Statement on the occasion of May 1: International Workers’ Day 2024
Equal rights and Opportunities for Women
Women face various forms of sexual discrimination in a painful, shameful, and open manner. Women’s paid job is still considered as dispensable work at. Only thirteen percent of Iraqi women are able to obtain a job opportunity, according to statistics from international organizations.
Even in the cases where women obtain a job opportunity, they will inevitably face multiple forms of discrimination. According to statistic from international organizations, women in Iraq’s wage gap reached 18.5% in comparison to men. Moreover, equal opportunities to obtain training and skills development are rarely if ever provided. This allows men to grow professionally, while women do not have the same opportunities.
Women in Iraq also exposed to various pressures including harassment, belittlement, and being deprived of simple rights at work, including the lack of special health facilities for women. Likewise, working women are deprived of maternity leave in the private sector, and such services are often dispensed with as soon as they reach the stage of pregnancy and childbirth. Free childcare, nurseries and kindergartens are not available increasing the pressure and burden on women to maintain their work. Many women are forced to work without contracts that clarify their rights, long working hours, and sever exploitation of their efforts. In addition, the burden of care work is imposed on working women; although women participate in paid job, the burden of domestic work is lifted from them.
Women searching for job opportunities, often face opposition from their families, in particular if they found jobs in the private sector. Families justify their objection to “protect” them from what they may be exposed to at work or on the street. This ultimately lead to keeping women at the mercy of their “patriarch.” As a result, women are relegated to living in poverty and destitution, thus remaining dependent on their male family members.
Sexual exploitation has become commonplace; women seeking work are subjected, in an unprecedented manner, to bargaining, selling their bodies in addition to selling their labor power at the same time.
Women are burdened with care work without any recognition of the value of their work. Although this work is essential for creating and sustaining life, and providing the necessities for their families, and society more generally, Yet, it is invisible.
Reactionary, patriarchal, and traditions within home combine with political oppression that oppose women’s rights in the workplace, supported by state laws and the prevailing social culture that is biased toward men at the expense of women. Thus, women are placed in an inferior position socially compared to men in the field of paid and unpaid work.
On the first of May this year, as we are joining the workers of Iraq and the entire world, we decided to make our voices and demands heard:
1- Providing equal work opportunities for women and ending sexual discrimination against them.
2- Facing the unjust traditions against working women, and treating working women on an equal footing with working men, and at various job levels within the workplace.
3- Providing all means and facilities that help women do their work, such as child care, health facilities, and safe transportation, which provide a suitable environment for women to work.
4- Ensuring security, safety and dignity for working women and job seekers, and criminalizing any harassment or compromising of a woman’s body and punishing it by law.
5- Respecting a woman’s right to choose the work they desire without interfering by the male members of the family under any pretext.
6- Providing job opportunities for all unemployed women or providing them with unemployment insurance until they secure a job opportunity.
7- Ending the expression “women are housewives”, care work for family members are the responsibility of the society and state. Equality in care work between women and men.
8- Maternity leaves for working women with full salary for one year in the event of childbirth, in addition to fully paid sick leave. Approval of paternity leave in order for working men to participate with women in caring for newborns.
9- Reinstate all women whose services were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic and who were on maternity leave, under the pretext of reducing the number of female and male workers.
On this day, we look to the union of women organisations and women’s movement activists, to defend the rights of employed and unemployed women in Iraq.
Aman Women Alliance
1st May, 2024
