How the functioning of public services supports the precariousness of working women while the State reinforces the war industry.
Working women face the biggest onslaught against our survival. The privatization of health, the lack of resources for dependence, the absence of benefit measures for the care of the elderly and children, the lack of places for kindergartens, the impossibility of access to housing and low wages and part-time have fostered our precariousness and economic dependence on our families and / or couples, but at the same time it has also reinforced the reactionary culture that exalts traditional female values linked to the role of housewife and caregiver mother. However, public funding in the service of the war is enjoying ever better health.
The rearmament enriches a multitude of agents, but the working class does not perceive any benefit. The United States imposes on Spain how to spend its public resources through its armed arm, NATO, which forces its members to spend 5% of GDP on military spending (more than double the current 2% invested by Spain). Spain complied with his orders and has tripled its investment in defense since 2018. Meanwhile, the military business sector increases its business and maximizes its profits. Spanish giants such as Indra or Navantia (together with Airbus) break profit records with 28.3 billion obtained only with public contracts, managing to award 88% of the budget for Defense projects in Spain. On the other hand, the Spanish Government, under the pretext of aid to Ukraine and the defense of Europe, allocates million-dollar budget items to military spending and uses public funds in massive purchases of weapons to the United States to be sent to the Ukrainian front. But don’t be fooled: these policies don’t seek our security or our well-being. It is about financing the war against the enemies of the Western bourgeoisie, so that it maintains its economic and geopolitical dominion, thanks to the money that comes out of our pockets. The working class is asked to sacrifice, wage containment and patience in the face of the deterioration of public services, while rearmament is paid for with our precariousness.
The war machine is watered with public money for the progressive deterioration of public services, such as health. The recent breast cancer screening scandal is not the result of negligence or coincidences, but is the result of how all Public Administrations and Governments respond to the profit logic of the capitalist model. It is the result of a systematic process throughout the State, which has increased total spending in private hospitals by 84.6% between 2011 and 2023. In this way, the State is also responsible for this situation, because although it does not have the competences in Health, it cedes the management and collection of many taxes to the Autonomous Communities, which decide to make a direct transfer to business groups such as Quirón or Ribera Salud, which reuse single-use sanitary materials to save costs. The working-class neighborhoods of the cities lack emergency rooms in primary care, while the “rural” areas do not have health centers or hospitals. Pediatricians, gynecological specialists are missing. In addition, women suffer from diagnosis delay compared to men in at least 700 diseases; less than 4% of the investment in health is directed to specific pathologies of women, and the research does not take into account that some diseases manifest themselves differently in men and women, which causes more female mortality for not receiving an adequate diagnosis.
On the other hand, the poor financing of benefit measures for dependence and children reinforces the tasks linked to reproductive and care work, and thus women workers are forced to have lower paid jobs, with part-time hours and more unstable jobs, which reinforces economic dependence and vulnerability to situations of sexist violence. And this has a clear cultural reflection; it is no coincidence that the figure of the “tradwife” and the idealization of motherhood are booming.
But the dependence of working women is also linked to the impossibility of accessing housing. Rent has increased by 94% in the last ten years and it is increasingly difficult to become independent without depending on other people. Owners refuse to rent homes to families with children, to single mothers, demand increasing guarantees of “solvency”, high payrolls, even working life, in addition to exorbitant guarantees and bail. You just have to go to any housing assembly to see that most of the people evicted are working women with children. And meanwhile, housing for “tourist use” is multiplying in all cities and real estate capital has legal facilities to buy entire blocks and evict all its residents, in addition to tax subsidies “if they do not raise the rent.” The workers increasingly suffocated, and the capitalist increasingly free.
At this point, working women can no longer trust the State to guarantee housing, health, kindergartens, or salaries that allow us to live independently, because public services are no more than business grass, because the State manages all resources systematically in the service of business interests. At this juncture, it is the work of working women and communist militants to promote slogans typical of our class, such as the iron opposition to rearmament and the capitalist management of all public services.
