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88 Days Campaign: DIY gifts for yourself and beloved to support the women in need! | |
Yves Kitchen County House was filled with laughters and joy last weekend! Owner of the kitchen, Bonnie Yves organized 3 dessert making classes to fundraise for HER Fund. After deducting the cost, all proceeds went to HER Fund for grant-making work. |
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Heartfelt thank to: Bonnie Yves, Brigit, Rainbow Village and students from CUMBA
Wanna join? Bonnie is going to organize dessert making classes in
March to fundraise for 88 Days Campaign. Please call 2794-1100 or email
info@herfund.org.hk for details and registration. |
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HER Fund is turning 5 years old | |
HER Fund was born on March 8,
2004. We would like to thank you all for your support and participation because
we wouldn’t have been able to reach this point
at our 5th year’s
anniversary without it.
We
will be hosting the “HER Fund’s 5th Anniversary Celebration and Sharing
Gathering” from 2 to 4 pm on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at the City University of Hong Kong in Kowloon Tong. Whether you're a donor or a volunteer, we would like to sincerely invite you to
attend this event. We look forward to sharing with you the results of our work
for the past five years’ while reflecting upon our direction and future
challenges. Your concern and support have always been the source of our strength, so please
call 2794-1100 or email info@herfund.org.hk on or before March 22, 2009 to reserve your seat.
Admission is free. Please join us to celebrate HER’s 5th birthday together! |
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A NEW BEGINNING FROM THE OTHER END - a women worker story | |
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Ah Chung is like a
gust of wind; her slightly hoarse voice often precedes her arrival. She is a
fast speaker, coming across as straightforward and decisive, like some heroine
figure in a story. Character is inborn and revealed at a very young age. Ah Chung is now 63 years
old and has always been very opinionated. She left secondary school after
reaching Form 4 and became a nursing assistant in a clinic. Whenever she felt
aggrieved at work, she would always complain to her mother about it and threaten
to resign the next day. But her mother would always advise her to be tolerant
because she was paid for her troubles. On hearing this, Ah Chung would find it
hard not to refute it with, "My boss does not give me a wage for nothing. I put
in the hard work too in exchange for a just reward. It is a fair deal." |
One time, a
colleague needed to take sick leave but was asked by the boss to offset it with
annual leave. Ah Chung thought it was unfair and used the Employment Ordinance
to reason with the employer. When asked how she knew about such arguments, she
replied, "I am not good with books but I do like to take different external
courses, and my knowledge has accumulated in this way." But knowledge alone does
not translate into courage to fight for rights. It seems that Ah Chung has an
inborn sensitivity to issues of fairness and justice. Despite her fortitude, Ah Chung was forced to give up her career to care for her family like
many other women in Hong Kong. "At the time, my mother had just passed away, my
father was elderly, and my daughter was only three. My husband saw that I was
under a lot of work pressure and persuaded me to leave my job. He said he was
willing to support the family on his own." And so it was that Ah Chung settled
into the role of housewife for 10 years. She had planned to return to work
part-time once her daughter entered secondary school but found it difficult to
re-enter the job market. I would get
through the interview and even reach agreement on hiring terms, but then the
boss would see my age on the application form and change his mind. He would say
'we don't hire people over 40'." At middle age, Ah Chung has qualifications,
experience and life exposures, but she has yet to overcome the social barrier of
age discrimination in the job market. Despite the many
rejections, Ah Chung did not mind too much. After all, it was not as if she
needed the money to feed the family. Hence, she was completely unprepared for
her husband's sudden suggestion for a divorce in 2001 when he had previously
vowed to be the financial pillar of the family. Close to 60 years old then and
worried that she could not afford the huge legal fees, Ah Chung gave up her
litigation and her right to seek alimony. She was more concerned about how she
and her daughter would survive from then on. "I have never been too concerned
with money, but I have never imagined that I would need to worry about money in
my old age." |
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Just when she was at a loss on what to do, she took part by chance in a photocopying workshop jointly organized by the Women Workers' Association and the Students Union of the Chinese University. She came across the concept of a "co-operative" for the first time and found its emphasis on fairness, openness and collective decision-making very meaningful. Around that time, the Women Workers' Association was planning to use the co-operative concept to set up a tuck shop in the university. Ah Chung began fundraising with a few sisters and became a core worker in the "Women Workers' Co-operative". After countless rounds of collective planning, discussing, experimenting and implementing, the tuck shop had repaid all its debt after three years of operation and has now become profitable. |
The shop opens six days a week from 8 in the morning to 11 at night,
providing delicious snacks to students. It not only enables women like Ah
Chung, excluded from the mainstream job market, to make a living but more
importantly, it helps to consolidate and build the social power of women.
For example, the tuck shop displays pamphlets on the status of women as well
as women's craftwork put on sale there by community groups. It is hoped that
such public education would help raise the awareness of women's issues
amongst student and arouse their concerns, and that they would take
individual actions to help marginalized groups. Ah Chung admits
candidly that she has mellowed as she matures, and her self-confidence has
grown steadily. "This is the biggest change in me since I joined the Women
Workers' Cooperative." In reality, Ah Chung is still the same person with
her self-confidence and her insistence on fairness and justice. It is just
that through the co-operative, she has rediscovered abilities that have lain
dormant for many years and is now able to use these to make new openings in
her life.
There are
650,000 female home-makers in Hong Kong. Ah Chung was a house-maker before
she joined the Women Workers' Co-operative. Home-makers take good care of
their family and so family members work to earn their living. Their
contribution to the economy is direct and yet not being acknowledged by
society. Home-makers are not included in Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes (MPF)
and they will not receive any pension after “retirement” or when they become
old.
Initiatives like the Women Workers' Co-operative creates opportunity for Ah
Chung and other women to earn a living. HER Fund supports and encourages the
development of women's groups which share the same vision and value to us.
We made grant to Women Workers' Co-operative in
2006/07 and
2007/08 for development, operation and promotion. | |
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Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?! | |
In our daily lives, we tend to mix up the Chinese terms “sex” and
“gender” and stick to traditional views on different genders. We will do a
mini-exposé on ten common misunderstandings in e-newsletter. Magazine A: “N, a movie star, wants to marry into a rich family and is prepared
to give up her film career…” Newspaper B: “The career of X, a singer, is being flushed down the drain
and needs to live on his girlfriend's income…" |
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Needless to
say, everyone can guess that movie star N is a woman and singer X is a man. This
is because we have been indoctrinated with this school of thought from a young
age: the ultimate goal for a woman is to marry a rich man, and men without a
career are useless. As we see this kind of news in newspapers and magazines
every day, we become used to these ideas and think that these are normal. The old saying
goes: “Men should aim high”. In other words, real men should have
forward-looking ambitions and venture everywhere to build up their careers.
However, in reality, men also need to be loved and supported, and to share
familial responsibility with their partners and family. When his career isn’t
going smoothly, his loved ones should open up to discuss the problem and share
the burden with the family. |
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Women are same as men. Career can give one’s self-confident and economic autonomy. Women also need to be respected and appreciated through her career development. Therefore, no matter women or men, we can choose different career to achieve and develop one’s skills, interest and values in different stages. Meanwhile, we can get our own income to achieve the need of economic autonomy and appreciation from others. |
HER Fund is a member of the International Network of
Women's Funds (INWF), |
Please forward HER News to 5 of your friends who concerns about the women issue |