AUT: MLNA - International Women's Day Issue

[Dan La Botz <103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
March 1998
Vol. III, Special Issue: International Women's Day
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               About Mexican Labor News and Analysis

     Mexican Labor News and Analysis is produced in collaboration
with the Authentic Labor Front (Frente Autentico del Trabajo -
FAT) of Mexico and with the United Electrical Workers (UE) of the
United States and is published the 2nd and 16th of every month. =


     MLNA can be viewed at the UE's international web site:
HTTP://www.igc.apc.org/unitedelect/. For information about direct
subscriptions, submission of articles, and all queries contact
editor Dan La Botz at the following e-mail address:
103144.2651@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or call in the U.S. (513) 961-8722.
The U.S. mailing address is: Dan La Botz, Mexican Labor News and
Analysis, 3436 Morrison Place, Cincinnati, OH 45220.

     MLNA articles may be reprinted by other electronic or print
media, but we ask that you credit Mexican Labor News and Analysis
and give the UE home page location and Dan La Botz's compuserve
address.

     The UE Home Page which displays Mexican Labor News and
Analysis has an INDEX of back issues and an URGENT ACTION ALERT
section.

     Staff: Editor, Dan La Botz; Correspondents in Mexico: Bob
Briggs, Peter Gellert, Jess Kincaid, Wendy Patterson, Jorge
Robles, Juan-Carlos Romero, Fred Rosen, Don Sherman, Sam Smucker,
Linda Stevenson.
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Dear Readers,

     International Women's Day, March 8, officially recognized
and celebrated in Mexico, represents an occasion for reflection
on the status of women in general, and for us an opportunity to
assess the status of women union members, workers, peasants and
the poor. The status of women represents one of the most
important measures in any society of the commitment to social
justice. Put another way, in an old adage: the rising of the
women is the rising of us all. So in addition to our labor
coverage, we offer here several articles on the state of the
women's movement and working women in Mexico.

     Dan La Botz, Editor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
IN THIS ISSUE:

     *First National Women's Parliament Meets, Discusses Labor
          by Linda Stevenson
     *Women's Struggles on Many Fronts
     *Women Hold Third Annual Fair in Mexico City
          by Linda Stevenson
     *Women: The New Leaders in Mexican Society
          by Dan La Botz
     *Social Statistics on Women
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               FIRST NATIONAL WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT;
               WOMEN DEBATE LABOR, SOCIAL SECURITY

                    by Linda S. Stevenson
     =

     For the first time ever in the history of Mexico on March 7
and 8, female politicians and civil society activists met
together in the Chamber of Deputies (the Mexican Congress). In
commemoration of the March 8 International Day of Women, the
Senate and National Chamber of Deputies' Commissions on Equity
and Gender, in coordination with the National Assembly of Women--
comprised of approximately 40 non-governmental organizations from
both national and Mexico City women's networks--organized a
two-day conference or "Parliament" on women's policy issues.  =


     The event took place in the Chamber of Deputies to highlight
the importance of the change of this institution from an
executive and one-party-controlled, patriarchal space to a more
plural, democratic, and proportionally representative part of
Mexican democracy in August 1997.

     Not only do five political parties have to share power for
the first time in 70 years since the Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) no longer has an absolute majority, but this Congress
is the most gender-balanced ever (although far from being 50/50)
with the highest proportions of women deputies and senators ever
elected: 17.2% female deputies, and 21.9% female senators. =


                    Feminist Consciousness

     There is a strong feminist consciousness among these female
deputies and senators, and a desire to represent women's demands
during this legislative period, alongside the interests of their
parties and states. One example of their political will is the
creation of the first Federal Commissions on Equity and Gender in
October of last year, in spite of controversy and opposition. =


     Part of the purpose of the March 7-8 Parliament was to
spread the federal-level support for gendered issues to the
states, and to create state-level commissions and policies to
address women's demands at that level.  =


     Some 1300 women attended the event. Among them were local
and state female legislators from all over the Republic, as well
as from the federal level, and politically active women from
non-governmental groups, academia, and small political parties,
which span the political and ideological spectrum.

