The 12-th International Trade Union Women’s School

The 12-th International Trade Union Women’s School organized by the ITUC /PERC CEE and NIS Women’s Network took place in Vilnius from 26 to 28 October 2011. Around 50 trade union women from 24 countries in the PERC region were present in Vilnius.

The Scholl was organized this year with the financial support from the ILO/ACTRAV Norwegian Fund project, Belgium ACV/CSC and logistic support from the three Lithuanian trade union centres.

The ILO/ACTRAV Norwegian project was initiated with the support of the PERC Women’s Committee and had foreseen four activities which are part of the committee’s action plan for 2011: training for project making, two sub-regional seminars in Sofia and Kishinev and the last part- Women’s School in Vilnius.

The program had as main objective the strengthening of the national trade union committees to fight the consequences of the on-going crisis and to have better representation in decision making in their unions.

The main theme of the 12-th Women’s School was “Empowering trade union women as a tool to implement decent work agenda”. The program of the School had a political part on the first day and the training activities for empowering the trade union women on how to overcome the barriers in women’s participation in unions and developing policy proposals.

Representative of the ILO/ACTRAV Budapest, Ovidiu Jurca, presented the Gender Equality and the Decent Work Agenda of the ILO, the Executive Secretary of the PERC, Grigor Gradev, gave some information on the future program of the PERC and the challenges unions are facing and the representative of the European Institute for Gender Equality in Vilnius, Maurizio Mosca, presented the actions and activities the institute is carrying for the working women.

The last part of the School was dedicated to the Annual Conference of the Women’s Network, which presented the new forms of communication of the network, debated on the redefinition of aims and structure of the network and proposed activities to the PERC Women’s Committee.

/PERC/