Feminism and the unions IN WEST GERMANY, of course, the unions in general are male-dominated organizations, and they follow a policy that is very far from offering a consistent defense of women's interests. Likewise, the need for waging an offensive struggle against the specific oppression of women in their own ranks is the least of their concerns.
This, however, has not kept active women trade unionists from becoming radicalized today and for years earlier around all aspects of their lives, as women and trade unionists. Nor has it kept them from gaining, slowly but surely, a voice in their organizations. CORERIR ENORRM demanded the abolition of Paragraph 218 without any sort of replacement for it.
Today, the leadership of the public services union (OTV) supports the demand of the feminists. And the motion of the IG Metall women's conference took a clear stand on this. It said that after ten years' experience with the system of "indications," (that is, everything that restricts the right to abortion), the women members of this union have come to the conclusion that the only possible answer is the right of women, and women alone, to choose in full independence and freedoin.
For women trade unionists, demands for equality concretely mean plans for promoting women and job quotas, which they see as representing a step forward on the road to self-determination.
In relation to the problems existing in their own ranks, the Greens asked Sybille Plogstedt and Kathleen Bode to make a study of sexual harassment
STEFFIE ENGERT
Leafing through the unions' women's publications, as well as through congress documents, you see a real influence of feminist ideas.
pregnancy, or in certain cases within
22 weeks. The traditional position of the unions was to support such restrictions, while the women's movement on the job. Its contents have proved explosive, including in the unions. This theme is at present a key axis of the work of many of the IG Metall women's cominissions, along with the still acute question of equal rights and
This is beginning to be reflected in the application of some concepts. For example, in a contribution to the most recent women's conference of IG Metall, the union women's commission correctly wrote the following about the dismantling of social gains:
"This policy is obstructing the emancipation of women. If the welfare state is dismantled and the responsibilities linked to human reproduction again fall on individuals alone, this would mean the going back on a large scale to the patriarchal capitalist structures of domination."
Hans Mayr himself, a member of the IG Metall leadership, felt obliged to use the term "patriarchal" in his report to the congress. This could not, however, conceal the fact that he had no serious proposal to make for taking up the fight against such things.
Concepts, of course, have their importance for developing consciousness of a problem. But, as the example of Mayr well shows, they can also serve as decorations and distractions. The concrete content of advanced demands is far more important. Union supports feminist demands on abortion law
One of the events that will go down in the history of women's work by the unions is the turn that we saw with respect to Paragraph 218 of the penal code, which permits abortion oniy in the first 12 weeks of
Women workers participate in the 35-hour struggle (DR)
Solidarital mit den
Lusoesnercien
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International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
equal pay and the more recent campaigns on quotas and the fight against Paragraph 218.
The women trade-union activists do not spare the men in their own organizations, even if the IG Metall resolution says nothing about the sexual harassment that women face from their male coworkers in the union. It does, however, mention sexual aggression by some male trade unionists against women employed by the union.
In any case, it can be seen that women are more and more on the offensive in training seminars in denouncing this sort of behavior. And in this, they are being supported by progressive instructors.
It should be noted that this question was already the subject of a contribution to the OTV congress last year. This document demanded modifications of Paragraphs 177 and 179 of the penal code (on rape and sexual aggression) to get "every forced penetration or forced relationship (anal, oral, or vaginal) punished as rape; psychological violence as a form of violence for purposes of sexual constraint punished; and rape within marriage also punished."
The OTV also supports the demand that the practice of questioning rape victims about their sex lives be ended, and that rape by intimates not be treated as a "lesser offense." These are demands that the women's movement has been putting forward for years.
It has been above all in connection with union training courses that we have seen the demand for organizing women in their own right come to the fore. The IG Metall women have demanded that in trade-union training sessions the historical role of women and the special treatment reserved for them under capitalism and the patriarchy be taken into consideration. Moreover, so that union women can participate in the union seminars, they are strongly demanding facilities for collective childcare by qualified personnel.
Even if the women in the unions are continuing to focus on the demand for equality and if they do not often talk about women's liberation, they nonetheless fix their sights more and more on their self-determination.
If we really want women to become the equals of men, the OTV women in Lower Saxony wrote in the union press in February 1985, "A bit more consideration has to be given to women, and men will have to occupy a bit less space.
From the January 9 issue of Was
Tun,' paper of the German section of the Fourth International 20