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”Accelerating Gender Equality through Women’s Economic Justice”
The International Women Day comes every year as a global day established by the United Nations in 1972, to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, while also making a call to action for strengthening gender equality and accelerating women’s empowerment. It is the opportunity to examine the pathways to greater inclusion for women and girls everywhere, as well as to unlock the capacities of women to learn, earn, lead, and ensure the goal of Social Justice in the Economy is met as key milestone of investing in women.
For almost a decade now, the World Movement of Christian Workers has been publishing a message to mark its solidarity with the efforts made by various institutions to empower women. This year's message is a testimony from the Movement in Rwanda to the situation of women in that country.
In Rwanda, Gender equality and women's empowerment are achievable goals in the journey of transformation. Since 2003, when Gender equality was included in the constitution, stipulating 30% female representation in decision-making organs, implementing policies for women's development has become easier where by this has driven stronger advocacy for women's issues, resulting in the adoption of gender-sensitive policies and affirmative actions.
Notably, initiatives in education and entrepreneurship offer collateral support for bankable projects, particularly benefiting women and youth, fostering their participation in leadership and economic development. These efforts have positioned Rwanda at the forefront, with the majority of female representation in parliament at 61.3%. Despite advancements in Gender equality, challenges still persist for women in both rural and urban areas regarding their participation in existing markets, control over productive resources, and access to decent work, hindering their economic justice. The latest labor force survey (LBS) in Rwanda indicates that although overall labor force participation stands at 52.9%, women's participation remains notably lower at 44.4%, compared to 62.5% for men.
In response to some of the above-mentioned barriers, MTC Rwanda and other likeminded stakeholders are implementing programs to accelerate women’s economic empowerment through empowering women and girls with financial literacy trainings, vocational trainings, agricultural value chain projects, support Saving and Loan groups and facilitate their linkage with financial institutions to boost their access to finance. In addition, women are also supported through business mentorship programs, professional tools and networks in order to turn their ideas into successful businesses. The policy advocacy is also done to ensure equitable conducive environment for both females and males’ economic development.
Justice and fairness, in all their forms, are virtues that we Christians are called to cultivate, practice and disseminate (Proverbs 21:3; Micah 6:8). Let us unite and continue the fight for a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination, negative gender, cultural and social norms. A world that is diverse, equitable and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge Social Justice in the Economy for Women’s Lives.
Message written by MTC - RWANDA
Pictures by MTC Rwanda
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Let's hope for Christmas!
What is Christmas?
Are God, Father Christmas and Jesus some kind of Superman?
Christmas is a time of hope for the residents of our neighbourhoods, working together to improve their daily lives.
Christmas is a time of hope for children's dreams: dreams of extended families, dreams of shared gardens and towns in bloom, dreams of neighbourhood festivities! (...)
Waiting for the Saviour, In the Saviour's tent,
Let's prepare for Christmas!
What is Christmas?
What was the shepherds' compass on Christmas night?
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Every year, on the celebration of International Migrants Day on December 18, the World Movement of Christian Workers (WMCW) publishes a message with a double aim: to inform, raise awareness in the community on the situation of migrant workers and promote and strengthen solidarity between WMCW members and migrant workers. Each time, the message is written by a member movement of the WMCW based on the situation experienced in its own country. This year 2023, Guatemala will inspire our reflection and our action.
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“Decent work is productive work that provides fair income, rights, social protection and supports sustainable economic growth. It is a source of dignity and the foundation of peace, social justice, greater equality”, this is what we find on the ILO website. This year, Nicaragua is witnessing the reality experienced by its population on this subject. Following them, we invite all movements to seize this day to take up this question.
The country is experiencing a strifling and distressing overview for the Economically Active Population (EAP) who aspires to have a decent work and fair wages which fulfills all the basic needs and the expectations that an average family can have in Nicaragua.
At this moment, the economically active population of the country is 3.6 millions of people of which only a quarter part of it has a formal job, the rest of population is underemployed or has an informal job from which they earn some income to support their families.
In general, the population recognises that the lack of employment is the main problem facing Nicaragua.
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On 1st May, 1886: a great day of mobilisation in all the factories of Chicago (United State) to demand the 8-hour working day. This strike set the basis for the struggle to change the labour and living conditions of workers all over the world, which is still going on today.
In fact, activists of WMCW movements find today with many workers and their families who experience very difficult living conditions due to the precarious work and low wages. Some do not eve have the bare minimum to survive. In some countries, such as Dominican Republic, the social security system only serves to enrich the intermediaries known as “Administrators of Health Hazards” and the Pension Funds which do not guarantee any illness coverage or a fair income in retirement or unemployment. The poorest are excluded from the system.
The economic policy, combined to the post pandemic situation, benefits only one group, while the most of the population can only cover a minimum of the basic family basket of goods. According to UN, the economy in the differente regions in the planet, is not all favourable. It states that for Latin America and the Caribbean, the economic outlook is complicated by the external international conditions that are normalising the macroeconomy, and by a high persistent inflation.
