By Karen Smith, CNN, September 19, 2011
A group of women in a violence-plagued area of the Philippines came up with their own weapon to end the fighting—a sex strike.
The women withheld sex from their husbands until they promised to quit fighting. Their stand helped end clashes in July between villages in rural Mindanao Island, a recently released U.N. Refugee Agency report says.
A separatist rebellion has been underway on the Philippine island of Mindanao since the 1970s. Families of Dado village had been displaced because of it since 2008 and are working to rebuild their community with the help of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other aid organizations.
Women of the village came up with the idea of a sex strike as a way to help rebuild their village and to bring peace, during a UNHCR sponsored sewing cooperative. Many of the women were fed up with not being able to deliver their products due to the violence that closed down a main road between two villages.
UNHCR Spokesperson for Asia, Kitty McKinsey said she witnessed the women quietly implement the solution to withhold sex from their husbands until the fighting stopped—and it worked.
Within weeks of the strike starting, the UNHCR reports that the main village road re-opened and the fighting stopped. The women of the sewing cooperative along with other villagers were able to deliver their goods and start to rebuild the economy.
The idea of withholding sex for a cause is not a new one—the ancient Greek play Lysistrata tells the story of women who organized a sex strike to end a war between Athens and Sparta.
More recently, a strike was launched in 2006 in the Columbian city of Pereira, known for its drug trafficking and violent crimes. The strike was implemented by wives and girlfriends of gang members to get them to change their lifestyle and hand over their guns.
A similar campaign was carried out by women in Kenya in 2009 to protest the growing divide in Kenya’s coalition government.
