Getty Glass Ceiling How ‘A Day Without a Woman’ Could Backfire

Amanda Carpenter is a CNN Contributer, former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) and speechwriter for Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).

Fifteen-thousand public school children are being kept out of their classrooms in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday. They’re not sick. Their schools are not being renovated. Nothing is wrong with the schools at all. Rather, a group of teachers decided they’d rather engage in political protest than do their jobs, shutting down the entire school system and leaving working moms and dads scrambling to make arrangements.

According to a statement released by Alexandria Public Schools, more than 300 staff members of the 2,352-strong workforce asked to skip work to observe “A Day Without A Women,” a request granted Monday afternoon. They, like the protest’s other participants around the country, are refusing to engage in any work to show commitment to “equity, justice, and human rights of women and all gender-oppressed people through a one-day demonstration of economic solidarity.”


No one should kid themselves, however, about the radical action these protesters are embracing. Women aren’t simply “tak[ing] the day off,” as organizers have phrased it. It’s not an incident of “high staff absenteeism” as Alexandria’s superintendent described it, either. “A Day Without A Women,” planned by the same people who arranged the Women’s March earlier this year, is a one-day strike—a form of protest so unpopular it’s typically used only as a last resort. Adding further insult to the families inconvenienced by the demonstration, the strikers appear unable to answer one simple question: What, or whom, are they striking against?

Theoretically, Wednesday’s event is designed to highlight the economic power of women by showing the world what can happen if they refuse to engage in both paid and unpaid work, as well as any shopping, for a day. Right away, thorny questions pile up. First off, are women really attempting to show their value in the workplace by refusing to work? This seems like a risky strategy. No worker is truly indispensable, and going on strike could invite employers to consider just how replaceable you are. Not to mention that parents thrown into the lurch due to last-minute school cancellations for petty political games will surely be tempted to consider other educational choices, too.

Second, what would happen if all women actually participated? The event’s organizers are suggesting women refrain from paid as well as unpaid work, which means mothers, if they followed through with the guidelines, may leave children unattended. The entire American airlines industry would be grounded without women to help planes get on and off the ground. Female nurses and doctors would not be available to administer chemotherapy, deliver babies or conduct life-saving emergency treatments. Do organizers truly want to encourage a movement that would lead to nothing less than the breakdown of civil society? This isn’t a feminist ploy, it’s one for anarchy.

Third, what political remedy are they seeking? No specific requests are apparent. All the organizing material is bathed in vague blather about raising awareness without asking for any specific reforms. Unlike this month’s “Bodega strike,” in which immigrant businesses closed their doors in objection to President Donald Trump’s travel ban, or #GrabYourWallet, which seeks to protest the Trump family’s conflicts of interest, or even January’s Women’s March on Washington, which was at least reacting to Trump’s inauguration and history of sexist comments, “A Day Without A Woman” is a protest without a point. If women are going to put thousands of children out of school and consider grinding the American economy to a halt, they at least ought to have a good, clear reason to do so.

In fact, all Wednesday’s meaningless demonstration does is hand the Republican Party a wide-open opportunity to dismiss it as a hysterical hissy fit, staged by left-wing activists still mourning Hillary Clinton’s loss. While the strike may make progressives feel better about themselves, it will not have that effect on everyone. Many GOP voters will tell you they felt compelled to support Trump precisely because of the increasingly aggressive protest tactics exhibited by the left during the campaign. There’s a reason why Trump called out protesters and made a big show of escorting them out of his rallies. It wasn’t just because his law-and-order-loving base loved watching demonstrators get hauled out of stadiums all over America. Those on the fence about Trump were watching as well.

The president could easily make an example out of the “A Day Without A Woman,” too. He ought to take a field trip across the Potomac to the front doors of an Alexandria City elementary school. He can bring along a bank of TV cameras and say, “These children should be in school today, but the same people who have tried to shut down my rallies, who shut down the streets and broke windows all over our nation’s beautiful capital during my inauguration have shut down this school today. All because they care more about protesting me than the children. Terrible!”

Because if these progressive protesters want voters to choose, yet again, between Trump and a disruptive mob driven by identity politics, Republicans should happily take them up on the offer. Americans—and yes, plenty of women, too—made that choice in 2016, and it worked out overwhelmingly in the GOP’s favor.

The “Day Without A Women” organizers made a severe misstep by making children and working families, many of whom who can’t easily skip work or get babysitters, into collateral damage for their dead-end, self-soothing political agenda. School may not be in session in Alexandria, in Prince George’s County, in Chapel Hill, or in parts of Brooklyn, but there’s a lesson the nation can learn from these closures. The modern progressive movement doesn’t have any goals. Just feelings, which come before all else.

