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Archives for October 2014

Icelandic Women Take a Day Off … and then Another!

October 24, 2014 By Pam

17-1975On October 24, 1975, Iceland came to a virtual standstill when women took the day off. They left their typewriters and steno pads, put down their paint brushes,  music books, and lecture notes, took off their aprons, left the dishes in the sink. Actresses walked off the stage. Teachers left their classrooms. Tellers grinned as nervous bank executives stepped up to the window. Moms and daycare workers handed the children over to dads. They didn’t do the shopping or get dinner. Fish factories ran at half-capacity. Planes were grounded for lack of flight attendants. Phones went unanswered. Newspapers weren’t typeset.

From 12 noon to 12 midnight, on a day men would remember as “that long Friday,” 90% of Iceland’s women walked away from their responsibilities to see what would happen. They called it “Women’s Day Off.”

Why? 1975 was the UN’s “International Women’s Year,” and women everywhere were taking a good hard look at their lives. In Iceland, where they made less than 60% of the wages men made, the “Viking mentality” was romanticized, and male violence undermined everyone’s quality of life, the women chose a dramatic action to show just how essential they were to the smooth functioning of their nation.

17-flagIn Reykjavik that day, 25,000 women, bundled in coats and scarves, streamed out of their homes and workplaces to attend a rally. They came from all walks of life, political parties, religious beliefs, union affiliation. Some chanted and sang, others stood quietly, tears in their eyes. They listened to speeches and waved homemade placards calling for equality, progress, peace.

At the stroke of midnight, having made their point, most went home, but the women employed at Morgunbladid, one of Iceland’s main newspapers, slipped back into the office. They typeset articles for the next morning’s paper, an entire issue devoted to the strike.

Ten Years Later …

17-Pres-winsIn 1985, they did it again. By now, Iceland had a female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (photographed cheering the day she won the election). A single mom, she stayed home in solidarity with the symbolic strike.

In 2005, women walked out again, this time at 2:08 on the dot, in protest of Iceland’s continuing gender pay gap. By 2:08, if paid the same as men, they would have completed their workday. As women converged in downtown Reykjavik that crisp sunny day, Margrét Pálmadóttir, founding conductor of the Vox Feminae Women’s Choir, led a mass sing-along. The crowd swelled to over 50,000, double the 1975 protest, making it the largest outdoor rally in Iceland’s history.

17-JABy 2010, everything was different. The name of the action had changed from “Women’s Day Off” to “Women Strike Back.” Instead of a sunny day, the 50,000 who rallied in Reykjavik defied storm warnings and stood in freezing rain. Violence against women was still a focal point of the protest, but the economic and political landscape had changed. Following a global economic crash, Iceland had gone from one of the world’s wealthiest societies to total economic collapse in 2008, largely, it was held, due to the excesses of mostly male bankers and politicians.

The Most Feminist Place in the World!

17-prime_minister_johannaIn response, the electorate voted in Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir as prime minister, the first openly-lesbian elected leader in world history. A new gender-neutral marriage law, passed in June 2010, legalized same-sex marriage. A few days later, Jóhanna married her longtime partner, Jónína. (Icelanders go by their first names, according to tradition.)

One thing leads to another. It is possible that the one-day strikes, regular reminders of the crucial role of women to the smooth functioning of a society, led to a new day in Iceland. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Rankings, in recent years Iceland has repeatedly ranked #1 in the world for gender equality in economics, education, health, and politics and has been dubbed “the most feminist place in the world.”

To Go Deeper: 

“Icelandic Women Strike for Economic and Social Equality, 1975” Global Nonviolent Action Database, Swarthmore

“The Most Feminist Place in the World: After a testosterone-fueled boom and bust, the women of iceland took charge” by Janet Elisa Johnson in The Nation. February 3, 2011.

“The Day the Women Went on Strike” by Annadis Rudolfsdottir in The Guardian, 10/17/05

 


Birthday greeting for Prime Minster Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir (1 min.)

