Now inspired by Shorty and his corrupt Commo unions strikes, the Women are going to bung on a STRIKE!!!!Women’s strike could be coming and history tells us what will happenJane Gilmore news.com.au FEBRUARY 8, 20178:10PM
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THE Women’s March movement made a simple announcement yesterday morning.“General Strike: A Day Without Women. Date to be announced.”
In only one day, the brief declaration has gathered tens of thousands of responses across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.There’s no further details yet, but this is the movement that brought more than five million women together the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, in 600 marches, across all seven continents, to demand gender equality.
While we don’t yet know exactly what the plan is for the general strike, the concept isn’t new, and has had overwhelming responses in the past.
On October 24, 1975 close to 90% of the women in Iceland went on strike, not just from paid labour, but even more importantly from unpaid labour.
22,000 women, 10% of the population of Iceland, gathered in Reykjavik. The equivalent in Australia today would be nearly two and a half million women flooding the streets of Canberra to protest, sing, speak, listen, and demand change.
Adalheidur Bjarnfredsdottir, representing the trade union for cleaners and other low paid women, spoke at the gathering in Reykjavik, “Men have governed the world since time immemorial and what has the world been like?”. Her answer, echoed by all the women at the protest, was that the world has been dominated by male violence and scarred by female poverty.
The women’s strike in Iceland brought the country to a halt. Schools, kindergartens, shops and factories closed, newspapers the next day were half their normal size and carried only stories about the strike. Men everywhere had to take responsibility for women’s unpaid work for an entire day. Most of them barely coped.
40 years later, inspired by the strike in Iceland, tens of thousands of women in Poland went on strike to protest the proposed ban on abortion. The protest, known as Black Monday, worked, and the legislation was voted down.
Former Polish prime minister Ewa Kopacz told reporters the ruling party had “backtracked because it was scared by all the women who hit the streets in protest”.
In January this year, thousands of women joined the Women’s March in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Thousands more could well join a General Strike as the momentum of the Women’s March movement grows.
Millions of women marched around the world on January 21st, to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration and rally for women’s rights. Picture: Wayne Taylor/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images
Given that details are still sketchy, it’s difficult to know exactly what effect this could have here, but the Workplace Gender Equality Agency estimates the value of unpaid work in Australia is around $650 billion per year, and more than two thirds of that work is done by women. If Australia matched Iceland’s effort, and 90% of the women in this country downed tools for a day, Australian men, like Icelandic men in 1975, would struggle to cope.
The truth is, though, that most women in Australia, and across the world, can’t go on strike. Not from their paid work, or their unpaid work.
Far too many women couldn’t strike because their work is necessary to feed and care for their children. Because they know that if they weren’t there to do that work, no one else would.
Many other women couldn’t strike because it would put their lives at risk. Because their culture and law says women have no right to self-determination.
And not all those places are far off lands. Some women in Australia would also risk their lives if they refused, even for one day, to do the unpaid work of womanhood. One woman dies every week in this country, because a man who claimed to love her believed he was entitled to take her life.
The very fact that so many women could not make this choice might impel the women who can to take the strike even more seriously. To protest on behalf of the women who can’t protest for themselves.
Imagine what would happen if even half the women in this country took up that call to arms. If women walked away, for just one day, from the school runs, cut lunches, scraped knees, hurt feelings, unfolded laundry, grocery shopping, social gatherings, footy club raffles, and family dinners.
And the drama continues overleaf
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