Regional Women’s Committees can provide leadership on women’s issues in regional forums and situations that are too broad to reasonably be the responsibility of one local or component. The women’s committees might organize PSAC participation in the local international Women’s Day Parade under an Alliance banner, provide guest speakers to community women’s groups to talk about the effects of government cutbacks on services to women, sponsor PSAC weekend seminars on assertiveness or rules of order. The possibilities are endless.
There are Regional Women’s Committees currently in the Okanagan, Vancouver, Prince George, and Victoria. For meeting dates and times, contact your local Women’s Committee, or check the Upcoming Events calendar. Click for news and information filed under the Womens Issues category. Older items are archived in our old webspace.
Family Care
The objective of the PSAC’s Family Care Policy is to remove one of the barriers wich prevents its members from participating fully in Union activities. The intention is to assist members in covering additional costs incurred as a direct result of attending an authorized Alliance activity. The expense entitlement page has more information. Members are entitled to claim expenses related to the care of the following family members who reside on a full or part-time basis with the member.
- A child under 17 years of age
- A person with disabilities
- An adult requiring care
Visit the national website for more information about the PSAC’s Family Care Policy.
BC Regional Women’s Committee Contact Info
Vancouver RWC: Co-Chairs: Alethea Boire and Angela Marafon
Prince George RWC: Chairperson: Patt Holmes, Co-Chair: Anne Evasin, Secretary: Parveen Deepak, Treasurer: Sandy Stephens
Victoria RWC: Chairperson: Virginia Vaillancourt
Okanagan RWC: Co-Chairs: Jennifer Leenhouts and Kelly Megyesi
Typical Activities of a local women’s committee might include:
- Identify barriers that prevent women from participating fully in the union and recommend to the local Executive specific ways to eliminate those barriers.
- Help women develop the skills to run for union office.
- Show films on women’s issues at lunch-break.
- Organize a local library on women’s issues.
- Report to the Executive and membership on events and developments in the women’s community.
- Draft equality bargaining demands and document supportive evidence.
- Provide representation on sexual harassment grievances.
- Monitor the implementation of affirmative action measures.
- Organize a local International Women’s Day celebration.
Why Women’s Committees?
Will Women ever be equal? Sometimes social change seems so slow. But, more and more unions are discovering that active women’s committees realty do make things happen.
The existence of a women’s committee lets everyone know that women’s rights is an important union issue. It’s a point around which women’s rights activists can rally and to which uninvolved women can gravitate. The existence of a committee lends credibility and unity to their concerns.
A women’s committee also makes sense strategically. Research, analysis and actions on all those concerns that get labeled ‘women’s issues’ can be coordinated in the committee. A women’s committee can be a power base from which equality demands are made and policies that promote women’s rights are advocated.
Women’s committees are needed throughout the union structure, Local women’s committees, regional women’s committees, regional women’s committees, component women’s committees, and the PSAC Equal Opportunities committee can all make useful contributions to a union women’s rights movement.
As part of a larger network of women’s committees, local women’s committees should reflect the role played by locals in a larger union structure. Local women’s committees can actively seek to involve women members in the activities of their union. They can identify the issues that are of particular concern to the women of their local and mobilize around them. They can act as resource centers on such items as sexual harassment and childcare. Local women’s committees can initiate convention resolutions and bargaining demands that pertain to the needs of women members.