     Bringing all of these women together fulfilled another
motive for the Parliament, which was to build on, strengthen, and
expand the plural and consensus-building forms of doing politics
that feminists and women's movements have been using for the past
two decades in Mexican politics.

     Although the degree of legislative success, let alone
implementation of gendered policies is yet to be seen, and some
serious obstacles will be confronted along the way, the Women's
Parliament will be remembered as an important historical moment
in the process of the institutionalization of feminism and the
feminization and democratization of Mexico's political
institutions.

                    Gendered Reforms Debated

     After the inauguration of the National Women's Parliament on
March 7, the attendees divided up into working groups around nine
women's issues: 1) reforms to civil, penal and procedural
legislation on intrafamiliar violence; 2) legislation on
education and women; 3) the Federal Labor Law (LFT) and social
security legislation; 4) civil code on family relations; 5) the
general health law and its relation with women; 6) review of the
situation of peasant women and their agrarian rights; 7) equal
participation for women in public administration and popular
election positions; 8) indigenous women and their rights; 9)
social communication and women.

     In the session on Federal Labor Law (LFT) and the social
security legislation, 78 proposals were brought to the table. =

Due to lack of time, only 38 were presented, but all will be
included in the proceedings of the Parliament. This large number
of proposals reveals the great number of groups that are working
on eliminating discrimination against women in the workplace. =


     Ever since the conservative National Action Party (PAN)
presented a series of proposals for reforms that would benefit
women in the National Congress in 1996, complementary and counter
proposals have been generated by other parties, women's
non-governmental organizations, and unions. Representatives of
the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)
commented that their party's complete labor law proposal will be
made public after approval at their annual national party
convention, to be held March 18-25.

     One of the key issues on which consensus was reached in the
working group was a decision to advocate for legislation to
prohibit pregnancy tests as a part of the hiring process (a
common practice in the maquiladora industry). Pregnant women have
the right to work as much as any other.

     Also related to biological discrimination against women in
the workplace, strong proposals were made to prohibit the firing
of women who become pregnant while employed. Concretely, the
legislation would switch the burden of proof. At present, when a
pregnant woman is fired, the burden of proof of unfair
discrimination is on her. Under the new proposal, the employer
would have to show the reasons for termination before the worker
is fired, and pregnancy could not be the motive.

     Such a change would mark an essential change in the current
patriarchal and employer-biased Mexican juridical process. It
would also potentially set a precedent for more equitable legal
relations between men and women workers, as well as between
employees and employers in Mexico.

     Other issues that were widely discussed include: the need to
strengthen the 1990 law against sexual harassment in the
workplace; the need for employers to take daycare into
consideration; affirmative action for women in decision-making
positions in unions and the workplace, by way of proportional
representation of the rank and file, among others. =


           Strong Consensus, but Ideological Divide

     In the concluding plenary on March 8, a summary of the
agreements made in the working session on the 78 proposals for
the Federal Labor Law was made by PAN Deputy Patricia Espinosa
Torres. All seemed satisfied with the summary until all of a
sudden during the last presentation, a small group of women
yelling their demands interrupted the discourse with an
appearance at the front of the chamber. They carried a huge
banner demanding the protection of workers' rights. The near
assault by the press to photo the occurrence and interview the
women increased the degree of disruption of the plenary
session. =


     After multiple calls of the chair of the session went
unheeded, finally the well-known leader of the National Peasant
Confederation (CNC) affiliated with the Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI), Senator Beatriz Paredes rose to the
stand. She explained to the audience that these women felt their
demands had not been adequately registered in the public summary
by the PAN deputy. She suggested they move to another salon to
discuss the matter so that the session could continue. They left
shortly thereafter.  =


     In the end an amendment was made to the Federal Labor Law
summary that proposals from this forum not impede in any way upon
the basic rights of workers, as currently exists in the Mexican
labor code. The amendment was added to the minutes of the
Parliament, as solicited by the women with the banner.  =


     A later revelation that these women were representatives of
the Popular Socialist Party (PPS) shows that differences in
ideological stances still exist in the discussions of women's
issues. Such differences were especially evident in the areas of
labor law, and around reproductive rights related to the
decriminalization of abortion. =


                            ###

               WOMEN'S STRUGGLES ON MANY FRONTS:
               MAYAN INDIANS, LESBIANS, WORKERS

     Women throughout Mexico took advantage of International
Women's Day (March 8), and the week or two preceding and
following it, to rally, march, demonstrate and protest over a
wide variety of issues and problems confronting women. In some
cases women's protest simply happened to coincide with the
universal women's celebration.

