International Women’s Day: Teachers are on the move for equality
To mark International Women’s Day, 8th March, Education International is calling upon member organisations to engage in activities highlighting women’s and girls’ right to quality education and to economic empowerment and to emphasise in those activities the intrinsic value of gender equality, fairness and solidarity to society.
In January 2011 over 350 teacher activists from all corners of the globe convened in Bangkok for EI’s First World Women’s Conference. One year on, the strong impact of this event can be felt.
When Susan Hopgood, EI president, addressed the closing plenary of the Conference, she highlighted the special role of Education International and its member organisations: “We are in a position to stimulate change, to achieve transformation. We are in the right area of work: Education; and we are in the right organizational framework: Trade Unions.” The Conference for the first time brought together the regional and sub-regional EI women’s networks in a global forum.
Six months later, at the World Congress in Cape Town, almost 1.000 delegates unanimously adopted the Resolution for Gender Equality, which provided the outline for the EI Gender Equality Action Plan. This plan will shape the gender equality work of the global education movement in the coming four years and beyond, focusing on three priorities: Gender equality in unions; girls’ access to and participation in quality education; and the economic empowerment of women.
In the past two weeks, over twenty education unionists worked intensively on spreading the trade union message at this year’s session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. They called on governments to support rural, indigenous and afro-descendant women workers and to realise the right of all women to organize, to bargaining collectively and to close the pay gap. They called on governments to ensure that national education plans include strategies and sufficient resources to meet the needs of rural, indigenous and afro-descendant girls: safe schools, qualified teachers, textbooks, sanitation and school meals.
On 8 March, International Women’s Day, EI is looking back on a year of intense activity, and gearing up to implement its Gender Equality Action Plan. EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen said: “The global education movement is set to achieve advancements in the area of equality. The EI women’s networks, uniting so many inspiring women activists, make up a tremendous global potential to achieve social and democratic change everywhere.”
