Could women strike?

[GarlicNovember]

It'd mean finding enough supportive men to take over child and other caring duties. Could it be done? Would it make the point that the world would grind to a halt if women didn't do all the supposedly invisible stuff they do?

Yes, I see that, Buffy, and you're right. While typing, I imagined the media interviewing high-profile women and none of the undervalued ones ... it places too much reliance on them to state the case. At the same time, I wouldn't want women divided into 'rewarded' and 'unrewarded' Where do you draw the line? If a woman has a well-paid job and a housekeeper, does she just go home in the evening & do the housekeeping? Or doesn't the housekeeper count as needing support, either, as she's paid? What about SAHPs of well-paid men?

You're not over-complicating the core issue, which is the amount of 'unseen' labour done by women and its real value to the economy. But strike action has to be generalised. I'm thinking of a strike my union arranged long ago, when we were trying to get paid maternity leave. The employer owned two massive, high-profile brands and hundreds of lesser ones. They could manage without the lesser ones for a month or so, but failing to produce the famous ones, even for a day or two, would cripple them. The staff on the famous brands already had maternity leave, but threatened to strike along with all the smaller ones. The company gave in at the last minute and we all gained maternity rights.

So is the strike for all women to participate, or only women who do "unseen" work? Or are women who don't do "unseen" work no longer women?

I'm all for solidarity, protesting, raising awareness of issues and will happily join the march, it's just the idea of pretending to strike when I actually don't do any unseen labour I could actually withhold a bit wanky.

The maternity strike out of solidarity is a different issue, I think and I can get behind that.

Have just come across this article about Icelandic women in 1975: the day the women went on strike www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/18/gender.uk