Statement from Clare Hemmings, Director of the Gender Institute
March 8th is International Women's Day and we are delighted that Professor Mary Evans is giving her lecture (Thinking about gender and social inequality: old themes and new battles) that evening as part of that celebration.
This is also the day of the Global Women’s Strike, which is a call for women (not necessarily born women) everywhere to resist sexism and misogyny and withdraw their labour in the face of violence and social exclusion. A colleague forwarded this description of the intent behind the strike from Berlin, which seems to sum up the sentiment rather nicely, and of course there are interventions, rallies and marches happening all over the world.
"The womens'* strikes stand for a feminism of the 99% (* flagging women are not always born women). The issues which affect women are general issues. Women are so diverse in terms of background, skin colour, sexuality and even sex, that this movement can take on the full revolutionary legacy and carry it forward. Women* recognise where violence rules, because they and their children experience it often enough. Women* know where work is exploited, because as workers they carry a double load and are paid less. When we call for a Day without women* on the 8th of March, we do so because we are indispensable. And because we are indispensable, we do not want to devote our work, our strength, our care to propping up and patching up a world in which new life is ground down in competition and the drive for profit, a world which rests on the idea that some lives are worth more than others."
In London there are a variety of events happening all day, including a 'speak out' at Parliament Sq 12-2 (including theatre pieces and public statements about women's labour and the importance of its withdrawal). Some faculty will be there (with the LSE banner) at 12, and so invite anyone who would like to and is free to come to join us at the square. See details of where and when below. But of course, since transformation of gender relations is what we spend a lot of our days doing, we won’t be striking on teaching, supervision or office hours commitments!
The LSE Gender homepage will be dedicated to the Women’s Strike for the next couple of days, so if you have images, text, events, ideas you’d like to be put up do send on.
In solidarity!
Clare Hemmings,
Director LSE Gender Institute
Be bold with LSE Library - International Womens day!
A note from Heather Dawson - Academic Support Librarian for the Gender Institute
8th March is International womens Day. Celebrate bold women with LSE Library resources.
The Women’s Library Digital Collections has the full text of
The Archives
- The Archives here at the LSE Library has materials relating to suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. View an online exhibition of her writings, photographs of possessions and accounts of her death.
- The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a biography of her life and importance it also has entries for many other famous historic British women.
- View other great images from our archives by following our curator Gillian Murphy on twitter @curatorequality
- Our women’s social movements database has historic writings and documents from activists worldwide from the 1840s- 2010. Click here to read more!
What gender studies resources we offer for free on our subject guide.
Check out our Gender Subject Guide or see two of my favourite be bold inspiring speeches.
If you wish to find out more about the resources we offer, let’s arrange a time to meet. You can contact me at h.dawson@lse.ac.uk.