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10 April, 2007April 2007
FETIESC Women march at Itapema on 25 March for equality and dignity
1. Australia – Professional Women Are Remaining Childless
2. Brazil – Sao Paulo Electricity Workers Commemorate Women’s Day
3. Peru – Adoption of Equal Opportunities Law
4. Russia – ILO/FNPR Seminar Held on Gender Audits in Russian Unions
5. Senegal – Parliament Passes Bill on Gender Balance in the Legislature
6. Spain – Guidelines are Proposed for Company Equality Plans
7. Venezuela – New Law Defends Women’s Rights
8. Resources
1. Australia – Professional Women Are Remaining Childless
A recent study by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists, and Managers of Australia found that many working women are not having children because it would be detrimental to their careers.
A full 34% of women with children had not taken any maternity leave, and 26% more would not be paid for time they might take off. And more than half claimed that by taking time off, it would be detrimental to their careers.
In addition, women are leaving their careers faster than men. Women cite the difficulty of balancing work and life, workplace culture and lack of senior job roles for them as being the most common obstacles they face in their career paths.
In spite of the fact that there is a skills shortage in many areas, women are not able to fill the gap because of work-life difficulties. Moreover, women are still earning about 40% less than men for the same work. The OECD ranks Australia 45th out of 115 countries in terms of wage equality.
This research shows that many women are still being forced to choose between children and a career.
2. Brazil – Sao Paulo Electricity Workers Commemorate Women’s Day
On 7 March, the Sao Paulo Electricity Workers celebrated International Women’s Day with the slogan, “Women and Agenda 21, a Commitment to a Better World.” Agenda 21 was the commitment signed by 170 countries in the UN framework to promote sustainable development.
The event stressed the importance of guaranteeing youth representation, both women and men, in labour and environmental fora, and youth representatives from the union in international bodies were present.
Questions that concerned the conservation of the Amazon were also discussed at the meeting. It was said that women have a historic role to play in conservation and preservation of forests, biological diversity, and maintaining ecosystems.
At the meeting, the Sao Paulo Electricity Workers endorsed the Manifest for the Protection of the Amazon, an initiative also promoted by many Brazilian artists.
3. Peru – Adoption of Equal Opportunities Law
On 8 March, the Congress of Peru adopted the law on equal opportunities between women and men, after a number of debates in various areas. The law establishes public policies to guarantee the right to gender equality.
It also guarantees the respect of the pluricultural and multilingual character of the Peruvian nation. The Executive is also called upon to carry out programmes to eliminate poverty and extreme marginalization.
On 8 March, women in the three trade union national labour centres participated in a rally in Lima to demand effective policies to guarantee the real implementation of their rights. Article 7 of the law contains work-related guarantees such as the following:
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Guarantee of the right to productive work exercised in freedom, equity, security and human dignity; measures to avoid all kinds of work-related discrimination between women and men in access to employment, training, promotion, working conditions and the same pay for work of equal value. These guarantees also include protection against sexual harassment and the promotion of compatibility between family and work-related responsibilities.
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Guarantee of the protection of men and women workers in the informal economy, in urban and rural areas, in order to promote the formalization of the economy, as well as the protection of those who are in an unprotected and excluded situation.
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Guarantee of non-discriminatory treatment for men and women domestic workers.
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Recognition of reproductive work done at home and in the community to generate the conditions to improve the situation of those doing the work and to promote shared family responsibilities.
Now the trade union centres are starting their work to ensure that the law is applied.
4. Russia – ILO/FNPR Seminar Held on Gender Audits in Russian Unions
ICEM women’s chair Genia Esenina, front row, at left
From 26-28 March FNPR, the Russian trade union central organisation, held a workshop together with the ILO on gender audits in Russian trade unions. A total of 23 participants and members of the gender equality commission were trained in the theory and methodology of gender audits in this first seminar, which served as the pilot project covering gender audits.
5. Senegal – Parliament Passes Bill on Gender Balance in the Legislature
On 27 March, the Senegalese Parliament adopted a bill that introduced gender parity on election lists that political parties present for elections on the basis of proportional representation.
The passing of the bill will mean that more women will be elected to parliament in Senegal in the future.
Religious leaders, however, were concerned that this bill was out of step with a Muslim country.
The Minister of the Interior defended the legislation with the argument that women, as the majority in the country, should be adequately represented in Parliament. At present, 23 women old seats in Parliament out of a total of 120, and new women members are certain to be added at the next election because of this legislation.
