| article for the Greater London Pensioners Association Newsletter,
December 2000
Global
Women’s Strike Report on the First, Preparation for the Second There have been women’s strikes before but International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2000 saw the first Global Women’s Strike. Women in 64 countries took part. News of the strike spread like wildfire. Hearing of it through the Internet or post or word of mouth, women devised ways, often at very short notice, to register their demand for a ‘millennium which values all women’s work and all women’s lives’ and ‘an end to no pay, low pay and too much work.’ The strike, first called by women in Ireland who were demanding an annual paid day off, was made global by the International Wages for Housework Campaign to protest the grotesque discrepancy between $800 billion a year spent on military budgets world-wide, while $80 billion is spent on the essentials of life – like water, sanitation, basic health, nutrition and education. Two-thirds of the work women do is unwaged and unvalued, but it’s worth an estimated (by the UN) $11 trillion per year. Women’s wages reflect how unvalued we are when we go out to work. So the strike demanded a change of all social and economic priorities for women (and therefore for men) including the following: pay equity internationally, wages for all caring work, paid maternity leave, breast-feeding breaks, protection and asylum from all violence and persecution; accessible clean water, healthcare, housing, transport, literacy instruction; abolition of third-world debt, non-polluting energy and technology; and freedom of movement globally. Pensioners spoke out against their extreme poverty (and the UK government’s plan of 75 pence per week pension increase); especially female pensioners, many of whom cannot afford to pay for essentials after decades of caring work. With the government’s campaign to drive single mothers out to work, more childcare falls on the grandmother, whether she has the strength to cope with toddlers or not. It cares little for the wisdom she has gained from experience, to past commitments or to the contributions still being made by this large sector of the population. Instead they drive older women to anger and revolt. In Canada, for example, Raging Grannies are on the warpath and they have found imitators in the USA. In the UK similar groups have started, but they need to break free of imposed controls before they can have an impact. Women pensioners from Greater London Pensioners Association or from the National Pensioners Convention outnumber the men on their weekly pickets of Parliament (Tuesdays or Thursdays, 11am to noon) just as they do in meetings. Women in Britain hit the streets demanding pension increases, and others in different countries related the Strike demands to their specific needs and ongoing campaigns—for land reform, welfare benefits, and pensions to name a few. In India on the day, thousands of village women struck against housework and fieldwork, demanding land as well as wages for all work. The Housewives Union in Santa Fe, Argentina demanded ‘Pensions without contributions for workers without wages.’ In Burkina Faso, rural women struck ‘to exist,’ demanding money for birth certificates and identity cards. In the UK sex workers launched the Strike by a march through Soho, London, demanding an end to eviction from their homes. On 8 March, 2000 a full day’s entertainment ranging from speak-outs to dancing thrilled women and men at London’s Union Chapel. An even bigger Strike is being prepared for the Second Women’s Global Strike on 8 March, 2001. You are invited to participate and also tell your friends, family members of all generations, community members and neighbours and invite them to take part. Make your contribution visible by stopping for whatever time you can, at home, in your workplace or in your community. Help us publicise the Strike by writing to your local press. Send us your Striking Statement of why you personally will strike, and we’ll put it on our Website. (This Website includes the latest Strike news from around the world.) Help raise money for publicising the Strike. If you know another language, we also need translators of Strike literature. Men pensioners will want to know the Payday men’s network which is coordinating support from men world-wide. And our weekly picket in Whitehall continues to press for the Strike demands. You can join us in support 1-2pm every Wednesday, opposite Downing Street. Please get in touch to find
out more and to get involved |