International Women's Day 2025: Women’s Labour Rights Are Human Rights

On International Women’s Day, the ITUC stands in solidarity with women workers, their trade unions and all progressive allies around the world, in the struggle for gender equality, women’s rights, and social and economic justice for all.

Within the current context of rising authoritarianism, a surge in far-right political forces, attacks on democracy and shrinking civic space, our struggle is now more crucial than ever.

Adopted 30 years ago, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) remains to date the blueprint for gender equality and women’s human rights. However, the promises made have yet to be fully realised for millions of women around the world.

While significant strides have been made in all critical areas of action of the BPfA, immense challenges remain. These have intensified due to a global pushback from transnational movements – including among conservative religious, civil society groups and state actors – seeking to undermine, erode, and even roll back hard-won gains on women’s rights and gender equality.

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Even the very concept of gender and gender equality has been under attack in recent years as these movements gain ground.

This backlash has led to restrictions on reproductive rights, an increase in gender-based violence and harassment, threats to gender equality education and women’s access to education and rising populist rhetoric that hardens or maintains conservative patriarchal norms, fuelling misogynistic, antifeminist, anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-reproductive rights sentiment.

Trade unions have played a pivotal role in fighting for gender equality in the world of work and beyond ensuring that all people regardless of gender, class, race, migrant status or other grounds can participate on equal terms. We are committed to continue to lead the charge for full implementation of the ambitious goals set out in the BPfA.

The 69th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will review the implementation of the BPfA. It is critical to ensure that the upcoming Beijing+30 Declaration supports workers’ demands for a New Social Contract grounded in a gender-transformative agenda and is fully aligned with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Agenda, in particular SDG 8 on decent work, SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 4 on education and vocational training.

The ITUC calls on governments to:

• Advance gender equality for social justice, democracy and peace to build a world free of all forms of gender-based discrimination, including intersecting forms of discrimination, extremism, violence and intolerance.
• Affirm workers’ rights as human rights by upholding the ILO standards and the fundamental principles and rights at work, in particular the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining and the right to strike.
• Establish universal access to gender-transformative social protection and quality public services.
• Ensure decent work for women, including through adequate investments in national employment policies, worker-led formalisation, public investments in comprehensive care systems and regulation of the digital transition.
• Realise equal pay for work of equal value for all, including through minimum living wages, pay equity, pay transparency and anti-discrimination legislation, as well as campaigns addressing gender-based discrimination and stereotypes at work and in society.
• Eliminate gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work, through the ratification and effective implementation of ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206.

The ITUC’s Women in Leadership Campaign

In this important moment, the ITUC is also proud to announce the launch of the ITUC’s new campaign on Women in Leadership. Women remain underrepresented in decision-making roles in political, economic, and social spheres, including in trade unions. Strengthening women’s leadership in unions is essential to advancing gender equality in the world of work and in society at large.

However, many ITUC affiliates have yet to achieve gender parity in leadership. The new campaign aims to increase women’s representation in the highest decision-making bodies of ITUC affiliates by the next ITUC World Congress in 2027 and forms part of the ITUC’s Democracy that Delivers campaign.

On 8 March, the global trade union movement joins with all progressive allies – in particular human and women’s rights organisations and feminist movements – calling on governments to accelerate action towards the unfulfilled promises of the BPfA. We will be stepping up our efforts locally, regionally and globally to create a world where gender equality is not a distant aspiration but a lived reality for every woman and girl. The ITUC is committed to it now and always.

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