     In Mexico City the group Enlace Lesbico, a lesbian
organization, accompanied by local representative Virginia
Jaramillo, demonstrated at the Legislative Assembly of the
Federal District to demand that the government recognize and meet
the needs and demands of lesbians. =


     Adela Mabarac, a member of Enlace Lesbico, said her group is
fighting so that lesbian couples can have social security
coverage, so that their children cannot be taken from them, so
that they will be respected at work, and to stop the harassment
and blackmail to which they are subjected.

     In the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas, Mayan Indian women
marched 14 kilometers from la Realidad to Guadalupe Tepeyac, a
town occupied by the Mexican Army since February 1995. There the
women wrecked  a military trench protecting a helicopter landing
strip. The women carried signs in Spanish saying, "No One Shall
Stop Our Voices" and "We Are the Seeds of Rebellion and We Shall
Bear Fruit."

     Claribel, a Mayan Indian woman, spoke to the assembled
group: "Some day in this place where tanks now stand, there will
be tractors; where traps and trenches now flourish, there will be
furrows of corn, beans and coffee; instead of soldiers, there
will be teachers and students; and there will be a little park to
dance with our brothers and sisters of this nation and of the
world in all the anniversaries of the international day of the
woman revolutionary."

     It was not planned as part of International Women's Day
activities, but in late February in Empalme Sonora, 66-year old
Lydia Cano, widow of a railroad worker, organized a "marcha de
las cazuelas," or march of the pots and pans in which women and
children filed through the town in support of the striking
railroad workers. "The women beat on the pots and pans as symbols
of hunger and unemployment," said Cano, as they joined the fight
to protect the jobs and contracts of their fathers, husbands, and
sons. For Cano such protests are nothing new. She had
participated in the 1959 railroad strike, suppressed by the
Mexican Army. Mexican women have a long history of struggle.

                            ###

                WOMEN HOLD THIRD ANNUAL FAIR
               IN MEXICO CITY'S NATIONAL PLAZA

                    by Linda S. Stevenson
   =

     Nearly sixty women's organizations came together to
commemorate International Women's Day in Mexico's national plaza
(the "Zocalo") on Sunday, March 8. The theme of this year's event
was "Without women's human rights, there are no human rights."  =


     This theme is in conjunction with the 50 year anniversary of
the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
is being celebrated and used anew as a form of pressure around
the world to work for new ways or to bolster existing ways of
defending human rights.  =


     Long-time activists, newcomers, and curious passers-by
perused and purchased articles made by the organizations
(including a range of things "feminine" from home-baked cookies
to female condoms), and feminist publications on any- and
every-thing about women's issues. =


     Speeches of the day revolved around the issues of violence
against women in Mexico. The achievements of laws mandating the
existence of specialized agencies to attend to victims of sex
crimes (95% of whom are women) were praised. But the thrust of
the speeches was that there is still much to be done and much to
be demanded from Chiapas, with indigenous women defending their
land and their rights, to Ciudad Juarez, where women in the
maquiladoras fight for just working conditions and equitable,
dignified wages.
                         ###
     =

          WOMEN: THE NEW LEADERS IN MEXICAN SOCIETY

                    by Dan La Botz

     Women represent the new activists and leaders in the labor
movement and the forces fighting for democracy in Mexico. For the
past 25 years women have in various ways been transforming the
Mexican unions, social movements and politics. Omnipresent in
Mexican labor as domestic workers, peasant laborers, service and
industrial workers, public employees and professionals women have
acted as catalysts of democratic change and progressive social
struggles. Nowhere have they been more important than in the
labor unions. =


