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Sharing his personal experience of what made him involved in the trade union movement and his lifelong commitment, Christopher Ng, UNI Apro Regional Secretary, promised UNI Apro’s continuous support to give women training opportunities and encouraged all women to join in the fight for equality and justice.

Carina Wong from Malaysia talked about her struggle in organizing employees in her company where men are reluctant to be active in the union as they fear losing job as breadwinners. The leadership in her union is thus held by a large majority of women.

This is in large contrast to the reality in India and participants were shocked to witness it through pictures taken at the Women’s Convention organized by Soma Ghosh’s union. Although attended by more than a hundred women, only male leaders were entitled to sit at the top table. Also from India, Paromita Adhikari revealed her difficulty in winning her family’s support for her active engagement in the union. She also has to put in extra effort to form positive relationships with co-workers who are members of other unions.

In the Korean retail sector, the concept that the customer is the king forces sales staff to obey even the most unreasonable demands. This perception often leads to high level of stress and causes infertility for some women employees. Chung Kyung-sook is very proud that her union could negotiate with the company unpaid one-year leave for fertility treatment. “The union is doing the right things for working people!”

Reports on the positive developments by women’s initiatives in Sri Lanka and Nepal also inspired other participants to achieve the same results by engaging committed and united women from the planning to the implementation of activities.

By sharing their own stories, the empowerment course also aimed to improve their skill to express their views in an appealing, concise, focused, persuasive and confident manner within a limited time, assuming that they will speak in front of a large audience in an international trade union conference.

Group work also allowed participants to realise that networking and effective and regular communication are keys to win support from family, co-workers or union members, as well as to organize inactive members.

This empowerment course was designed as a part of a series of events to give women trade unionists the opportunity to share detailed national activities in the Women’s Committee and sector activities in each Sector Conference. Participants also actively contributed to the discussions in their sector conferences following the empowerment course.

To see photos, visit Flickr