Live global coverage of International Women’s Day 2017 as events took place around the world to mark the ongoing fight for equality
I’m handing over the blog now to my colleague Lexy Topping in London – she’ll continue to update you on events, protests and everything else as International Women’s Day continues its way around the globe.
Thanks for reading and for your comments and contributions – do keep them coming.
A key feature of 2017’s International Women’s Day is the call for “a day without women” – for women to take the day off work (paid and unpaid, at home and out of the home); to avoid shopping for the day,“with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses”; and to wear red in solidarity.
In America, the call to strike has been led by the organisers of the Women’s March, which took place across the US (and the world) the day after Trump’s inauguration.
A group of feminist activists and academics wrote recently in the Guardian about the need to strike:
The idea is to mobilise women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle – a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions. These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women.
In embracing a feminism for the 99%, we take inspiration from the Argentinian coalition Ni Una Menos. Violence against women, as they define it, has many facets: it is domestic violence, but also the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women; the violence of state criminalization of migratory movements; the violence of mass incarceration; and the institutional violence against women’s bodies through abortion bans and lack of access to free healthcare and free abortion.
But Guardian columnist Lindy West, speaking on Australian TV this week, while agreeing that “protest is most effective when it disrupts people’s lives”, echoed concerns of others who are cautious about the proposed strike:
It would be tremendously effective if we could mobilise every single woman in the world …
A concern for me, as a very privileged, financially stable white woman who works from home … it’s very easy for me to say yes, everyone should go on strike but I want to be very cognisant of the fact there are very many women who cannot afford to lose one day’s worth of pay, let alone risk their job.
You can find details of strikes and other protests taking place around the world from Australia to Uruguay via the links on this page.
And here are some ways you can take part if you’re not striking:
Brendan Cox, whose wife Jo Cox was murdered last year, has shared this picture of the Labour MP for International Women’s Day:
Jo was passionate, beautiful, fearless, compassionate& strong.A role model for her daughter (and son) on International Women's day #IWD2017 pic.twitter.com/hQIdLSuhYM
— Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) March 7, 2017
In the UK, International Women’s Day coincides – or collides – with the Budget.
Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti argues that austerity is a feminist issue, with women more likely to be single parents, earn less and work part-time than their male counterparts.
It’s 19 November, since you ask.
If you’d like to hear more about how International Men’s Day is on 19 November, can I suggest you follow comedian Richard Herring on Twitter, as he endures his annual feat of replying to all the people wondering when International Men’s Day is.
Here’s what Herring wrote for the Guardian on International Men’s Day in 2015:
International Women’s Day is on 8 March: 24 hours (of the 8,760 annually available) set aside to celebrate women and all of their achievements. And people get furious about it.
Surely, you might think, you could only be cross about it because that definitely isn’t enough time to celebrate the achievements of over than 50% of the population. But no …
So for the last two International Women’s Days I have tried to highlight this stupidity. I have got up early, logged on to Twitter and searched for the phrase “international men’s day”, found every single person who has tweeted the question and responded to them all individually: “It’s 19 November.”
There are thousands to get through. It goes on relentlessly, for hours and hours, but I try to get to them all because to see the same moronic question asked over and over again by people (who don’t even think just to check Google to make sure they’re not making an arse of themselves) is very funny, and shows exactly why an international women’s day is necessary.
Incidentally, nobody tweets me back to say: “Oh thanks for the information. I was wondering when it was.” Almost like they don’t want to know the answer to their own question.
My hope is that if I can spend a day a year dealing with this issue, then that means that everyone else can get on with making International Women’s Day about celebrating women and not complaining about the supposed raw deal men get. So I let men know that they do have a day if they want to celebrate themselves. Though not many of them do when it comes along, weirdly.
On 24 October 1975, the women of Iceland did no housework, to protest against their feeble, 5% representation in parliament. They technically went on everything-strike, but since their democratic exclusion was mirrored in the workplace, this functionally meant they stopped looking after their children and doing the washing-up (those who did have jobs worked in schools and nurseries, so those had to close as well). A staggering 90% of women took part, after the genius move of renaming it, not a strike, but a “Women’s Day Off”, dressing up stridency as me-time. Men had to take their children to work, which gave the event its other name: The Long Friday.
This action changed the face of Icelandic politics, delivering to Europe its first female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, five years later. But its significance in the wider feminist landscape is subtler, since that tension of where you situate domestic labour in the fight for equality is, if anything, more pronounced now than it was then. Feminism at home sounds a lot like nagging. The strike was underpinned by a movement, the radical Red Stockings in Iceland, and sister organisations across Europe making the case for paid housework.
We now broadly reject domestic responsibilities as innately female, so would struggle to galvanise action around them. Yet we still do most of them (statistically, I mean; I don’t personally, I am a slut) and they are still unpaid. I struggle to see much victory in this turn of events.
