2000
Most of the work women do is unwaged, unrecognised and unvalued

The Strike focusses 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.

We are calling for A millennium which values all women’s work & 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. A strike is the best way to make visible women's contribution, needs and demands, because WHEN WOMEN STOP, EVERYTHING STOPS! Women have taken strike action before – from Iceland in 1975, to a decade of Time Off for Women in 24 countries (24 October 1985-1994), to Switzerland in 1991 and Mexico in 1999 . . . Such actions have won increased recognition for all the work women do, waged and unwaged, and more bargaining power for our demands – from pay equity to welfare benefits and childcare.

We are not striking for a few women to rise in the hierarchy

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 attempt by governments to sacrifice our lives on the altar of the “global market”. Just as people everywhere are accusing governments of not representing any of us against corporate greed, we are accusing women in governments of not representing women. We as a movement are learning not to confuse the personal ambitions of some women with the road to all women's liberation and the complete transformation of society.

WE MUST CHANGE THE WORLD'S PRIORITIES

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, genetically modified foods, NAFTA and the World Trade Organisation have highlighted.

2001

The Strike demands aim to be a framework to help you express the needs specific to your situation. By speaking to the needs of women globally, they unite everyone taking part in the Strike, and bring international power to each local action. Therefore we hope that whatever you highlight or add, you will list ALL the demands.

The leaflet for Strike 2000 was produced in 25 languages -- a fantastic achievement made possible by help from all over the world. We urgently need translations of the new leaflet. Please contact the London address if you can help.

It is especially hard to spread information in rural areas. But if women in villages and provincial towns send in their news, then women in cities (even in other countries) can circulate them via e-mail or fax. In this way those of us in towns and cities can help those of us in villages who have little or no resources or access to the media.

2002

We women are the world’s first carers, bringing new life, and protecting and caring for not only humans but the planet’s life. No wonder we have always been the invisible activists creating movements against war and injustice.

The Global Women’s Strike, a grassroots movement against the globalisation of mass murder and exploitation, is an extension of the caring work we do. In some countries, we have been holding weekly protests since ’America’s new war’ began. As carers we are pointing the movement in the direction that can stop all genocide: we demand an end to obscene military spending. These massive resources must be put into caring, feeding, healing, learning and educating. This is the way to end war and with it the glorification of uncaring macho militarism, which even some women are now following as the road to ‘equality’. It is a disaster that only half the human race is trained to care and the other half to believe it has ‘more important things to do’. Instead, all of us, women and men, must make caring central.

Can anyone deny that production should be at the service of caring, not killing and profit? Yet $800+ billion is spent on arms each year – and more money has been committed to bombing countries like Afghanistan where people are starving, and persecuting or imprisoning anyone anywhere who dares to oppose. The anti-globalisation, anti-war movement, to which women are contributing so much hard work and energy, is just beginning to recognise that Invest in Caring not Killing is a perspective for winning.

That is why the central demand of the GWS is

Payment for all caring work -- in wages, pensions, land and other resources. What is more valuable than raising children and caring for others? Invest in life and welfare, not military budgets and prisons.

This establishes women’s entitlement – though we do the basic work in every society, our contribution is uncounted. The other demands are about specific needs, showing the ways that this first basic demand would change the world.

A strike is the strongest weapon that workers have, and women, who do 2/3 of the world’s work, are the hardest workers. When we stop, everything is disrupted. You’ll see on our website how women and girls in over 60 countries made the first two Strikes a success by taking at least some time off from their work, waged as well as unwaged.

Women in Uganda walked for three days without food in order to demonstrate and celebrate with women globally. In India 5000 village women marched to the state capital. In Peru’s capital, domestic workers brought together grassroots organisations and rural and industrial trade unions; while Indigenous women had a gathering in the Andes. Argentinian housewives formed, and held a demonstration with, a coalition of women’s organisations. In Spain thousands gathered in Barcelona’s central square and a national trade union called for a two-hour strike. In Guyana women of African, Amerindian and Indian descent held a vigil against the murders of women and children. Women in Ireland picketed the tax office for the money women are owed. In England women marched to Parliament. Some US women launched the International Pay Equity Petition and others marched with Justice for Janitors . . .

2003

The more we as women come together to break the divisions of race, ethnicity, nation, religion, language – which divide us to deprive us – the more grassroots women’s needs are visible and our demands heard against the wars and the trade in arms that soak up our resources.

Over half of world military spending is by the US. It is this military might that enforces US economic supremacy. It imposes oil – the prime pollutant – as the main energy source. With its European and Israeli allies, the US promotes and sells weapons to governments everywhere to make war with each other and to defend their power against us. That’s how 75% of the budget of, for example, Uganda and Pakistan is devoured by military spending.

In recent months, the Strike’s key demand for the return of military budgets has been echoed by all kinds of people in Third World and industrial countries. They have agreed that even the threat of war is an attack on every life on this planet: from mothers demanding clean accessible water, food and welfare, to veterans among millions of others in dire need of health care, to waged workers forced out of work without means of survival or struggling against low pay and long hours, to people with disabilities and pensioners deprived of a dignified income, to children denied basic education and students denied grants, to homeless people . . . All point to the $900+ billions world spending on weapons of mass destruction and demand to know: Why must the military be the priority for which each of us must do without?

This is a new and holistic protest, against not only war but the draining of our collective wealth and resources for war. The consensus global priority is to reclaim the military budget. To this end, people are working out new ways of organising based on each sector being accountable to other sectors, and rejecting political ambition and parties whose priority is their own power. Though men may be the most prominent, women are always the backbone of anti-war activism.

Our network of struggles is stronger and extends further, connecting us with what women are making happen all over the world. Women in Nigeria joined across tribal affiliation and occupied the offices of Shell Oil, which had exploited, corrupted, polluted, killed and maimed for profit. They demanded some of these lavish profits for food, schools, healthcare – for caring. Such struggles for survival and change are points of reference for the rest of us, enabling us to see our own pain in the experience of others, but also to find our own power in the victories of others.

To gain independence, we have often had to “prove ourselves”: to suppress our needs, adopt macho values, work harder than men, play down our unwaged caring work, spend less time with our children and families, and even look down on our mothers (while “professionals” look down on us). With the Global Women’s Strike we bring women’s priority of Invest in Caring Not Killing to every initiative for change.

Striking to reclaim the world military budget for caring is a strategy that could only come from women the carers but, like caring itself, is central to everyone’s survival: so social wealth is invested in caring, not in killing; so life and the care of it once more becomes society’s priority, and the work women do to protect life is finally recognised as the basic work of society, to be shared by all; and so we stop the oil for war and war for oil that makes war on all of us every day.

2004

The Strike came out of a long grassroots history, starting in 1952 with a little pamphlet called A Woman’s Place and continuing with Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, now a classic, in 1972, and Sex, Race and Class in 1973. All three made the case that the work women do for wages is a second job, that the work we do in the home and in the community without wages, producing all the workers of the world, and our struggle to change the world, were invisible but central.

Since then, we have been campaigning to get RECOGNITION and WAGES for all the unwaged work women do, as well as for PAY EQUITY-- these are JOINT LEVERS against women's poverty, exploitation and discrimination of every kind. According to the UN, women do 2/3 of the world’s work: from breastfeeding and raising children to caring for those who are sick, older or disabled, to growing, preparing and cooking the food that feeds families, communities and continents (80% of food consumed in Africa is grown by women), to volunteer work and to work in the informal economy as cleaners, seamstresses, street sellers, sex workers, as well as work in the formal economy. Here again women’s work is often caring for people, in hospitals and schools, as domestic workers, childminders, personal assistants . . . or in sweatshops - jobs where men who do comparable work also get low pay. But women get the lowest, and often face sexual and racial harassment. . .

In Beijing in 1995, the International Women Count Network which we co-ordinate, supported by more than 1,500 organisations, won a major UN decision. National accounts were to include how much of their lifetime women spend doing unwaged work and how much value this work creates. Trinidad & Tobago and Spain have put this into law; other countries are carrying out time-use surveys and increasingly consider unwaged work in court decisions and government policies. . .

In Venezuela, we are working with the women who are building a caring economy and won Article 88 of the Constitution, which recognises housework as an economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth, entitling housewives to social security. The Strike has been spreading news of such momentous victories, supporting the revolutionary process there in which women from the grassroots are the most active participants.

We also demand recognition for the contribution of men who actively support our struggle because they agree that INVEST IN CARING NOT KILLING is the priority of all workers and all humanity. Not only do men owe women their daily survival -- from breastfeeding to cooked meals, clean clothes and emotional support -- but they also depend on women prioritising survival to oppose the values of the Market, values which now threaten the survival of the world. The web page of Payday, a network of men, www.refusingtokill.net, is an important contribution to the movement against war, and to the recognition of all those who risk their own life and liberty in defence of everyone’s life and liberty.

We are often told that in order to win we must unite, but we don’t hear much about how to do that (except from political parties that want to lead us). We use the Strike as a framework for unity -- among sectors of women, between women and men, within and among countries -- because it is based on each sector accepting and enriching the independent struggle of every other. The Strike is not party political, nor is it separatist. It is ambitious for the movement for change but it stands against personal ambition that undermines mutual accountability.

Website: www.globalwomenstrike.net

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