 

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 1975 International Women’s Year, Global Gender Gap, Iceland, Iceland’s female president, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, lesbian prime minister, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Women Strike Back, Women’s Day Off, women’s strike

The London Matchgirls’ Strike of 1888

October 17, 2014 By Pam

16-Matchgirls-VerticalCourageous action arises from places of misery and oppression — places like Victorian London’s East End.

A starting place for immigrants — Irish dockworkers, Huguenot weavers, Jews fleeing persecution in Russia — the East End was poor, prone to epidemics, and severely overcrowded: cupboards were sometimes rented out as rooms. Factories spewed poisonous clouds into the air and contaminated the water supply, leaving people without water for long stretches.

Annie Gives Voice to the Voiceless

16-Annie-BesantIn 1888, several months before Jack-the-Ripper killed and mutilated six women in the East End, Annie Besant, a crusading journalist, heard about the deplorable work conditions at the Bryant & May match factory which employed many women, most of them teens. She made up her mind to spark public concern with her writing.

Besant began by interviewing several workers. She learned that they were paid meager wages for long, grueling days. Fines for petty offenses — talking, tardiness, dropping materials, taking unauthorized toilet breaks — were deducted from the take-home pay. One pale sixteen-year-old who lived with her sister told Annie that they subsisted on bread, butter, and tea for days at a time.

16-Table-sceneLow pay and 12-hour days were not the workers’ only hardship. The factory air was thick with phosphorus. White sulphur, used on match tips, got onto the workers’ fingers. They ate at their work benches, Annie wrote, “disease the seasoning to their bread.” Poisoned by their work, the young women often became bald, and some developed “Phossy Jaw,” a disease that literally ate their faces.

Charles Dickens, in an 1852 essay, painted a grim picture:

Annie Brown is twenty years of age, of pale and scrofulous aspect. She went to work at the lucifer-factory when she was nine years old, and after she had worked for about four years, the complaint began, like a toothache. Her teeth had all been sound before that time… She was occupied in the lids on the boxes. She could smell the phosphorus at first, but soon grew used to it. At night, she could see that her clothes were glowing on the chair where she had put them; her hands and arms were glowing also… On uncovering her face, we perceived that her lower jaw is almost entirely wanting; at the side of her mouth are two or three large holes. The jaw was removed at the Infirmary seven years ago. 

Besant published her exposé in her socialist publication, the Link. In her opening sentence, she described the young workers as underfed, oppressed, flung aside when worn out. She asked, “Who cares if they die, provided only that the Bryant & May shareholders get their 23 per cent?”

The Matchgirls Call a Strike, Chanting “Annie Besant!”

16-strike-committeeThe company threatened a libel suit and insisted that all workers sign a petition certifying that Besant’s article was untrue, exaggerated at best. Despite their desperate straits, not one worker signed.

When the company identified one they deemed the “ringleader” and fired her, all 1,400 women put down their work, stood up, and walked out. On impulse, 200 of them headed for Fleet Street where the Link office was located, chanting in unison, “Annie Besant! Annie Besant!” The matchgirls were on strike.

Besant was as stunned as the management of Bryant & May, but she answered the call. First, she formed a strike committee to draw up a list of demands. (Above photo: Annie at the lectern, surrounded by members of the strike committee.) 

When a strike fund was established, donations poured in. With Besant’s help, the workers held meetings, walked a picket line, and gained sympathetic publicity with demonstrations.

16-ParadeThe highlight of the strike came when the matchgirls marched to the House of Commons. A delegation of young workers was allowed to enter and speak about their lives in their own words. One fifteen-year-old pulled the scarf from her head to show that she was almost completely bald. The MP’s were shocked.

16-newspaperRegretting bad publicity, the directors of Bryant & May met with strike representatives and agreed to all their demands, including better wages, a separate room where the workers could eat, and the abolition of fines. The matchgirls’ successful strike is still celebrated in British labor history.

One final note: Besant petitioned for a “matchgirls’ drawing room.” As she envisioned it, this was to be a home for working women who had no real homes and “no playground save the streets.” She wanted it to be a pleasant refuge, with a piano, some light reading, games, not, she warned, an institution with rigid rules of discipline and prim behavior. Within two years, a donor made Besant’s dream come true and opened a home for the matchgirls.

