The 98th STUC Women\u2019s Conference was chaired by Pearl Abernethy of Community Union. In her Chair\u2019s address, Pearl highlighted the ongoing organising and campaigning around women\u2019s rights led by the STUC Women\u2019s Committee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She spoke about the importance of working collectively as women within the trade union movement and opened the conference with a message of solidarity, \u201cSolidarity is our greatest strength.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intersectional solidarity remained a cornerstone of this year\u2019s conference \u2014 from the theme Women Build Bridges, Not Borders to the motions considered by delegates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EIS member and first-time delegate Carmen Sullivan moved the first of the EIS motions, Motion 9: Critical literacy skills and political literacy as resilience against far-right influence. Carmen cited EIS statistics from the national branch survey, evidencing the rise in prejudice-based violence and aggression, particularly among male pupils and often directed at women teachers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She told conference how this increase in misogyny has been accelerated in the digital age, \u201cMisogyny is supercharged by social media,\u201d and \u201cfar-right narratives are now piped straight into our pupils\u2019 pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The motion called on the STUC Women\u2019s Committee to support the wider STUC work in countering the far-right. It also urges the STUC to engage with Time for Inclusive Education, including their digital resource, the Digital Discourse Initiative, which Carmen described as vital for teachers. The motion passed unanimously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EIS delegates then spoke in support of a range of other motions on women\u2019s safety, equality, women\u2019s health, and maternity pay, before Claire Robertson moved the second EIS motion of the conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Motion 27: Addressing prejudice-based violence through intersectional solidarity, calls on the Women\u2019s Committee to liaise with the STUC Disabled Workers\u2019 Committee, the STUC Black Workers\u2019 Committee, the STUC Youth Committee, and the LGBT+ Workers\u2019 Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conference agreed that an intersectional approach is essential when tackling discrimination, as an attack on one group can quickly become an attack on all. Claire encapsulated this in her speech stating, \u201cWhen rights and freedoms are being questioned for some groups of people, these rights and freedoms will sooner or later be compromised for the presumably privileged \u2018majority\u2019 as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conference closed with a renewed commitment to collective action, and affirmed that intersectional solidarity is not just a slogan but a strategy. A strategy that EIS members in particular and the trade union movement as a whole will continue to advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 98th STUC Women\u2019s Conference was chaired by Pearl Abernethy of Community Union. In her Chair\u2019s address, Pearl highlighted the ongoing organising and campaigning around women\u2019s rights led by the STUC Women\u2019s Committee. She spoke about the importance of working collectively as women within the trade union movement and opened the conference with a message […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2785,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions\/2785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}