21 May, 2019On International Women’s Day this year, IndustriALL affiliates demonstrated their determination to advance gender equality at work. They called for women’s voices to be heard in unions, and more women in leadership positions.
Unions are fighting to end violence and harassment at work and pushing for equal pay. Everyone has a responsibility to be part of this discussion and the solution: this is not an issue for women to resolve alone.
Gender equality is not a women’s issue, it is a trade union issue.
Affiliates from all corners of the world took action, along with their national centres, to support the call for an ILO Convention on gender-based violence in the world of work. This global action highlights the continuing and widespread violence against women in IndustriALL sectors and sends a strong message to the perpetrators and their employers that all forms of violence against women are unacceptable.
Women’s participation in IndustriALL’s sectoral work is still too low and has yet to improve significantly. IndustriALL’s women’s committee has endorsed a set of recommendations for new strategies to address the gender imbalance in industries with the lowest representation of women.
The recommendations include:
- Each network and sector to set its own rules for increasing women’s participation in meetings
- Sectors and networks to devise strategies to analyze the issues facing women in the workplace and in the union and develop campaigns to address them
- Using global framework agreements to demand multinational companies to employ more women in male-dominated areas and challenge companies on their performance on gender equality