     This new important role for women has not been easily
achieved. Within the workplace and the unions women remain in
many cases second class citizens. At work many women face sexual
harassment on the job, pregnancy tests to get or keep a job, wage
and job discrimination, lack of adequate child care facilities
and in many cases sexist treatment as social inferiors. In the
unions, women find that men dominate the organizations, holding
the key positions at almost all but the lowest levels, while
sexism and machismo often undermine the equality and solidarity
that should exist in a labor organization. =


     But remarkably, against these institutional barriers and
behaviors, women have been central figures in the fight for
democratic reform in the labor movement, while at the same time
fighting for feminist reform in their workplaces and unions.
Their determined struggle has changed the Mexican union movement.
 =

     One cannot conceive of the new National Union of Workers
(UNT) without the push from women workers. Women make up large
minorities or majorities in some of Mexico's most progressive
unions: the teachers' union, the social security workers' union,
the flight attendants union, the university workers' unions, and
the independent federation called the Authentic Labor Front
(FAT). Without the thousands of women activists and hundreds of
local leaders in these unions, there would be no new Mexican
labor movement. =


     Women have also been powerful forces for change in other
social movements and in politics. In the countryside, women in
Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and in scores of
regional and local peasant organizations play roles as courageous
activists and leaders. In the Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD) women members and leaders represent much of the party's
leadership, activist membership and its voters. In what Mexicans
call civil society, the broad social movement for civil and
political rights, women have been among the organizers and
leaders of groups such as the Civic Alliance (Alianza Civica).

               The Radical Movement of the 1960s

     Women played an important role in the Mexican Revolution
(1910-1920) and again in the upheavals of the 1930s, but the
women's and feminist movements of today have their origins in the
experiences of the "generation of 1968." In the mid-1960s in
Mexico a new democratic student movement emerged, mainly made up
of and led by men but with many women participants. Defending the
Cuban Revolution of 1959 and demanding in democracy in Mexico
City, the young men and women of the 1960s opened a new era.
Their drive for freedom clashed with the state.

     After the Mexican Army's 1968 massacre of as many as 300
students at Tlatelolco, thousands of young men and women joined
the organizations of the new revolutionary left and went off to
organize peasants, workers and the urban poor. While some few
took up arms as guerrilla revolutionaries, most went to work in
peasant organizations, unions and community groups attempting to
link revolutionary ideas to the social movements.

     Men dominated the leftist revolutionary organizations, but
women also made up a good number of these Castroist, Maoist, and
Trotskyist revolutionaries. Whatever the weaknesses of those
organizations, they helped train a generation of women in social
and political activism. But those new left also produced a
reaction against machismo and male domination. =


          The Birth of the Modern Women's Movement

     In the early 1970s, influenced by the feminist movement of
the United States and by a visit of Betty Friedan to Mexico City,
Mexican women began to launch their own women's liberation
movement. The United Nations International Year of the Women held
in Mexico City in 1975 created a controversy out of which came a
division between women prepared to work with President Echeverria
and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and those who
wanted an independent women's movement. =


     Organized mainly by independent leftist women, the new
feminist movement of the 1970s oriented toward the urban poor,
peasants and workers. But radical, mostly middle class feminists
challenging machismo, fighting for social and political equality,
advocating abortion and defending lesbianism found that the
working class women's movement had its own issues: the fight for
running water, sewers, and electricity, for jobs and incomes. =


     The tension between the feminist movement and the non-
feminist working class women's movement has been both a cause of
frustration and a source of inspiration to Mexican women. After
20 years, the result has been the development of a social (in
some cases a socialist) feminist movement. This movement,
combining the struggles of women with those of workers and the
poor, has influenced the unions. =


               The Movements of the 1980s

     Women's role as social and political leaders has grown
throughout the recent decades. During the 1980s, the women of the
Urban Popular Movement (MUP) created important organizations in
cities throughout Mexico fighting for jobs, housing, water,
sewers, electricity. From Monterrey to Mexico City those
organizations mainly made up of poor women formed a central part
of Mexican political life. =


     Women also joined in land seizures from Sonora to Chiapas,
as indigenous communities and poor peasants fought for their
farms and their livelihoods. At the same time, the 1980s saw the
appearance of outstanding new women labor and political leaders,
among them:

     *Housewife Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, leader of a human
rights organization, whose son was among the disappeared
political activists of the 1970s, became the first woman
contender for president as the candidate of the Revolutionary
Workers Party (PRT) in 1982. =


     *Seamstress Evangelina Corona appeared literally out of the
rubble of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City to lead the 19th of
September Garment Workers Union, creating an independent national
union.

