Text by Beatty Hallas
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for kids and everyone else
The riot of a playground where play is unleashed. Swings extended at full arc; teetering tiptoes after a swift slide; white knuckles on the scrabbling rope. A mum on the swings. A grandad chatting in the shade. Full-on and rewarding and alive. I’ll just stop there as it’s school pick-up time.
This poster looks as if from another age: the screenprint harks back to the 70s and 80s and the work of See Red Women’s Workshop (1). Not handmade on a kitchen table, or disintegrating on a wet noticeboard, but multiplied online with global invitees. Current strifes mimic those of forty-ish years ago, when undaunted movements rose to meet them. This poster says we can do that again.
The Women’s Strike or My Mum is on Strike (MMIOS) takes place anually on International Women’s Day. It is free. You will find activities, a kitchen and a circle of chairs. Food is prepared from leftover supermarket stock. It may be served by male attendees, along with a crèche. Children listen or run about. If you can’t attend, please wear red and post online about why you can’t.
These gatherings (2) and marches (3) grew from industrial strikes (4), fuelled by the ‘…dream of a world where the caring for children is celebrated; where mums and carers are valued for the socially transformative work they do; where everyone gets a break sometimes; and where we eat, play, love and fight together.’(5) Does anyone notice? This is not solely withdrawing a ‘service’, but a day of difference: to refresh, meet others, be present. Greenham protester Maureen Wilsker notes: ‘…it’s always exciting to spend days surrounded by like-minded people when you’re in a minority’. (6)
Being a ‘stay at home parent’ is a serious undertaking. Some surveys indicate it equates to two and a half full-time jobs.(7) UK governments have made it harder to be at home. For many it is the only option as costs soar. Reproductive work, as a sacrificial expression of what it is to be a woman, is no longer ok. Shared care evolves, but lockdown perpetuated gender norms.(8) Childcare remains a low-skilled pursuit in terms of wages. Kids are just future employees in the making.(9) How do we get ‘…the acknowledgement from society that the work we are doing is fundamental and important?’(10)
Calls for sympathetic working conditions for women through Wages for Housework (WfH) (11), the Dagenham strikes (12), political promises in India (13), support for Skandinavian fathers and solidarity economies sound progressive. Still men own 50% more wealth globally, whilst women’s unpaid care work has a monetary value of $10.8 trillion a year.(14) The world continues to be supported by women. If we stop, the world stops, but who will take over?
Families struggle to live and love well in the twist of outside forces. So play powerfully where you can in ‘collective joy’ (15), mingle and make visible associations that result in practical and emotional resilience. Invest in childhood, pass on life lessons and absorb ‘the immense rewardingness of children’.(16)
1 https://seeredwomensworkshop.wordpress.com/
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Without_a_Woman
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_una_menos
4 https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/lowell-mill-women-form-union
5 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141778920942747
6 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/20/greenham-common-nuclear-silos-women-pro test-peace-camp
7 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/mother-equivalent-2-jobs-full-time-childcare-98- hours-work-mum-survey-a8258676.html
8 Lockdown increasing, gender norms https://ifs.org.uk/publications/gendered-division-paid-and-domestic-work-un der-lockdown
9 https://birthstrike.home.blog/
10 https://caringlabor.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/selmajamesra.pdf
11 https://selmajames.net/category/wages-for-housework-campaign/
12 https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/tradeindustry/industrycommunity/collec tions/equal-pay/ford-strike/
13 https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/women-household-work-payment-gender-caste-7154573/ 14 https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/time-care
15 https://www.facebook.com/womenstrike.uk
16 Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, Penguin Books, 2014, p145
Bio
I am an artist and researcher concerned with actions of good purpose, believing in art’s power to bring people together, foster caring relationships and offer hope for the future. Using writing, performative scenarios and moving image, my work reveals empowering individual responses to the world, whilst seeking to connect with others. I hope to energise human motivation, instigate understanding and establish reciprocal support. I am informed by grassroots and DIY and awake to my role as a parent and carer.
