BY ELIZABETH STONE
HAVANA, Cuba - Thousands of people crowded into the Karl Marx theater here April 13 for the opening session of the International Women's Solidarity Conference.

More than 3,000 participants have already registered, coming from dozens of countries. The largest delegations are from Latin America, North America, and Europe. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are also represented.

Opening speakers addressed a major theme of the conference - the intensifying attacks on living and job conditions of working people worldwide that disproportionately affect women in semicolonial countries. Vilma Espín, president and longtime leader of the Federation of Cuban Women, spoke of the devastating impact of policies "whose aim is precisely to make things better for the wealthiest few in the world."

Espín pointed to intensified attacks on the right to medical care and education, to the numbers of women dying of curable diseases in the capitalist world, to figures that show half the children in Latin America and the Caribbean do not finish grade school, to deaths due to clandestine abortions, and to thousands of women who are not allowed to choose how many children to have. "Women should have control over their own bodies," she asserted.

Espín said that increased numbers of women are working in Third World countries, but under bad conditions with the worst pay, and lack of social services. "Their life is ongoing work, with days with no beginning and no end."

Reviewing the gains by women in Cuba toward more equality since the 1959 revolution, Espín said that progress could not have been achieved without the solidarity of people around the world. "We haven't conquered all, but we must defend all we have conquered," she said.

Mayada Abassi, vice president of the International Democratic Federation of Women, opened the meeting.

"The large turnout for the conference reflects energetic support for the Cuban people and opposition to the U.S. blockade," she said. "It is the dignity of the women and the people of Cuba that has helped the international community to think more each day that the situation imposed on the Cuban people is unjust."

Nora Castañeda, head of the Continental Front of Women, also spoke. The day closed with musical performances by Cuban artists. The high point of the cultural program was a presentation by Anacaona, a dynamic all-women Cuban band.

Elizabeth Stone is a member of the International Association of Machinists in Chicago.  
 
 
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