To strike on the 8th of March is not a neutral decision. Conquest of the feminist struggles, it is no coincidence that this tool has been chosen for this day of action: it allows us to acknowledge that masculine violence structures every productive and reproductive space, public and private.
The strike of the 8th of March is part of a path begun in Argentina in June 2015 under the banner “Ni una menos”, where many women gathered to denounce femicide and actively demand a radical transformation of the society. With the complicity of governments, gender violence is being reinforced by neoliberal, racist and classist policies, that put women in a state of social and economical vulnerability. The Women March that took place in January 21st in the USA was the latest of many other significant days of mobilization of women since last year, from Argentina to Brazil, from Poland to Germany, from Turkey to Italy. In the context of a global crisis, the call “Non una di meno” for a strike in Italy responds to a transversal claim denouncing the exploitation of the informal, precarious and intermittent feminine economies.
The women, protagonists of the reproductive labour, are the ones who provide the conditions allowing the good functioning of this part of the economic sphere that is told as productive. A role imposed by the patriarchy ingrained in every society, which, absorbed by the capitalist system, brought with it the institutionalisation of the exploitation of women through the shallowness of the existing gender equality policies. Those only worsened the precariousness endured by women.
This is a political challenge: a global strike that stems from the will to break with the colonial and classist barriers between women; a global strike launched by a feminism that is intersectional and claims self-determination for women, transexual and intersex persons, lesbians, mothers, migrants, sex workers, all of them are workers.
The feminist strike takes back the public space and unmasks the different facets of masculine violence: the one we suffer at home, everyday in the streets, in recreational areas and in the workplace; the one that excludes women from the language, the one that negates the right to decide what to do with one’s body and that criminalises the migratory movements. The same violence that imagines as the sole viable family the one that consists of two people, a man and a woman.
This 8th of March, we too go on strike, because we recognize ourselves in the aims, contents and methods of this international call. Acknowledging there is still a long way to go, our association works daily to transform society so that it would support self-determination for the individual. We do it by implementing and promoting these contents through the tool of volunteering in our local and international activities.
On the 8th of March, we thus withdraw from productive and reproductive labour, we refuse the roles imposed on us inside and outside the workplace on grounds of gender. “If our lives have no value, we strike!”
Enjoy the strike everyone!
The collaborators of Servizio Civile Internazionale