Dear Sisters,

We invite you, your relatives, friends and colleagues to join the Global Women's Strike on International Women's Day, 8 March 2000. You may already be a participant in the World March organised by La Federation des Femmes de Quebec/The Federation of Women in Quebec, Canada. We have written to them, and they welcomed our proposal that we combine our events and support each other.

The strike was called almost a year ago by the National Women's Council of Ireland, and was made global by the International Wages for Housework Campaign and the International Women Count Network which Wages for Housework co-ordinates. Women from a number of countries launched the Global Women's Strike at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March 1999 in New York.

The Strike focuses on women's enormous contribution to every society and every economy. Women make the world go round, and raise and look after its entire population; but most of the work we do is unwaged, unrecognised and unvalued. This lack of economic and social recognition is a fundamental sexist injustice which devalues women and everything women do, including keeping our wages 25%-50% below men's. In fact, though a few women are now in highly paid managerial positions, the gap between women's and men's wages is growing. For example, in Mexico since the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), women's wages have dropped from over 70% of men's to just over 50%, a levelling-down policy which governments are trying to extend to the whole of Central and South America. While in the South welfare benefits and other social programmes are largely non-existent, in the North they are being cut, ignoring women's right to such benefits as payment for the caring and other unwaged work we do.

You will see from the attached/enclosed leaflet that we are calling for A millennium which values all women's work and all women's lives. Women and girls need and deserve a reduction of our workload, and financial recognition for our enormous contribution. Less work, more time, more resources. Our work can be recognised and our workload reduced in many ways, from rights to the land we cultivate and solar cookers that actually work, to better and more accessible health care, childcare, transport, education, technology . . . It is not the money that's lacking but the political will to change the world's priorities. The figures on military spending - $700 billion a year - compared to spending for essentials for living - $20 billion - demonstrate that for all to see.

Women all over the world are taking up the call to join the Global Women's Strike and are proposing an endless variety of ways of stopping this work, whether it is waged or unwaged. A strike is the best way to make visible women's contribution, needs and demands, because When women stop, everything stops! No one can avoid seeing that.

This is certainly not the first women's strike. On 24 October 1975, women in Iceland took a Day Off and the country came to a halt. In 1985 they celebrated the strike's 10th anniversary with another Day Off, while women in 24 countries together took Time Off to demand recognition of all unwaged work -holding fairs, conferences, demonstrations, coffee mornings and other women's events. In 1991 women in Switzerland had a national strike. This year it was women in Mexico City: on 22 July millions of women took to the streets demanding the recognition of the unwaged housework they do - no doubt they were inspired by the Indigenous women in Chiapas who have spearheaded the protection of their communities from NAFTA and the army. There must have been other women's strikes which we don't know about, and the Global Women's Strike may well bring them to light.

Time Off initiatives won recognition of the right to inheritance for widows in Zambia, paid time off for college catering and office staff as well as women's free use of leisure facilities in England. The Iceland strike also gave women more bargaining power in many areas from wages to childcare.

Women have been pressing in many ways for unwaged work that we are expected to do, and most of the time have to do, to be recognised. Mothers have fought for paid maternity leave and for welfare benefits which enable them to refuse the lowest paid jobs and to raise their own children. In Minnesota in the USA (the richest country in the world which has no paid maternity benefits or child benefits), married women are now offered a small payment if, rather than going back to their jobs, they choose to take care of their children in the first two years of life. Every woman, single, married, lesbian or not, anywhere in the world, must have that choice.

This strike does not have as its aim the advancement of the few. We have had enough of pinning our hopes on women who urged us to support their rise in the economic and political hierarchy with the promise that when they had attained powerful positions our needs would be addressed. In fact, women who have climbed the power ladder have all too often been used against us, to disguise the contempt in which we are held by governments which sacrifice our lives to the merciless needs of "the market". We in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are governed by a party which has 101 women Members of Parliament (MP). They have watched while single mothers' money was cut; more of us do a double day without even approaching pay equity in waged jobs; and legislation is passed which make rape victims, especially those who are asylum seekers, even more vulnerable - only one woman MP voted against this. The women's movement is learning not to confuse the personal ambitions of some women with the road to all women's liberation and the complete transformation of society.

As the year 2000 approaches, more and more people are aware that such a transformation is vital: the world cannot go on as it is. From war, famine and disease to global warming and other ecological devastation, racism and every other kind of exploitation - high tech has not increased happiness and well-being for the great majority of us, and has often had terrifying consequences, as protests against the arms trade and genetically modified foods have highlighted. Women and girls insisting on different economic and social values can stop the world and begin radically to change it.

To publicise the Global Women's Strike, women in the European and Latin American Network of Pirate radios (Women Creating Communication Spaces) are broadcasting a jingle they have composed in Spanish and German, which you may want to translate for your own network (English translation enclosed).

Some trade unions have started to take up the call for the Strike. Men and boys are being asked to support it too. Please contact us with your ideas on the ways women can participate in the Strike, and on how women should be remunerated for all their work, in time, money, land, housing, healthcare, childcare, education, technology . . . As part of the mobilisation for the Strike, women in Ireland are campaigning for International Women's Day, 8 March, to be a paid public holiday from 2000 on.

You can get back to us by post, e-mail, fax, or phone. The leaflet has a box for people to add their own demands on any subject, and their contact details so we can stay in touch, and keep one another updated on how we plan to join the Strike.

The enclosed leaflet is available in the following languages so far: Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Catalan, Chinese, French, Gaelic, German, Gujerati, Hindi, Italian and Spanish. Other translations are being worked on. If you need copies or can translate in your language please let us know.

We also have for sale attractive Women's Global Strike T-shirts, badges and postcards (with English logos) - reduced price on bulk orders.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

10 St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway

Crossroads Women's Centre, 230a Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 2AB

PO Box 86681, Los Angeles, California 90086-0681

22 November 1999

Join the Global Women's Strike on 8 March 2000.

I'm called Malika,

I'm a woman from the South and walk six hours a day to fetch water

and I'm going on Strike to demand an end to the Third World debt.

That's why I say enough is enough to exploitation.

I'm Ramona,

and as a mother I demand that all women are paid for the work we do

caring for older people and educating our children.

For that reason I'm on strike.

I'm Frida,

I'm a lesbian, my desires are legitimate

and fighting against lesbophobia - what a piece of work.

So I'm on strike.

I'm Magdalena,

and I'm a sex worker and I'm going on strike so that my work is respected

and my labour rights are recognised.

I'm Candelaria,

I'm an immigrant and Black. I've had enough of having to work against racism and I want that work recognised.

Out on strike!

Out on strike!

Stop the world and change it!

Join the Global Women's Strike - 8 March 2000.

For a millenium which values all women's work and all women's lives.

Out on strike,

100 out on strike,

1000 out on strike,

I'm out on strike,

I'm out for them,