PRESS UPDATE 2 Stop the world and change it. Join the GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE 8 March 2000 for a millennium which values all women's work and all women's lives

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Brixton, London, England - women leafleting for the Strike

Women around the UK and in over 50 countries have taken up the call to STOP THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT. On 8 March women around the globe will be striking to protest that while $700 billion a year is spent on military budgets world-wide, less than $20 billion is spent on the essentials of life - clean water, health, sanitation, basic education. NEWS FLASH: AVAILABLE ON CD: STRIKE 2000 an exciting original track by Redjen, former lead singer of The Bellestars whose Salsa hit "One More Kiss" went straight in at No 1 and was the editor’s choice on Europe’s largest internet chart (www.peoplesound.com) Redjen and the Songlines International Women’s Choir will be performing at the Union Chapel (Highbury & Islington) on 8 March. More information attached. STOP THE WORLD an animated cartoon of a woman dusting a spinning world which comes to a halt when she stops! STRIKE 2000 and the ANIMATED CARTOON can be downloaded from our Website http://womenstrike8m.server101.com, or call 0207 482 2496 if you want the CD posted.   HIGHLIGHT OF EVENTS IN UK: A day of celebration and protest 1-11 pm Union Chapel, Compton Ave, London N1 Full wheelchair access - Sign language interpreters (1-6pm & 7-11pm) Groovy childcare & Luscious snacks by Payday Men's Network FILMS, VIDEOS, MUSIC, LIVE ENTERTAINMENT, POETRY 8 – 10pm CABARET with Redjen ('One More Kiss' & composer of Global Strike 2000) Songlines International Women’s Choir DISCO: DJ Sexyrubbersole playing an eclectic mix GREATER MANCHESTER: 10am - 2pm Strike marquee outside Ashton-under-Lyne Town Hall, inviting women to have a glass of champagne and add their strike demands to the growing list. Refreshments, balloons, creche and entertainment including from comedienne Blair babe MP Fifi. Tel 0161 344-0758 for more details LIVERPOOL: L’pool Black Sisters holding Open Day at their Women’s Centre, lighting candles on the rail outside and planning to stop the traffic into Liverpool. Merseyside Women's Festival is holding a Strike Workshop on 15 March for a report on what happened. Tel 0151 709-8162 (Renee) for more details KEITHLEY: Keithley Women's Centre is holding low-cost alternative therapy sessions for the Strike. Tel 01535 681-316 for more information. STRIKING WOMEN SAY: FOR AN END TO NO PAY, LOW PAY & TOO MUCH WORK, WE DEMAND: q Wages for all caring work. What is more valuable than raising children and caring for others! q Equal pay for all in the Global Market. q Paid maternity leave, breast-feeding breaks & other benefits - stop penalising us for being women. q Affordable and accessible housing and transport. q Protection from all violence, at home and outside. q Abolition of 'Third World debt' which falls heaviest on women. We're owed much more than we 'owe'. q Accessible clean water and non-polluting technology - we all need cookers, fridges, washing machines, computers . . . and clean air and water q A millennium which values all women's work and all women's lives.

