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UNI-Apro Women breaking through for equality!

Published: 9 December 2009
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 The 11th UNI-Apro Women’s Committee met on 7 December 2009 in Kuala Lumpur which was supposed to be held in July in Jakarta but had been postponed due to the unexpected and unfortunate incident of bombing in a hotel in Jakarta.



On behalf of Malaysian Liaison Council, Bro. Shafie welcomed the Women's Committee. He encouraged women to have a strong character in trade unions and to put pressure on leaders to get on the Executive Committee, and that perhaps they should not be so polite. He said 'Women's voices must be heard.

Anjali Bedekar, President of UNI-Apro Women also welcomed all, especially Veronica Fernandez Mendez, Head of UNI Equal Opportunity Dept to come all the way from Nyon.



The committee welcomed new faces including Ikuko Ishiguro, JSD Japan and Deepa Bharadwaj, Nepal as Titular members and Lu Shu-chin and Ting Yi-Hsuan, CTWU Taiwan as Substitutes. There have been changes in the UNI-Apro secretariat, that is Yoko Ogawa as the Director for UNI-Apro Women, Alice Chang as the Director for UNI-Apro Commerce and Magdalene Kong as UNI-Apro Youth. The gratitude was expressed to resigned members and Alice who had greatly contributed to the work in this committee.



Veronica introduced the new UNI website and highlighted activities and campaigns done this year, for International Women’s Day, World Day for Decent Work, and 16 days of activism against gender violence and showed us a new video on “Break the Circle”.

Decision for Life is another new project in cooperation with ITUC and other partners. India and Indonesia were selected in our region and Anjali and Siti updated a series of activities in each country.



Every member reported on their own activities in line with the UNI-Apro Women Action Plans. A new reporting format was suggested by Yoko in order to compare and monitor the annual progress within the union as well as among us.



Yoko also reported that the resolution on women’s representation was adopted by the recent World Executive Board and would be submitted for adoption by the Nagasaki Congress next year. It gives a clear target of 40% in terms of representation in each sector committee, regional executive, as well as sending delegates to any Conferences. It’s time for us to speak loudly in every sector and in unions to achieve this goal!



Tamami on behalf of Japanese affiliates briefed on the preparation for Nagasaki Congress and looked forward to receiving as many as women especially from the region. Yoko also updated a tentative program for the UNI World Women’s Conference.



The committee pledged to continuously work harder to have a bigger voice in their unions to fight for decent work and gender equality and to share good achievements in Nagasaki.



For more pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uniglobalunion/sets/72157622828916727/