The 'A Day Without a Woman' Strike Has Already Caused an Entire School District to Cancel Classes
By Kelsey Lafferty. Photos: Getty Images.
Even though the A Day Without a Woman strike isn't happening until March 8, it's already caused an entire North Carolina school district to cancel classes.
How exactly? A whopping 75 percent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District employees are women, and both towns skew pretty liberal. Given the large number of expected teacher absences, the district's superintendent, Jim Causby, preemptively canceled classes and changed next Wednesday to a teacher work day instead. However, the district made it clear in a statement that the cancellation isn't necessarily an endorsement of the strike.
"Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools values and supports its female employees. However, the decision to close schools is not an endorsement of the planned demonstration," according to the statement. "The decision is made solely to avoid operating school on a day when there are insufficient staff to provide instruction and basic school services."
A follow up to January's Women's March on Washington, March 8's A Day Without a Woman strike coincides with International Women's Day.
If the name sounds familiar, there's a reason: the precursor to it was February 16's A Day Without Immigrants strike, meant to show what the country would be like without immigrants and to protest President Donald Trump's immigration policies. The effect of that was palpable. In Washington, D.C., alone that day, more than 50 restaurants closed their doors; school districts in Texas saw their admission drop by almost 40 percent; and marches took place in major cities.
For the upcoming women's strike, women who are able to are urged to take the day off work; shop at independently owned, women- and minority-owned businesses; and wear red out of solidarity. The absence of women from workplaces and big business is meant to highlight "the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system—and the pervasive and systemic gender-based inequalities that still exist within our society, from the wage gap, to vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity," according to the strike's website.
This story originally appeared on Glamour.
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