<1st policy workshop on searching for women’s employment welfare strategies: in the passionate mood created by the instructors and participants>

<1st policy workshop on searching for women’s employment welfare strategies: in the passionate mood created by the instructors and participants>

The 1st policy workshop on searching for women’s employment welfare strategies was held on March 31, 2009.  It was hosted to react to women’s employment and job crisis, and the crowded workshop demonstrated high interest in the topic.

The first lecture was about the policy comparison regarding the reaction to this economic crisis, and the second lecture is about ‘climate changes, energy crisis and our reaction: focusing on the criticism on the government’s low carbon green growth discussion’.

In the first lecture, the instructor identified that it depended on the subjects if the current economic crisis which was worsened and transferred to the real economic crisis would terminate 30 year neo-liberalism or has been getting worse, and highlighted financial normalization and domestic demand activation should be carried out above all in order to overcome this crisis. In particular, since neo-liberalism is a system to exclude and block employment and income-earning, he stressed to create advance economic circulation structures to overcome this contradiction.

The 2nd lecture is about climate changes and energy crisis, and it evoked and opened our eyes to the causes of energy crisis and significances that we had not recognized yet. Especially, we were shocked about the fact that the climate change by only 2 ℃ made dinosaurs extinct, which means changes in climates have a very powerful impact on ecosystem.  Since changes in climates usually result from energy crisis, we realized the necessity to change our lifestyle to solve the energy matters.

The green growth by the Lee Myeong Bak authorities excludes the concept of social equality. In addition, in the budget related to the green growth, the great majority is involved in widening and dredging the 4 rivers and construction, which is not relevant to the green growth.  Especially, the instructor stressed it should be very urgent to save and give life to branches of rivers rather than the mainstreams of the 4 rivers, in order to settle the shortage of water.

We are very thankful to many participants from KWAU, Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the Democratic Labor Party, and others.  We hope to see them in our 2nd workshop, as well.