World Conference of Women Workers

Postcard from the first World Conference of Women Workers (1956)

The World Conference of Women Workers is a feminist event organized by the World Federation of Trade Unions. During the conferences, activists from all over the world get together and draft recommandations for the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Labour Organization. Their goal is the inclusion of women within the labor movement and the improvement of their working conditions.

The first World Conference of Women Workers took place in Budapest in 1956, the second in Bucarest in 1964, the third one in Dakar in 2023.

Origins

Political context

The first World Conference of Women Workers was organized in 1956 in Hungary, which put together its first National Conference of Women Workers in 1947. During the 1950s, the labor movement was centered around men and focussed on worker's rights within a capitalist system.

However, women worker's rights were important for labor unions with communist leanings or legacy: their goal was both to become attractive to women so that they would unionize, and to educate unionized women in order to make them activists in the labor movement. At the time, union women were doing the best they could to fight for gender equality within the movement.

The first Conference took place in june 1956, a few months before the Hungarian Revolution against the communist government. In this context, women's rights weren't a priority for the State. Labor unions were the only way for the women of Hungary to fight for their rights.

Beginnings

The project was first suggested by Benoît Frachon, the head of the General Confederation of Labour, a french labor union who was a member of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). The concept was debated during the 1954 WFTU assembly. At first, the WFTU chose the city of Vienna to host the even, but in the end Budapest was selected. The WFTU was worried about the rise of political tension in Europe and thought it would result in a third World War. According to Louis Saillant, director of the WFTU at the time, it was of utmost importance to promote unity between labor unions and both unionized and non-unionized workers to face the eventuality of warfare.

The WFTU made a point of integrating African women workers in the Conference. Louis Saillant,

Madeleine Colin [fr] and Germaine Guillé [fr] were put in charge of their recruitment, which was difficult because Europeans didn't know much about working conditions in Africa, and it wasn't easy for African unionized women to travel to Europe in order to relay their experience.

Nina Popova, then president of the Antifascist Committee of Soviet Women supported the project. Multiple union delegates from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia were invited to participate in the preparatory assemblies. Maddalena Grassi, head of the WFTU Women's Committe, was particularly active during this stage.

Ideology

Poster from the General Union of Textile Workers where a woman worker adresses people looking at the drawing : "Your labor union activist doesn't scare us anymore; thanks to him, we won!" (1916)

The WTFU promoted a bottom-up organization and the "action in unity" principle, meaning cooperation between unions regardless of their political leanings. The WFTU clearly stated that the delegates sent to the conference were to be selected regardless of their personal or official political affiliation, or status within their respective unions. The point was to create a network of activists who shared similar goals, and to undermine political rivalry between union leaders.

In archived documents, Luigi Grassi (politico 1891) [it] wrote that the conference's objectives were to gather women from capitalist, socialist and colonized countries in order for them to compare their living and working conditions, and hopefully to become allies and friends. The long term goals were also to give women an incentive to unionize and encourage labor unions to create outreach programmes tailored to recruit more women.

Publicly, the WFTU gave three main reasons for the creation of the Conference : to fight against wage disparity between men and women, to fight for world peace and to fight along colonized countries for their independance.

Conscious of Cold War tensions, the WFTU was also looking to temper political tensions by promoting international female friendship. The Federation was trying to get powerful labor unions to fight together for something they all thought to be important: the end of gender inequality in the attribution of wages. All labor unions could get behind this fight because the female workforce was traditionally used to replace men when they tried to fight for better working conditions. Making women's wages the same as men's would decrease the attractiveness of this practice.

The first Conference (1956)

14th-16th of june 1956

Cover of a french magazine with illustrations representing the Word Conference of Women Workers (1955)

The first Conference took place between the 14th and the 16th of June 1956. 40 to 49 Nation States were representated and around 500 activists came together in Budapest.

The delegates who were invited didn't always have leading roles in their unions, but instead were chosen to relay their colleague's experience and concerns. The WFTU pushed working women from Hungary to the forefront, and made them to be a perfect example of socialist progress. This role prevented them from talking about their actual issues in Hungary. The goal for the WFTU was to show capitalist and colonized countries the superiority of socialist systems for workers. This silencing of women's voice was remarked upon by the Hungarian delegate during the Conference.

The Conference was made up of debates and presentations explaining women's conditions in labor unions. Those reports also suggested ways for unions to adapt to women. The most well rounded account was presented by Tsune Deushi and suggested the following :

Consequences

Teresa Noce

Following the Conference, the WFTU took multiple resolutions to reform labor unions in order to include more women. The most important decision was to elect more women in positions of power, which was starting to happen more and more in the 1950s. Women activists became leaders in the WFTU : Elena Teodorescu for Romania, Maddalena Grassi and Teresa Noce for Italy, Germaine Guillé [fr] for France. Within the WFTU, the fight for women's rights wasn't personalized in a single key figure because its members changed regularly. Madeleine Colin [fr], however, was a particularly successful activist for working women's rights at the time.

