News

Previous to the World Executive Board Meeting in Nyon, the World Women’s Committee held its annual meeting to discuss the group’s strategic priorities and activities, that will be carried out in the upcoming year.

The President of the World Women’s Committee, Denise McGuire from Prospect UK, chaired the meeting which focused on key issues for women workers, including gender violence and Equal Pay.

UNI’s General Secretary, Philip Jennings, addressed the Committee and expressed his shock at the statistics regarding gender violence. He offered his support to the work carried out by the group by asking women to: “Go for it!” and to continue pressing their issues. “Let’s not wait 81 years to achieve equality”, he said in reference to the amount of years women would need in order to achieve equal pay.

Christy Hoffmann, Deputy General Secretary of UNI also addressed the participants. She spoke about the importance of the UNI Mentoring Program, which provides young women with the tools to engage in union work and seek decision making positions within their unions. She also shared her experience as a young union worker with a Mentor, and how this shaped her and helped her in her work with unions.

During the meeting, the Head of UNI equal Opportunities, Veronica Fernandez Mendez presented the campaigns, programs and actions that the department has been working on and which reflect the commitments adopted in the resolutions of the UNI World Women's Conference in Cape Town 2014. They include campaigns like 40for40, Mentoring Program, Equal Pay as well as the new campaign for Breaking the Circle Against Violence, which will focus on the impact of violence in the media; and the new UNI campaign for Women's Health.

The next meeting of the UNI World Women's Committee will take place in 2016.