From #MeToo To #WeStrike
A year before #MeToo erupted in the United States, women in Argentina were fighting against an epidemic of violence against women in which, on average, one woman is killed every 30 hours. The murders are often brutal, women are tortured, their bodies are mutilated and dumped in public places. But women in Argentina are not merely victims. At noon on October 19, 2016, thousands of women all over the country walked off their jobs, stopped doing unpaid housework, watching the kids, or preparing the meals; they stopped carrying out the emotional work required of political organizing; they stopped conforming to the social script of gender and its attendant divisions of labor that organizes the subordination of women. The strike was Argentinian women’s response to the growing number of femicides in the country, and specifically to the brutal murder of the young Lucía Pérez.