The work of the Strategic Planning Workshops on Gender Equality Priorities, organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) office in Cairo, closed on 22nd August 2019. These workshops entailed discussions about many conventions, including the International Convention on Salary No. 100, the Discrimination Convention No. 111, the Maternity Rights Convention No. 183, and No. 190 concerning the Convention on Violence and Harassment in the workplace.
In this context, union sources claimed that the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress presented a plan, which was already sent to the ILO, consisting of five points and, at its head, unemployment rates.
When a citizen gets a job in the private sector, the citizen is asked to provide the 'work stub', granted by the Ministry of Labour. During the three-month trial period, the citizen’s contract can be canceled anytime, which might leave the worker unemployed. In this context, the congress has raised the question of the distribution of work based on gender because some companies prefer to recruit only males over other genders. They assume that certain jobs are not meant for women. The third point cited by congress was related to the issue of harassment. The trade union organization called for an awareness campaign that sensitizes women about their basic human rights and complaining in cases of harassment.
Furthermore, the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress has come back to the question of the absence of crèches in several industrial zones, which further hinders women in their participation in the economic wheel. In this respect, the Union has called for the application of the Labour Code, which stipulates that any factory employing more than 50 workers must open a nursery while companies employing less than 50 people must enter into a day-care centre.
The fifth point of the plan focused on strengthening the roles of women in leadership positions where the Union emphasized the importance of women's representation in these positions, recalling in this context their executive requires a representation of 30% of women on the Administrative Council while they are represented only 4.5% in the general unions of the Egyptian Union of Workers (Governmental).
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