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Stabroek News
(Guyana) Grassroots women in Venezuela are being held up by their peers around the world as a shining example of what can be achieved through lobbying and advocacy. In the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution, women won Article 88, which recognises housework as an economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth. Under Article 88 housewives are now entitled to social security benefits. According to the Global Women's Strike (GWS), a non-governmental organisation headquartered in London England, through their lobbying Venezuelan women won more than they asked for. In addition to Article 88, women are visible throughout the Constitution, which has incorporated the female gender in all the texts. Other articles, laws and policies favour women heads of households and they are given priority in the distribution of unused land and housing. The Constitution guarantees equality in the workplace between women and men. There has also been the creation of breast milk banks and state schools in which one million of the poorest children are receiving three free meals a day. Bilingual education, which recognizes the language and culture of Indigenous communities passed on from generation to generation by women, is also guaranteed. GWS, which has a strong anti-war lobby worldwide, supported the process in Venezuela. It singled out Head of the Venezuelan Women's Development Bank (Banmujer) Nora Castaneda as being "central to the 1999 Constitutional process that won one of the most advanced Constitutions in the world ... for women and indigenous people, as well as for all working people, and all those who face discrimination on grounds of sex, race, age, disability. After working for years to develop an agenda for women that included the input (and addressed the dire needs) of grassroots women, she and others picketed the Constituent Assembly daily". Banmujer was set up on March 8, 2002 and Castaneda set out to build not just a bank, but a way of life for women. Despite winning Article 88, it was recognised that because women headed the poorest families, it would not be enough for them to sit down and wait for government social security handouts. To date, the bank has granted 40,000 micro-credit loans to women. And GWS announced last month that while Castaneda was on a speaking tour of the US, the Vanguard Foundation (San Francisco) made an unprecedented grant of US$75,000 for the self-help activities for economic and community development of grassroots women in Venezuela. Castaneda says she sees micro-credit as a way of empowering women, who, along with children are the poorest people in the world. Calls have been issued for an Article 88 in every country in the world and women everywhere should take up this lobby, not just to have housework recognised as a job, although that would a great start, but to ensure an end to discriminatory practices that are still rampant in most societies. http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_editorial?id=3990765 |