6. Spain – Guidelines are Proposed for Company Equality Plans
Ramon Parra from FITEQA CCOO has drafted the following guidelines for company equality plans in the wake of new legislation in Spain that requires companies to draw up such plans:
1. Create a commission for real equality between women and men.
2. The commission should be made up of the company and the signatory trade unions.
3. This commission will do a diagnosis of the situation on the basis of all data that a company provides, which will always be broken down by sex:
• Work site, fixed employees, casuals, type of contract;
• Departments;
• Work groups, seniority;
• Wages and salaries;
• Schedules, shifts (night), working time;
• Reductions in working time, flexibility;
• Leave time;
• Training, continuous, how much training per year;
• Content of risk assessment;
• Is the mutual society elected in consent with trade union consent?;
• Are there agreements with the mutual society for more benefits?;
• Are examinations extended with specific proof?;
• Are there suitable jobs for pregnant women?
and also
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Composition of the Works Council;
- Composition of the Health and Safety Committee;
Composition of the Environmental Protection Committee; - Composition of the Equality Committee.
- What sector does the company belong to?
- What agreement is applied?
- How many sites does it have?
- If it is a multinational, in what countries is it present?
- Does it have a committee to coordinate the different sites and how is it made up?
- Do trade unions participate?
- Do they meet regularly?
- Is there some plan or equality project?
A company must provide this data to the commission, and once it has studied it, the commission will define a work plan for each site to follow. Then, as a result, the objectives must be fixed to eliminate inequalities.
For that purpose, deadlines, measures, and resources must be identified, both human and financial resources.
On the basis of this diagnosis, the commission can decide what steps it needs to take and what advice it requires in order to establish measures, such as establishing a code of good practice, which, among other criteria, will explain the kinds of conduct and abuse that would be punishable, or even lead to dismissal in case of sexual harassment or sex discrimination.
These are the two types of discrimination that violate the integrity of the person. The commission will ensure that these situations do not happen, and if they do, that they are punishable.
7. Venezuela – New Law Defends Women’s Rights
A recent law passed in Venezuela calls for jail terms from 6 to 18 months for those who offend, humiliate, or threaten women. The law, called the Law on Women’s Right to a Life Free of Violence, punishes all those who attack women’s emotional and psychological stability.
The law also condemns to prison terms for 20 months those who harass, threaten, insult women, and establishes more severe punishments for lascivious acts, such as forced prostitution, sex slavery, and work-related violence.
Thus, the protection of the dignity, physical, psychological, sexual integrity, property, and legal rights of women is established in public and private.
8. Resources
A toolkit has been published by EMCEF and EPSU on equal opportunities in the electricity sector in Europe, and is available at
http://www.eurelectric.org/equalitydiversity
The ILO has compiled links to ILO publications and sources for statistics and standards. It and can be found at
http://www.ilo.org/public/spanish/support/lib/
resource/subject/gender.htm (in Spanish)
The ILO has published trends in women’s employment in 2007, and can be found at
http://www.ilo.org/public/french/employment/
strat/download/getw07.pdf (in French)
The WHO has published a document on the relationship between gender and health and safety problems, which can be found at
http://www.who.int/occupational_health/
publications/genderwork/en/index.html
The Social Watch Gender Equity Index has been published, and can be found at
http://www.socialwatch.org/en/avancesyRetrocesos/
IEG/index.htm
The European Union has published a report on Equality and non-discrimination in the framework of the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All.
http://web20.s112.typo3server.com/fileadmin/pdfs/
Reports/Annual_Reports_2006/annualrep06_en.pdf
On 13 March, the European Parliament adopted a roadmap on equality between women and men, which can be found at
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?Type=TA&Reference=P6-TA-2007-0063&language=EN
IRIN has launched a new book on sexual violence against women and girls in conflict.
http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/sow/IRIN-TheShameofWar-fullreport-Mar07.pdf
CLADEM has published a report on the killings of women in Central American and Mexico.
http://www.cladem.org/espanol/regionales/
Violenciadegenero/Docs/Estudio%20Feminicidio%20en%20centroamerica%20y%20méxico.asp (in Spanish)
CLADEM has another study on sexual violence and armed conflict in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.
http://www.cladem.org/espanol/regionales/
Violenciadegenero/Docs/CLADEM%20Estudio%20Conflicto%20Armado.asp
The Inter-Parliamentary Union has done a survey on women in parliament worldwide.
http://www.ipu.org/pdf/publications/wmn06-e.pdf
The Belgian Union FGTB organised a meeting on work-life balance on 8-9 March, the results of which can be found at
http://www.fgtb.be/code/fr/c18_0000.htm (in French and Dutch)