Intro WIL EN

The ITUC Congress Statement stressed the responsibility to frame a feminist agenda that is focused on the equal economic participation of women and women’s leadership everywhere.

With the pandemic crisis, women have been particularly hit hard losing around $800 billion in income – the combined GDP of some 98 countries. Early data suggests that only 43.2% of the world’s working-age women were employed in 2021, compared to 68.6% of working-age men.

This would mean that women’s working lives will be disrupted over a long period of time unless appropriate measures are adopted.

Women in trade union leadership has never been more important, being a key factor to promote a gender transformative agenda for recovery and resilience.

Although progress has been made, with women constituting 42% of the membership of ITUC affiliates, the number drops to just 7% who are in top leadership positions .

The ITUC Women in Leadership (WIL) programme aims to build a global pipeline of current and future generations of women leaders in the trade union movement, in line with the ITUC’s values and constitutional commitment to the promotion of gender equality.

Participants will be equipped to develop and advance the movement. This would include issues on which women’s campaigning and activism has been key and yielded significant results for sustainable and just workplaces.

The WIL programme aims at enhancing women’s leadership skills and building knowledge and capacities around the key workers’ demands for a New Social Contract and how these can help foster a gender transformative agenda within our movement.

The programme will be on-line and will include two main components:

  • Overarching Curriculum including three modules on leadership building and development
  • Deep Dives including modules on “Policy”, “Organising” and “Setting the Narrative”

Participate will be also supported by a mentoring component throughout the implementation of the courses.