New technologies cause the suppression or devaluation of certain types of jobs, pushing many peopel into the informal economy without any kind of protection or security.
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From 24th to 31st March, 2023, 75 delegates representing to movements affiliated to World Movement of Christian Workers, from 25 countries from four continents, met in Lourdes (France), on the occasion of its XIV General Congress.
Under the slogan “Social justice for an economy of life”, we shared workers’ lives of our countries and regions. Using the method See-Judge-Act, we analysed the causes ot the different situations denounced and we decided on the actions to be taken in the global movement and in the local movements.
We have confirmed that the main cause of the dehumanising situations who live workers all over the world is the same one: the unbridled pursuit of profit by the few. This race for money is not only devastating for the human beings, but also it is destroying the environment and depredating the Mother Earth. The whole future of humanity is at stake.
This congress held in France, in the midst of social and trade union mobilisation, we have shown our solidarity with the French workers who are fighting for to respect of their labour rights, threatened by the current government who intends to increase the retirement age and thus to undermine their quality of life,
The migrant situation also drew our attention, especially the youth that, without future in their countries, is forced to leave to other horizons. In these migrations, they are sometimes endagered to die, leaving their families in debt, as happened recently with the tragic fire in a so called “temporary” centre in Juarez City,Chihuahua, Mexico, where 40 Guatemalan migrants died.
We have also highlighted the admirable work of all those people and, particularly of those women, who with their entrepreneurial spirit and initiative are trying to generate independent employment, to find better living conditions in their country.
We also encourage to men and women, driven by their faith in risen Christ, to continue their struggle for greater justice, equality and fraternity. In this sense, we also want to encourage to the youth all over the world to keep fighting for a more just world and to build themselves a future.
Concluding, we have made our own, pope Francis’s words, about “the need to create a new economy of friendship with the earth and an economy of peace”, “to transform an economy that kills into an economy of life”.
May Jesus Worker and Virgin of Lourdes give us light and strength to keep fighting for a social justice and an economy of life,
Lourdes, on 31st March, 2023
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A day strongly rooted in the history of working movement.
In 1910 in Copenhagen, during the 2nd International Socialist Women’s Conference, which gathered to a hundred of women from 17 different countries, the idea of an “An International Women’s Day” was adopted.
The first International Women’s Day was celebrated the next year, on 19th March 1911, to demand women’s right to vote, to work and the end of her discrimination at work.
On 25th March, a fire during a seamstresses’ strike at a Triangle Shirtwaist textile mill in New York kills to 140 of the 500 workers, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, locked inside the factory. Some of them were only 14. This tragedy, linked to the exploitation of working woman, had a strong impact and later, it was commemorated during the International Women’s Day, that, then, it was linked women’s fight to working movement.
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TO LIVE THE UNIVERSAL FRATERNITY WITH MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
Migrants and refugees are exploited and discriminated against in their destinations. It is necessary to promote sustainable development and ensure the dignity of all human beings, including migrants. In 2022, more than 100 million refugees around the world (the source is UNHCR) have been forced to flee their homes to flee their fears due to persecution and violence caused by conflict and civil war. In 2021, the number of refugee recognition applicants in Japan was 2,413. As a result of the refugee recognition procedure, 654 foreigners were allowed to stay in Japan. Of these, only 74 foreigners were recognized as refugees, and 580 were not recognized as refugees but were allowed to stay in Japan due to humanitarian considerations. The number of foreign residents in Japan is 2,961,969 as of the end of June 2022.
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In a world beset by conflict, marked by deep inequalities and ecologically unsustainable, decent work represents a route to peace and social justice. In fact, as the Universal Church1 states, it is access to free, creative, participatory and inclusive work, as well as land and shelter that enables each of us to earn a dignified living. It also ensures that we are collectively able to take care of the planet and make this world a more habitable and beautiful place. Decent work enables us to walk together as a people towards a more dignified life. Access to work for all is an inalienable priority.
We have embraced His Holiness Pope Francis’ appeal to remain engaged and move forward together on the path of intergenerational dialogue, education and work.2
We condemn the exclusion of many migrant workers from employment and social rights. Workers who provide essential services often lack sufficient social recognition and decent working conditions. Working conditions, resulting in increasingly impoverished working families, do not ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met, nor are they compatible with personal and family care needs, particularly in a global context of soaring prices and rampant inflation.
“Informal” work does not promote personal, family and community development and endangers the fundamental principles underlying social cohesion, peaceful coexistence and social justice. It does not promote the implementation of collective social achievements and does not offer many people, particularly young people and women, any prospects for the future.
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Confinement due to Covid-19 began two years ago and in Uganda, after almost two years workers have experienced unspeakable stories of suffering and despair. Many workers have lost their jobs due to the long period of confinement and unemployment levels have risen.
