REPORT BACK FROM VENEZUELA AT THE JOHN HUSTON FILM SCHOOL

galway | anti-capitalism | event notice Wednesday March 22, 2006 14:32 by Global Women's Strike Ireland Ireland at allwomencount dot net 087 7838688

A GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE EVENT FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S MONTH

Report back of the Global Women’s Strike’s eight-country delegation of grassroots women and men to Venezuela, featuring a rough-cut of a new film, the fourth in a series of Strike films on Venezuela. ..

The event will also include the Irish launch of a ground breaking new book Creating a Caring Economy: Nora Castañeda and the Women's Development Bank of Venezuela edited by Nina Lopez, an international co-ordinator of the Global Women's Strike and published by Crossroads Books, London.

The book is composed of speeches by and interviews (by Nina Lopez) with Professor Nora Castañeda and provides a path-breaking framework for building the movement which is “creating an economy at the service of human beings.”

In February 2006, a delegation of the Global Women’s Strike from a number of countries was in Venezuela working with the Land Committee in Los Teques (part of the Strike in Venezuela) when President Hugo Chávez announced that from June 2006 the poorest housewives would receive a monthly income equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage in recognition for their work in the home – 372,000 bolívares or about $180…One hundred thousand housewives will be the first beneficiaries from June, and another 100,000 from July.

Chávez said that up to 500,000 women would eventually get this money. Chávez has put together the recognition Article 88 of the Venezuelan Constitution gives to housewives’ work, with the recent legislation aimed at lifting the poorest out of poverty, and redirected some of the oil revenue to women – as Chávez has repeatedly said, women are the poorest, work hardest and are most committed to the revolution.

The report back will feature news of this first payment to housewives in recognition of their work and what it means for women everywhere.

Last year the Strike in Ireland asked the Oireachtas (parliamentary) Committee on the Irish Constitution to use Venezuela’s Article 88 as a model for making visible and paying for women’s unwaged work here. Their resulting proposal doesn’t do this and hides women’s contribution in ‘gender-neutral’ language; now Venezuela is leading the way in paying wages for housework there’s no excuse for any government.

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Report Back By Maggie Ronayne, Co-ordinator of the Global Women's Strike in Ireland and Finn Arden, Film-maker and Payday Men’s Network

Time and Venue: Tuesday 28th March at 6pm in the Huston Film School, National University of Ireland Galway (Earl’s Island, opposite the cathedral behind the University's human rights centre).

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Further information: 087 7838688. Email: Ireland@allwomencount.net

The Global Women’s Strike is an international, multi-racial grassroots women’s network with co-ordinations in 11 countries organising together under the theme ‘Invest in Caring not Killing’.
www.globalwomenstrike.net

Payday is an international, multi-racial network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike.
www.refusingtokill.net