Women in More Than 50 Countries Set to Strike Today on International Women's Day

Today is International Women’s Day, and thousands of women are staging a one-day strike in what’s been dubbed a Day Without a Woman. The impact of the strike is already being felt in the United States. In Virginia, the entire public school system of Alexandria is closed today after 300 women requested the day off. Some schools are also closing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in New York City. The U.S. Women’s Strike was called by organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, the largest nationwide day of protest after an inauguration in U.S. history. And women in the United States are not alone. Women in more than 50 countries are expected to take part in their own strikes. The International Women’s Strike effort was launched in October 2016 after women in Poland, South Korea, Argentina and Sweden organized strikes to fight issues from the criminalization of abortion to femicide. For more, we speak with Tithi Bhattacharya, associate professor of South Asian history at Purdue University. She is one of the national organizers of today’s Women’s Strike.