Ten years ago, on June 3, 2015, thousands of women took to the streets of Argentina chanting “Ni Una Menos”—not one (woman) less. The spark was the brutal femicide of a young woman, but the fire quickly spread beyond borders. It became a rallying cry not only against gender-based violence but against the social system that allows, enables, and justifies it.
A decade later, this movement still resonates. From Latin America to Europe and the U.S., millions have echoed its demand: to end the violence that marks the lives of women, queer, and trans people under patriarchy. But the slogan also raises deeper questions: What produces this violence? Why does it persist? What will it take to end it?
Gender violence isn’t just a cultural issue or a matter of personal behavior, it’s built into the very structure of society. Patriarchy serves capital through unpaid and underpaid labor, through the policing of bodies, through the feminization of poverty. In Latin America this can mean large numbers of femicides, while in the U.S. it means the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or state violence that targets gender-oppressed people.
From Buenos Aires to Atlanta, repression and inequality are generated and protected by the same social order. When the far-right attacks reproductive rights or LGBTQ+ existence, it does so to uphold a violent and unequal system.
Ni Una Menos channeled collective outrage into a grassroots movement, leading to marches, strikes, and assemblies. It helped politicize a generation. Feminist movements improved abortion rights, fought against economic injustice, and placed gendered violence into the center of public debate, not through institutions and legal battles, but through struggle.
Still, the system responded by trying to neutralize that power. Governments and NGOs adopted feminist language while maintaining the same conditions of exploitation and control. Minor reforms without true transformation became the norm, and the roots of violence remained in place.
Real liberation demands more. It needs a feminism rooted in class struggle, one that sees gender oppression not as an isolated issue, but as a pillar of capitalism. This means connecting feminist struggle with other movements led by workers, migrants, and working-class communities across the world. Ni Una Menos began in Argentina, but its message is international. Our oppression is global. So must be our resistance.
Ten years on, we remember Ni Una Menos, and we organize to carry its struggle forward. Not one less, not one more sacrificed to this system. A better world is not only necessary, but also possible.
Links to articles in Prensa Obrera:
