The Impossibility of the International Women’s Strike is Exactly Why It’s So Necessary | Novara Media
▻http://novaramedia.com/2017/03/06/the-impossibility-of-the-international-womens-strike-is-exactly-why-its
by Camille Barbagallo
Signalé par @isskein que je remercie bien
The international women’s strike is impossible. Really, it is. But let’s be very clear – the impossibility of the women’s strike is precisely why it is one of the most important things that needs to be done. The impossibility of the women’s strike is not because the women’s strike is not a ‘real’ strike (you know, when blokes in unions walked out of factories); nor is it impossible because apparently it’s only for ‘privileged’ women, or because unprivileged women cannot strike. The impossibility emerges when we confront the reality of women’s work and what striking means today.
The timing of the international women’s strike to coincide with international women’s day is a powerful reminder of women’s history. Firstly, women have always worked – it is just that sometimes we don’t receive a wage for the work that we do. The history of international women’s day – beginning with a strike of women garment workers – many of them immigrants – in Manhattan in 1908 forces us to complicate the easy picture of men at work and women in the home and reminds us of the centrality of women’s waged labour to the development of capitalist production and that women have always struggled and gone on strike. Not only for better wages and conditions but also, as the thousands of striking Russian women of 1917 did, for peace, for bread and for roses.