If you want victory, go to Poland: “The so-called Black Protest last October,” feminist activist Katarzyna Bielinska tells me, “was provoked by an attempt to tighten already the extremely restrictive abortion law in Poland by introducing an even more barbarian bill, banning abortion totally, making a woman who aborts liable for five years’ imprisonment, criminalising miscarriage and blocking prenatal foetus investigation and treatment.” Tens of thousands of women went on strike, or – this detail pleases me – went to work but dressed in black, and didn’t do anything. More than 140 cities, towns and municipalities were profoundly affected, especially public-sector work.
“The success was huge and unexpected,” Bielinska says. “The governing Law and Justice party rejected the bill three days after.”
Today is on course to be one of the most political International Women’s Days in history, Alexandra Topping and Molly Redden report:
From Thailand to Poland, the United States to Australia, the first Global Women’s Strike will see action on both the industrial and domestic fronts, with participants keen to show solidarity with an energised global women’s movement.
“We are united, we are international – and we are everywhere,” said Klementyna Suchanow, a Poland-based organiser of the Global Women’s Strike, adding that the walkout would put governments and institutions under pressure by giving women a voice that has long been ignored. “We are an army of women across the globe and we are no longer asking to be listened to. The world is being forced to listen to us.”
The theme for 2017’s International Women’s Day – which celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – is #BeBoldForChange.
Organisers of the Global Women’s Strike have joined forces with coordinators of the Women’s March and hundreds of human rights and women’s campaigners to capitalise on momentum in the movement in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Up to 2 million people around the world marched for equality in January the day after his inauguration.
The Women’s March – which now has organisers across 200 cities in 80 countries – has called on supporters not to engage in paid or unpaid labour and only spend money in small and female-owned businesses.
Recognising that the poor financial situation and rigid work laws mean many will not be able to take part in a physical strike, organisers are urging supporters to wear red, a colour historically associated with the labour movement, in solidarity.
In other countries women will wear black, or different colours, while the focus on issues from femicide to abortion will be decided in each nation.
The relationship between feminism and capitalism is a twisty one, but in the US Wall Street is making its own International Women’s Day statement with this statue of a girl facing down the charging bull.
Reuters reports:
Placing the diminutive, school-aged girl in front of the massive bull on the eve of International Women’s Day was a way of calling attention to the lack of gender diversity on corporate boards and the pay gap of women working in financial services, a spokeswoman for Wall Street firm State Street Global Advisors said.
“A lot of people talk about gender diversity, but we really felt we had to take it to a broader level,” said Anne McNally.
Although women have made some headway against the glass ceiling, State Street said one out of four of the companies that make up the Russell 3000 Index still have no female representation on their boards.
The little bronze girl by artist Kristen Visbal was put up in the wee hours of the morning as “guerilla art”, McNally said. But the firm discussed it with the city beforehand so that it could remain at least temporarily.
“We’re actively pursuing that it stays for a month,” she said. “If the city decides that it should stay in perpetuity, we’re absolutely on board with that.”
In Greece, the Eurozone’s weakest member state, the governing left-wing Syriza party has issued a rousing statement to mark International Womens’ Day.
After eight years of economic crisis and depression-era poverty, the ruling Syriza party elected to mark the day tapping into the radical rhetoric that first swept it to power.
Women, it said, were not only poorer wherever they lived, they were paid less than men for the same work, while the violence often perpetuated against them was “the most widespread crime in the world and harmed the life, dignity and freedom of half the world’s population”.
Applauding the protest action women had taken over the past year, “from the squares of Argentina to those in European cities and Turkey”, women, it said, had marched against gender violence, racism, sexism, Donald Trump’s misogynist agenda and the policies and effects of austerity.
The 8th of March is a reminder that in our country female unemployment, especially among the young, has soared. The shrinking of the social state brought about by the politics of austerity over the last decade has further encumbered women regarding care for children and old people.
Under the stewardship of Greece’s first ever leftist government, legislation outlining the equality of the sexes had been drafted and would soon be put to parliament and sexist language removed from all public documents, it added.
Less than 19% of the 300-seat Greek parliament is represented by female MPs.
In Afghanistan, Reporters Without Borders says it will today hold an opening ceremony for the country’s first Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists, in Kabul.
Afghan journalist Farida Nikzad will head the new centre, which says its aim is “to assist and protect women journalists, especially those working in remote parts of Afghanistan, who are more vulnerable”.
Nikzad explains:
The creation of this centre is intended to send a strong message not only to Afghan women journalists, but also to all of the country’s women.
We want to support women journalists both in war zones and within the news organisations for which they work, to defend both their rights and their physical safety. To that end, we need the government and media owners to commit to do their part in what is a key battle for Afghan society.
The centre says it is already working with 10 female journalists, five of them in conflict zones.
Reporters Without Borders says many women have been forced to give up work in the media due to violence:
In some regions, there are no longer any women journalists at all. Three of the 10 journalists and media workers killed in 2016 were women. Thirteen women journalists and media workers (including five foreigners) have been killed since 2001, and at least 10 have had to flee the country.
Afghanistan is ranked 120th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
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