Women’s Strike 2020 – Call to Action
Each year on the 8th March women across the world go on strike. We refuse to do all the work – both paid and unpaid – that keeps the world clean, fed and healthy. The Women’s Strike transforms the traditional strike. For hundreds of years the work that women do has been denigrated and ignored and the conditions of our lives have been marked by violence and harm. The Women’s Strike is about realising the power we already hold – it is our labour that keeps the world turning and profits flowing. When enough of us stop, the world stops with us.
This is an invitation for feminists of all genders to join the strike in Britain. The Women’s Strike is an international strike for solidarity between women and against the borders that attempt to divide us.
On 8 March we will speak out, we will be disruptive and we will strike and refuse to work. Across the world millions of young people have been leading the fight for ecological justice. In the last year it has become frighteningly clear that we must urgently dismantle the economic and political system that sees women and nature as resources to plunder, exploit and harm.
When we strike we defy those who continue to not believe us when we are raped. Sexual violence, from assault to everyday workplace harassment is at the centre of our exploitation.The number of women killed by former and current partners has increased to an average of three deaths per week. We demand collective solutions to our individual experiences of violence whether they occur in the home, on the streets or at work. With cuts to domestic violence and rape services, rising racism and nationalism, and record numbers of women suffering violence we need to build a feminist movement from below that strikes at the heart of our oppression and exploitation.
When we strike we challenge the male dominated trade unions that ignore the reality of our lives. Austerity is nothing short of a class war and the big trade unions have been asleep on the job. For ten years it has been women that have suffered the most as the rich have gotten richer and the rest of us struggle to put food on the table, keep the heating on and the rent paid. The cost of childcare in Britain is so high that many of us are trapped in low-paid and unrewarding work just to balance the nightmare that is getting the kids to and from school.
On 8 March we will be on strike from the work we do – regardless of whether we get paid or not. The Women’s Strike occurs on International Women’s Day – and we join with million of women and non-binary people across the world in fighting for a feminist future.
Join us.
Bristol Bristol International Women’s Strike 2020
Edinburgh International Women’s Day Edinburgh
London London Women’s Strike 2020
London Sex/Work Strike 2020
If your organisation, union branch or collective would like to support the women’s strike please email info@womenstrike.org.uk