Celebrating 27 years of uniting nurses

DENOSA statement for Women’s Day: SA government must ratify ILO Convention 156

Media statement.

Wednesday, 09 August 2023.

PRETORIA – As today, 9 August, marks the commemoration of Women’s Day in South Africa, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) calls on the government to speed up the ratification of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 156 to acknowledge the workers with family responsibility as well as to align all the country’s labour laws with the recently ratified ILO Convention 190, which deals with sexual harassment of women in the world of work.

This is as the country continues the battle with the scourge of Gender-Based Violence against women and at the time when women continue to be treated as second-class citizens and deprived of their many rights.

DENOSA believes strongly that the ratification of Convention 156 and alignment of South Africa’s labour laws with Convention 190 will be the greatest steps closer towards the emancipation of women in the country who often are faced with extra loads of work both in the workplace as well as in their homes.

“Ratifying ILO Convention 156 by South Africa would be a huge step in acknowledging the value of care that workers with responsibility, majority of whom are women, give over and beyond their workplace contribution,” says DENOSA 2nd Deputy President, Thandeka Msibi.

“Women provide care in their homes every single day before and after work, and this is the work that they are not acknowledged or even compensated for. ILO Convention 156 ensures that they are paid back for this extra work in one form or another. Only workers in sectors that have collective bargaining enjoy this benefit in the form of family responsibility leave as one way to compensate them, whereas many workers in other sectors do not enjoy this right since South Africa has not ratified ILO Convention 156,” adds Msibi.

The ratification of this convention is more urgent in a country like South Africa, which is characterized by many absent fathers in family responsibilities.

DENOSA acknowledges that the nurses in the country, the majority of whom are women, are among the workers that need the intervention of ILO Convention 156 for the value of their care to be recognised. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the nurses went the extra mile in their work of care, yet they were never paid for this extraordinary amount of care that they put in.

While DENOSA applauds the South African government for ratifying ILO Convention 190 in 2021, there arises the need to align the country’s labour laws with this progressive convention so that the issue of harassment against women can be totally eradicated from the world of work and for job seekers to also be protected from the scourge of sexual harassment.

DENOSA wishes all women in the country a Happy Women’s Day.

End.

Issued by DENOSA.

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