Iida Käyhkö: We won’t prop up universities that don’t treat us as equals
Academia remains a bastion of patriarchal power – its structures mean certain men always get to the top of the hierarchy. Universities like to put on prominent display the tiny minority of women who have managed to break through the glass ceiling – but the presence of women in senior management is no consolation when researchers and lecturers face poverty, sexual harassment and the expectation of labour performed for free and out of an instinctive feminine desire to “care”.
In the UK, women aged 18 are 36% more likely than men to go to university. Young women are currently holding up the higher education sector in this country by taking out personal loans, buying into a field that offers them little in return for the burden of debt they are forced to take on.
What they have to look forward to, if they stay in academia, is low pay and precarious and short-term work, pensions under threat and an enduring gender pay gap. Casual contracts are widespread in academia, with about 50% of academic staff in the UK on insecure contracts.
Academia runs on prestige, which only comes from high-profile research, conference attendance and publication. Performing this visible work depends on forgoing the invisible labour at home: it relies on not having care duties, having financial stability, and being able to leave domestic labour to someone else.
Simultaneously, women have to deal with sexual harassment, assault and bullying. Nearly one in 10 female students have been raped, while only 6% of victims reported it to their university. The hierarchies of the university leave many students and early-career academics afraid to report assault or harassment, or ignored or silenced when they do.
Even within supposedly liberal universities, the context in which women exist is one of gendered oppression. If you pay attention you can see it in how students are drowned out in seminars and tutorials by men. Women of colour receive racist and sexist abuse, and their expertise is questioned.
This is why the strike for pensions is about far more than just the right to retire with dignity, and an adequate standard of living in old age. It is also in protest at the marketisation of education, the gender pay gap and increasing casualisation. This is why the University and College Union strike and the global Women’s Strike movement join together today to make a unified demand: for fair contracts, closure of the gender pay gap and adequate provisions for those within universities who have care responsibilities. If our voices are not heard, we will withdraw our labour, within universities and in our homes, to make it clear that it is our work that makes academia function.
Iida Käyhkö is a master’s student and student academic representative at University College London, and an organiser with the UK Women’s Strike
Frankie Mullin: Shout loud for Laura and all the sex workers whose voices go unheard
I am striking for Laura Lee, the Irish sex worker and activist we lost last month. Laura was one of the bravest women I ever met. She was a mother. She was a slayer of bigots.
Like all sex workers, Laura lived under the weight of stigma and criminalisation. Shortly before she died Laura alleged she had been sexually assaulted. So my #Strike4Decrim is for Laura, a protest against the laws and stigma that jeopardise lives; against the patriarchal ideal under which some women are pure and others are whores; and against the licence to abuse that’s implicit in this distinction.
At 7pm tonight in Soho, in London, sex workers will be holding a minute’s noise for Laura. Because Laura was loud. During her life, she refused to be silenced when DUP members subjected her to misogynist inquisition in Stormont; she refused to be silenced by the “tsunami of abuse” as she launched her appeal against the law that makes it illegal to pay for sex in Northern Ireland; and she refused to be silenced over sexual abuse, making a police statement about an alleged attack shortly before her death.
It’s here, in Laura’s story and in the stories of many others, that the #MeToo movement and the women’s strike intersect: in the acknowledgment that, for centuries, women have endured sexual harassment, putting up with it as a kind of unspoken price of being a woman, as a form of labour we never consented to.
As #MeToo laid bare the pervasiveness of sexual abuse, sex workers were excluded, unable to speak or ignored when they did. While whore-stigma affects all women, the actual whores were left behind. When the world tells you prostitution is, by definition, abuse, or that you were asking for it by virtue of your work, you are silenced. Laura spoke though, and we believe her.
Last year, the sex worker safety organisation National Ugly Mugs received reports of 97 rapes and 45 sexual assaults. Sex workers – those who put a price tag on sexual labour – have thought long and hard about the line between consent and nonconsent. So listen to sex workers this International Women’s Day. When they call out abuse, the #MeToo movement must listen. When they tell #MeToo that criminalisation makes sex workers’ jobs more dangerous, listen. Sex workers are part of your community, part of any feminist movement.
Frankie Mullin is part of the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) and the Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement (Swarm)
Susana Benavides: As a migrant woman I suffer twice
I am the mother of three daughters and a qualified librarian. In 1999 I left Ecuador in search of more opportunities and moved to Spain. I started a new life there, first working as a maid and then starting my own small business. However, the 2008 financial crisis affected Spain very severely and I had to emigrate again, this time to London.
I arrived in London in 2009 and started working as a cleaner at Topshop, where I worked for more than seven years. In all this time, I was never employed directly by Topshop, but by a subcontractor. In 2010, a new contractor changed the cleaners’ contracts from full-time to 2.5 hours a day, with much worse conditions.
When I complained about the changes the bullying started. My manager called me “a donkey”, increased my workload and ignored my breaks, overlooked my health problems and, eventually, physically attacked me. I tried to get help but I couldn’t speak English. I was depressed and desperate.
Everything changed in 2013, when I realised I could get help from a trade union and organise other workers. With the support of United Voices of the World, we could fight against injustice and take action against the bosses that exploit us. My struggle wasn’t over, though. Eventually, I was sacked.
I feel that as a migrant woman I suffer twice. The language barrier seems an opportunity for bosses to exploit us through bad contracts. They use our disadvantage against us.
As a woman, I feel that my work never ends. I finish a shift at work and then continue to care for others as a daughter, mother, sister, wife and friend. We carry our whole community on our shoulders.
On Thursday I will join other women to demand fair treatment a work, at home and in the community. A fair share of the workload and of caring responsibilities and an acknowledgment that my work is valuable. I will fight alongside other women for justice, equality and to end exploitation. Join us, we have a world to win.
Susana Benavides is an Ecuadorian mother of three
Rosie Ferguson: Single mums need change, for them and their children
While no doubt some single parents will strike today, many won’t be able to be there in person. But that doesn’t mean they can’t meaningfully make their voices heard.
There are 1.7 million single families in the UK, with 90% led by a single mum. At Gingerbread, we work with and support thousands of them to overcome challenges and achieve their goals, and we campaign on issues that affect them and their children. But we know the responsibilities of being the sole carer and sole earner for a family can make taking on additional fights hard to do.
The single parents who campaign with us are passionate and articulate, and committed to seeing change for them and their children – whether that’s challenging the government to reduce the £4bn in child maintenance arrears, or challenging companies to change discriminatory family ticket pricing so that tickets are accessible to the one in four families who are single-parent-led. But often they can only take action while the kids are distracted with a game, or after bedtime.
We know that increasing access to flexible work, making childcare accessible and ensuring that unpaid caring work is valued are not just issues for single parents, and will be issues challenged by the strike. It’s incredibly important on days like today that we stand together and show just how much still needs to change for all women. But we need to respect the different ways that people can contribute, and ensure the voices of those who can’t be present in person are still heard. Online actions are a really important part of this, as is recognising difference as well as similarity.
For single parents, leaving daily chores at home or getting out for a few hours without the kids just isn’t an option, and there is often nobody else there to share the essential tasks. Let’s make sure we don’t forget that. And just because you can’t be there doesn’t mean your experience is any less worthy – in fact our recently published report, One in Four, shows just how much more still needs to change for single parents.