The purpose of the strike is to make women's issues visible, discuss them, and make demands. The main emphasis of the strike will be the care work many women are made to do and the ensuing emotional burden women have to carry. Women usually have to clean, cook, wash up, iron, go shopping, and run households - or constantly be reminding their partners to do their share of chores. The JIF (International Women's Day) platform's Michele Cloos pointed out women still have to do the lion's share of this work.
According to Cloos, women spend hours of their unpaid time maintaining households, namely up to 12 billion hours worldwide. At the same time, they are usually the ones working paid cleaning and care jobs. The issue with this sector is that the work does not receive the respect or recognition it deserves.
JIF's demands are simple: time, money, and respect. By time, Cloos explained, the platform demands that women have more time in the form of reducing working hours. As for money, JIF members believe that the minimum wage of women must be increased, especially as many women work in low-paying sectors.
Under that same umbrella the platform also demands a fairer tax system, specifically relief on single-parent households - women make up 80% of these households. As Cloos puts it, "these are the large areas in which women are able to choose how to live. They need time to do everything, they need money to fund lifestyles, and they have also earned respect from society."
The plan for the strike next week is for women to drop their work at home to demonstrate just how much they actually contribute to their environments.
The platform has also published a guide to symbolic strike actions to be held in businesses in order to make women more visible. She concluded: "People should be able to see just what women contribute to society - either at home or at work - because without us, things would stop working everywhere."
LINK: More details on Fraestreik.lu
