A couple of weeks ago, the organizers of the Women’s March in Washington marked out 8 March on their calendars. Not only was it International Women’s Day but the date would also be “A Day Without A Woman” – a one-day strike of women to highlight the contribution we make to the economy.
International Women’s Day has always been tied to labor rights (first by the Socialist Party of America in 1908, and later by female textile workers in Russia in 1917). But that hasn’t meant that every woman in the workforce has been able to take part. Then and now, women have worked in jobs where striking just isn’t an option.
There are various reasons for that. In the US, women are more likely than men to work in part-time employment where workers are often considered more “disposable”. They are also less likely than men to receive a pension, more likely than men to live in poverty and more likely to be paid hourly rates that are below minimum wage. That makes striking risky, and this is before you even get to the astounding amount of unpaid work women do, including caregiver roles where taking a day off can be a matter of life and death.
I’m incredibly fortunate that those are not considerations when I am deciding whether to strike today. My female colleagues and I have a slightly different consideration: can Guardian US continue to inform our readers about what is happening in the world without us?
About 37% of newsrooms are female according to the American Society of News Editors, and that figure has barely changed since 1999. By contrast, the staff of Guardian US is majority female (59%), with editorial staff 46% female and non-editorial 69%.
What’s more, our senior management globally is overwhelmingly female – the Guardian’s editor in chief is a woman, the editor of Guardian US is a woman and one of the two deputy editors of Guardian US is a woman.
There are other occupations where women make up the majority. Pre-schoolers in America will have a tough time learning today if their teachers, 98% of whom are female, do decide to go on strike. More important though is healthcare – what would hospitals around the country look like if the 91% of nurses who are female simply didn’t show up?
Whatever you decide to do today, know your legal rights.
