WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK CAMPAIGN

WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK CAMPAIGN

Co-ordinators of the International Women Count Network & TIME OFF FOR WOMEN

Tel: 0207 482 2496 Fax: 0207 209 4761 Email: womenstrike8m@server101.com

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PRESS UPDATE 1: 16 February 2000

STOP THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

8 MARCH 2000!

The first-ever Global Women’s Strike - for a Millennium which values all women’s work and all women’s lives.

SPAIN: Women Stop across Catalunya! Women from churches, trades unions, local government and feminists are calling a stoppage of women (and men supporters) at 12 noon for a Millennium without Poverty or Violence. Women in waged work will gather outside their workplaces, and women doing unwaged work will gather in the central square of their village, town or neighbourhood for the reading of a manifesto outlining stoppage demands. Since there isn't enough time this year to organise a 24-hour strike, activists will plan a full strike for 8 March 2001! For information in Spanish, click here.

INDIA: Women will do no housework or other work in the villages of Madhya Pradesh; thousands will march in three large Districts: Raipur, Ragard, Mahasmund. Deputations led by Chhattisgarh Women’s Organisation will go to Bhopal to meet officials and to Delhi to lobby the government Chief Minister, pressing demands to end violence and poverty.

IRELAND: The Women Count Network will be Striking for a Change in any way they think appropriate and, along with the National Women's Council, is pressing for a National Paid Holiday on 1 February (St Brigid's Day), to Value Women's Work: "A DAY OFF – because we're worth it!" As Margaretta D'Arcy (WCN Galway) points out, "Women's unwaged work is the largest industry in Ireland, worth at least 314bn per year. It's about time we got something for it." For more inforomation, click here.

BURKINO FASO: Rural women are Striking to Exist, demanding money for birth certificates and identity cards which most can’t afford.

PHILIPPINES: Community groups will lobby the president to issue a Presidential Proclamation making 8 March a paid holiday; women’s parties and picnics in communities and villages; a "No Shopping Day" to protest against the consumer industry’s profits at women’s expense. Co-ordinated by the Foundation for Huwomanity-Centred Development.

CANADA: Raging Grannies holding a workshop downtown and a Press Conference with Queen’s Women’s Centre, publicising Women Take Off March 8 and asking "Are you March 8 compatible?"

MEXICO: Daughters of the Corn Women’s Collective holding a strike day with public meeting, debate and celebration in Mexico City.

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: The National Union of Domestic Employees will lead a women’s march and rally in the capital, Port of Spain.

NIGERIA: The Grassroots Women Foundation is demanding that 8 March be declared a national public holiday and that breastfeeding working mothers be paid a special allowance.

USA: Events in several major cities including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC, co-ordinated by US Wages for Housework. The Welfare Warriors (Wisconsin) gathering women’s Bills for Billy (Clinton) – what welfare they’re owed for their work, which he’s stealing from them. Bills to be presented on 8 March.

Highlight in UK will be event in LONDON:

1-11pm, Union Chapel, Compton Avenue, Islington, N1 (Highbury & Islington tube). Women are invited to be audacious and bodacious at a Day of Celebration and protest, films and live performances by women singers, dancers, poets, from a range of countries.

Star guest Redjen, (former lead singer of The Bellestars) whose original track "Strike 2000", is the Strike’s theme song. Her Salsa hit "One More Kiss" went straight in at No 1 and was the editor’s choice on www.peoplesound.com, Europe’s largest internet chart.

Full wheelchair access ~ childcare ~ food & refreshments.

ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE, Tameside – women will be invited into a Strike Marquee in Market Square for a glass of champagne and to list their own strike demands, while children play on a bouncy castle – under the watchful eye of creche workers!

Other activities planned at BOLTON Unemployed Centre; SALFORD Women’s Centre; LIVERPOOL Black Sisters; KEITHLEY Women’s Centre . . . WATCH THIS SPACE!

Women are also making plans in: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guyana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Kurdistan, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Mexico, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan. . .

Why are women striking?

To demand a total change of priorities. $800bn a year is spent on military budgets worldwide, less than $20 billion is spent on all the essentials of life – accessible clean water, health, sanitation, basic education. Women make the world go round, and raise and look after its entire population; but at least two-thirds of the work we do is unwaged and unvalued – even though it’s worth at least $11trillion a year. Because of racism, Black and immigrant women work even harder, and in countries with the least resources the burden of women’s and girls’ work is most crushing. This basic sexist injustice, devalues women and everything women do. It keeps our wages 25%-50% below men's. In fact, though a few women are now highly paid, the gap between women's and men's wages is growing.

