World Women’s Conference: A New Social Contract For Recovery And Resilience – Grounded In Equality And Equity

The 4th ITUC World Women’s Conference will be held 13-14 December online with women trade union activists from around the world organising to advance gender equality and equity within the context of a global health, economic and social crisis and beyond.

Details of the conference can be found here, with some sessions open to all and live on the ITUC Facebook page.

The main themes of the conference are the following:

• the differentiated impacts of COVID-19 on women;
• building a caring economy – #InvestInCare;
• eliminating gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work – #RatifyC190;
• securing equal pay for work of equal value and gender-responsive social protection;
• building women’s transformational leadership in the unions;
• climate justice and just transition – women as actors for a just transition;
• women’s struggles for peace, freedom and democracy; and
• how do we ensure that equality and equity is at the heart of the recovery?

Sharan Burrow, ITUC general secretary, said: “This is an extraordinary time for working women who lost jobs and income in disproportionate numbers, since women workers are the majority in the sectors hardest hit by the health crisis, including in the informal economy.

“The trade union movement is navigating a global pandemic that continues to claim lives, cause serious illness, affect livelihoods and disrupt workers lives. Trade union activism, organising and unity is needed more than ever.

“The conference gives us a platform to understand the gendered impacts of this crisis and how we can shape the responses – both now and after the pandemic.”

The conference will take an intersectional approach to the different themes and will highlight the experiences of young women, older women, women of indigenous communities, LGBTI+ women, racialised women and disabled women. This will include women in migrant communities and women working in the informal economy.

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