Politics & Government

Trump acknowledges International Women’s Day — but not the Day Without A Woman strike

By ELIZABETH KOH

ekoh@mcclatchy.com

March 08, 2017 06:38 AM

Demonstrators marched across 42nd Street during a women's march, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, in New York.
Demonstrators marched across 42nd Street during a women's march, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, in New York. Mary Altaffer AP
Demonstrators marched across 42nd Street during a women's march, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, in New York. Mary Altaffer AP

President Donald Trump marked International Women’s Day Wednesday with a pair of tweets professing his “tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve,” though he did not mention the worldwide Day Without A Woman strike happening on the same day.

The Day Without A Woman strike, partially organized by the same activists who engineered the Women’s March on Washington and other cities after Trump’s inauguration, is meant to protest economic bias against women, as well as transgender and gender-nonconforming people, according to NBC News.

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School districts in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina reported they would be closed for the day after thousands of staff members asked for the day off, and a municipal court in Rhode Island said it would also reschedule its 75 cases slated for that day because of a lack of staff.

The strike’s webpage encourages women to either take the day off work, avoid purchasing or wear red in support.

“These actions are aimed at making visible the needs and aspirations of those whom lean-in feminism ignored: women in the formal labor market, women working in the sphere of social reproduction and care, and unemployed and precarious working women,” a group of activists wrote in a Guardian editorial.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who has pushed for a maternal child care policy and helped organize a White House meeting for female business leaders last month, also acknowledged International Women’s Day with a more overt nod toward “the powerful impact we have on our societies and economies”:

Unexpectedly large crowds of women and human rights activists took to the streets of Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte and even smaller towns like Boise. Protesters around the country marched for women's and civil rights and were intended to se

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