### Latin American women meet in Havana Over 350 women representing 101 women's organisations met in Havana last November to assess the progress toward equality during the United Nations (UN) decade of women. The women came from 39 different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. They made an analysis of the obstacles for women which still remain and drew up plans for the future in the region. This meeting came in advance of a regional meeting of governments to prepare the worldwide Nairobi conference, taking place in July.
Socorro RAMIREZ
The representative from CEPAL (the Latin American economic studies unit), Vivian Motta, stressed that the decade of women was winding up in the context of an economic crisis that has also affected the Third World. She stated that the crisis has hit women more than any other section of the population, producing a deterioration in the living conditions of a major proportion. She pointed to the gains already made in the last ten years in which a thorough analysis of women's position had been made and which witnessed an increase in the participation of women in social, political and alternative movements, such as the women's movement. Awareness and solidarity had also been strengthened. And certain legal advances had been obtained, as well as an increase in the activity of non-governmental organisations.
The meeting agreed to make Reagan's inauguration day, a day of mourning and of Latin American unity, with women marching in black against the continuiing policy of imperialist aggression. It also agreed to mark International Women's Day on March 8 with the creation of the 'International Women's Front' against US intervention and 'to build a wall of strength and love through sisters weeping together to try to create a barrier of women to stop the threat to peace in Central America.'
Progress towards women's equality has now become unstoppable. In 1978, only 14 countries had ratified the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. (1) By 1984, only Paraguay and a few Caribbean countries had failed to ratify. However, this has not necessarily resulted, in the majority of countries, in the adoption of the necessary measures.
The annual report of the International Development Bank (IDB) in 1982 shows that the Gross National Product of 25 countries in the region has declined by more than 3%. Per capita income had gone down by 10% in countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guyana and Uruguay. The external debt of the region has surpassed the 350 million dollar mark. More than two thirds of new loans have to be given over solely to the payment of this debt which increases because of arbitrary rises in interest rates.
A further obstacle in the way of positive gains in the last ten years is the existence of dictatorial regimes which have systematically violated human rights. Arms' spending accounted for 600 million dollars in 1982.
Women are only 20% of the economically active population, except in Cuba where they are 38.9% (in Havana 44.9% of women are looking for work for the first time). In the region, women are still largely concentrated in the textile and light industries, in the service industries and in the home work sector and as street vendors.
In the countryside women represent 17% of the workforce, and 24% in Cuba. Of course, unpaid work done by women on the family plot is not included in these figures. In Chile and Uruguay unemployment is more than 30%, in Jamaica it is 27% and in Panama, 14.2%.
Convention No 100 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on equal pay has now been ratified by 15 countries, but in the majority of them huge wage differentials still exist, aggravated by the lesser trained skills of the female workforce. The World Health Organisation says that in the Caribbean, 40% of women are heads of households, in Paraguay, 37%, and Uruguay 20.9%, a situation resulting either from actual separation, from husband's emigration or from desertion. Both the multi-nationals and the maquiladoras (2) operate a system of super-exploitation of women and the family. The policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also have 1. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination was launched by the United Nations in 1979. See International Viewpoint, No. 70, February 25, 1984.
Maquiladores are factories which function as subsidiaries of US based corporations. They deal in one small part of the production process which gives them greater flexibility. Most of the workers in these factories are women and because of the method of production they are super-exploited.
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unfavourable consequences on the employment of women in the public and private sectors and for the living conditions of people in these countries.
In relation to trade union activity, there has been no greater involvement of women because of a lack of means of overcoming the contradictions in their situation as mothers and as workers; because of poor maternity and childeare provision and the increasingly difficult conditions under which women have to manage the household. Through deductions from their wages, women workers pay for maternity leave, but they are obliged to officially hand in their resignation at the start of the leave which the employers can always accept at their convenience. Women workers are also obliged to undergo urine tests in order to ascertain whether they are pregnant.
We must work for the establishment of health programmes for women at all stages of their lives and in all circumstances. It is also necessary to raise demands around sexuality which is vital to the physical, psychological and social wellbeing of all women and men, in the framework of equality of the sexes. We are for a sexuality free from the ideology of women as sexual objects open to exploitation, submission and violence. We are for women's control over their own bodies, over how many children they have and when, as well as for more liberal laws for terminating a pregnancy when it is unwanted. Women's work not recognised
Because of the traditional division of labour and because of the mobility of the male workforce, part of the agricultural work falls on women who usually take part in every stage of the production cycle, including planting, harvest and tending the animals. They carry the major responsibility for work on the family plots and for care of the domestic animals, raising pigs, tending cattle, and milk production. But this work is not recognised or remunerated because the middling peasants are the sole owners of the land and as heads of the family the men are responsible for all transactions. So however much peasant women may need loans or training they cannot get them because the title-holders are men, even in the situation where a woman is the de facto head of a household.
