The History Of Female Sex Strikes

April 27, 2017 in Daily Bulletin

Maureen Shaw wrote about the surprisingly(?) successful history of female sex strikes:

  • The original and most famous fable comes from the Greek play Lysistrata, where the Peloponnesian War was ended thanks to a sex strike.
  • But their success is more than just myth. In the 1600s Iroquois women won the right to veto future wars through a sex strike.
  • In 2003 Leymah Gbowee won a Nobel Prize for ending Liberia’s civil war, in part through the organization of a strike.
  • In Kenya women used the strategy to end political infighting and establish a stable government in 2009.
  • And in 2010 women in one Colombian city used the same tactic to bring down the murder rate by 26.5%.
  • Sex strikes have also brought peace in The Philippines.
  • To be successful sex strikes need to have specific demands in smaller, well-knit communities.
  • One hopes, however, that we’ll eventually live in a world without sexism, where women can exercise power through formal mechanisms.

Read more on Quartz.