Opinion

There is a saying that “Hands that rock a child in the cradle move the world”. It can be said to be an appraisal of the special role that women play in the development of history.

However, women’s rights to freedom, equality and dignity as human beings have mercilessly been trampled down and women have fallen prey to all manner of inhuman and unethical crimes, which are committed incessantly like those that appear when Pandora’s Box is opened, for thousands of years.

Therefore, they continued to fight for their rights and, in the course of it, March 8 International Women’s Day was born.

The International Women’s Day finds its origin in the struggle of the workers in the American city of Chicago. In the city in which the rich and the poor, heaven and hell coexisted, presenting a sharp contrast, fierce struggle had been waged against the exploitation of men by the capital and for the right to survival and democratic freedom long ago.

The women in the city staged a large-scale demonstration and strike demanding the right to existence and political rights on March 8 1909, which shook the whole world as well as American society. The demonstration that day was an eruption of the pent-up wrath and grudge of American women who had been subjected to ill-treatment, contempt and discrimination on a “charge” of having been born as women and a massive resistance of women demanding equal rights and dignity with men.

Over a century has passed since then, but many women in the world have not yet freed themselves from the desperate plight of Esmeralda and Margarita, main characters of such novels as Cathedral Notre Dame and La dome aux Comelias, still suffering from inequality and absence of rights.

Where then is the beacon the women of Chicago had so earnestly desired?

In the DPRK women exercise complete equality with men.

As for the right to work, the most essential right of all human rights, they enjoy the equal right to work with men and are fully provided with the right to development as a social being.

The law stipulates that those who reach the working age have the right to work as they desire. Every woman begins to work in any job as she desires after graduation from the senior middle school and if she wants, she can enrol on the study-while-you-work education system to have college education.

The DPRK provides them, be they are workers, farmers or intellectuals, with full conditions on the highest level to create and enjoy a cultured and happy life as masters of the country. Ordinary weavers and other women workers become labour innovators and labour heroines under the close concern of society and the collective and are elected as deputies to power organs at all levels including the Supreme People’s Assembly.

As a drop is enough to taste the saltiness of the sea water, medical benefits the Korean women enjoy for childbirth speak volume about the blessed life they enjoy.

All women are provided with free medical care for delivery in the country. Hospitals equipped with full conditions for delivery have been built across the country, and especially women conceiving triplets or quadruplets receive all kinds of medical benefits from the beginning of pregnancy under the special concern of public health institutions.

By the socialist public health law, when women give birth to children, relevant medical institutions provide safe and effective medicines and treatment techniques to ensure their health responsibly and public health institutions and the institutions, enterprises and organizations they belong to are obliged to pay close attention to the protection of health of pregnant women and nursing mothers and take good care of the health of women in childbed and their children. Mothers of triplets or quadruplets enjoy special care and benefits including the provision of doctors in charge and free supply of comfortable houses, medicines, foodstuffs and household goods.

In the country women with many children are given preferential treatment and highly praised in society. They are even awarded the title of Mother Hero.

All women, irrespective of workers, farmers and intellectuals, are provided with all conditions to create and enjoy happiness as masters of the country.

Song Woman Is Flower is widely sung in the country. It sings not only of the beautiful features of the Korean women who are hailed as the flowers of the family, life and country and devote their heart and soul to the country and people, but also of their gratitude to the country which has built the flower garden of attaching importance to and respecting women.

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