O novo internacionalismo feminista: articulações possíveis de reinvenção grevista e transversalidade política

Abstract

This study seeks to understand how the new feminist internationalism, driven by mobilizations and feminist strikes, and particularly emerging from the Global South, challenges the existing capitalist order. Methodologically, it is predominantly held by bibliographic research, complemented by semi-structured interviews and documentary research, and grounded in the theoretical framework of the Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), which seeks a systemic explanation for gender oppression under capitalism. Initially, it recovers the reality of women under capitalism and engages in dialogues with other feminist perspectives. The study then delves into SRT, drawing from previous debates and ongoing issues, understanding the necessity for building solidarity and collective action. It revisits episodes where women raised significant demands related to both productive and reproductive labor, including going on strikes, and examines the historical origins of March 8th within the labor and socialist movements. Subsequently, the multifaceted context of the ongoing civilizational crisis is characterized in order to comprehend and characterize the movement and the articulations that repoliticize the March 8th, which takes the streets advocating for feminist demands and transversally linking these struggles in each territory – hereby considered the women's labor related demands.In this context, the strike assumes new characteristics due to its global nature and its articulation between demands that recur unevenly at the local level. Among the main characteristics of feminist internationalism are: the combination of diverse scales; the construction of new parameters and collective political categories to think, visualize, and feel the oppressions; and the capacity to produce ubiquity without homogeneity, i.e., to have multiple expressions without uniformity. Moreover, classical legal categories of the strikes as social and political facts are confronted with the international feminist articulations. Finally, based on interviews with feminist activists, the study seeks to situate Argentina, where the call originated, and Brazil —more specifically, the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte— to analyze the reception of the call to strike and the tactics, strategies, and demands of the movement. It was found that although the feminist strike tool has not yet been fully incorporated as a method in Belo Horizonte, the debates and demands present in marches and voiced in the streets contain, with local particularities, the same mottos strongly present in the international women's strike, which supports and evidences the transversal ubiquity defended here. It was also found that the relationship between self-organized movements and the institutionalization is not free from tensions but enables political mediations according to the conjuncture. It is concluded that the movement demonstrates potential for mobilization, organization, and denunciation, pointing towards a broader social transformation and articulating different agendas that affect women in their multiplicity in the face of the challenges and multiple crises. The strike is thus an instrument capable of adding greater radicalism to interventions, although not always viable. Therefore, the massive manifestations of women, advocating for articulated demands, constitute a fundamental characteristic of this new feminist internationalism, whose rooted strength in Latin America challenges the hardships of reality and dares to propose the construction of another world.