After the massive success of last month’s global women’s marches — which drew millions of attendees across 600 rallies in 60 countries — organizers are preparing their next action. The group behind the Washington protest took to Twitter to call for a massive strike, or as they called it: “A DAY WITHOUT A WOMAN.”
While a date hasn’t been announced, it’s widely assumed to be March 8 — International Women’s Day. If a fraction of the women who marched on 21 January participated, we could see hundreds of thousands of people take a stand. While the original events were spurred by the inauguration of President Trump, the group’s focus expanded to issues including LGBTQ+ rights, access to safe and legal abortions and birth control, the wage gap, and violence against women.
The will of the people will stand. pic.twitter.com/SKJCRLhRKn
— Women’s March (@womensmarch) February 6, 2017
Many Irish women have already declared they won’t work on International Women’s Day to protest the country’s abortion ban. At the end of last year, several countries took similar action: in October Polish women went on strike to protest restrictive abortion laws, a month later French women walked off the job in opposition to the gender pay gap. Incredibly, in 1975, 90 percent of the female population of Iceland went on strike over pay discrepancies. Four decades later they repeated the move in 2016 when women left work 14 percent early to mark the 14 percent wage gap. Considering we’re already taking actions in our own countries, we think it’s about time we banned together and made a global statement.
Credits
Text Wendy Syfret
Photography Holly Falconer