“STRIKING Women — Combatting the Stereotype” is the theme of the fourth seminar of the National Assembly of Women (NAW) 2024. The event is being held this weekend at the NASUWT education centre at Rednal, Birmingham, and will host an esteemed panel of speakers from across the movement, including Unison, Unite, RCM, PCS, TUC and the National Pensioners Convention.

The seminar will recognise and debate the role of women in leading, taking and supporting strike action, building industrial responses to improvements in pay, terms and conditions of workers, too many of whom are low-paid workers, often women workers in precarious employment sectors.

Unison speaker Jo Moorcroft will share with delegates an example of her union campaigning for NHS workers in the north-west region, where in 2022 alone, the union organised around healthcare assistants in Greater Manchester and won over £30 million in back pay for members.

This is a spectacular organising win with the campaign now being rolled out in Merseyside and Cheshire currently, winning back pay in a further five hospital trusts already for this predominantly low-paid, female workforce. 

Gail Cartmail, the recent head of operations of Unite, will also share her experiences of “Combatting the stereotype” and winning for women alongside her union’s first female general secretary, Sharon Graham.

Looking back, the establishment of the NAW was born of such struggle and in 1952 it established three main clear and simple demands: 

• Peace and the prevention of wars

• Women’s political, social and economic rights

• The conditions for the happy development of children and families.

Many of these are demands that the labour and trade union movement, alongside the NAW are still making today, 72 years on. As well as information, education and international solidarity, the role that the NAW has played and continues to play has developed a broader set of principles that have been built on as a charter.

The aim of the Charter for Women was, and remains, to inspire a new and inclusive socialist feminist theory and practice that will motivate a new generation of women activists and revitalise the fight for women’s liberation.

It suggests that one of the ways of doing this is to unite around a campaigning programme as outlined in the Charter for Women.

The charter did not and does not offer new policy but instead seeks to bring together the key demands for which progressive women are fighting in various arenas. It covers three broad areas, social policy, the labour market and the labour movement. It raises the main progressive concerns/campaigning points for which women have fought under each of the three themes. 

Women’s political, social and economic rights remain a challenge — as seen, for example, on November 22, Equal Pay Day, the day, based on the gender pay gap, that women stop getting paid in relation to men. It seems abhorrent that in modern society, women still work five weeks of the year for absolutely nothing in comparison with their male colleagues.

As it is that the burden of care and childcare in a modern society falls mainly on women, who experience a resultant pension detriment following them as women in old age and pension poverty due to this draconian social construct.

These debates and many more will be covered at the weekend seminar, resetting priorities and sharing experiences of members and guests alike.

Date for the diary: The 2024 AGM of the National Assembly of Women will be held at Unite head office on June 15 and all members are welcome. For joining instructions visit the NAW website.

Vicky Knight is a member of the NAW executive.