Organise women to transform the trade unions !

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DURING the Second World War, 18 million women in the USA were recruited into heavy industry. For most, it didn't need much persuasion: for the first time, they were able to learn skills that had been reserved for men. They were able to earn decent wages. They were able to break the stultifying mould of petty servitude imposed on women. In shipyards and aircraft factories, foundries and engineering, they proved that there was nothing at all natural about the sexual division of labour that decrees what a 'women's place' is.

After the war, they were driven out again. And in a few short years, the old ideology was restored with a vengeance.

Marginally

But the boom years, less dramatically, brought women out of the home again. There was no similar breakthrough into skilled, well-paid jobs. But all the same, most women could earn an independent wage.

Now once again, we face wholesale deportation from the labour market. The jobs and • services are being eliminated. Very soon, the small ideological gains painfully won by the women's • movement, rooted in the reality of women's partial escape from the kitchen sink, will be under mortal threat.

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I want more informationO/l Organiser supporterb Name Address DONT S AFTER able and experienced about. the ways of their movement. So knowledgeable that they've learned to live with the routine, the bureaucracy, the sellout, the dead, jargonised language designed to stifle real communication, the excuses for inaction, the hierarchy that cuts out the rank and file, and the countless other encrustations of old rubbish that weigh down the workers' movement.

Tackle There are, of course, the few strong, brave women who have carved out a place for themselves - but at the cost of adapting to the male environment. They are not the pioneers or frontrunners of a movement, but token women, held hostage and used to prove that nothing is wrong.

We need to build a movement of women in the unions that can act together, work out demands, learn from experience, find new ways of organising ourselves, and forge a cohesive, self-conscious force to change the trade union movement, not merely to advance' women into a movement that stays the same.

The strands of this movement exist and are being formed in many corners of the trade union movement, spontaneously. What we do not have as yet is the sense of this movement as a movement with conscious goals and methods, organised networks or resources, or even visibility.

Women's Fightback is calling together a conference of trade union women on March 27th, which could be a milestone in the building of such a movement.

For a start, it will be the first ever rank and file women's trade union conference, bringing together women from different unions on a national :