The First of May 2001 – International Workers’ Day CARERS
OF THE WORLD UNITE! Women’s International
Network for Wages for Caring Work (WinWages) |
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| On the day that workers traditionally express
solidarity across national boundaries, we as an international network of women, waged and
unwaged, proclaim our right to be recognised as workers. We demand from global capital
recognition in the form of wages for caring work, pay equity for all women and men in the
global market, abolition of Third World debt, and the resources and protection from
violence to which we are entitled. We expect support from men workers for these demands. Until now trade unions have not generally recognised women as workers even though it is women who do 2/3 of the world’s work. The fact that we do most of this work without wages hides the work, the worker and her struggle. So it is not surprising that it has never been recognised that women pay the highest price for globalisation and for Third World debt, both of which are after all a conspiracy between international capital and national governments to defraud us. With globalisation, structural adjustment policies, privatisation or closure of essential services – most recently the privatisation of water proposed by the IMF and opposed by huge popular movements all over the world which have defeated it in some countries – survival increasingly depends on women and girls working even harder for less. But our additional workload is uncounted because most of it, and often all of it, is not even paid. Why should capital care if we have to work 18 hours a day when they have never had to pay for any of it, and when they couldn’t care less about those we care for? This global situation of women and girls is further hidden behind the successful careers of those women in board rooms, legislatures, universities and local and international agencies and NGOs, who claim to represent us but who show little or no concern for the low wages or the no wages that the rest of us are suffering. On 8 March 2000 and 2001, women and girls in over 60 countries took part in the Global Women’s Strike called and co-ordinated by the international Wages for Housework Campaign. We demanded that the new millennium values all women’s work and all women’s lives, and invests in the enrichment of every life rather than the enrichment of the few. In the past month, grassroots women from 11 countries – Argentina, England, Guyana, India, Ireland, Italy, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Uganda and the USA – met in London to exchange our experiences of organising women’s global resistance to globalisation, and to co-ordinate our efforts for 8 March 2002. We heard about the actions taken this year by the organisations in our global network:
Our demand for wages for all caring work establishes women’s entitlement to the wealth and resources we have produced. It establishes the urgent need for a total change of priorities, away from deadly military budgets and economies run for profit without regard for human life and the life of our planet. It recognises that women, counted on by every society to do most of the caring work, are at the heart of the movement which is bursting out everywhere against the uncaring market. It demands that, rather than women being more like men, men must be more like women, that is, that caring work must become the central concern of every economy and every political decision. signed by: International Wages for Housework Campaign Endorsed by: Contact address: Crossroads Women’s Centre
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