Uganda was one of the countries with the longest lockdown period, from 1 April 2020 to January 2022, when the economy was fully reactivated. Informal entrepreneurs had no income during this period and had to dip into their own savings, rely on government food aid or seek help from family and friends to survive. This means that during the period of closure, most workers found themselves in a subsistence economy.
The conditions of confinement have affected almost all sectors of the labour market. The number of people employed in Uganda has declined from 9 million in 2016/17 to 8.3 million in 2019/20. This led to many wage earners losing their jobs. Other workers were forced to close their businesses.
Due to the unemployment situation in the country, even before the pandemic, Uganda used to export labour to the Middle East, especially to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This was despite reports of poor working conditions. The number of Ugandan migrants has decreased from 25,363 in 2019 to 9,026 in 2020, due to the effects of the pandemic. This explains the extent of the impact of confinement on workers in Uganda and globally.
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International Women’s Day, that has its origin in a tragical event on 8th March in 1908, we receive it again in 2022 in the midst of a health pandemic which has wreaked havoc in the economies and societies in the world and, at the same time, it has showed us the structural inequalities in the development in all areas of our lives.
In this particular time of crisis, women have been at the frontline inside and outside the home. In the private sphere, more than three times the hours of unpaid care work already fell on their backs, the pandemic increased them; and, in the social sphere, their role has been essential in running the soup kitchens, the neighbourhood self-organising, the health promotion, in the neighbourhoods, even when the personal resources and institutional capacity have been limited and the rights recognized, have also been threatened. Despite this work by women, social and protection systems were broken up and calls for help, complaints of violence and the sexual abuse have increased. Women were left at the expense of domestic violence in conditions of greater vulnerability, taking place a rise of feminicides as the cruellest expression against them.
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The Church and the world are expecting a lot from us. I start with this statement because we are looking at the effort and commitment of our Pope Francis in doing that the great community of Jesus Project’s followers joins around him, understands the dimension of this proposal that it goes far beyond from those who confess our creed, that reaches to all workers around the world and in every corner of planet, this our House, threatened dangerously today by the disease of consumerism, the greed, negationism, intolerance, rotten fruits of selfishness, this evil that was so struggled by the one who, by Love, gave his life by all us.
These times living are really strange, saddened by the number of deaths resulting from a pandemic, but also by the precariousness in which millions of victims of unemployment live, aggravated by the disease, but also by the mechanisms of wealth concentration of the powerful. We are saddened deeply to see to millions starving to death, despite all the technological advances in food production, but even more saddened by the waste. How worrying it is to see whole families moving aimless, hopeless, frightened by ethnic, religious and political conflicts, looking for a place where they can have peace; families barred by barbed wire, electrified fences, police with water jets and dogs that scare, humiliate and kill. This horrible scene we are witnessed, designed by a death project and produced by a system that nothing has to offer to humanity, is also wounded of death, as Mother Earth, it is dying; but the Mother will recover, due to the wounds, but the perverse system will pass, as others have done.
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Nowadays, according UN data, there have not been so many people in the world who are displacing and living outside their place of origin. In 2019, there were 272 million of migrants all over the world, 51 million more than in 2010, Is this a problem? No, quite the opposite!
Migration is a historic opportunity to meetings, cultural enrichment, and exchange of skills among peoples and citizens of the world to progress together and to face the great challenges of humanity. The pandemic we are experiencing shows that migrants often bring their skills to face it, in particular by working in health services, transport, catering and many personal services. We cannot forget that migrants are, above all, workers. They are our brothers and sisters.
Many economists agree that migration is often an opportunity for the economy of the host country.
And, however, recent news reports us terrifying pictures. The Mediterranean Sea has become a cemetery for people who flee from poverty and wars. All over the world, migrants are singled out, arrested, persecuted, and harassed. We have still on mind the images of the police tearing the tarpaulins of migrants’ tents in several French towns, as Calais, but also in Paris! We are horrified to see women, men and children sleeping outdoors on Polish and Belorussian frontier. Europe has the duty of hospitality. But, today, migrants are used as scapegoats. This is useful to hide to those who are really responsible of social and environmental crises, those who run a system in which the financial gain predominates over the human beings.
Instead of welcoming and knowing people, walls are being built in many places. Today, there are more than 1000 km of walls in Europe and the world has never seen so many built. As if many countries were trying to entrench themselves against the poorest.
We are movements of workers. We are well aware that precariousness in which the migrant populations are, force them to work in indecent labour conditions. This situation also serves to question the social benefits of workers in the host country and to divide the workers among them. Acting for and above all with the migrants also means to act for all the workers’ rights. This was reminded in France by the undocumented workers who dared to go on strike in November 2021, with their trade union to demand the regularization of their situation.
We also think of all the activists of WMCW movements who work with migrants. In this way, ACO activists in Bordeaux, France, explain why they are involved: “This lack of humanity strikes us deeply, because the dignity of these people has been violated. Our commitments of fraternity, of support with the associations are reinforced before the violence with the human beings are treated”. The activists are taking measures in other cities of France, as Calais, in the region of Paris, in the south of France, etc.
