Women and the Global Labor Movement: In Search of ‘Decent Work, Decent Life’

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5063/women_and_the_global_labor_movement_in_search_of_decent_work_decent_life/

Tuesday October 20 11:40 am

By Michelle Chen

The recession has been hard on the working man, but often, the least visible and most resilient survivor of the economic crisis is a woman.

This week, delegates from 100 countries are gathering in Brussels at the first International Trade Union Council World Women’s Conference. The event marks a growing consciousness of women's issues not just in humanitarian terms—as they are often framed by aid organizations—but in the context of global labor struggles.

Under the theme of “Decent Work, Decent Life for Women,” the conference takes a broad view of women workers as they relate to challenges like social welfare policy, union activism, gender-based violence, healthcare and climate change.


Delegates in Brussels this week at the first-ever "World Women's" conference organized by the ITUC, the world's largest trade union federation. (Photo courtesy International Trade Union Council)


The ITUC Charter of the Rights of Working Women emphasizes the right to secure employment with “no more arbitrary division between female and male tasks.” But the conference discussion guide notes that the synergy of economic and gender inequality has turned women into both the engines of global commerce and targets of exploitation:

Production has come to be increasingly organised through ‘global supply chains’ through which multinational firms have been able to source their goods from all over the world using diffused networks of suppliers often based on developing countries.

This has allowed them to take advantage of abundant supplies of less well paid and less organised labour, largely female, in these countries... With rapidly changing technologies in information, communication and transportation, there has been a massive growth in tourism and leisure services, as well as the outsourcing of more ‘mobile’ services such as data processing and call centres. Agricultural production also has seen changes.

These are all areas were women work in large numbers.

FULL story at link.