Advance the Struggle for Working Women across the Asia Pacific!

IWA ASPAC Statement for May Day, 2026

On this International Workers Day, the International Women’s Alliance Asia Pacific salutes workers, especially the working women, throughout the region who are organizing to advance their struggles, running our communities, and fighting back against their exploiters.

From factory workers to farm workers, from service workers in hotels and restaurants to domestic workers in homes, and so many more, working women continue to be in the frontline advancing the rights and protection of all workers. Low wages across the sectors keep working families below the poverty line while the impact of neoliberal policies such as contractualization take away job security. Lack of living wages and no job security is forcing many from the rural areas into the cities looking for work to survive. We know that many women are then forced into further debt to migrate abroad to be able to ensure their loved ones can survive. Meanwhile, workers who try to unionize for better working conditions and wages face harassment, restrictions of working hours, and even union busting during working hours.

Communities across the Asia Pacific are feeling the blunt effect of the world wide economic and political crises fueled by the desperation of US imperialism to maintain as the number one superpower. Particularly, here in the Asia Pacific, the US government's militaristic so called “Indo-Pacific pivot” continues to wreak havoc in countries and communities throughout the region. Military war games destroy the environment, troops’ exercises bring mayhem into communities especially to women as violence against women continues to rise while farm workers are forced out of the fields to make way for “war games” or forced to work for even lower wages. Meanwhile, the US wars and proxy wars in West Asia, continue to destabilize and impact communities enabling even more wars, with women bearing the brunt of this man-made crisis.

For women, this means we must strengthen our dedication, organize, and come together with all working and oppressed people to transform our fear into a collective fight for the liberation of all.

Today, we particularly find inspiration from the tireless trade unions in Asia Pacific. Their ongoing courageous work to unite across their struggles has seen victories for workers. Most recently, we saw how the Kowloon House West Avenue workers in the Philippines successfully asserted their demands for wage increase, benefits, and the turnover of service charges. In New Zealand, Woolworths Customer Care Centre members were able to ratify their Collective Agreement. The Indonesian government was also forced to pass the Domestic Workers Protection Law after relentless organizing, resistance, and collective struggle of grassroots organizations.

Women continue to defend their ancestral lands and livelihood while being confronted with continuous oppression in their communities. Today we raise our voices together in calls that unite our sectors and communities: Living Wage for All, the end of contractualization, and all neoliberal policies, for they worsen the economic crisis.

Today as we unite our calls throughout the region, we draw inspiration from the thousands of working-class women who organized, continued to defend their struggles, and worked to advance the rights of women and all oppressed people throughout our countries against fascism, repression, and US imperialism. May we continue marching along the paths they began for us as we advance the rights of women and all oppressed people.

Further advance the struggle for working women across Asia Pacific!

End US-backed wars of aggression!

Workers of the world, unite!