Occupational Safety and Health. Training the trainers

Women are seriously missing out by non-participation in certain activities which have traditionally been "male" activities. Among many such are certain trade union endeavours in which women could and should take a far more active role, such as in training. By so doing, they increase their skills - and thus their self-confidence - their visibility, and the perception of their value to the rank-and-file. Thereby also, they enhance their ability to break through the glass ceiling - one often ignored because of the more visible corporate glass ceiling - of trade unionism. Equally important, it also prepares them to take on other roles outside of the union.

Women are often absent from certain trade union activities, reluctant to get involved because they see these as areas where technical skills and expertise are critical, making them question their competence. For real change to take place, union leaders need to demystify technical areas, empower workers, and encourage their women's committees to address problems specific to women in the workplace.

Training women workers as instructors in trade unions is one such example where some success has been noted. Train-the-trainer workshops for women workers can accomplish powerful goals, helping women to understand the important role they can play in becoming instructors for their unions, and realize their potential to stimulate positive change. Such courses provide a supportive classroom environment whereby women workers feel empowered and able to carry out new roles and newly developed skills. Equally important, it prepares the women for taking on other roles both within and outside of the union.

But such training is different from training mixed-gender groups and deserves special attention. It requires: 1 spoonful of training methodology, 1 spoonful of technical skills and information, and 10 spoonfuls of confidence-building. Through the use of empowerment training techniques, workers can relate their own life experiences to what is being discussed and practiced both in the classroom and in the workplace. By stimulating self-reflection, trainees understand better how workplace and environmental problems affect them, and what they can do to address them. The process also provokes a greater understanding of how to work effectively with others to stimulate awareness of workplace and environmental issues.

Building a strong sense of solidarity among a group of women trainees takes time. Workshop facilitators play an important role in nurturing the development of group cohesion, helping trainees unleash the ability to develop their technical knowledge, to acquire new skills related to the workplace, to develop group work-skills, to learn about and practice using new training philosophies, and to apply those training techniques to empower other workers.

But even those women workers who have undergone such training still face many hardships, such as difficulty advancing in the rank-and-file of a trade union, in gaining support from male leadership to organize training courses and in ensuring that other women participate. They encounter jealousy for demonstrating particular competencies and may even have obstacles placed before them just because they are women. Addressing technical subjects to a group of male workers can be particularly intimidating. In the classroom, women workers benefit from practicing their roles as trainers in front of a highly supportive group. Seeing and hearing each other tackle technical issues is tremendously effective in building the self-confidence needed to face a male or mixed group of workers.

And worth the effort

But it's worth the effort: "I don't want my daughter to grow up feeling inadequate and uneducated like I have. I want her to feel in control of her life. This is why I wanted to gain these new skills and pursue this direction", a statement revealing the motivation behind one Filipina trade unionist's desire to become an Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) instructor. A stirring success story is that of Kalpana, an Indian woman working in Bombay.

Kalpana

"I was zero when I came to the first workshop", said Kalpana, a computer operator in the port of Bombay, who attended two ILO OSH train-the-trainer workshops. The first workshop taught 16 women participatory/empowerment training techniques and technical material. Ten months later the second workshop reinforced their mastery of that material. The first workshop gave Kalpana - who previously had never taught or organized workers - the self-confidence to organize numerous OSH workshops for her union. All of the other women did the same. Since the second workshop, Kalpana was elected to the Women's Steering Committee of the International Transport Federation. She organizes and teaches trade union workshops, participated in the XIV World Congress on OSH in Spain, attended a three-week international OSH trade union training course in Israel, organized contract workers seeking wage revision, speaks publicly about AIDS, and gave a speech on women's leadership in trade unions at the World Centenary Congress of the International Transport Workers' Federation in London - in front of 3,000 delegates from 120 countries, with 84 speakers, among whom only four were women.

Kalpana and the others transformed themselves into OSH motivators/transmitters and were catalysts in a "multiplier effect" - one group like this can train literally thousands of workers. Thanks to the successes of these Indian women workers, the same opportunity was provided to women trade unionists in the Philippines.

The success illustrated here, and others, have provided the inspiration for women to move into additional arenas also. As part of a national programme of advocacy and action through OSH training and education in Brazil, women widowed by occupational accidents will be trained to be transmitters and motivators of a culture of safety on construction sites. Who could convey better to workers the importance of OSH than a woman who has lost her husband to a work-related accident? Once widowed, these women quickly become marginalized, often turning to drugs and prostitution. This training is a way to provide some of them with a new future. Some will also participate as instructors in literacy training through OSH, and be involved in training seminars where prevention, rehabilitation, return-to-work policies and access to treatment services are discussed.

Thus, such women have not only proven their worth as trainers, but it has allowed them to overcome some of their former problems in the workplace. These examples also show how the experiences and successes of one group of women workers can serve as models for similar groups of women in other parts of the world, enhancing their value in the labour market.

Gender! A Partnership of Equals Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.

Gender! A Partnership of Equals
Geneve: International Labour Office, 2000. 115 p.