     *Author Elena Poniatowska emerged as an outstanding
novelist, social critic, and leader of civil society. =


     *Economist and politician Efigenia Martinez, together with
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and Porfirio Munoz Ledo, founded the
Democratic Current which emerged from the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, and later founded the Party of the
Democratic Revolution. =


     Women like these played leading roles reformers, radicals
and revolutionaries throughout the decade of the 1980s.

                    Women in the Unions

     Increasingly throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s women entered
the workforce coming to represent between 30 and 50 percent of
all workers.

     Beginning in the 1970s women played an important role as
activists in the Teachers Union (el SNTE), and particularly in
its rank and file movement, the National Coordinating Committee
of the Teachers Union (la CNTE). Bilingual Indian women school
teachers represented a driving force of the rank and file
movement, if they did not always become its leaders. The struggle
of the teachers helped thrust a woman, Elba Esther Gordillo--part
reformer and part agent of former president Carlos Salinas de
Gortari--into the leadership of el SNTE. =


     Since the 1980s, el SNTE and la CNTE have played an
important role in cohering a new reform-minded union leadership
as well as a radical rank and file. Gordillo was a central figure
in the organization of the Forum: Unions Face the Nation which
later gave rise to the new National Union of Workers (UNT).

     In the 1970s striking women telephone operators chose a man,
Francisco Hernandez Juarez, as their leader. The women pushed
Hernandez Juarez forward in the union, making him general
secretary, the top officer. Hernandez Juarez, a shrewd political
operator and, some say, a rank opportunist, owes his political
power to the women who made him their leader. =


      Hernandez Juarez was the key figure in the creation of the
National Union of Workers (UNT) and became one of its three
presidents. But throughout a 30-year career as a union leader, he
has owed his power to the women telephone operators. Without the
women operators, he would have been a nobody.

     Women make up a large percentage of the flight attendants'
union, which has chosen as its leader Alejandra Barrales.
Barrales has also become a leader of the Federation of Unions of
Enterprises of Goods and Services (FESEBES), and a vice president
of the UNT. An ally of Hernandez Juarez, she has become the
articulate spokeswoman of moderate reform in the labor movement.

     Women workers also make up an important component of the
huge 350,000 member National Union of Social Security Workers
(SNTSS). Working as office workers, clerks, technicians,
physicians and in a hundred other jobs and professions, women
form an important part of the SNTSS. Women in the SNTSS serve as
union officers and representatives. =


     The SNTSS makes up an important part of the new UNT, and
SNTSS leader Antonio Rosado serves as president of the UNT, but
he too owes his position in large measure to the women of his
union.

     The Authentic Labor Front, the FAT, has played a leading
role in the fight to democratize labor movement in Mexico, and in
creating a kind of feminist labor unionism. The FAT Convention of
November 1997 created a special women's organization within the
union to take up women's issues and push women forward. Women in
FAT play roles as leaders of the unions, cooperatives, peasant
and community organizations, carrying the message that political
independence, democracy, and working class feminism go hand-in-
hand. =


     Bertha Lujan, one of the three co-leaders of the Authentic
Labor Front (FAT) represents another example of new women leaders
in the labor movement. Lujan has been one of the architects of
the FAT's struggle to democratize the Mexican labor movement. She
has also been one of the feminist leaders of her union and of the
labor movement. =


          Women in Social and Political Organizations
     =

     In Chiapas the appearance of the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation led to dramatic changes in the relations between the
sexes. The EZLN helped to create a current of Indian peasant
feminism. The EZLN promulgated a "Women's Revolutionary Law"
which gave women equal political and social rights and the right
to choose their own partners and determine how many children they
would have. The EZLN's leaders included Comandante Ramona who was
welcomed in Mexico City in 1997 by tens of thousands not only as
a leader of the EZLN, but as a woman Indian leader.