Sigrid Ekendahl (1959)

The second decision was to make women's work an international priority in policy-making. To act on this, the WFTU had an audition with the head of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in which they asked for the creation of a Women's Committee.

Other decisions included :

After the Conference, Sigrid Ekendahl asked the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to recruit someone who would be in charge of educating union leaders about best practices regarding women worker's inclusion. Marcelle Dehareng was chosen in 1957 to fulfill this role.

In order to select delegates, and following their return home, two women-only worker's unions were created : the Senegalese Women's Union and the Committee of Working Women in french Sudan.

Known participants

The second Conference (1964)

The second World Conference of Women Workers happened in May 1964 in Bucharest. In this Conference, women from socialist countries were allowed more freedom to talk about their issues at home.

After the event, the WFTU adopted a charter of social and economic rights for women workers, which included the improvement of women's literacy and programmes to secure better jobs. The Federation also created an International Committee for Women Workers, and tried to convince the ILO to apply a list of resolutions decided upon by women delegates in the Conference. Those decisions regarded better access to vocational training for women, freedom to chose one's job, the recognition of women's experience on a job, etc. Another Committee for women was created within the ILO to represent women's interests.

The decisions agreed upon during the Conference protected mothers and married women specifically because they were most impacted by gender inequality in the workforce.

Known participants

The third Conference (2023)

The third World Conference of Women Workers took place on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2023 in Dakar. During the event the WFTU elected the new members of their Women's Committee. The Conference was presided over by Pambis Kyritsis, Cinzia della Porta and Awa Sy [fr], all WFTU cadres.

The Conference was very aware of the worldwide rise of far-right politics, and suggested to look at women worker's rights as a way to protect all workers, regardless of gender. Debates centered around remote work and reproductive labor, as well as the gender dynamics of allied health professionals.

Known participants

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Zimmermann, Susan (2023). "Spurring Women to Action? Communist-led Women's Trade Unionism Between the Hungarian Shop Floor and Top-level Internationalism, 1947 to 1959". Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. 31 (2): 339–362.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Barthélémy, Pascale (2022). "Chapitre 6. La guerre froide des Africaines (1956-1960)". Sororité et colonialisme : Françaises et Africaines au temps de la guerre froide (1944-1962) (in French). Éditions de la Sorbonne. pp. 195–236. ISBN 979-10-351-0809-0.
  3. ↑ "La conférence mondiale des travailleuses l'ouvrira à Budapest le 14 juin" [The World Conference of Women Workers wil open in Budapest on the 14th of june]. Le Monde (in French). 1956-05-26.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Beaulieu, Georges (1956). "« Quand les femmes s'y mettent », de notre envoyé spécial à Budapest" ['When women start working', from our reporter in Budapest]. Antoinette (in French) (9): 6–7.
  5. 1 2 Blanquart, Louisette (1964). "8 ans..." [8 years ago...]. Antoinette (in French) (4): 5.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Laot, Françoise F. (2015). "La formation des travailleuses (1950-1968) : une revendication du syndicalisme mondial ? Contribution à une histoire dénationalisée de la formation des adultes". Le Mouvement Social (in French). 4 (253): 65–87.
  7. 1 2 Cazet, Lucía (2026). "Jorgelina Martínez". Cuesta Duarte (in Spanish).
  8. ↑ Beaulieu, Georges (1956). "Vive la Conférence Mondiale des Travailleuses !". Antoinette (in French) (8): 14–15.
  9. 1 2 3 Scutt, Jocelynne A. (2024). Wage Rage for Equal Pay: Australia’s Long, Long Struggle. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 167–168. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-42178-5. ISBN 978-3-031-42177-8.
  10. 1 2 3 Lentz, Carola; Ehmer, Josef (2023). Life Course, Work, and Labour in Global History. De Gruyter Brill. pp. 237–238. ISBN 9783111147529.
  11. ↑ Wieringa, Saskia (2002). Sexual Politics in Indonesia. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 205–206. doi:10.1057/9781403919922. ISBN 978-1-349-43122-9.
  12. ↑ WFTU (2023-11-25). "WFTU Announcement on the Completion of the Third Working Women's Congress - Labor Today". Retrieved 2026-10-07.
  13. 1 2 3 Nazioartea (2023-11-24). "LAB has attended the World Federation of Trade Unions' congress of women trade unionists". Retrieved 2026-10-07.