Revisiting and Recreating the Strike

Abstract

Since 2016, feminist mobilizations have reactivated the practice of the strike. Some countries have experienced mass expressions of it; in others, the term was simply adopted and with it a forceful idea: the power of social disruption. Partial strikes were carried out around the world with varying degrees of support, as were sit-ins, marches, actions, and calls to stop the various productive and reproductive circuits in which women are involved on a daily basis. For feminists the call to strike entails a number of pressing problems, since traditional models of the strike do not account for reproductive and other forms of unwaged or marginalized labor. The question then becomes what kind of strike would best serve those who tirelessly perform the labor of social reproduction and who at the same time are most denigrated and devalued. Yet looking back on the history of the strike, we are reminded that many strikes were connected to elements of working-class life that did not directly concern production. Looking to recent historical instances of the feminist strike recorded in the visual archive, this article seeks to broaden the feminist understanding of the strike by uncovering how women have used it on their own terms and in their own ways to effect change.