     The Party of the Democratic Revolution involves many women
sit as representatives in the Legislative Assembly of the Federal
District and in the congress. Senator Rosalbina Garavito, a
former guerrilla, has become one of the PRD's most prominent
political leaders. Women's activism has grown, however, in all of
the political parties, under the influences of a vague, but
nonetheless real feminist sentiment. The meeting of the First
Women's Parliament in Mexico City on March 7, 1998 represents the
culmination of a 30 year long struggle. =


     But the Women's Parliament represents only one manifestation
of women's influence. The existence of the National Union of
Workers and the May First Inter-union Coordinating Committee
(CIPM), the two new independent federations, represent equally
important examples of the women's movement's influence. =


     Yet, even the new union reform organizations themselves
remain dominated by men. The UNT passed up an opportunity to make
Alejandra Barrales one of its three presidents, choosing instead
three men. Women have not yet gained full equality in the union
movement, and in some unions they face downright discrimination
and subordination. In workplaces of Mexico women continue to
fight for equal wages for equal work, equal job opportunities, to
stop sexual harassment and to win child care centers. But today,
in the face of great obstacles, women represent a far stronger
force, a more feminist force than at any other time in Mexican
history. =


     All Mexican workers, and all workers in Canada and the
United States--for we are now all part of the same labor
movement--owe a debt of gratitude to the Mexican women. Had there
been no women's movement, there could have been no new labor
reform movement. The rising of the women has also been rising of
the working class, has been the rising of us all.

                         ###

       SOCIAL STATISTICS ON GENDER AND WORK IN MEXICO

          Economically Active Population (EAP) by Sex

               EAP                 Percentage of Total EAP
Year Total          Men            Women     Men       Women
1950  8,272,000     7,145,000      1,127,000 86.4%          13.6%
1960 11,253,000     9,235,000      2,018,000 82.1%          17.9%
1970 12,955,000     10,489,000     2,466,000 72.2%          19.0%
1980 22,066,000     15,925,000     6,141,000 72.2%          33.3%
1990 31,229,048     21,630,013     9,599,035 72.0%          33.3%
1993 33,651,812     23,243,466    10,408,346 74.7%          35.7%
-----
Source: National Employment Poll, April-June 1991-1993; La
Economia Mexicana en Cifras, 1993; La Economia Mexicana en
Cifras, 1990, in Gonzalez Marin, Maria Luisa, ed. 1997, Mitos y
realidades del mundo laboral y familiar de las mujeres mexicanas.
Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, with the Instituto de
Investigaciones Economicas de la UNAM. (p. 197).
-----
     In 1995, of the 35 percent of the economically active women
(10.8 million women), the majority, 5.9 million, were salaried
workers; 2.4 million women were self-employed; 2.0 million
non-salaried workers; 400,000 piece workers and 150,000 female
employers (National Program for Women (PRONAM), 1995).

     In every one of ten Mexican households, the woman is the
only source of income; in five of those ten, the principal wage
earner; and in three, the woman contributes the same as her male
counterpart. It is important to note the difference between the
traditional expectation of the man of the household providing for
the family and the reality. In the reality of 1995, only one of
every ten households is supported exclusively by a man (National
Program for Women, 1995).

     In 1991, 48.6 percent of working women were married or
living in "free union," while in 1993, the percentage increased
to 53.7 percent (National Program for Women, 1995). =


     Although the economic crisis have led to a general decrease
in social benefits for all workers, it has hit women workers
harder. Between 1991 and 1993, employed women without access to
medical and social services rose from 54 to 59 percent. The
proportion of men in the same circumstances increased only 2
percent, from 64 to 66 percent (National Program for Women,
1995).

     Of the almost two million births registered annually in
Mexico, about 450,000, or 25 percent, occur to women under
twenty, according to Secretary of Health Juan Ramon de la Fuente.

                         ###
END MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS - SPECIAL ISSUE - WOMENS DAY



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