had never married.

The average woman done full time is paid 70 percent as much as the average man working full time. When increases in the cost of living are taken into account, hourly wages have fallen about 5 percent in 20 years.

Shorter workweek

Eighty-two years ago, on March 8, 1908, socialist women of New York City marched by the thousands for the shorter workweek; for the end of child labor in the factories, mills, and mines; and for safer working conditions in those workplaces.

That march established March 8 as Women's Day on a national scale, and in 1910 the Socialist Congress made March 8 International Women's Day.

When we see the decline of living standards for women and children in this rich capitalist country, then we know that our sisters all over the world are suffering as we are. They too must carry the burden of children and labor on their backs as if they were beasts of burden.

Only a society which puts humankind before profits will ease the burden of all of us, male and female. Happy International Women's Day to all of our sisters, wherever you are! as Marxists have always done, to join the battles that arise (such as

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