Women in Mexico went on strike Monday. 

They are protesting worsening levels of gender violence and inequality, as many as 36 million women declined to work, either in their careers or in their homes.

"It has been normalized for centuries. Mexican culture has been like that for centuries," said Valeria Lara who works for an international corporation. "And Mexican women find it really hard to realize when they are being victims of machismo, because no one ever taught us that’s not the way women should be treated."

The strike followed the largest feminist march in Mexican history on International Women's Day.

Millions of women took to the streets in every state Sunday, demanding change.

And on Monday, the streets and roads of the capital were bare.

One Mexican Employers' Association estimates the strike may cost the country's economy $1.7 billion.

Many public and private businesses supported the strike.

But not everyone in Mexico was on board with the action.

Criminologist Klaudia Hernandez is a criminologist has studied gender violence in Mexico and says that preventing women from protesting is a form of gender violence itself.

"Many businesses will be facing enormous economic losses today, but that's what this strike is about, to prove to them the value that women bring. Many people still have not understood the importance of symbolic acts in history," she said. "Collective acts in which we all act as one in whatever way we can."