To Go Deeper

16-book-coverAnnie Besant: An Autobiography.  Republished by Dodo Press, August 2007.

Annie Besant (Lives of Modern Women), by Rosemary Dinnage, Penguin Books, 1987

16-play-poster

“M Is for match Girl Strike of 1888” Blog by Maryann Holloway

Lewenhak, Sheila. Women and Trade Unions: An Outline History of Women in the British Trade Union Movement. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.

“The Little Match Girl Strikes Back” on the blog Robert Frost’s Banjo, July 23, 2009.

 


“The Matchgirls: Rehearsal” from a musical (6 minute clip)

 


“The Match Girl Strike” (4 minutes) Artistic and informational video, but inaccurate about the etymology of the word “strike.”

 

Credits:

16-musical

Featured illustration by Peter Jackson from Guilty: Match Boxes that Cause a Strike, original artwork from Look and Learn no. 568, December 2, 1972.

Illustration of women and children working at a table first appeared in The Child Slaves of Britain by Robert Sherard.

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: 1888, Annie Besant, Bryant & May, Charles Dickens, East End, London Matchgirls Strike, Match Girls Strike, Phossy Jaw, the Link, Victorian London

Sex Strikes and Birth Boycotts — No Laughing Matter

October 10, 2014 By Pam

15-Lysis-GraduateIn Lysistrata, that bawdy old Greek comedy, scantily clad women fed up with the Peloponnesian War lured their warrior husbands home, then slammed shut the bedroom doors, so to speak, promising to open up when peace was declared.

This week, writing a chapter about women’s use of sex strikes, I learned that, ever since Aristophanes’ heroine proposed the idea in 411 B.C.E., women around the world have occasionally withheld sex or childbirth for the purpose of making an impact on society.

Hysterically funny on stage, it’s not always so funny in real life. Here’s a sampling of actual Lysistrata experiments:

●  1530, Nicaragua — Indigenous women proclaimed a “Strike of the Uterus” after the Spanish governor established a slave trade, vowing to prevent children from being born into slavery.

15-Legs●  @1600, Iroquois Nation — Noting that they produced the warriors, women threatened to forego childbearing until men conceded some decision-making powers on the war council.

●  1919, France — Feminist socialist Nelly Roussel called for a “Strike of the Wombs” to counter post-war pro-maternity propaganda.

●  1940s, China — When women in one village were denied suffrage, the Women’s Association declared a sex strike. A second election was soon called, and women were allowed to vote. They promptly elected a woman as deputy village head.

●  1979, West Germany — On Mother’s Day in Lower Saxony, over 1,000 women joined in a nationwide antinuclear campaign, pledging not to bear anymore children until the ruling powers give up nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

●  1985, India — In New Delhi, female students at St. Stephens College vowed to avoid relations with men until the end of the semester, to protest harassment and frequent “panty raids” by male students.

●  1986, Finland — Women collected 4,000 signatures on a petition announcing, “No Natal for No Nukes” promising to withhold sex until the government of Finland changed its pro-nuclear policies.

15-Absurdistan

●  2001, Turkey — Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see below.) 

●  2003, Liberia — In a successful campaign to end a 14-year civil war, Leymah Gbowee led a coalition of Christian and Muslim women in a variety of nonviolent tactics, including a sex strike.

15-Lysis-Project

●  2003, Global — As the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower organized the “Lysistrata Project: The First-Ever Worldwide Theatrical Act of Dissent.” On March 3, there were 1,029 readings of Aristophanes’ play in 59 countries — a megaphone for antiwar protest. Unfortunately, no one in the Bush administration was listening.

15-Crossed-Legs●  2006, Colombia — Proclaiming a “strike of crossed legs,” women in Pereira withheld sex to stop gang wars and drive home the point that violence is not sexy. The ten-day strike may have worked. By 2010, Pereira’s murder rate declined by 26.5 percent.

●  2009, Kenya — Thousands of Kenyan women called for seven days of chastity to force the President and Prime Minister to talk with each other, speed reform, and end months of stalled negotiations. WIthin a week, the leaders talked.

