The trade unions in the Netherlands are male oriented. If they concern themselves with women at all, it is with women working outside their homes; here that is about 30 per cent of the women between 14 and 65 years old. Housework is not work in trade union terms; housewives don't have a labour contract but a life contract and there are no unions that fight for their rights. Although about 23 per cent of, in terms of the unions, working people are women, only 10 per cent ( in 1960 only 5 per cent) of the union members are women: this does not make it easier for us women to have any influence.

How are the unions organized? There are federations of unions: the NVV (The Dutch federation of unions), which is socialist oriented, vaguely related to the PvdA, the social democratic political party in the Netherlands; the NKV (The Dutch Catholic federation of unions), as the name says. Catholic oriented; and the CNV (The Christian federation of unions), Protestant oriented. A year ago the NVV and the NKV formed a federation: not too positive for women; you can guess the attitude of NKV men...

What I am talking about in the rest of this paper is the NVV. What does the NVV do for women who work outside their homes? In 1959 the "Secretariat for womenworkers" was started and a woman was appointed; at the moment there are two paid women working there. But they have a lot to do: to look after all the commissions that handle the women's question, nationally and internationally, to keep in contact with the women in the unions, making them more active; and they are responsible for the courses given for women (since 1973). That is enough work for ten workers so they are quite overloaded and there is no money for another worker.

On the 9th of April 1975 (Women's Year) a resolution on women workers was accepted by the "Verbondsvergadering", the highest organ in the hierarchically structured NVV. This resolution is also directed towards changing the mentality of all union members. One of the points of that resolution is: "The integration of women in the unions has to be promoted by an active policy of the federation (NVV) and the unions by means of : special attention and facilities for the women members, e.g. by women and work committees and by courses for women members".

Although it is going slowly there are now such women's committees in five of the fifteen unions belonging to the NVV; such committees consist of mainly women with a man as president. For almost all committees the status is very unclear; they are not elected which means that the leaders of the hierarchical unions can just neglect them: they don't have the right to make decisions. I myself am a member of the ABVA; this is the union of civil servants, workers in the health services and welfare workers (total number of members about 180,000 of these 32,000 women), and I am a member of the women's committee of the ABVA, belonging to the NVV.

I will tell you in short the history of our committee and our way of working. In 1973 some women members of the ABVA demanded from the leaders that they should organize courses for women members. The first course was held in the beginning of 1974. Twice as many women as could attend the course enrolled. During that course the union leader who was present was urged to install a working committee that should have as its task to find out how we could come to an officially elected committee for women in the ABVA. More courses followed: in 1£77, three courses of two days. All courses are overcrowded so next year more must be held. In this short time something has been gained by women which was a great success. It was an official meeting with deputies of the different districts: in more and more districts groups of women had become active and had worked on several activities. So on the 15th of September 1976 the first officially elected women and labour committee was installed and 79 proposals with respect to women and work have been accepted. All this happened in the way we work in the women's movement: to the point, no repetitions of the same arguments etc.

The starting point of all proposals shows clearly that we want to reach all people and you can see this in all .proposals: social security, taxes, education, child care, etc. At the last general congress of the ABVA about its structure in January 1977 women were present very clearly, with the result that it has been decided that we should get the same structure for women's work as we have for the different "trade groups"; this means that we have women's groups in the districts. Now the union leaders have to listen to us; they are very hierarchy-sensitive, therefore this is very important.

So this is the shell - important - but now we have to fill it in. There are many important proposals that have to be worked out: e.g. the leaders are working about 90 hours a week: does anyone wonder why there are no women...

Although we have been taken much more seriously (one reason surely being that more than 50 per cent of the new members are women...) sometimes it is fighting a losing battle. We have, furthermore, the constant dilemma of short term solutions - long term solutions, for example, pensioning women off at 60 (instead of 65) because of the double workload or is this role establishing? The union leaders see more in short term solutions.

What we are doing in the districts: most of the time there are two sides to this work:

1. giving information, starting information hours by women for women with the goal: helping women with labour problems; showing them the way in the ABVA and giving information about the different activities and
2. lecture evenings where a woman tells something about e.g. labour rights, social security etc. with discussions afterwards in small groups: we hope to get more solidarity among the women because I think: "Together we are very strong!"

To conclude this paper some words about my personal femsoc motivation to work within my union on the women's problems. Trade unions have, if they want to use it, power In society, so if you can get unions to work on our problems we can make progress and I fiope you have seen that something is possible. The NVV is at least a little socialist although more social democratic oriented which to me is not real socialism: so we try to get real feminism-socialism in it. Why don't I work in a left-wing political party? I am afraid that in a political party you have to make more concessions and I am only one person... This does not mean that it is not important for women to be in political parties.

I would like to discuss these things with femsoc sisters from other countries and about their ideas and activities in this field.

Jophien van Vaalen