International Women’s Day march in Belgrade, “Without us everything (the world) stops”, 2025. Photo: Lara Končar

The first associations with strikes are usually blocked factories during work stoppages, columns of workers on the streets, with reminiscences of historical strikes held over the past hundred and fifty years. Feminist marches are linked to the observance of the 8^th of March, protests most often address gender-based violence. Pride parades carry the colourful joy of rainbow colours on one hand, but on the other, either ignorance from the general population or open violence from conservative social actors.

The feminist strike is still a little-known phenomenon in our country. Is it a strike in which only activists participate? Or is it a strike of women and all their allies? What would even be the format of such a strike, and finally, is it an impossible phrase if, according to generally accepted opinion, strikes involve workers, whilst feminists deal with identity issues?

The answers are best sought in environments where feminist strikes have been held successfully and en masse. If we lack inspiration or motivation to organise this type of strike, it is good to recall the historical example from Iceland. Exactly half a century ago, on the first day of the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985) – on 24 October 1975, 90% of Icelandic women participated in a one-day strike. They rebelled against the fact that their work was not adequately valued either at work or at home, and that women were paid less than men. (Sounds familiar?) They demanded that awareness be raised about the value of women in society as a whole. The positive effects of this massive work stoppage have lasted for decades, along with everything that has been done in Icelandic society in the field of gender equality in the meantime. Today, Iceland is one of the countries with the highest level of equality in the world.

Alright, Iceland is a good example, but it’s a small, island nation with about 400,000 inhabitants? Still, it is possible to organise massive feminist strikes today, as shown by the examples of Spain and Switzerland. On 8 March 2018, under the slogan “If we stop, the world stops”, 5.3 million women across Spain joined the one-day strike, with about half a million in Madrid and Barcelona alone. Besides drawing attention to unrecognised women’s work, Spanish women protested against the epidemic of gender-based violence. In a similar context, on 14 June 2019, Swiss women organised a massive strike, joined by 300,000 protesters. The demands set out in their manifesto include not only the experiences of dominant white, heterosexual women in Switzerland, but also those with experiences of racial oppression, queer and homosexual identities, young and old, women with disabilities. And all these different women gathered to put an end to institutionalised racism, sexism, heteronormativity, homophobia and transphobia, for climate justice and education aimed at equality and emancipation.

Thus, previous massive feminist strikes have shown that it is not only possible to connect the feminist struggle with labour rights, but conversely, that it is impossible to imagine a solution to the crisis caused by the neoliberal system of exploitation if gender inequality in the sphere of work and the sphere of privacy is neglected or postponed. Because without women, the world stops!

Here in Serbia, Where do we stand?
In the current context of student protests, the primary demands concern the work of institutions, as well as action through direct democratic methods such as assemblies. Also, the student movement uses its political capital built through consistency, persistence, and the highest degree of transparency (which has also not been common for local societies for four decades) – not only to call on institutions to do their job but also to strengthen the trade union struggle. Since the beginning of the year, general “rehearsals” for a general strike were held on 24 January, and then more massively on 7 March. True, due to the current legislative framework, it was not possible to organise a general strike in the full meaning of the word, but there was a massive response from various economic entities. Among them were small entrepreneurs, the cultural sector, medicine and pharmacy, agriculture, education, which has been on strike for months at all levels. All this led to the signing of a joint document by five trade unions requesting reform of the Strike Law and the Labour Law. These reforms would create better conditions for organising mass strikes in the future.

Let us now imagine that the law actually gets reformed, imagine that we reach such a developed democratic level that, as in countries like Greece or Belgium or France, trade union centres can halt the state when they want to oppose exploitation or other social injustices. Still, something would remain excluded. That is the sphere of domestic work, care work for the elderly and young – in short, the jobs of social reproduction would not be covered even by such a general strike. And that “something” which is uncovered, according to the latest research in Serbia, amounts to as much as 20% of the state budget. This work is mostly performed by women, because in unpaid care work and household chores, they spend an average of 4 hours and 36 minutes compared to 2 hours and 5 minutes that men work during the day (according to the Republic Statistical Office for 2010 and 2015). Also, according to research by the Academy of Women’s Entrepreneurship from 2022, by market estimates for household chores, women should receive about 72,000 dinars monthly for the work they do in the household.

If trade union organising has been internally and externally undermined for decades, nearly rendered meaningless by laws, what hope can we have for jobs that are essential but almost unrecognised, reduced to stories about how it’s more “natural” for women to perform them and they should do it “out of love”? Or perhaps such a state of workers’ rights has just laid bare the system of exploitation and brought the struggles of different social positions closer together?

Unions in Serbia, at the invitation of students in the blockade, held a meeting where they agreed to join forces to start the fight for changes to the Labour Law and the Strike Law. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that with the globalisation of the workforce, local efforts to achieve labour rights have been significantly hampered. Many of our fellow citizens work for foreign companies, which are most often not obliged to adhere to local legislation that is already unfavourable, and are forced to sign employment contracts that prohibit any form of union association and strike, or they don’t have contracts at all. The tacit threat that hangs over them during their daily work tasks is that companies will otherwise move to another country or region, or bring in a workforce from economically less developed areas than Serbia.

Many women, in addition to facing unacceptable conditions in paid jobs, mostly perform invisible work within households, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t contribute to profit and isn’t crucial for the functioning of society. In the last decade, invisibility and undervaluation, characteristic of women’s domestic work, have become pronounced features of many other jobs, so it seems that the next round of struggle for labour rights and life welfare could be led by precisely those who understand well what that means. It could take place on several fronts – both within unions and outside them, and through public discussions and assemblies initiated by students, it has the potential to become united and directed against exploitation and the devaluation of different forms of human work.

Just as the student movement has empowered and engaged a wide circle of people to unite against various forms of oppression, or as Swiss women gathered women of different identities, the struggle for labour rights and dignified work can be initiated by a women’s strike. Let’s just imagine one day in which women in Serbia, younger and older, from different backgrounds and professions, suspend their unpaid activities, family obligations, but also paid jobs. The irony of the position of many of them is such that they even have one “advantage” – no one can threaten them with dismissal or reduced wages, because they don’t receive any for their work anyway.

However, the effects of their strike would be strong, as it would clearly show how much they contribute to the survival of the state and society. In addition to the immediately noticeable economic losses, women on strike can turn the situation around by setting new conditions in which work and life should take place, and then inspire and encourage others to join them. The force of those 24 hours and the panic they would cause cannot be measured against any other form of resistance and advocacy. Each of these women will use the strike to deal with her environment and the specific circumstances in which she finds herself, but it simultaneously becomes collectivist and feminist, as it points to the place of women and their work in the structure of society and calls for change.

By joining with all others who suffer injustice, which is a good part of the citizens of Serbia, it will be shown that undervalued domestic work, as well as care work, is one of the many ways in which the state and the profit it is guided by squander our lives, and that the feminist struggle is inseparable from the general struggle for dignified work, better living conditions, and a healthy living environment. Each woman will strike in her own environment, as much as conditions allow, and then at the end of the day join other women in Belgrade, and all those who support them, to realise that they are not alone in their struggle.

8^th March Collective every day

The research we use as sources does not include the most recent data. Namely, on 18 March 2024, the Rulebook on the methodology for calculating unpaid domestic work was published. However, we do not have new data because the Law on Gender Equality has been “suspended”, which is a precedent in previous legal practice, that due to one article (in this case on gender-equitable language) the entire law is suspended.