27 October, 2010The Indian trade union movement clearly faces a lack of women in leadership positions. Unlike in industry, women are strongly underrepresented in trade unions. This and other problems were discussed at the women workshop held in Delhi, on October 21 and 22.
INDIA: The problem of enhancement of women's participation in the Indian national trade union movement was the main subject of a workshop organized on October 21 and 22 by the IMF South Asia regional office in Delhi.
The participants, 21 women from different corners of India, gathered and discussed challenges faced by trade unions and women workers in India, identified their daily needs and problems as well as spoke about potential trade union strategies to strengthen women's position and profile within national unions.
Over the recent years women enjoy increasing employment in different industrial sectors of India. This increase is not however reflected in female union membership, let alone union leadership. The reasons of insufficient representation of women and ways to solve the problem were thoroughly analysed by the workshop participants in course of the workshop.
The participants also got an understanding of how IMF communications work is organized. They also learnt about recent solidarity campaigns organized by the IMF, as well as what the global, regional and national communication channels are used by the IMF to promote and achieve success in the global solidarity campaigns.
Problems of women workers' organizing, their insufficient participation in the work of trade unions, qualities necessary for an effective trade union leader were some of the important issues discussed in plenary and group sessions, enabling the participants of the workshop to understand the reasons of the existing problems and ways to overcome them.
One of the important results of an intensive work during two days of the workshop was the creation of a pool of committed trade union female activists ready to start the work which will modernise the present gender situation in trade union movement of India and will raise the profile of women leaders within it.