The Working Women’s Coordination Committee, affiliated to the CITU, organised its district-level conference on the Challenges faced by working women in the years following liberalisation here on Saturday.
The decades following liberalisation and globalisation had empowered the contractual nature of labour, and legalised women’s employment at night.
Amid the altered landscape of work for women, have the requisite protections been put in place and have pay parity been enforced in the market economy were among many questions raised by the representatives meeting of the Working Women’s Coordination Committee.
The conference called for regularisation of eight-hour working norm, and guarantee of dignity and respect for women at work places; to enforce the Supreme Court direction of equal pay for equal work to rid gender disparities in pay; rid discrimination in promotions based on gender; rid gender discrimination and sexism in workplace and create an enabling employment for work; set up impartial internal complaints committee to deal with complaints of sexual harassment at workplace.
It also called for guaranteed protections and safe working environment for women engaged in hazardous occupations and night shift jobs; to create basic amenities include clean toilets and clean drinking water facilities for women at workplace; to provide for housing, health insurance, and education for children of working women among others.
The committee demanded that some of these protections that have taken legislative forms are yet to find implementation in the workplaces.
The committee has demanded that women’s safety and their right to work with dignity, economic security and respect were part of economic growth.
