Trade Unions Unite to Halt Unfair Treatment towards Women

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has decided to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls by planning several programs across the globe. The ITUC is the largest trade union organization which represents 176mn workers in 151 countries and territories, and has 301 national affiliates.

According to its recent press release, ITUC affiliate trade unions in Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Mauritania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and many other countries are staging various activities in a bid to stop violence against women today. Some of them include campaigns backed by videos, posters, pamphlets and so on.

The two key objectives of the mobilisation are to raise awareness among the organizations themselves and draw the authorities’ attention to this issue, especially prevalent among under-developed countries. In June, at the 2nd ITUC Congress in Vancouver, decided to connect the organisation along with its affiliates with the UN Women - UNIFEM campaign on this issue.

The ITUC General Secretary General Sharan Burrow expressed “Combating the violence that denies women their fundamental human rights, and the structural gender imbalances reinforcing it, is a priority for the trade union movement.” The release informed that it has plans of engaging employers in the social dialogue process which eventually mitigate the issues women workers facing today.

The ITUC states in the world of work, sexual harassment is a scourge affecting women in huge numbers, especially young new recruits. It also points out women working in the informal economy, in rights-free zones, are the most vulnerable to extreme forms of violence, together with women in precarious employment, such as domestic workers, an undervalued, widely exploited group, generally unprotected by labour laws.

Similarly, women migrant workers are another group highly exposed to violence, above all those without a good grasp of the language in the host country and no knowledge of its laws and institutions.

By Jose Roy