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Women
International Women’s Day
HAVE YOU GOT THE WOW FACTOR?
WOW is Women Organising Women
By Sue Hammond
Women's Officer SPSF Federal Office
International Women's Day is on the 8th March and the CPSU-SPSF would like members to promote the WOW factor.
International Women's Day is a Celebration of the Achievements of Women as Makers of History.
It honours the struggle of women over the centuries to participate in society on an equal footing with men.
Much to Celebrate, Much Still to Do
Women workers have much to celebrate and women have made many achievements in improving their wages, conditions and entitlements. However these entitlements and rights are not distributed equally amongst our sisters and we still have a long way to go to achieve gender equality in the workforce. Internationally and nationally our sisters still suffer from varying standards of discrimination, poverty, abuses of rights, exploitation and wage inequality.
Global Inequality
Did you know that:
- Women own less than 1 per cent of the world's property.
- Women are seventy per cent of the world's people who live in poverty.
- Women hold only 12 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide.
- Two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults are women and girls account for two thirds of children without access to education.
Closer to Home, Women Still Under Paid & Over Worked
In Australia, while women's participation in the workforce has increased, most of the growth in employment has been in the casual and part-time workforce.
- Women are clustered into low and medium income groups.
- Eighty-five per cent of women earn under $50,000.00.
- Approximately three quarters of women earn under the average weekly earnings.
- About seventy per cent of public sector women earn under $40,000.00.
- Only nine per cent of boardroom positions in Australian companies are held by women.
- Women are more likely to be reliant on the old age pension.
- Lone parent families in Australia were predominately women.
- The median superannuation balance for women in 2000 was half that of men.
The Good News....
The good news is that women in organised sectors and in trade unions do better than women who are not.
Therefore women must remain unionized, active and organised. WOMEN MUST ORGANISE WOMEN!
& The Bad News
Federal Government's Radical Agenda
This has never more important for Australian women workers than with the forthcoming assault on workers by the Howard Government and their proposals to radically dismantle the industrial relations system. Their proposals are a threat to women and to a fair industrial system. The Minister for Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews sees fairness as misconceived and ònly leads to regulatory excess and inefficiency'.
The current agenda of the Howard Government is to alter the way that that minimum wages are fixed, to remove many conditions and entitlements from awards and agreements, to force workers onto individual contracts, to remove worker's rights to take legitimate industrial action. Conditions like paid maternity leave, paid family leave, long service leave, unfair dismissal protection and superannuation arrangements all come under threat.
Time To Talk
This International Women's Day members are asked to take the time to talk with other women about work and about the benefits of being in an active union. Members are asked to identify women in the workplace who want to join, who would make good activists and who could be encouraged to become delegates.
WOMEN ORGANISE WOMEN
WOW! NOW!
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