Countries/Cities in contact so far: ALBANIA Tirana - ARGENTINA Buenos Aires, San Luis, Santa Fe - AUSTRALIA Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle - BELGIUM Brussels - BRAZIL - BURKINA FASO - CAMEROON Yaounde - CANADA Alberta, Vernon, Victoria (BC), Calgary, Haldimand-Norfolk region, Kingston, Waterloo (Ont), Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver - CHILE Santiago, Valparaiso - COLOMBIA - CZECH REPUBLIC Prague - ENGLAND Brighton, Bolton, Edinburgh, Exeter, Keithley Liverpool, London, , Gtr Manchester, Norwich, Rochdale, Salford - EQUADOR: Quito - FINLAND - FRANCE - GERMANY Bremen, Hannover - GHANA Accra, Tema - GREECE - GUYANA - HAWAII - HONG KONG - HUNGARY Budapest - INDIA Bhopal, Calcutta, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Raipur, Ragard, Mahasmund - IRELAND Dublin, Galway - ITALY Rome - JAPAN - KOREA - KUWAIT - KYRGYZSTAN - MALAWI Lilongwe - MEXICO Mexico City, Sonora - NETHERLANDS Biddinghuizen, Ospel - NICARAGUA - NIGERIA Uyo - NORWAY - PANAMA - PERU Andes, Cuzco, Lima - PHILIPPINES - PORTUGAL - PUERTO RICO - ROMANIA Timisoara - RUSSIA - RWANDA Kigali - SENEGAL Dakar - SOUTH AFRICA - SPAIN Basque Country, Barcelona, Bilbao, Granada, Malaga, Seville, Zaragosa - SWEDEN Gothenburg - SWITZERLAND Bern - TAIWAN Taipei - TRINIDAD & TOBAGO Arima, Port Spain - TURKEY - URUGUAY - USA Arizona Tucson; California-- Los Angeles, Monterey County, Mountain View, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Van Nuys; Colorado-- Leadville; Florida; Louisiana-- New Orleans; Maryland-- Takoma Park; Massachusetts-- Boston, Lexington, Salem; Minnesota-- Moorhead; Missouri-- St. Louis; New Mexico; New York-- Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan; Ohio-- North Lewisburg; Oregon-- Portland; Pennsylvania-- Philadelphia; Texas-- Austin, Thurston County; Washington-- Seattle - WALES Gwynedd.

STRIKING STATEMENTS FROM WOMEN ROUND THE GLOBE.

ARGENTINA: We ask those who can't attend the Housewives Union event to support the Strike by putting a broom outside their front door. We have fought for so many years in isolation and were even despised by many feminists. Our motto: We're neither few nor crazy (ni pocas ni locas), our slogan: Pensions without contributions, for workers without wages!

AUSTRALIA I seem to have spent all my life working very hard to attain very little. I worked from home doing machining for 15 years. I was a single mother wanting to spend more time with my child and never drew the government 'support' I was entitled to because it wasn't enough to survive on and the offensive way they invade your privacy. I gave up a second child to adoption because it was too hard to contemplate raising him in the grinding poverty I still endured even though I worked 40+ hours, the rates were so bad. After 15 years I had tendonitis so bad I was on painkillers all the time. Finally in my early 30s I became a prostitute. By 38 I was too old and fat to get enough to pay the mortgage. I only had 3 years to go to pay the place off but I had to give it up. I went back to Uni 2 years ago. I had to keep on working, support my son and myself, be a full-time student racking up an education. On March 8 I shall spend the day meditating and praying for gender justice. I won't go to Uni, I won't clean house or prepare a meal and I won't have sex with a man for love or money!

BURKINA FASO Women are not allowed to make decisions in the home. When children want to get married only the father’s decision counts. v Women are an object of pleasure. We make love willingly or unwillingly, without pleasure. v Single women are given no value. v More time for breastfeeding. v Men continue to make women suffer. Beatings, denial of responsibility. Women are denied the right to speak. v The suffering of polygamy.

CANADA When women’s work is recognised it will be the end of racial and sexual discrimination. All discrimination among human beings is based on discrimination against women. v For on-site licensed childcare at worksites, flexible work hours for mothers, options for well paid non-sweatshop work from home offices, tax benefits for having and raising children. v No corporate rights without human rights.

