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Statement for press briefing, 22 March 2007
MORE MONEY, LESS WORK, LESS VIOLENCE! GRASSROOTS WOMEN FORM A CAMPAIGNING NETWORK OF AND FOR WOMEN FROM INTERIOR AND COAST
By Friday, March 23, more than forty mainly grassroots women will have met in groups for six days at Red Thread’s Crossroads Women’s Centre in Georgetown to decide how to change our lives.
We spoke about the joys in our lives, but also about the burdens - the work all of us do for up to 21 hours a day for no pay and low pay, the lack of recognition for our work, which begins with the unwaged work of caring for our families, and the brutal violence we face both inside our homes and outside our homes.
We all accepted the four priorities which some of us had identified during meetings held last year, and we decided to form a network to campaign for them. The priorities are: § A living income for all grassroots women, wherever we live, whatever our race, whatever our age, whether we have a disability or not, whether we are single mothers, mothers living with spouses or other partners, or women mothering the children of relatives, neighbours, or strangers. § Access to all the goods and services we must have to care for ourselves and our families at a price we can afford. This means that communities without potable water or power must have them; it means that women, children and men with disabilities must have access to all services and to the buildings where they are provided; it means that prices for all goods and services must be within our reach, and that potable water must be free. § Protection of women and children from all kinds of violence: from physical, sexual, emotional and verbal violence in our homes and workplaces; from the sexual violence of strangers; from the racial violence which is committed not only by individual men and sometimes women, but by organised elements acting on behalf of various powerful groups. § A strong political voice for grassroots women across all divides.
Today, Thursday March 22, 2007, marks the official launch of our campaign.
The 46 women were brought together by Red Thread, Guyana coordinator of the Global Women’s Strike which every year since 2000 marks International Women’s Day (IWD) with actions in many countries on or around March 8 with the theme, “Invest in Caring, not Killing”. These countries include Peru and Venezuela on this continent, India in Asia, Uganda in Africa, Trinidad & Tobago and Haiti in the Caribbean, and countries in North America and Europe.
In Guyana, this week’s six-day meeting of grassroots women from the coast and interior broke new ground: we marked International Women’s Day not with a public event but with grassroots women meeting among ourselves to plan how to form and build a strong network to defend the rights of grassroots women across race, across age, no matter where we live, whether or not we have a disability, whether we are single mothers, mothers who live with spouses or partners, or women who are caring for the children of relatives, neighbours and strangers.
The meeting began on March 18 because we were working to ensure that those of us who are Indigenous women or other women from the interior could join those of us on the coast, who are mainly Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese and Mixed, and we achieved this with a lot of hard work and by raising money from individuals, a small business, a corporation and an NGO. We thank everyone who made a donation, small and large, including the four women, two teenagers and one man who donated their labour and their time (providing childcare, shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, pots and pans) to make the week a success.
During our discussions this week we made other decisions: 1. To demand implementation of the Ministry of Education policy that no child can be refused education because the parent/s cannot afford every item of the school uniform. 2. To fight for changes in how the National Insurance Scheme is administered and for measures to hold employers accountable when they make deductions from our wages and fail to pay them in to the NIS, in fact stealing from their employees, and leaving us deprived when we need NIS support. 3. To step up our monitoring of how VAT is affecting prices so that we can continue our campaign for a VAT that is fair and fairly implemented, and that is not exploited by greedy business people. We will not accept an increase in the burden we carry trying to make our low incomes stretch to meet higher and higher prices. 4. To call for a decent minimum wage in the private sector, beginning with domestic workers, security guards, bartenders and other restaurant and hotel workers, and shop assistants. 5. To begin our campaign for a living income for all grassroots women with two groups whose present income support is the biggest outrage of all. The first group is made up of people, most of them women and children, who receive $2470 per month as public assistance, given to children when their parents cannot be found, have died, or are too ill or disabled to work for money; and to adults who are too disabled or ill to work for money. The second group consists of “old age pensioners”, women and men who have spent their lifetimes working, including women who have spent their lifetimes carrying the triple workload of unwaged caring work, waged work, and unwaged community work, in recognition of which they receive a pension of G$3675 a month.
All these, and every other issue on which we decide to campaign during the year, relate to our main demand – more money, less work, less violence!
Finally, some of us will be working with Red Thread on a “report card” project which aims to hold political parties and Parliament accountable to grassroots women by monitoring whether they keep their promises. We will concentrate especially on promises made in the party manifestos on our four priorities. This project is supported by the Canada Fund. We have already gone through the manifestos and made a list of the promises, and we will be writing to all the parties next week. We believe that it is up to so-called “ordinary” women and men to hold political parties, Parliament and other institutions accountable to us. We believe that we are responsible when we do not hold them accountable. We believe that what we are doing will encourage other grassroots women, as well as everyone else, to hold accountable all who have power, in every institution.
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