WOMEN PLAN BIG STRIKE

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 2

WOMEN PLAN BIG STRIKE

fN.Z. Press Assn,—Copyright) NEW YORK, July 20.

The last time a nation’s women went out on general strike, they stopped a war. The date was 411 8.C., the war, between Sparta and Athens, and it all took place in a play.

This year some American women are planning a similar action to try to help end another war between the sexes, The date is August 26. “We’re advising women to do their own thing to confront the unfinished business of equality,” said Mrs Betty Friedan, who calls herself “chairperson” of the event and who dreamed up the idea as former president of the National Organisation for Women (N.0.W.), THREE DEMANDS She lists the three strike demands', free 24-hour child care centres, free abortions on demand, and equality for women in education and employment. “The political parties, corporations, hospitals, churches, unions, mass media—all the Establishment groups—have not really felt the urgency and power women have as 53 per cent of the population,” Mrs Friedan said. “The strike should make visible the sheer fact of this oppressed majority.” Mrs Friedan is urging women to march, demon-

strate, sit-in, stop typing, stop vacuuming, stop buying and, if appropriate, stop making love, “to do something to visibly protest the discrimination against women.” The August date was chosen to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the day the nineteenth Constitutional Amendment—giving women the vote—was ratified. The scheduled activities of women in many parts of the country forecast a nonviolent, highly energetic protest of what they consider discrimination against women on the job- and in the home. BOYCOTTS To demonstrate the clout of female buying power, Los Angeles women are being urged not to buy anything on August 26. Consumer boycotts will be launched against companies considered most exploitative of women. “We’re looking at the advertising,” said a member of a Manhattan group called Bitch, which is researching a list of 50 companies. “We’re looking for the companies which exploit the image of women, give a very peculiar slant to what women are really about” In New York women leaders are talking about a “baby-in” in which infants will be set on the steps of City Hall to dramatise the demand for child care centres.

In several cities the day’s motto for housewives will be, “Don’t iron while the strike is hot.”