WUNRN
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/women-forge-a-space-for-themselves-in-latin-american-labour-movement/
LATIN AMERICA - UNION WOMEN
FORGE THEIR SPACE IN LABOUR MOVEMENT
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Misogyny is the word on the lips of women trade unionists in
“The
problems faced by women workers are greatly aggravated by misogynistic
attitudes that further block progress towards their rights and hinder the
participation in decision-making posts of those who are working to modify the
culture in the labour movement,” said Mexican trade unionist Martha Heredia.
“The participation of Latin
American women workers in trade union leadership posts is not in line with the
percentage of women who are in the labour force,” said Heredia, chair of the
Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) Women’s Committee.
Heredia and the other women
labour leaders interviewed by IPS pointed out that only one Latin American
woman has reached the presidency of a trade union federation: Bárbara Figueroa,
who since 2012 has led Chile’s Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, the country’s
biggest union, with over half a million members.
Alexandra Arguedas, who heads
TUCA’s gender programme, explained that to boost female participation in the
labour movement, the regional confederation demanded at its second ordinary
congress in 2012 that its member unions set a 40 percent quota for women in
leadership structures.
TUCA is the International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC) regional organisation for the
Arguedas said from the TUCA
offices in
As part of that self-reform
process, she said, “participative gender audits are being implemented as a key
instrument to make the gender perspective a cross-cutting question throughout
the entire trade union movement.”
Training of women is also being
given a push, and delegations made up of equal numbers of men and women have
started to be required for all activities.
The Economic Commission for
But the gap shrunk
significantly between 1990 and 2006, with an 11 percentage point rise in female
participation and a one percentage point drop in male participation.
Didice Godinho from
Godinho, a social researcher
who is now secretary of women’s issues in
Besides the patriarchal culture
in
She welcomed the fact that one
of TUCA’s founding principles is that the labour movement must be inclusive,
and that it promotes gender equity in its leadership bodies and all of its
activities. But she said that putting equality principles into practice “is a
pending challenge.”
That is abundantly clear to
Marcela Máspero, the most prominent female trade unionist in Venezuela, who
says “it is very complicated to be a woman and a trade unionist in an
environment where misogyny is embedded, and where there are doubts that we have
the same commitment, willingness and capacity, even if there are no longer
doubts that we have the same skills.”
Máspero, the national
coordinator of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (ÚNETE) and a presidential
council member of the World Federation of Trade Unions, said gender policies
like those fomented by the International Labour Organisation helped women gain
space in trade unions.
But the leader of ÚNETE – which
has 1.5 million members from the public and private sectors – said she doubted
that quotas were the way to achieve greater participation by women in union
leadership posts.
“We forge a place for ourselves
in the battle, elbow to elbow with men, against the common adversary: the
bosses, capital, bureaucracy, and in that battle we don’t need concessions,
because women have the same values and capacities as men when it comes to
participating and leading,” she said.
She noted that women trade
unionists must somehow juggle their commitments as “mothers, wives in many
cases, breadwinners, workers and labour or political activists.”
She added that quotas “are
merely cosmetic measures if women are not given practical help in handling
their multiple roles.”
Máspero said that while the
labour movement in
“I don’t see women heading the
labour movement in
Heredia, who is also one of the
leaders of the Mexican Telephone Workers Union and is involved in gender policy
questions in her country and in ITUC, said women leaders have the challenge of
“strengthening the role of female workers not only in the labour movement but
also in collective bargaining.
“We must be in the vanguard in
vindicating women’s rights, especially the right to decent work, which includes
a living wage, social security coverage, bilateral negotiations and a gender
perspective as a cross-cutting issue,” she said.