ENGLAND I am a Black lesbian woman fighting against all sorts of prejudices, in society, with my family . . . every day is a fight to get my rights, which are no different to the rights of other people. I support the Strike because from this day on everybody will realise how much power women have. v Raising children is some of the hardest work there is, and women like me who are non-biological mums are usually officially invisible in our children’s lives. I’m striking because no woman should have to choose between raising children and living a lesbian life; and our families must be recognised and valued. v As pensioners, we’ve put in our time. We’ve raised kids and served husbands, dinner and sex. If that were not enough, we’ve also gone out, not with any great career in mind, but for waged work to help meet expenses. We’ve suffered low wages and bad working conditions. v I am registered blind and I also have a small amount of brain damage. I will be striking because I have had enough of being treated like an illness and not a person.

GHANA I welcome the Global Women's Strike because women like myself all over the world don’t get credit for the hard unpaid work we do. In Africa rural women go out into the fields, growing food, carrying firewood, fetching water, taking care of families and communities.  Society and the economy would not survive without this work.  The contribution we make should be paid for, we should have time off with pay. I would also like to see recognition for the unwaged work of raising children in the face of racial discrimination.

MEXICO The work housewives do in the home must be recognised in some way. For example, here in San Luis it is important to fight for the same rights to your things when you separate in marriage or at least to give the wife a decent wage for her work as a wife, mother and housewife. Most women are left without anything, having to support their children.

PUERTO RICO Full participation in decision making. Women must decide about social change. In particular, the US military base in the Vieques Island must go. High incidences of cancer. Women and girls have reported assaults by US marines including sexual assault and rapes. Peace is not a privilege. It is a right.

SPAIN Either we change the world this decade or we’ll be left without the forests, without indigenous people in Chiapas, without fertile land to cultivate. We don’t appear in the history books even though we are the real protagonists. I have worked all my life, raising two daughters and a son, looking after my parents in my home and my mother-in-law until she died. Today my years of waged work do not afford me a dignified old age. v So that we are not punished for choosing to stay home and raise our children. v Because women are a high percentage in the Church. v Breast milk should be part of national accounts, subsidies for breastfeeding mothers, mothers at home and all mothers in general.

USA I work full time raising four boys. Also taking care of my father-in-law during his final days. For this I get no gratitude, no time, no help. I think it is about time that a woman’s thankless job becomes widely recognised. v Stop the violence towards women ... we will not be victimised any longerI'm a single mother working for poverty wages -- I'm going on Strike on behalf of working mothers everywhere so that we can be respected. v I’m in middle management and have just been told that my child having needs is no excuse for me to work at home occasionally. v My demand is for a four-day work week for mothers with children over two years of age and a three-day work week for those with children under two years of age; six to ten months maternity leave option without loss of positions. v Insurance and health care available to all. Childcare provided at places of employment, and paid on time and in full. v Contraception and reproductive rights for women world-wide. v Immediate steps to be taken to begin cuts in military spending, and increased investments in education, sanitation, health and housing. v Disappointment that many women who have risen in the hierarchy are not representing women and their real needs and aspirations. v As a single mother with a hearing disability, I am joining the strike because I am sick of living on a fixed income that is inadequate to meet the needs of my son and myself. It’s always on me to do the work of adjusting so that I don't miss the subtleties that are so much a part of human communication. I'm sure much more could be done technologically to make the world accessible to all of us. The Strike is a way to say we intend the needs of people to be central in this new millennium.

WALES Compensation for injuries due to domestic violence ignored by the police even after being reported repeatedly.

WHY MEN SUPPORT THE STRIKE: In my work as a mental health nurse, I often see the ramifications of the lack of recognition of what is traditionally women’s work. So I think it is really important for this work of childcare, cooking, cleaning, shopping etc, to be recognised as important, essential and invaluable.  I know a woman who was deported and she left her daughter of two years old behind. As an asylum seeker, I know it is extremely painful to be separated from your child or your family. Women suffer abuses worldwide, sexual abuses. This is why all men should support women.  I watched my mother ruin her health bringing up us four children, virtually on her own, often without any housekeeping money each week from my father. If she had been paid for all the work she did, life would have been a lot easier for her and her children as well.  Not supporting the women's action is tantamount to agreeing to this status quo ante!