Tomorrow, March 8, is "A Day Without a Woman," brought to you by the pink-hat brigade that gave you the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21.
It's billed as a Lysistrata-like women's general strike, in which females are supposed to stay home from their jobs, ditch classes if they're students, and abstain from that quintessential double-x chromosome activity: shopping. Plus, I presume, tell their husbands to fold their own laundry and have a headache if asked for sex.
It remains to be seen how many women in the private sector will actually want to lose a day's wages or let down clients, bosses, and co-workers becayse they want to relive their experience of carrying a uterus poster and screaming "Dump Trump!" two months ago.
But there's one group that's embraced A Day Without a Woman like a life-jacket after a shipwreck: the teachers at our nation's public schools. You know, those unionized-to-the-gills taxpayer-paid employees who can't be fired unless they commit mass murder and already take numerous paid days off during the school year for "professional development," strikes for higher salaries, mental health, or whatever. But they're doing it all "for the children," as they always say.
The Huffington Post reports that dozens of public schools up and down the East Coast will be closed tomorrow because they don't expect their mostly female teaching staffs to show up for work.
All 16 public schools in Alexandria, Virginia, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina, The New School in New York City and a preschool in Brooklyn, New York, have canceled classes for International Women’s Day on March 8, anticipating staff shortages.
Here's why:
Alexandria City Public Schools’ website announced that more than 300 staff members requested leave for Wednesday, which “may be” attributed to observance of the strike. Though schools will be closed, many early childhood and afterschool programs will continue to meet. “This is not a decision that was made lightly,” the message reads.
Similarly, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools announced last week that the district would be canceling classes because of the high volume of teachers interested in participating “Day Without A Woman.”
“I asked our school principals and central office department heads to survey staff to find out how many absences would occur,” Jim Causby, superintendent of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City public school system, said in a statement. “The results came back, and the number was significant. In fact, it is my determination that we will not have enough staff to safely run our school district.”
See what I mean?
And at the New School, professors are expected to look the other way if their female students make the supreme sacrifice of spending the day in Central Park instead of turning in that term paper:
“We encourage faculty not to mark students absent if they have communicated their intentions ahead of time and made the necessary arrangements with you,” university provost Tim Marshall wrote in a statement.
The HuffPo is all-approving: "Schools are realizing they can't operate without women."
But Legal Insurrection reports that a lot of parents, many of them working mothers (who have to go to work because they, unlike the teachers, don't have the luxury of getting paid anyway), aren't very happy about seeing their kids' schools closed so the faculty can vent about President Trump. They're the ones stuck with trying to figure out alternate arrangements for their children during school hours–and also with wondering how far their kids may get behind in learning what with teachers taking off for this and that.
Now the organizers have gloated on Twitter that the march has closed schools! Gloating because they have interfered with a child’s education and burdened females who cannot afford childcare or lose a day of work. Stay classy!
Legal Insurrection quotes a tweeter:
If there's one thing that people love, it's when their kids' school schedule gets impacted for political reasons
Even the Los Angeles Times's reliably liberal Meghan Daum is skeptical about A Day Without a Woman:
Make no mistake, March 8 will mostly be a day without women who can afford to skip work, shuffle childcare and household duties to someone else, and shop at stores that are likely to open at 10 and close at 5….
Along for the ride will be the perfunctory cutesy-ironic Internet memes about gender-based microaggressions like mansplaining and manspreading. Any male who complains about having to pick up the slack left by striking/boycotting women can count on plenty of eye-rolling invocations of the popular refrain “I Drink Male Tears.”
Meanwhile, for the millions of women who have no choice but to show up and meet their responsibilities on March 8 (and every day), it will be business as usual.
Except for public-school teachers. Why do they never really have to show up and meet their responsibilities? And why do they get accolades from the press for refusing to their jobs?