On the large latifundias, women's temporary work is given the minimum remuneration without any kind of social provision. It is vital to guarantee to women as well as men, the redistibution of the productive resources under their control, along with the establishment of special training programmes for women.
Forty-four million Latin American and Caribbean people, 25 million of them women, are illiterate. The insufficient 26 resourcing by the state of education and social training, combined with the dispersal of the population and the early inclusion of women in agricultural work, mean that women find themselves outside of the educational process.
Although the trend is toward equal numbers of boys and girls entering primary school, it is also true that women tend to leave school before reaching the higher grades.
The number of women in higher education has slowly gone up, with a concentration on careers in the arts, letters and teaching. Because of poor scheduling and poor materials only 35 out of every hundred taking part in adult education are women.
On all levels, education must be oriented in accordance with professional criteria and not sex stereotypes. It will be necessary to revise educational methods in order to present a more positive image of women that will make it easier to change attitudes. The women's organisations should promote informal educational activities aimed to inform women about their rights and make them aware of what opportunities exist to become fully integrated into society.
They should also conduct study plans and programmes involving sex education.
Other problems facing women are the lack of adequate housing, poor sanitary conditions, hunger, the inadequate medical and hospital facilities available to 100 million Latin Americans, poor diet, and the anaemia related to dietary deficiencies.
Every year more than a million children under the age of five die in Latin America and the Caribbean, and more than 40 million suffer damage. According to UNICEF, most of these deaths stem from avoidable causes, such as ignorance of the elementary notions of hygiene, nutrition, or the lack of safe drinking water. The deterioration in living conditions have led to alcoholism, drug abuse, and vagrancy, as well as to crimes such as child prostitution. There are 30 million abandoned children.
The media are being used to reinforce ideas of white supremacy to the detriment of Blacks, Indians and mestizos, who are shown in "quaint" folk settings. Women are portrayed as passive consumers with no thought of looking for alternative solutions.
Attitudes, prejudices and conceptions that reflect a decadent image of women, which isolate women from society, perpetuate the tradition of female submissiveness and inferiority, and block possibilities for personal and collective development are being reinforced.
In their programmes, the media should maintain a respectful image of women, put a rein on wasteful consumerism, violence and pornography, and stimuli to egotistic individualism. They should support efforts to advance a new approach in mass communication and alternative forms according to the majority of participants in the meeting.
### EGYPT Defend
Egyptian socialists
On January 21, the Egyptian police staged a series of arrests. Thirty persons were taken in. Eleven were accused of belonging to the Egyptian Communist Party-Congress Faction (a left split from the Egyptian CP) and 19 of membership in • a "Trotskyist Communist Organisation."
According to reports by Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, as well as by the Egyptian daily Al Ahram of January 22 - 28, the persons arrested, including one woman, were a doctor, a journalist, a pharmacist, a teacher, a translator, two lawyers, three engineers, six government employees and seven students.
These thirty persons jailed were charged with "belonging to secret armed Communist organisations." And were to be tried in the State Security Court. The prosecution was demanding sentences of 15 years in prison at hard labor on the basis of charges such as possession of pamphlets that "incited people to rebel and demonstrate against the regime, and criticised religion,"
The persons arrested have just been released, but it is not yet clear whether the government intends to go ahead with the prosecution. Indeed, this case seems to illustrate well both the systematic repression against the revolutionary left by the Egyptian regime and its present need to try to maintain a democratic face. In these conditions, international protests against instances of political repression can be very important.
### SYRIA Fl supports
Syrian socialists The Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International affirms its fraternal solidarity with the struggles of the comrades of the Communist Action Party in Syria against the brutal dictatorship of Hafez El-Assoud. The congress particularly affirms its solidarity with the 170 comrades held in the dictatorship's prisons on accusation of belonging to the CAP. The Fourth International undertakes to continue and step up its struggle for the release of these comrades.
International Viewpoint 25 March 1985