London-based feminist punk rockers YAKKIE have shared ‘Lean Out’ as a Pay What You Want track on Bandcamp, with all money raised being donated to striking teaching assistants at Richard Cobden school in North London.

Confirming the track is a tribute to Dawn Foster and the global women’s strike, vocalist Janey Starling (also the founding frontwoman of Dream Nails) says it’s ‘A call for all women to go on strike to demand better conditions at work and in their lives. It’s women’s care and nurture that keeps the wheels of society turning, but that’s not recognised or paid. Teaching assistants play a vital role in supporting children at school – they have a right to job security and good pay. 

This is a song about flipping tables instead of sitting at them. We wrote this song when we realised that the ‘theme’ for International Women’s Day is determined every year by a private consultancy. The origins of International Women’s Day are in women’s struggle for labour rights after a factory fire in 1911 in New York killed over a hundred women and girls, but capitalism and the cult of the individual have tried to steal our feminist history and our power from us. It’s time to wrest it back by going on strike.’

Smashing, in-your-face riffs run through the song as Janey offers up thoughts on who really offers support in the current climate: ‘Who cares for women? Other women’. There’s a crunching breakdown, powerhouse drumming from Maeve Westall and impassioned, important thoughts about how women are treated – both in the workplace and the wider sphere: ‘They call it care, we call it unpaid work’.

SEE YAKKIE LIVE

21 March – The Victoria, London 

16 May – The Great Escape, Brighton

04 June – Bulletproof Festival, London