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Topic: Women and equality: Still a long way to go
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Mick
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2753
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posted 07 January 2004 06:25 PM
quote: Women and equality: Still a long way to goFlashback to 1971, when delegates to CUPE’s national convention adopted a ground-breaking report on the status of women in CUPE. The report challenged the union to make changes in a number of areas to advance equal rights for women members both in the union and in the workplace. Now, more than 30 years later, CUPE’s long history of fighting inequality and injustice for women in the workplace is beginning to pay off. Recent victories include a $414 million proxy pay equity payout in 2003 by the then- Conservative Ontario government to 100,000 women across the province, pay equity advances for health care workers in Saskatchewan and victories won through strikes large and small across the country. While CUPE campaigns – like ‘Up with Women’s Wages’, focused on increasing the wages of female workers – are succeeding at the bargaining table, women’s political participation in the union has stalled. The retirement of National President Judy Darcy, and that of National Secretary-Treasurer Geraldine McGuire two years earlier, has left a female leadership void, say many women’s rights activists in the union. “To go from a period where women have played a significant leadership role in CUPE to an executive board that is predominantly male leaves me asking, ‘Where are the women?’ This has to change,” says Denise Hammond, a worker at the Ryerson Students’ Administrative Council in Toronto and a member of CUPE 1281. She points out that there are 300,000 women in CUPE and “our issues must be better represented in our union through the visible presence of female leaders. It’s shocking that this kind of gender gap is happening.” Read More...
From: Parkdale! | Registered: Jun 2002
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skadie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2072
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posted 12 January 2004 04:44 PM
I am a local Chairperson with the United Transportation Union. I noticed when I first took the position about two years ago that there was no allowances for having a woman in that position. For example, all information was addressed to "Brother" or "Mr. Chairman." The Union handbooks were filled with little cartoons of men eyeing up the Presidents secretary who wore heels and a short skirt, or imagining pin-up girls while working. My boss complained about having to alter his papers to include me. Two years later I've discovered that the Union doesn't take into account the challenges of women working for the Employers that they oversee. Women have an entirely different set of working challenges which aren't being addressed in Arbitration or Agreements. I definitely think that if the Chief Officers of the Union had some female influence then women would have a much easier time securing and keeping jobs in the transportation industry.
From: near the ocean | Registered: Jan 2002
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Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560
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posted 12 January 2004 08:08 PM
Women already contribute more "volunteer" labour than people realize in the health care field anyhow. Who does it fall to, to take care of elderly and sick relatives? Often female members of the family and often unpaid - in fact, many women have to forgo outside work in order to take care of ailing relatives.My grandfather has Parkinson's. For my grandmother and my aunt, his care was a full-time job (and now for my aunt, it's a part-time job on top of the other stuff she does in her life). For my mother, who works outside the home full-time, it was a second part-time job at least one day a week, and before he went to the nursing home (which took ages, btw, even though my grandmother was too old and frail to take care of him physically), the women in our family took turns sleeping at their place once a week to relieve my grandmother, who wasn't getting any sleep due to my grandfather wandering in the night. So yeah, that's for sure - there's a hell of a lot of unpaid work being done by women. Sure, men do unpaid work as well, but I don't think it's anywhere near to the extent that women do, or at least that women are EXPECTED to do.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001
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