March 8 was International Women’s Day, and to commemorate the day, an organized strike took place called “A Day Without a Woman.” It was a small affair, especially considering the monstrosity of the Women’s March that took place in January. I was initially excited to hear about International Women’s Day; however, the more I read about the actual strike, the more questions I have. After the recent and overwhelming Women’s March, was the Day Without a Woman strike actually effective? Was it necessary? Did it take away from the progress that the Women’s March had made? 

March 8 has been International Women’s Day since 1909, when women took to the streets of New York and protested for better pay and shorter hours. The strike consisted of women “skipping work, wearing red and refusing to spend money.”

If we were at school at the time of the strike, female students could have participated by not spending money on campus or attending classes. The local radio station could have participated by solely playing songs by men, similar to a radio station in Alabama.

In theory, the strike this year was a good idea. It was meant to show the economic power that women have by striking. However, the participation for the strike was definitely smaller in comparison to January’s movement. Some of the biggest impacts of the strike included a court in Rhode Island that shut down because of staff staying home, and some schools, including public schools in Chapel Hill, closed down because teachers stayed home for the strike.

If students at NC State had not been on break, there could have been a bigger participation in the strike. When I attended the Women’s March in January, there were so many familiar faces in the crowd in downtown Raleigh, which leads me to believe that the same people would have participated in some way in the recent strike.

So, why were the strikes less impactful than the previous march? One reason for the smaller turnout in participation may be because the Day Without a Woman strike did not have everyone’s full support. There was not enough momentum to make the strike as effective as the Women’s March.  

Some women simply did not want to participate. Suzanne Venker, an opinion writer for FOX News, said, “I would no more participate in a protest than I would stick needles in my eye.”

Venker continues on to talk about the “silent majority” of women who are against what feminists were fighting for during the strike. If Venker is correct, then she exemplifies how many women were sitting the protest out, again not allowing the event to be completely successful.  

Van Penninger demonstrates this same idea in his short opinion piece for The News & Observer. He went about his day just like any other in Raleigh. In his column, he claims that the media isn’t showing the “true women’s day heroes,” like his waitress in a restaurant near NC State that said she was “fed up with all these women who think they are owed something.” The waitress also made the point to say that she has to work, just like “her man” does because they earn what they have.

Penninger’s waitress represents many other women that actually couldn’t participate in the event. Low-income women could not afford to take the day off from work or jeopardize their position with their company by skipping a day. Similarly, had NC State not been on break, it is very likely that many female students couldn’t skip class in fear of falling behind. This further made the strike ineffective, considering many women couldn’t leave their daily obligations which lowered the number of those participating.

The strike did attempt to account for the lack of participation and had other ways for women to show their support. The organizers stated, “Many women in our most vulnerable communities will not have the ability to join the strike, due to economic insecurity. We strike for them,” on the Women’s March website.

NC State did not have equal representation of women when it was founded; the institution began as a male-only college. However, times have clearly changed, and we now attend a university that has approximately 10,000 undergraduate students that identify as women, which makes up 45 percent of overall undergraduate students. Considering how many women we have at our university, not only students but also professors and staff, we should be interested in equal opportunity for all.

The strike was attempting to show the impact that women have economically; however, it fell flat in comparison to the overwhelming magnitude of the Women’s March, where the square was overflowing with women, men and children.

NC State students should be interested in the event regardless, considering Raleigh seems to be a hub for women’s rights with participation in both the strike as well as the Women’s March. Even though we were on break and couldn’t all participate in the strike in Raleigh, participation on our part in the future can help bridge the gap between genders and move closer to gender equality.