One unwashed dish might not seem a  powerful statement on its own, but, if it is one of a million dirty  plates, it could make a resounding mess. This week, on the 8th  of March, thousands will renounce their daily demands to strike for  International Women’s Day. Women are calling upon women to act, or not  act, in any way they can: to ‘put a broom outside the front door or a  banner in the window; bang pots and pans, change your facebook profile  to the image of the Strike, refuse to do the washing up or the shopping,  charge double for sex work’.[i]  They’ll also gather to disrupt public spaces across the world. The aim:  to paralyse life for the day. To stop the rhythms of routine and show  the undervalued — often hidden — work that keeps the world moving.

Women will gather outside Parliament  in London to demand an end to gender violence, discrimination and  poverty. This is one of many gatherings, but the reasons to strike are  diverse. For example, the All African Women’s Group will perform a play  condemning racism and sexism in England’s immigration system. A  demonstration outside London’s Central Family Court will protest ‘unjust  separation of children from their mothers’.[ii]  Groups including Women Against Rape, Queer Strike, and the English  Collective of Prostitutes are coordinating the day’s activities. Of course, many women can’t afford to spare a day to strike and participating in International Women’s Day can also entail calling a representative or signing a petition.

Organizers have said they hope the  strike will build on the momentum of the anti-Trump women’s marches, as  well as recent demonstrations in Argentina and Poland fighting for  reproductive rights and against male violence. But the movement’s roots  are more than a century old. The first International Women’s Day took  place in 1911, when more than one million women from Austria, Germany,  Denmark and Switzerland rallied for women’s suffrage and other causes.[iii]  The day was inspired by a 1909 National Women’s Day in the United  States, organized by the Socialist Party of America following a garment  workers’ strike in New York, in which female workers demanded better conditions.

These actions sparked a movement that  would eventually span many countries, and today International Women’s  Day is meant to rally women as a collective. This focus is integral to  the spirit of the day. To quote Gloria Steinem, ‘The story of women’s  struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one  organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human  rights’.[iv]

The history is compelling and  powerful but also presents some troubling contradictions. Is it  empowering and liberating for women to collaborate under the banner of  ‘being a woman’, or is it simply reaffirming entrenched gender  divisions? Is it okay to bang a pot or not go shopping, thereby  reinforcing some gendered associations that many want to challenge?  Temma Kaplan’s theory of female consciousness is useful in unpacking  this paradox. According to her, when women mask their differences and  homogenise their identities by claiming to act in the name of  ‘womanhood’ they are employing female consciousness.[v]  

Female consciousness denotes  situations in which women accept their ascribed role as caregivers, but  demand the rights that these obligations entail. Throughout history,  groups appealing to womanhood have often justified overtly  political acts, allowing them to challenge or rightfully resist state  power and to move outside the private domain.[vi] For example, in the late 70s women in Argentina’s Plaza de Mayo drew upon their identities as Madres to protest the desaparecidos — the disappeared. Appealing to their identities as mothers wielded greater power and more protection than calling themselves ‘citizens’.[vii]  Female consciousness places human need above other political  requirements, promoting a profoundly radical, egalitarian vision. Thus  it is paradoxically both conservative, in seeming to buttress the  established gender system, and potentially revolutionary.

Women’s history is strongest as a  story of collaboration and collective struggle. Social welfare in Europe  today only exists because women repeatedly made demands of the state  throughout the last centuries, often drawing on the rhetoric of  motherhood to claim rights, legitimacy and expertise.[viii]  These histories are so important at the moment, when Theresa May’s  government is effectively dismantling the UK’s welfare state and  disproportionately affecting women — particularly marginalised women — in doing so.[ix]

This sense of solidarity is perhaps  the greatest reason for women at the University of Cambridge and  elsewhere to partake in International Women’s Day. The University is  always celebrating great men —  their faces riddle the dining hall walls and reading lists. Plenty of  great women have graced Cambridge’s hallowed halls, long before they  gained full membership to the university only seventy years ago. But  there shouldn’t be a ‘Great Man’s’ history of women, at Cambridge or  elsewhere. Rather than celebrating individuals, women’s history is  strongest when it acknowledges and learns from the moments when women  have acted in unity to bring about sweeping changes. So go to London, join a local gathering, or bash about some pots instead of washing them.