Cuts to Health Services for Women

The National Health Service (NHS) is in crisis. Much of the government’s injection of additional investment has ended up in the pockets of private companies. The end result of government policies has been job losses, cuts, closures and privatisation. Women form the majority of the workforce in the NHS, and are also disproportionately represented in […]

Women, Rape, Alcohol and the Law

COMPOSITE C – WOMEN RAPE ALCOHOL AND THE LAW (Emergency Motion – Alcohol & Rape of Women and Emergency Motion 4 – Who’s Perverting the Course of Justice? Under current English and Welsh law rape can only be established if it can be demonstrated that sexual intercourse took place without consent and that the defendant […]

Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is the fourth most common cause of death from cancer amongst women in the United Kingdom (UK) and is known as the silent killer. One-hundred women die each week from ovarian cancer; it is the fourth most common cancer in women, and the biggest gynaecological killer. Every year about 6,000 women in the […]

IPSWICH MURDERS

Conference sends out its deepest sympathies to the families of the young women recently murdered in Ipswich by a serial killer preying on women working in the sex industry. These tragedies highlight once again the vulnerability of women, who for whatever reason, are out and about at night. On November 25th 2006, the Eastern Region […]

WOMEN’S PENSIONS

This motion is as a result of the Pensions White Paper put before Parliament on Tuesday 16th January 2007. Conference welcomes the improvements to the original proposals for Pension Reform which has been won by a determined coalition of Women Trade Unionists, EOC and Pension Campaigners. Conference notes however that the new proposals still do […]

MATERNITY AND CARER’S RIGHTS

Conference welcomes the new rights for parents and carers to be introduced in the Work and Families Act, which will come into force in April 2007 It notes that parents and carers struggling to achieve work life balance will now be able to take advantage of the following improvements: 1)Statutory Maternity Pay, Maternity Allowance and […]

GLOBALISATION

This conference notes the War on Want report “Fashion Victims, The true cost of cheap clothes and Primark, Asda and Tesco” published on 8th December 2006, which highlighted the working conditions of the predominantly female workforce within the textile factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which produces clothes for Primark, Asda and Tesco. This report found that […]

Definition of Violence Against Women

Research at national and international level has consistently shown that domestic violence is a form of gender specific violence. Violence against women is a violation of internationally guaranteed human rights, rights which the United Kingdom (UK) has signed up to, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against […]

Women’s Promotional Materials

Many years have elapsed since we had ‘women in UNISON’ t-shirts, badges and literature available for promotional events, recruitment campaigns and collective identity. Although some individual branches and regions have sourced their own items for particular events, we miss having a national supply of ‘women in UNISON’ goods that we can all access, use and […]

White Ribbon Campaign

For years Women in UNISON have been active in the campaign “Raise the Roof on Domestic Violence”. This campaign has made great progress and now men have launched their own campaign on violence and women. On the White Ribbon campaign website, www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/, it states that the “White Ribbon Campaign UK is the United Kingdom branch […]

Skinny Models

Conference applauds the Spanish government in taking the first step on putting pressure on the Association of Fashion Designers to use a calculation known as the Body Mass Index (BMI), which is based on weight and height to reject excessively thin models. The World Health Organisation says a person’s BMI should be between 18 and […]

No Means No

Conference is appalled to note that, according to data from Rape Crisis : 1)one in four women have experienced rape or attempted rape; 2)one in seven women have been coerced into sex, rising to one in three among divorced and separated women; 3)the most common perpetrators of rape are husbands and partners; 4)ninety-seven per cent […]

The Women and Work Commission Recommendations

Conference notes that the government has responded to the Women and Work Commission’s report, and has published an action plan “From the playground to the boardroom”, which is designed to break down barriers to women’s achievement. Measures include: 1)the roll-out of new ‘Equality Reps’ across England; 2)a major new ‘Exemplar Employer Initiative’ – the government […]

Promoting the Gender Equality Duty

Conference is pleased to note that with effect from April 2007, there will be a statutory duty on all public authorities to have due regard to the need to: 1)eliminate unlawful sex discrimination; 2)promote equality of opportunity between men and women Public authorities will no longer be able to simply respond to complaints of sex […]

Modern Day Slavery

The plight of many women held against their will and used as sex slaves came to the public’s attention during the World Cup in Germany, however this is only the tip of the iceberg. In Britain there are estimated to be at least 5,000 women who may be working as prostitutes after being trafficked to […]