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Mainstreaming the gender agenda
28 September 2005
Women from transport unions across the world seized the opportunity to air their concerns at a women’s conference at ITF headquarters in London, UK, on 22-23 September.
Women workers from unions in more than 50 countries - from Argentina, Benin, Georgia and Ghana to Honduras, India, Jordan and Mongolia - met at the ITF Women transport workers’ conference. There they were given a chance to have their views fed into next year’s ITF Congress, which will be held in Durban, South Africa. They were also set up with practical tools through an ITF resource pack.
Among the participants was Natalia Prosdocimi of the Centro de Capitanes de Ultramar y Oficiales de la Marina Mercante in Argentina, the first woman ship’s captain in the country. She described how her union had successfully fought for the inclusion of maternity and lactating rights provisions in collective bargaining agreements within the fishing sector; the union was now pressing for the same provisions across the entire maritime industry.
Providing an account of women in the Filipino aviation industry working in reservations, Linda Marcelo of the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association commented: “Our workplace is far from ideal. We are in a congested room, lined up like rows of plants.” She highlighted the importance of a study on the hazards of office work.
Meanwhile the first woman train driver in Morocco, Saidah Abbad of the Union des Syndicats UMT des Transports, who, following in her father’s footsteps, had always dreamt of a career on the railways, summed up her feelings about the conference: “I want to see how this conference can help my work to improve the position of women in society. It’s important to see the problems experienced in other countries and it’s good to coordinate activities.”
Conference concluded that the ITF Women’s Committee needed to ensure its structure reflected the diversity of women transport workers so that young women, call centre and logistics workers, and women from all regions were involved. Other resolutions included a call to support women’s leadership in trade unions and gather best practice data on dealing with gender issues.
Copies of the
Making unions stronger resource pack are available at
www.itfglobal.org/women/stronger.cfm.
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