On March 9, 2020, Mexico experienced a historic Women´s strike that demonstrated its economic importance, while demanding more effective measures to stop the gender violence that has been on the rise in the country for more than a decade.
The feminist collective of Veracruz – the Mexican state that has registered the most femicides in the country -, Las Brujas del Mar, launched this call on Facebook on February 18. The group posted on Facebook: “If we stop, for the world. Let’s join this symbolic protest; let’s paralyze our activities for a single day so that they realize that they forget 52% of the population.”
Several feminist groups echoed the proposal, promoting the women’s strike to make visible the economic importance of women workers.
Leaders in the technology sector in Mexico supported women’s strike.
The leading technology companies in the country also supported this massive women’s strike, as is the case of who was the ex-Chief Executive Officer of Google Mexico, María Teresa Arnal, who is now in charge of the Stripe payment gateway. From her Twitter account, María Teresa shared several publications where she supported this initiative.
The network of women Conectadas_MX, which promotes equality in Mexico’s technology sector, expressed its sympathy for women’s strike and urged public and private organizations to show solidarity with the activity.
The head of communications for Twitter Mexico, Monica Portes, was also sharing information from her social network account about the planned activities on the weekend of March 7 and 8, in addition to sharing information on the unemployment of women.
Didi offers its women members economic incentive in solidarity with the strike
The shared transport company Didi joined the women’s strike that took place in Mexico, offering an incentive to the driving partners who decided to participate in this historic deadlock that the country is experiencing.
To compensate for the profits that they will not obtain for not working on Monday, the platform offered to eliminate the service commission and provide them twice per kilometer traveled between March 10 and 13, 2019, as reported in Mexican media Expansion. Didi’s case is unique, as the other platforms did not announce any similar measures. For its part, Uber declared that it supported the driving partners for the strike, but will not take any action to compensate those who decide not to operate that day on the platform.
According to data from the National Executive Secretariat for Public Security, in Mexico, ten women die every day due to femicide. The lack of measures by the authorities, added to the inequality that still prevails in various fields of the country, has exacerbated the outrage of women, who in recent years, have organized themselves with increasing force to demand substantive changes in the country.