STATEMENT BY THE STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN’S LEAGUE
31 July 2026
Today, on Pan African Women’s Day, the Revolutionary Women’s League extends its revolutionary greetings to the women of Kenya, Africa and the world. We salute workers, peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, students, teachers, healthcare workers, informal traders, professionals, revolutionary organisers and all those whose labour sustains society while remaining exploited under imperialism and capitalism. We equally stand in solidarity with all those subjected to patriarchal and gender based oppression, recognising that the struggle against every form of oppression is inseparable from the struggle against exploitation.
Pan African Women’s Day is not merely a day of celebration. It is a day of struggle, remembrance and renewed commitment. It honours the generations of African women who resisted slavery, colonial conquest and imperialist domination, who organised workers and peasants, who carried supplies to liberation fighters, who endured imprisonment and torture, and who refused to surrender the dignity of our people.
Kenya’s own history bears witness to this revolutionary tradition. We remember Mekatilili wa Menza, who organised resistance against British colonial rule on the Coast. We honour Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima, whose courage in the forests of Mount Kenya helped sustain the Mau Mau liberation struggle. We salute Wangari Maathai, whose defence of our environment challenged dictatorship, land grabbing and imperialist models of development. Across our continent we honour Charlotte Maxeke, Lilian Ngoyi, Albertina Sisulu, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Ruth First, Josina Machel, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, Dulcie September and the countless unnamed women whose sacrifices advanced not only the liberation of Africa but also the cause of world revolution.
Their legacy reminds us that women have never stood on the margins of history. They have stood at its forefront.
More than six decades after formal independence, the overwhelming majority of Kenyan women remain trapped within a neo colonial social order that denies them genuine freedom. While a small comprador elite accumulates immense wealth, millions of women struggle daily against poverty, unemployment, landlessness, food insecurity, rising prices, collapsing public services and insecure livelihoods. Women produce enormous wealth through their labour in farms, factories, flower farms, tea estates, fishing communities, markets, schools, hospitals, households and the informal economy, yet they continue to receive only a fraction of the value they create.
These conditions are neither accidental nor inevitable. They are the direct consequence of a neo colonial economic order maintained through imperialist domination and administered by comprador governments that subordinate the interests of the Kenyan people to foreign finance capital. The privatisation of healthcare and education, the commercialisation of essential services, the grabbing of community land, the plunder of our natural resources, the casualisation of labour and the deepening burden of foreign debt continue to intensify the exploitation of working women throughout our country.
Working women bear the greatest burden of this crisis. They labour in factories for poverty wages. They cultivate land they do not own. They sustain families through unpaid domestic labour while confronting unemployment, insecurity, political repression and gender based violence. Women in informal settlements, rural communities and urban working class neighbourhoods carry the daily responsibility of ensuring the survival of families under conditions created by a system that values profit above human life.
The Revolutionary Women’s League affirms that women’s oppression cannot be understood apart from the material conditions that reproduce it. Patriarchal relations are continually reinforced because they serve systems of exploitation by maintaining unpaid labour, depressing wages and preserving class domination. The struggle against patriarchy is therefore inseparable from the struggle against imperialism, neo colonialism, capitalism and every form of class exploitation. Genuine emancipation cannot be achieved merely through legal reforms or symbolic representation. It requires the revolutionary transformation of society itself.
We equally affirm that the decisive force for women’s emancipation lies not among privileged elites who have secured positions within the existing order, but among the millions of working women whose labour sustains society. The future belongs to the women who till the land, produce food, teach our children, heal the sick, build our industries, trade in our markets and organise within their communities. Their collective organisation constitutes an indispensable force for national liberation and socialist transformation.
We reject every attempt to reduce women’s emancipation to corporate appointments, token political representation or donor funded empowerment programmes that leave untouched the structures responsible for exploitation. The advancement of a privileged minority cannot substitute for the liberation of the working majority. Women cannot be liberated by merely integrating a few into institutions that continue to exploit the many. Genuine emancipation shall be won only through organised mass struggle led by the working class and its allies.
For the Revolutionary Women’s League, the struggle for women’s emancipation forms an inseparable component of the National Democratic Revolution. The defeat of imperialism, the dismantling of the neo colonial state, genuine land reform, national industrialisation, democratic control over our natural resources and the establishment of people’s power create the material foundations upon which the complete liberation of women can be realised. The emancipation of women is inseparable from the emancipation of the working class. Neither can triumph without the other.
The Revolutionary Women’s League is the women’s mass organisation of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya, established to organise, educate and mobilise women under the leadership of the Party. Guided by Marxism Leninism, the mass line and democratic centralism, we transform the everyday struggles of women into organised revolutionary struggle. From the masses, to the masses, we learn from the experiences of working women, synthesise those experiences through scientific socialism and return them to the people as revolutionary consciousness, organisation and action. Our task is to build the organised power of women as an indispensable force of the National Democratic Revolution and the future socialist transformation of Kenya.
On this day we extend our revolutionary solidarity to the women of Palestine resisting genocide and occupation, to the women of Cuba defending socialism under blockade, to the women of Venezuela resisting imperialist aggression, to the women of Western Sahara struggling for self determination, to the women of Sudan striving for peace and sovereignty, and to working women everywhere confronting exploitation, racism, colonialism, fascism and war. The struggle of working women knows no borders, for imperialism itself knows no borders. We affirm that the liberation of women in Kenya is inseparable from the liberation of women across Africa and the world, for imperialism is a global system and our struggle must equally be international.
We therefore call upon women across Kenya to organise in villages, estates, campuses, workplaces and communities. Build revolutionary organisations. Deepen political education. Unite with workers, poor peasants, progressive youth and all patriotic forces committed to national liberation. Reject tribalism, corruption, chauvinism and every ideology that divides the oppressed. Transform the daily struggles of survival into organised political struggle, and organised political struggle into revolutionary power capable of defeating imperialism and building socialism.
The Revolutionary Women’s League remains steadfast in building a disciplined movement of politically conscious women capable of advancing the National Democratic Revolution and contributing to the broader struggle for a united, sovereign and socialist Africa. We reaffirm that the liberation of Kenya shall remain incomplete until women are fully liberated from exploitation, oppression and every form of domination. We equally affirm that socialism cannot be built without the full participation, leadership and revolutionary initiative of women.
The freedom of women shall never be granted by the oppressors. It shall be won through organisation. It shall be defended through struggle. It shall be secured through revolution. The organised women of Kenya shall stand in the front ranks of the National Democratic Revolution until exploitation, oppression and imperialist domination are consigned to history.
“Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!”
Forward with the emancipation of women!
Forward with the unity of the working class and all oppressed peoples!
Forward with the National Democratic Revolution!
Forward with Pan African unity!
Forward to socialism!
Steering Committee
Revolutionary Women’s League
Women’s Mass Organisation of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya