Speaker Name: Andi Cipta Asmawaty of the APWLD Labour (Women Organising Workers – WOW) programme
Dear Chairs,
Good afternoon! Thank you for accommodating the space for us to deliver our statement in this plenary and power to all of us, sisters, feminists, comrades, unionists, worker and farmers
We believe that we can go beyond what people, including the ruling class, expected 100 years ago, that: women can lead, women can take on powerful positions and be decision-makers in unions and non-unionised mobilisations, women can and should influence any strategic agenda and policies, and we will continue to do what needs to be done: to agitate, mobilise and organise and also, bring cross-movement solidarity to amplify the voices of grassroots women workers.
APWLD is the leading network of feminist organisations and individual activists in Asia and the Pacific. Our 295 members represent groups of diverse women from 30 countries and territories in Asia and the Pacific. Over the past 35 years, APWLD has actively worked towards advancing women’s human rights, including labour rights and rights to decent work as well as Development Justice.
On behalf of APWLD, I am delivering this statement to express our concern about the situation of women workers in Asia and the Pacific region and request your attention to bring this concern to the 111th Session of the International Labour Conference.
Women workers are very clear on what we are up against: we are against the capitalist monopoly that – in the name of profit and growth – exploits women’s labour and sends women into the labour force without honouring our dignity and respecting our human rights. We are against patriarchy that does not only reduce women’s value as a second class but also commodifies women’s bodies and works for capitalists’ gains for profit. For so long, corporate greed has preyed upon women workers’ blood, sweat and tears, heavily relying on systemic discrimination and devaluation of women’s labour power.
Three years after the outbreak of COVID-19, we continue to witness how capitalism and globalisation have operated, driven and exacerbated crises in precarious work and the significant increase in labour flexibilisation that lead to growing inequality. We continue to witness the struggle of women workers in migration to get protected and enjoy their rights and the declining wage share to corporate profits. Unfortunately, we were right that globalisation only deepens the systemic violations of the rights of women workers.
We call on all of us to commit:
1) To actively promote decent work for all workers, including informal and migrant workers, living wage and rights to organise. Plenty of evidence shows how women workers are strenuous to claim and exercise their rights. The unions’ activities were restricted in many factory areas where women work. In Bangladesh, at least 3,000 workers were dismissed when they exercised their freedom of association and collective bargaining.
2) To implement ILO Convention No. 190 in eliminating violence and harassment in the World of Work. We must strategise for more ratification and bring women workers’ situations, their experience of violence and resistance to be more prominent in the ILC discussion.
3) To ensure human rights-based policy coherence in labour policies, regulate private sectors, including in the global supply chain and hold the governments, especially in the global north countries, accountable. The extra-territorial human rights obligations of member states must underpin the implementation of the ILO core conventions to protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all workers.
4) To recognise women’s leadership in the labour movement, including women in the union and non-unionised mobilisation, to ensure women enjoy their full and effective democracy and political rights, including the rights to actively exercise their political rights in decision making process, both in private and public life, by taking affirmative action and positive measures to encourage their leadership space and to eliminate the structural barriers that deepen gender injustice.
Instead of recognising the essential work of human and labour rights defenders, the authorities continue to target workers and labour activists under the repressive law. Consequently, the rights of workers to exercise their democratic rights such as the right to peaceful assembly and Freedom of Association has been consistently cracked down in many countries across Asia and the Pacific region . We demand social justice for the human and labour rights defenders who have been detained and targeted.
Again, in this privileged space, we hope we are able to strengthen our solidarity and power among us.
Long Live International Solidarity! Long live working class women across the Globe!
Friday, 13 June 2023
On behalf of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
Andi Cipta Asmawaty
We thank you, Chairs!
Watch the full video here.
