LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Women to Gain Share of Leadership Posts

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 12 2002 (IPS) - Leadership posts in Argentina’s trade unions, which are dominated by men, will be forced open this month to broader participation by women thanks to a new law that reserves 30 percent of the candidacies in internal elections for women.

“The new law will strengthen the labour movement by fomenting greater participation by women in the trade unions,” Senator Deolide Gómez, of the governing Justicialista (Justice) Party, told IPS.

A proportion below 30 percent will only be permitted on the party leadership slate in unions in which women make up less than 30 percent of the membership.

The law finally made it through Congress five years after being introduced when it was unanimously approved by the Senate on Nov 6. It also establishes that women must comprise 30 percent of the representatives of a trade union in collective bargaining with companies.

If the 30 percent requirement is not respected in the negotiations, any agreement reached can be rejected by the Labour Ministry, according to the new law.

However, the few women who have risen to leadership positions in the labour movement say the new legislation will not be enough, and that it will have to be backed up by continuous pressure from female trade unionists.

“Women have to actively participate in trade union assemblies and fight for key decision-making posts, because we cannot be protagonists in the world of work and resign ourselves to a mere office on women’s affairs in the trade union,” said Gómez, the head of the Argentine Union of Private school Teachers.

According to official figures, women comprise 35 percent of the economically active population in this Southern Cone country of 37 million, Latin America’s third-largest economy, where unemployment has soared to over 21 percent due to the worst economic crisis in the nation’s history.

Over 50 percent of working women hold precarious, poorly-paid jobs, with no social benefits, and which make no contributions to the trade unions or towards the pension system.

Women are the main breadwinners in nearly 30 percent of households, either because their partners are unemployed, they earn more than their partners, or they are on their own.

Few women in Argentina have won key decision-making posts in the trade unions, an environment that is “profoundly sexist,” said Senator Gómez.

The public teachers’union, the Confederation of Education Workers (CTERA), 85 percent of whose membership is female, is headed by a woman, Marta Maffei. However, the leadership has been “essentially male” since the union was created in 1973, notes Maffei.

In the early 1990s, Mary Sánchez became CTERA’s first female secretary-general, followed by Maffei. Since then, the union’s governing board has been made up of an equal proportion of men and women.

The situation is similar in the Association of Airline Workers of Argentina, which represents flight attendants. After 40 years of male leadership, the union’s secretary-general is — for the third term in a row — Alicia Castro, a parliamentary deputy from the Front for Change party. In the union, Castro heads an 11-member executive board, which includes five other women.

Castro told IPS that “women are indispensable actors in the process of renovating the trade unions.” But, she said, the new 30 percent quota would not bring about a true transformation without changes in the prevailing mindset that limits women to domestic questions.

Although many would see it as only logical for women to lead labour organisations in which the membership is mainly female, the heads of both the teachers’union and the flight attendants union have traditionally been men.

That is also true in the case of the Federation of Associations of Health Workers, which represents many women, including nurses, nursing aides, lab technicians and cleaning staff in hospitals and nursing homes.

The Federation’s secretary-general is Carlos West Ocampo, and the executive board is made up mainly of men.

But a United Left party legislator for the city of Buenos Aires, Vilma Ripol, who ran against West Ocampo in the Federation’s internal elections, remarked to IPS that the state should not meddle in the internal affairs of the trade unions.

Even though Ripol acknowledged that women are underrepresented in the labour movement, she said the changes should be brought about by the pressure of female workers, because otherwise the transformation will not be genuine.

Ripol fears the new law will merely bring about a superficial change in the labour movement leadership, which has little credibility and is widely mistrusted in Argentina, as revealed by opinion polls.

The sexist bias is also seen in the leading central trade unions. The General Confederation of Labour is headed by Rodolfo Daer, and all 15 of the union’s secretaries are men.

The same is true of the “rebel” faction of the CGT, an offshoot led by transport worker Hugo Moyano. Even the union’s office on women’s affairs is directed by men.

The exception is the Central Union of Argentine Workers, to which the head of the teachers’ union, Maffei, belongs. The central union’s statutes stipulate that at least 20 percent of the leadership posts should be occupied by women

The quota law reserving 30 percent of candidacies for women first began to be applied in national and provincial legislative elections and municipal polls in the early 1990s.

Critics initially argued that the quota would be used by politicians to fill key posts with their wives, sisters or other women.

Since the implementation of the quota law, women’s representation in Congress has ballooned, to 38 percent today.

Senator Gómez said the passage of the law establishing a 30 percent quota for women in trade union elections was due above all to the fact that a woman with experience in the labour movement is at the head of the Labour Ministry.

Minister Graciela Camaño, the wife of Senator Luis Barrionuevo, who is himself a trade unionist, sponsored the law and visited the Senate to witness the voting, in a gesture that was not shared by the leaders of the central trade unions.