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AMC Statement on International Women's Day 2010 |
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ASIAN MIGRANT CENTRE
Statement on International Women’s Day
8 March 2010
Today the world celebrates the 99th International Women’s Day (IWD). On 19 March 1911, over 1 million women and men attended women’s day rallies in various countries, in keeping with the decision of the Second International Conference of Working Women (1910, Copenhagen) to celebrate a common International Women’s Day throughout the world. This first formal celebration of IWD focused on the campaign for women's rights to work, vote, empowerment and to end discrimination. The “Bread and Roses Campaign” was also launched this year. [IWD website]
This was the culmination of the growing organized struggle of women in the early 1900s against their oppression and inequality. This means that two decades after workers rose up, on 1 May 1886, to demand an 8-hour work day and better working conditions, working women’s situation had hardly improved. For instance, more than 15,000 women marched in 1908 in New York in order to demand for shorter working hours, better pay and voting rights. It was in 1913, on the eve of World War I, and campaigning for peace, that women’s groups set 8 March as IWD, which remains to this day.
The United Nations proclaimed a UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace in 1977. Since then, the UN has observed 8 March as IWD, “to highlight the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women.”
Therefore, International Women’s Day, like May Day, emerged from the womb of the struggle of women and workers for regulated working hours, basic rights, decent work, equality, empowerment, dignity and justice.
The Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), in marking its 20th founding anniversary in 2010, chose to start our celebration by joining all peoples worldwide to honour the gains, victories, sacrifices and struggle of women. In celebrating IWD, we affirm the Chinese saying that “women hold half of the sky” – i.e. life could not be without women, and that real progress and human development could not be achieved without the equal and full participation of women.
AMC was founded in 1989 as an Asian regional NGO promoting the human rights, empowerment, dignity and proper recognition of the work and contributions of ALL migrant workers, particularly women migrants, migrant domestic workers, migrant labourers, migrants’ families, and migrants in temporary or vulnerable situations. Since then, AMC has put gender mainstreaming and the recognition and promotion of the rights and value of the work of women migrant workers, particularly domestic workers, among its primary agendas.
AMC helped form the first-ever trade union of migrant domestic workers in HK in 1989, advocated for women migrants’ agenda and inputs in the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action, intervened in all major UN summits (1990 to 2001) to assert migrants’ and women’s positions, continues to support Asian women migrants’ campaigns and empowerment efforts, and spearheaded rights-based and gender-responsive economic development and reintegration strategies in Asia. AMC is now in partnership with migrant networks in Asia, domestic workers’ alliances, and trade unions in advocating for an ILO Convention on Domestic Workers, and in spearheading the “International Campaign for the Rights and Recognition of Domestic Workers” (“8-HR” campaign). This campaign asserts that domestic work should be covered by the 8-hour work standard, and that 8 essential rights should be recognized and guaranteed equal application for domestic workers (i.e. labour rights, rest, equal remuneration, retirement and social security protection, reproductive and family rights, residency and mobility, respect for the value and status of work, reintegration and integration rights).
This year, it is very important for us to support the advocacy for the ILO Convention on Domestic Workers and the “8-HR” campaign. Perception and treatment of domestic workers is very deeply rooted in patriarchal frameworks, making the recognition of the work and status of domestic workers a key aspect in the advancement of women’s emancipation and the combating of gender-based discrimination and oppression.
The protection of the rights of ALL migrants and their families – women and men, regardless of visa status – are essential, as mandated by the 1990 “International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.” The core human rights conventions of the UN and the fundamental labour rights instruments of the ILO have long established the minimum standards of protection and equal treatment for women and workers, including women migrant workers. Therefore, continued activism is needed in order to ensure that CEDAW, the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation 26, the ILO’s decent work agenda, and the commitments of States under the Beijing Platform of Action and Millennium Development Goals, become effective instruments in advancing gender equality and the human rights of women.
Almost 100 years since the first IWD, women’s rights, conditions and status in society have advanced, as evidenced by the above standards and commitments. However, these advances, in real terms, are unequal, dictated largely by racial/ethnic, class and other biases. Therefore, women migrants, migrant domestic workers, and women in the informal sector remain the most vulnerable, lower-paid, abused, violated and oppressed. Millions of women migrants in Asia continue to be victimized and trapped into exploitative conditions and gender-based oppression, including debt bondage, forced labour, trafficking, and contemporary forms of slavery.
Amidst all these, women and migrants continue to organize, form alliances, and struggle for their rights and livelihood. In Hong Kong, domestic workers – both local and migrant – have formed the Federation of Asian Domestic Workers’ Unions (FADWU). In Asia, migrant domestic workers have formed their self-representative Asian Migrant Domestic Workers’ Alliance (ADWA); local DWs have their regional Asian Domestic Workers Network (ADWN). The International Working Group of Domestic Workers (IWG-DW) and International Domestic Workers’ Network (IDWN) work together to coordinate and promote the “8-HR” campaign.
We honour IWD as the day for women to help raise their and the public’s consciousness of women’s issues, and inspire women throughout the world to organize and fight for their rights as women, as workers, as persons and as communities. IWD is a day for all women and men to dedicate our lives to the realization of “Human Rights for Women” and “Human Rights for All”.
Asian Migrant Centre
8 March 2008, Hong Kong |
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