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This year, as they do each year, EI affiliates are organising and participating in local and national events to commemorate International Women’s Day on 8 March, and highlight ongoing challenges related to gender equality and women’s rights.

In addition, EI’s delegation of 20 women unionists attending the first week of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW), will join the other Global Union Federations (GUFs) and many of the 6,000 plus delegates at this year’s UNCSW in a Women’s Day march to demand ‘a life free from violence for women and girls!’ in New York City.

The march comes at the end of the first week of the 57th Session of UNCSW, which is reviewing UN member states’ progress on ‘ The Elimination and Prevention of all forms of Violence against Women and Girls’.

Agreed conclusions The trade union delegation at this year’s UNCSW comprises 85 women, all delegates from EI, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Public Services International (PSI), and UNI Global Union.

Delegates arrived in New York City in time for the official opening of proceedings on Monday, 4 March. Unusually, this year, a draft of the agreed conclusions that are usually adopted at each UNCSW was circulated by UN Women three weeks before the Commission opened.

This was done to avoid a repeat of the impasse that occurred in 2003 and 2012 when no conclusions were agreed upon. The UNCSW themes then were violence against women in 2003 and rural women in 2012.

Need for collaboration This year, member states, as well as civil society organisations, are determined to work productively towards reaching the consensus needed for the agreed conclusions to be met.

To this end, the GUF delegation spent the first two days working closely and collaboratively to scrutinise the proposed draft conclusions, which had already been revised three times by member states by the second day of the UNCSW.

By the following day, GUF delegates had drafted a 2-page document outlining the priority areas that the unions would like to have included in the agreed conclusions.

Call to recognise violence in workplace The trade union delegation is lobbying for the inclusion of a strong paragraph on violence in the workplace. This  recognises the role of trade unions as legitimate stakeholders in all efforts to address workplace-related gender-based violence.

It also acknowledges the ‘spill-over effect’ that gender-based violence which takes place outside of the workplace has on women’s participation in the workplace.

Union delegates are also seeking references in the agreed conclusions to:

• Ending child labour

• The need for women to be able to have full employment and decent work

• The need for direct investment in public services by member states

• The importance of education and educators in all efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls

The GUF delegation will also be hosting a parallel event at the UNCSW on International Women’s Day, entitled: ‘Violence and Vulnerability: Workplace Challenges and Responses’.

The event will address the issue of the links between women’s over-representation in vulnerable employment and gender-based violence. EI Deputy General Secretary Haldis Holst will chair the event at the Church Centre for the UN on Friday, 8 March.

Local activities EI affiliates’ annual activities to mark International Women’s Day are often strategically linked to matters of local concern related to gender equality and women’s rights.

For example, in Norway this year, EI affiliate Union Education of Norway (UEN) will highlight the celebration of 100 years of women’s voting rights in Norway (1913-2013) in its 8 March fact sheet.

Although Norway is recognised in most UN indices as a world leader in gender equality, challenges remain, including the fact that Norway has one of the most gender-divided labour markets in Europe

‘No more words! Time for action’ Other affiliates’ activities will focus on the official UN theme for this year’s 8 March celebrations, which reflects the UNCSW theme : ‘A Promise is a Promise: Time for Action to End Violence against Women’.

This also resonates with the slogan developed by EI and adopted by all of the GUFs  ‘No more words! Time for action’ alludes to the huge gap between laws and policies adopted by governments at national, regional and international levels to prevent and eliminate gender-based violence and the reality of women’s lives.

To read GUF delegates’ priority ideas for the 57 UNCSW, please go here

See here for details of Norway’s year-long women’s vote celebrations.