15-Anti-Republican●  2011, Philippines —  Women in a sewing cooperative on rural Mindanao Island were unable to sell their wares because violence between men in rival villages had closed the main road. They called for a sex strike. Within a few weeks, the road was opened and deemed safe for travel.

●  2011, Togo — Inspired by the successful nonviolent campaign by Liberian women in 2003, Togolese women vowed to abstain from sex for one week to protest the 45-year military rule of the Gnassingbé family, their use of torture, and the lack of human rights. It took courage to publicly condemn the ruling family, but the sex strike had little impact beyond making headlines.

15-Access-Denied●  2012, USA — The Texas-based Liberal Ladies Who Lunch set up a Facebook page urging women to withhold sex for a week, not as a weapon against men, but as a reminder that  “if women lose our hard won rights to medical care, birth control, and pregnancy choice, it won’t only affect women.” The strike proposal was made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the demand that congress and insurance companies cover contraception was serious.

 

●  2014, Japan — A website threatening a sex strike against men who voted for Yoichi Masuzoe, reportedly received 75,000 hits a day. Despite objections to his misogynist comments, Masuzoe was elected governor of Tokyo.

15-Ukrainian-t-shirt

●  2014, Ukraine — After Russia annexed Crimea, Ukrainian women went online to launch the “Don’t Give It to a Russian” campaign, encouraging their sisters to say “Nyet!” to having sex with Russian men. They wore T-shirts bearing a logo of two “praying” hands held to resemble female genitalia. The group’s Facebook page immediately got over 2,300 “likes” and made headlines in Russian newspapers.

To Go Deeper

15-Lysis-JonesMusical & Theatrical Sex Strikes:

Modern adaptations of Lysistrata include the Western musical The Second Greatest Sex (1955), another musical The Happiest Girl in the World (1961), and Broadway’s recent sports-themed musical Lysistrata Jones (photo). While literary and theatrical treatments of the story are almost always comedic, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia rock band song “Lysistrata” concludes with the refrain, “I won’t go to war no more.”


15-Absurdistan-posterThe 2001 Turkish sex strike inspired two modern films. The 2008 award-winning German-French comedy Absurdistan, directed by Veit Helmer and filmed in Azerbaijan, tells about two young lovers in a remote Soviet village, caught up in a sex strike for repair of a water pipeline. Absurdistan (2 min trailer)

 


15-The-SourceThe 2011 French film, The Source, directed by Radu Mihāileanu, is set in a small Arab village in North Africa, where women go on a “love strike” to protest their hard labor carrying water from the mountains. (2-minute trailer) 

 

Real Life Sex Strikes:


2011, Philippines — Women’s sewing collective in 2 villages used a sex strike to stop men from fighting and open a much needed road. “Sex Strike Brings Peace” (3.5 minutes United Nations film)

 


2011, Colombia — News report on women’s “crossed leg strike” to demand a useable road after a woman and her baby died in labor because the ambulance couldn’t get to her. The report also touches on other recent strikes. (4.5 minutes)

 


2003, Liberia — Clip from Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the sex strike in Liberia (1 minute)

 


2009 Kenya — News report about women’s 7-day sex boycott protesting poor leadership and demanding a national discussion of crucial issues. (2 minutes)

Credits

Featured poster by Shayna Pond for the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma’s theatre arts production, March 2013

Lysistrata meets The Graduate by okhanorhan for the Dawson Theatre Collective, March 2012

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Absurdistan, Aristophanes, birth strike, crossed legs strike, Kathryn Blume, Leymah Gbowee, Liberal Ladies Who Lunch, Lysistrata, sex strike, Sharron Bower, The Source

A Woman’s Strike in Burkina Faso

October 3, 2014 By Pam

14-BarbaraTypingIf women ever really went on strike and refused our assigned roles, “Everything, everything would have to change!” So wrote my mentor, Barbara Deming (1917-1984), pacifist, lesbian-feminist author-activist.

This week, the focus of my writing has been a chapter about women’s use of strikes — the collective withholding of labor, symbolic strikes (Women’s Strike for Peace), and Lysistrata actions (withholding sex or birthing). It’s an exciting action-packed chapter, fun to research. I love reading about Annie Besant and the Matchgirls’ strike in London in 1888 and the Uprising of the 20,000 shirtwaist workers in 1909 NYC and the garment workers massive actions last year in Bangladesh. All of it — inspiring!

