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The Sub-Saharan Africa women’s committee

15 April, 2014IndustriALL’s Sub-Saharan Africa Women’s Committee met on 3 April 2014 in Mauritius, one day before the regional executive’s meeting. The meeting was chaired by Beauty Zibula and attended by some 20 women from Mauritius, Cameroon, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

One of the most important focuses of the meeting was to check on the progress made in the different countries in setting up women’s structures. Setting up women’s structures is one way to make unions take women’s concerns seriously. IndustriALL ‘s policy is for national councils to be formed in countries where there are more affiliates. These country councils are platforms that women can use – women must claim them and raise issues and where possible form national committees. This will help the women to communicate among each other.

So far a committee was formed in Zimbabwe. In Zambia a women’s structure was set up, and a person has been made responsible. Steps have been taken in Nigeria and Cameroon. The situation is difficult in DRC. At the end of May the structure will be formed in Lesotho. The structure was created in Ethiopia. (follow the link for details http://www.IndustriALL-union.org/ethiopian-unions-form-womens-committee). Not in all the countries unions have succeeded to consolidate under IndustriALL – this is not the case fort Mauritius for example. Women’s structures are felt to play a positive role in this consolidation. In countries where there is no executive committee member, the office must facilitate the communication and formation of the women’s structure. Once the structure has a chair, that person must communicate with the office.

It was felt unanimously that communication needs to be approved. The delegates promised to fill in the questionnaire on women membership and return it in order to enable the basic data to be collected.

The need for women’s projects was flagged up. The project with the most women’s involvement is the union-building project in nine countries. What the project does is train women shop stewards as well as men. However it does not create women’s structures. This is one way that women can be trained. Some of the textile projects have women’s empowerment included in them. These projects need to be monitored more closely.

In addition HIV and AIDS must be part of the program for women. The HIV infection rate is going up again, most probably because people are becoming complacent. It was also felt that research needs to be done on infection rates among young workers. This is the last year of the IndustriALL HIV and AIDS project because the traditional solidarity support organizations are no longer willing to support HIV and AIDS work. It was decided to campaign to bring back the funding. It was agreed that brands and employers can be approached to fund HIV and AIDS work.

The committee decided to nominate Angeline Chitambo, Zimbabwe, and Prince William Ankrah, Ghana to represent the region on the gender sub-committee at international level. The aim of this sub-committee is to make concrete proposals to meet the goals stated at the founding Congress in 2012.

The regional women’s conference will be held in Johannesburg on 14 October 2014. The theme is Women Workers: Safe Work with Dignity. The international women’s committee decided that the regional conferences in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa would work according to a standard agenda. This agenda includes issues such as health and safety, maternity protection, organizing precarious workers and leadership, as well as preparing a resolution to be adopted by the main regional conference. It is hoped that many women will attend the regional women’s conference.

In conclusion the women decided to continue discussing the women’s charter and to report back to the next meeting.