PERC Women’s School 2023

The PERC Women’s School under the theme of “Vulnerable groups and gender pay/pension and other gaps eradication policies”, took place in Moldova on 7-8 November 2023

The Women’s School was co-organized by the PERC Women’s Committee together with the Belgium trade union CGSLB with support from the Belgium Federal Public Service for Employment, Labor and Social Dialogue and, with ILO ACTRAV support . Around 40 participants both from over 20 countries from all over Europe took part in the meeting. The participants received a warm welcome from the Roya Garayeva, President of ITUC PERC Women Committee, Igor Zubcu, President of CNSM - Moldovan Trade Union Confederation, Anton Leppik, ITUC PERC Executive Secretary and Isabelle Schömann, Deputy General Secretary, ETUC.

During the 2 day school the following main issues were discussed by the participants:

• Vulnerable groups, representation and inclusion , where Ukrainian Unions’ representative from FPU and KVPU gave insight on women refugees during war time; the UN refugee agency, Chisinau office (Hanna Ursol, UNHCR) paying attention to testimony from Ukrainian women refugees in Moldova. The Moldovan Parliament representative Angela Munteanu-Pojoga gave insight on equal pay initiatives on national level and mentioned that Moldova is in the final stages of the process to ratify the ILO C.190!

• Achieving equal pay for work of equal value: attention to the gender pay gap between men and women, the pension gap and other gender equality strategies. Maria Tsirantonaki from the ITUC Equality department presented the ITUC “New social contract rooted in a gender transformative agenda” and looking at the Equal pay day (18 of November), EPIC coalition, NSC pillar of equality and inclusion.

• Gender policies on national and international level, from the ILO ACTRAV, Rafael Peels presented on EIGE Gender equality Index 2023 with statistics on pay gaps and Maresa Le Roux, CGSLB (Belgium) presented on the upcoming Belgian EU presidency, importance of gender equality on EU level and Belgium concerning the gender/pension pay gap.

• Attention to the gender dimension and vulnerable groups in trade union negotiations – National experiences (round table).

• The importance of social dialogue in the search for solutions in times of instability during which representatives from Ukraine and Turkey gave a special intervention on Social dialogue in time of war, and Social dialogue after natural disasters (earthquake).

• Non-discrimination and equal opportunity for women in time of telework, where Tamar Gabisonia, (ILAW) Solidarity center gave an extended presentation on research that have been completed and the work that ILAW is doing assisting workers.

The participants had time to exchange on good practices on national cases on gender pay/pension gap, equality strategies in their trade union work. Country cases from Moldova, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Albania, Italy, Norway, Armenia, North Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Russia and Azerbaijan was shared.

The Women’s School was closed with a recap of the main element that come forward during the 2-days and a reminder on the main pillars of the PERC Women’s Committee program pillars for the coming period.