Whose Social Charter? capitalist Europe Jane Connor trend, despite recession and slow growth rates in the European Com- munity (EC), has been an ongoing in- crease in the number of women workers as a percentage of the workforce as a whole. In Britain, women today account for 44 percent of the workforce, with that figure predicted to be over 50 percent by the end of the century. There is similar picture accross Europe. But it is clear that women's jobs are concentrated in the service sectors, traditionally low-paid sectors. Despite 15 years of equal pay legisla- tion, women in Britain on average cam 28 percent less than men, and this figure is worsening. So what prospect does 1992 hold for women workers in Europe? The Single European Act will sharpen competition between producers - this intensification represents a big threat to many of the social gains of European workers. Increased competition will in
Andrew Wiard/Report evitably lead to redundancies, and in the volatile service industries women will bear the brunt. The "harmonisation" of conditions for workers across Europe in each sector will inevitably - unless there is a co-ordinated fightback - be a downward harmonisation. And production will be re-located to where costs are lowest: already we have seen attempts to break down the ban on nightworking for women. Downward harmonisation and relocation can roll back many gains women have made, not least in terms of health and safety and workplace nurseries.
1992 represents a central contradiction between the neo-liberal free market and the pan-European social legislation that the social democrats would have us believe is implicit in the Social Charter. The 13 fundamental rights of the Social Charter are ambiguous and general. The document calls for "equality of treatment for men and women". SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 22, March 1990
# There is no commitment to any form of positive action to ensure that women workers benefit from any new jobs created.
• There is nothing in the Social Charter defending the most fundamental of women's rights - the right to control her own body, the right to choose.
• And there is no framework for setting up systems of supervision to ensure that what fundamental rights are included in the Social Charter are adhered to.
Whilst the social democrats ponder this contradiction between the free market and the "social market". and the reformists have their "discourse on equality" and make demands to improve the Social Charter, women (and all workers) need to get organised and develop cross-European co-ordination to defend our interests.
But women are not only facing an economic offensive: there is also an ideological offensive against the gains of the women's movement. This ideological offensive is coalescing across Europe, both cast and west, around the issue of reproductive rights.
Socialists in general, and the revolutionary left in particular, have to understand that this is a key component of the ruling class and bureaucratic offensive. But we should also recognise that the defence of reproductive rights has mobilised and will mobilise women across Europe. Any attacks have met with fierce op position.
For women in the Spanish state and Italy, reproductive rights are a relatively recent and limited gain. The French goverment, despite a concerted campaign led by the Church, has, under pressure from women, declared the early abortion drug RU486 to be the moral property of women. The British government seems unlikely to follow suit, and even if the govemment and the drug's manufacturers resist pressure from the anti-abortionists, medical trials lasting several years will have to be con ducted before women in Britain can gain access to this relatively safe method of abortion.
In Britain the attack on reproductive rights is particularly intense. "Opting out" proposals for hospitals in the new NHS Bill, together with the closure of many family planning clinics, will further limit the NHS resources available for abortion, contraception and gynaecological research. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 22, March 1990
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Elsewhere, too the offensive is hotting up:
• The urban terrorists of "Operation Rescue" who have been campaigning in the USA, have now begun using their 'pavement counselling tactics to terrorise women attending abortion clinics in Britain.
• Not only "Operation Rescue" but a highly developed concept of foetal rights and father's rights is being developed in the USA. In the USA the number of cases against women for "foctal abuse" (in other words not caring properly for the foetus in utero) is growing. The Webster vs Reproductive Health Services defeat is a major threat to American women's "right to choose".
The codification of foetal rights", and the ruling class's attempt to en-
norm of heterosexual nuclear family is also expressed in the British Embryo Research Bill. The unamended Bill seeks to limit embryo research and ban it on any foetus over 14 days after conception. Amendments range from reducing the time limit for abortion to 24 weeks, to
35 ABU 35 HOURS NOW! John Harris (IFL) denying lesbian and single women access to artificial insemination.
In fact a Bill that should have increased