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Some 300 women (and a number of men) from 100 countries are attending the second world women's conference organised by the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) in Dakar, Senegal, from 19-21 November. This is the first time that an African country is hosting an ITUC World Women’s Conference. In recognising this achievement, Senegalese President Macky Sall included it on the list of key national conferences, and the country’s second woman Prime Minister, Aminata Toure, chaired the opening session.

Unusually, this women’s conference is called a ‘Women’s Organising Assembly’, to signify the conference’s strategic importance to the wider ITUC objective of ‘building the power of workers’.

“This is a doing conference”, said ITUC’s General Secretary, Sharan Burrow,  arguing that workers’ power needs (re)building because trade unions are currently engaged in a struggle to “reclaim our democracies, our communities, [and] the dignity of work and our rights as women and as workers”. The objective of the conference, therefore, is for participants to strategise and define the tools and mechanisms through which union women will become the motor that drives union movements around the world.

Women central to union struggle

Malian essayist and political activist Aminata Traore echoed these sentiments in her presentation when she stated that unionism is a form of struggle.

She urged union women to be the intellectual instruments of today’s struggle, and also stressed that unions must face the challenge because in a time of worsening crises, “we need political creativity, and we must reinvent work and re-think the economy”.

Senegal’s Prime Minister, Aminata Toure, made participants jump to their feet and applaud for joy when she announced that her government would fast-track the ratification of ILO Conventions 189 and 183 (on domestic workers and maternity protection, respectively).

Women hold up half the sky, but only hold 12 per cent of union leadership

Policy analyst and activist Hakima Abbas argued that existing models of leadership are very much based on characteristics that are considered ‘male’ and ‘masculine’, so that when women seek to occupy leadership roles, there is a general perception that they are not ‘proper women’.

She suggested that as the conference considers how best to increase the numbers of women leaders, participants might reflect on what she called “leaderful” leadership. This means “being led by collectivities of activists, coalitions…” Viewing leadership as leaderful, therefore, means acknowledging the many ways in which groups of people and social movements have been led by the masses struggling, working and pushing for change together.

This view of leadership allows society to see that, in fact, women have been leaders all along: for example, during the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, women protested together and with men, and led the way for the winds of change to sweep away the old political guard.

Taking action

To make these aspirations a reality, the ITUC is calling on its affiliates to sign up to the ‘Count us in!’ campaign, which aims to increase the number of women leaders in trade unions and increase efforts to organise more women in unions. The medium-term objectives are: 100 ITUC affiliates should sign up to the campaign before the 3rd ITUC Congress in 2014; 80 per cent of ITUC General Council members should have at least 30 per cent of women in their decision-making bodies by the 4th ITUC Congress in 2018; there should be a five per cent increase of women’s membership in each national centre that subscribes to the ‘Count us in’ campaign by the 2018 Congress.

Workshop participants reacted enthusiastically to this call, and made suggestions for actions that would ensure the sustainability of women’s leadership once these quota targets have been achieved. Crucially, it was felt that mechanisms for supporting and monitoring the progress of women leaders in unions should be established, because leadership can be a difficult road for women to walk when they are few and far between.

The conference conclusions will be presented at the 3rd ITUC Congress in Berlin in 2014, when it is hoped that women’s organising and the efforts of the women’s organising assembly will be recognised as central to the (re)building of workers’ power.

For more information on the ITUC Women’s Assembly, click here.