International Women's Day : Melbourne Indymedia

I think part of this has to do with males being threatened when they feel that women are taking on their roles. It takes a lot of strength to sit back and tell yourself, "OK, I will allow a women to do this or that," when it is a major task that affects us all. But please remain sensitive to the fact that we put up with a lot of shit from men everywhere, all the time. I don't think I should have to run through examples of what I'm talking about here, but none the less, it really grinds at you after a while, and it grinds at you a hell of a lot more when it comes from comrades.

I recently dug up an old zine about gender - it said one way to analyze situations is to imagine the same circumstances that you are in, but with reversed genders - then imagine if you would act the same way. For example, if you see a guy hassling a girl on transport, you would defend her and tell the guy to fuck off, right? Imagine if you saw a girl hassling a guy? Would you defend him? Just something to think about - sexism is apparent in every interaction we have.

Please respond to this constructively, don't apologize or feel pity, please just start thinking about yourself and how you can change how you act. Thanks.

MG

Thursday, 8 March 2007 is International Women's Day and we're delighted to take this opportunity to announce the launch of LabourStart's special coverage of women workers:

http://www.labourstart.org/iwd

Today you can read about --

* UK: Unions have warned that local councils may have to cut jobs as they struggle to meet a deadline to bring in equal pay -- including back pay for many thousands of women.

* Australia: According to a new report issued this week by the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation, thanks to the Howard government's labour laws, not only is Australia at the bottom of the OECD countries in terms of workers' rights, but women workers are hardest hit. Since the introduction of anti-union legislation, women's wages have actually fallen by some two percent.

* Turkey: Thousands of women marched -- supported by, among others, the petroleum workers union -- demanding peace and equality. Among them were women workers from Novamed, a company that was the target of a recent LabourStart online campaign.

* Israel: According to a government report issued this week, women's salaries remain half that of men's.

* Canada: Seventy women workers who have been on strike at the First Ontario Credit Union since 20 October have gotten an extraordinary gesture of solidarity from fellow union members. To mark International Women's Day, unions in the area will be withdrawing $800,000 from the credit union on Thursday.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Our new page at http://www.labourstart.org/iwd will report on women worker's issues -- including struggles for equality -- throughout the year. Please spread the word.

And make sure you've sent off a message in support of those women workers at First Ontario:

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=190