The “Day Without a Woman” strike is going to be mostly a day without privileged women

For one thing, momentum for the strike has been slow to build. Momentum is a critical way to garner and sustain media attention. But it also provides cover for women worried about calling out from their jobs. As any good union organizer knows, there is strength in numbers. Without this sort of collective power, a large number of working-class women may abstain from the strike because the risks of sticking out will seem to outweigh the benefits.

Women account for nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage workers in the US, and women of color account for more than half of those earning minimum wage or less. According to a recent Oxfam America study, ingrained sexism in the working world has pushed millions of women into jobs that pay low wages, provide little, if any, benefits, and often impose irregular hours. The number of these sorts of jobs, according to Oxfam, is only going to increase over the next decade. In other words, tens of millions of women have neither the benefits nor the flexibility to take the day off in protest.

The organizers acknowledge that many women will be unable to refuse to work on the appointed date. As the website notes: “Many women in our most vulnerable communities will not have the ability to join the strike, due to economic insecurity. We strike for them.” But this feels very much like a protest of the privileged—and frankly, unrealistic.