Africa Kenya In April 2009 a group of
Kenyan women organised a week-long sex strike aimed at
politicians, encouraging the wives of
the president and
prime minister to join in too, and offering to pay
prostitutes for lost earnings if they joined in.
Liberia , awarded with 2011
Nobel Peace Prize In 2003
Leymah Gbowee and the
Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace organized
non-violent protests that included suggesting a sex strike, though this was not actually carried out. Their actions led to peace in
Liberia after a 14‑year
civil war and the election of
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, country's first female head of state. Leymah Gbowee was awarded the 2011
Nobel Peace Prize "for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for
women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
South Sudan In October 2014,
Pricilla Nanyang, a politician in South Sudan, coordinated a meeting of women peace activists in
Juba "to advance the cause of peace, healing and reconciliation." Attendees issued a statement which called on women of South Sudan "to deny their husbands conjugal rights until they ensure that peace returns."
Togo In 2012, inspired by the 2003 Liberian sex strike, the
Togolese opposition coalition "
Let's Save Togo" asked women to abstain from sex for a week as a
protest against President
Faure Gnassingbé, whose family has been in power for more than 45 years. The strike aimed to "motivate men who are not involved in the political movement to pursue its goals". Opposition leader
Isabelle Ameganvi views it as a possible "weapon of the battle" to achieve political change.
Elsewhere Colombia In October 1997, the chief of the
Military of Colombia, General Manuel Bonnet publicly called for a sex strike among the wives and girlfriends of the Colombian left-wing guerrillas,
drug traffickers, and paramilitaries as part of a strategy—along with diplomacy—to achieve a ceasefire. Also the
mayor of Bogotá,
Antanas Mockus, declared the
capital a women-only zone for one night, suggesting men to stay at home to reflect on violence. The guerrillas ridiculed the initiatives, pointing at the fact that there were more than 2,000 women in their army. In the end the ceasefire was achieved, but lasted only a short time. In September 2006 dozens of wives and girlfriends of gang members from
Pereira,
Colombia, started a sex strike called
La huelga de las piernas cruzadas ("the strike of crossed legs") to curb
gang violence, in response to 480 deaths due to gang violence in the
coffee region. According to spokeswoman Jennifer Bayer, the specific target of the strike was to force gang members to turn in their weapons in compliance with the law. According to them, many gang members were involved in violent crime for status and sexual attractiveness, and the strike sent the message that refusing to turn in the guns was not sexy. In 2010 the city's murder rate saw the steepest decline in Colombia, down by 26.5%. In June 2011, women organized in the so-called Crossed Legs Movement in the secluded town of
Barbacoas in southwestern Colombia, started a sex strike to pressure the government to repair the road connecting Barbacoas and its neighboring towns and cities. They declared that if the men of the town were not going to demand action, they would refuse to have sex with them. The men of Barbacoas showed no support at the beginning of the campaign, but they soon joined in the protest campaign. After 112 days strike in October 2011, the Colombian government promised action on road repairs. Construction ensued and the strike ended.
Naples, Italy In the build-up to
New Year's Eve in 2008, hundreds of Neapolitan women pledged to make their husbands and lovers "sleep on the sofa" unless they took action to prevent
fireworks from causing serious injuries.
The Philippines During the summer of 2011, women in rural
Mindanao imposed a several-week-long sex strike in an attempt to end fighting between their two villages.
United States of America In 2019, Georgia governor, Brian Kemp (R), signed
House Bill (HB) 481 into law. It was immediately blocked by a lawsuit. HB 481 criminalizes most abortions after six weeks and adds a “fetal personhood” language. This language changes the definition of a “natural person” to include an unborn child at any stage of development in the womb. This law has been nicknamed a “heartbeat bill” because HB 481 states that no abortion will be performed if the physician determines that they detect a human heartbeat. In response to this bill's passage, actress and #
MeToo activist,
Alyssa Milano and Waleisah Wilson wrote an opinion editorial for CNN and went to Twitter to call for a sex strike until the policy was repealed. In the
tweet, Milano calls on women to join her sex strike until women “have legal control over [their] own bodies” because women cannot risk a pregnancy under this new bill. In her CNN opinion piece, Milano states that there are similar bills to the one in Georgia and that the single purpose of them is to make it up to the Supreme Court, forcing them reconsider
Roe v. Wade (1973). In this opinion piece, Milano discusses the history of Lysistratic protest, calls on people who can become pregnant to conduct a sex strike, and pay attention to current events. Milano encourages a sex strike in addition to other efforts.
Roe v. Wade was indeed reconsidered and overturned in 2022. == In entertainment ==