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One hundred years ago the first International Women’s Day rallies
drew over a million people campaigning for women’s rights. A week
later, a fire caused by lax safety precautions broke out in New York’s
Triangle Shirtwaist factory sending over 140 garment workers, to their
death. Most of the victims were women and the fire focused subsequent
International Women’s Days on their working conditions. Survivor
Pauline Pepe remembers watching the blaze take over.
“That was a terrible thing. And when we got down, we saw the three
flights burning… The people. There all - all bodies - oh, oh, oh, it
was terrible. I'll never forget that time. Never.”
Standing on the pavement the day of the fire with hundreds of other
witnesses was the young Frances Perkins, later the first woman to serve
in the US Cabinet as Secretary of Labour under Franklin Roosevelt. The
hazardous conditions that caused the accident inspired her to push
through major reforms that became a model for progressive labour
legislation around the world.
“Having Frances Perkins in 1941 at the International Labour
Conference was such a breakthrough. Almost like Eleanor Roosevelt when
they were drafting a couple of years later the human rights declaration.
Women of that stature speaking with courage, conviction and confidence
set the stage as it were for the next decades of women.”
Today, women still make up the majority of garment workers worldwide.
In Cambodia, for example, women make up 90 per cent of the garment
industry. Here, in partnership with government, employers,
international buyers and trade unions, the ILO’s Better Factories
Cambodia programme is monitoring factories and helping them to improve
working conditions.
Special programmes address issues of maternity protection,
discrimination at work, and build capacity of women trade unionists.
But Cambodian garment workers recently faced a disaster of a different
kind: the global economic crisis, which hit their export-based industry
hard.
Anne Ziebarth, Better Work Programme (in English): “More than sixty thousand workers lost their
jobs. Even those who were able to stay in their jobs saw their
incomes fall and because most of these workers had no savings they had nothing
to fall back on. Now the sector is recovering, so we’ve seen
employment levels come up but all of this does point to the need for enhanced
social protection.”
In 2010 the global unemployment rate was higher for women than for men
and many more are trapped in vulnerable employment, work characterized
by low pay, long hours and informal working arrangements. Women also
fall behind men in access to training and education, especially in the
developing world.
“If women are starting from sadly a deteriorating position anyway,
it’s so important we have a chance with the recovery measures to move
ahead on gender equality and we shouldn’t miss that.”
One hundred years ago women made a stand for their rights at work and a
role in the future of their countries …. One hundred years later they
are helping shape a global economic recovery where there are no one-size
fits all solutions.