What do women want?

Abolition of "Third World debt". Women in the South are owed billions for centuries of work.

Accessible clean drinking water and ecologically sound appropriate technology for every household.

Affordable, and accessible, housing and transport.

Protection against violence – at home, in factory or office, on the farm, on the street.

Pay equity for all – equal pay for work of equal value – internationally.

Decent wages for caring work, whether in the family or outside.

Paid maternity leave and breastfeeding breaks at paid employment.

Increased pensions, child benefit and other benefits paid to mothers and other carers.

Implementation of the UN decision (Beijing 1995) to measure and value the unwaged work done by women and men in national economic statistics.

Are men supporting us?

Payday men's network is gathering statements from 2000 men globally on why they support women they know going on strike. They say: "Like women, we want to work less and have more money. We too want our unwaged work recognised and paid with money, time, resources, land, peace and rights. And we know that as long as women work too much, even more than men, for too little, even less than men, their pay and conditions are the standard for men."

Distinguished playwright and novelist John Arden, who lives in Ireland, says he supports the Strike because: When I was a child I was constantly aware that my mother was occupied day in day out with what she called her ’voluntary work’. . . Not only did she not get paid for all this, I don't think she even got thanks . . . if it hadn't been for millions and millions of women, the likes of my mother, the war effort would have totally collapsed – to say nothing of the peace effort in subsequent years . . .

Publicity Materials

Also available by post or email: Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, European Portuguese, Urdu

Striking T-shirts, badges, postcards are available.

Because we need less work,
more time and more resources

Unwaged work:

Recent estimates show unwaged work contributes as much as £739 bn to the British economy (Office of National Statistics [ONS], October 1997).

Two-thirds of women working out of the home full-time do most of the housework. (Red magazine, Jan 2000) 45% of women work over 40 hours a week doing waged jobs. 10% work over 50 hours. (Guardian,4 Jan 1999)

Women in waged work with young children do 46 hours a week of housework (childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, gardening/DIY) compared to 25 hours by men. (Omnibus Survey, ONS, 1995)

Wages/incomes:

Women’s average full-time weekly earnings are 72% of men’s. (New Earnings Surveys 1978 & 1998, ONS)

Black women earn up to 32% less than white women. (Unison, 1995)

28% of white households live on less than half the average household income; in contrast, 84% of Bangladeshi households live on less than half. (Policy Studies Institute, 1998)

The average weekly income from all sources (benefits, wages, pensions etc) of women aged 30 to 70 was less than half that of men in the same age range. (Women's Individual Income 1996/97, Women's Unit, prepared by DSS Analytical Services Division 1999)

There are 1.7 million single parents (one in five of all families) caring for 2.9 million children (Times, 11 Feb 1999), the majority of whom are on benefit and living on an average income of £106 a week. (Women's Individual Income 1996/97, as above)

51% of Afro-Caribbean, 30% of African, and 8-10% of Asian families are single parent families (Policy Studies Institute, 1998)

1.2 million people hold down two waged jobs, two thirds of them women. (Guardian, 4 January 99)

Women with two jobs work 30-60 hours a week for an average of £100. Some do three jobs for little more than £100 a week. (Guardian, 24 October, 1994)

2.45 million people mostly women earn below £64 a week. (The New Review, Low Pay Unit, March/April 1999)

Carers:

14% of women over 16 in Britain are carers for people with disabilities. A third of women carers spend over 20 hours a week in unwaged caring work. (Social Focus on Women and Men, ONS 1998) This caring work has been valued at £39.1 bn a year. (British Medical Assocn report Taking Care of the Carers, 1995)

Formal and informal voluntary work is estimated to be worth at least £68bn a year. (National Centre for Volunteering, 1997).

Pensioners:

66% of pensioners claim Income Support because they have no or a very low pension in their own right as women. They live on £75 a week. (Government paper Partnership in Pensions Dec 1998)

Money:

The British government collects £79m a year from the poorest and most indebted countries, nearly all in Africa. The UK government uses our money to underwrite business deals, often for the arms trade, and then claims it back from the poorest countries’ health and education budgets. (Figures for 1998/99, Jubilee 2000)

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