This month, I will share tidbits from this chapter-in-progress. Today — the story of a one-day woman’s strike in Burkina Faso, the little landlocked nation in West Africa. Enjoy!

President Sankara’s “Mad Act”

14-Sankara-Quote“You can’t make fundamental changes in society without the occasional mad act.” That’s what President Sankara boldly proclaimed when he came up with the idea for “Market Day for Men.” Indeed, it seemed a mad act.

In Burkina Faso, in 1984, women went daily to the market, rain or shine, having no way to preserve food at home. They left early in the morning, often walking long distances. At the market, they selected produce and haggled with vendors to get the most out of their food money, doled out to them each day by their husbands. Then, they carried the heavy loads back home and prepared the family meal.

Joséphine Ouédraogo — On Board with the Bold Experiment

14-OuedraogoIn the few years before his assassination and the coup, President Sankara appointed several women to high positions, including second in command at the Ministry of Defense. For Minister for Health and Family Welfare, he appointed Joséphine Ouédraogo. She was trained as a sociologist and worked for the revolutionary government from 1984 to 1987.

Inspired by Sankara’s commitment to speak for the “great disinherited people of the world,” Ouédraogo worked to eradicate the custom of female genital mutilation, helped develop new laws governing family life, promoted the distribution of contraceptives, fought against discrimination, and advocated for marginalized groups. After the overthrow of the revolutionary Sankara regime, she was out of a job. In 1997, she was appointed head of the United Nations’ “African Center for Gender and Development” and, in 2007, was named Executive Director of Enda Third World, an international organization based on Senegal.

Market Day for Men — The Revolution Bursts Into the Family!

14-market-distantThe mid-1980s was a time of great change in Burkina Faso, a country that traditionally had a strict division of labor along gender lines. In September, 1984, with the blessing of both President Sankara and Minister Ouédraogo, the women in the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution called for a one-day women’s strike and, simultaneously, a “Market Day for Men.” They urged community leaders — priests, imams (Muslim prayer leaders), teachers, and news reporters — to encourage support for the experiment.

The people in the capital city of Ouagadougou were given fair notice of the event in a media campaign, but the date was kept a secret so that women would not do extra shopping the day before to spare their husbands. At eight p.m. on Friday night the word came: the strike was to be the next day, September 22.

Bright and early Saturday morning, the experiment began. Women handed over their shopping lists, and the men were on their way — in a torrential rain.

Where Are the Cashews? How Much for Mangoes?

14-Market-foodAt each marketplace, the men were greeted by teams of militant women from the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. They stopped women from entering the markets unless they were single or had husbands who were ill that day.

The marketplaces proved alien to the men, most of whom wandered in confusion, as if they were lost on a strange planet. They asked about prices and were alarmed at the figures quoted. Not adept at bargaining, they handed over the money and hurried on to buy the next item on their lists. Finally, they carried their heavy loads home, realizing from their aching backs, tired feet, and pounding heads the frustrations and fatigue the women lived with daily.

Joséphine Ouédraogo later wrote of that day:

The atmosphere was fantastic, as much for those who “played the game” as for those who found it “absolutely ridiculous.” It was well worth it. It provoked unexpected debate in all quarters. The revolution had burst into the family and pointed an accusing finger at the masculine conscience!

To Go Deeper: 

14-Book-Cover

“Everyday Heroes — Joséphine Ouédraogo (Burkina Faso)” on the blog: Trust Africa.

“Women of Vision — Burkina Faso” on the blog: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

“The Revolution Cannot Triumph Without the Emancipation of Women: A Reflection on Sankara’s Speech, 25 Years Later” by Amber Murrey, Speech given at Oxford University, June 8, 2012, published in the International Journal of Socialist Renewal

BOOK: Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, Pathfinder Press, 2007

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Barbara Deming, Burkina Faso, Josephine Ouedraogo, Market Day for Men, Ouagadougou, President Sankara, Thomas Sankara, woman’s strike, women’s liberation, women’s symbolic strike

Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

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