Key strategic priorities

• Participation of women in the trade union
• Women leadership development
• Union Education and Training
• Gender and Collective bargaining
• Violence Against Women
• Sexual Harassment
• Building gender structures and defining the role of structures, co-ordinators, office bearers deployed
• Building the federation
• Building the alliance
• International work - Exchange programmes with gender/women structures.
• Gays and Lesbians
• Building a strong women's movement
• Data collection
• Monitoring and assessment

Background

We acknowledge that the present day problems of women workers are not personal, individual problems, but social problems which women suffer as members of the society, as workers and as women - we have to tackle them as part of the problems of the whole society. Decades of legalised discrimination on the basis of sex and colour have resulted in black women being the most marginalised section of our population. Women are still located in more vulnerable employment sectors, which are poorly paid, poorly regulated and hold little possibility of promotion and training. Women, in particular African women, have the highest rate of unemployment and experience the most extreme levels of poverty. Past economic, social and political circumstances in our country contributed to a breakdown in communities. Accumulation and exploitation under apartheid capitalism relied heavily on the unpaid labour of women. Unpaid reproductive labour is a central part of women's oppression. In addition, traditional notions of women`s social role have restricted women, particularly in their leadership role in politics and society. For the trade union movement to effectively take up the struggles of women workers, we have to challenge the gender division of labour in the household and in the workplace, and fight for the socialisation of reproductive labour and for the equal participation of men and women in household labour. The elimination of racial and gender inequalities forms part of a socialist agenda. Our belief is that to achieve socialism, it requires that we challenge patriarchy and racism.

Aims and Objectives

¨ To eradicate gender inequality
¨ To ensure that gender equality issues are integrated into all the Unions policies, structures and programmes.
¨ To redress past gender discrimination