International Viewpoint
1992 1992-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 12 →
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MA: Slowly, such centers are being formed. They include groups like "rape crisis", "lifeline," and "childline," as well as centers for battered women. But very few women actually go to such centers. I know of a comrade whose husband is also a political activist. Every weekend she is beaten. She has a broken nose, a broken arm.
It is difficult to intervene even though we treat it as a political issue. It is difficult to know what to do because the next week they are together again. Very few working-class women actually go to these centers. It is mostly students or petty-bourgeois women who go. guinea pigs, and they have never been given education or options to choose this or that method.
Maternity benefits are still a big problem in this country. Legally, the situation is that a woman can take three-months maternity leave, and the state will pay 40 percent and the employer a small amount. So there isn't full-pay compensation when women go on maternity [leave]. There is therefore no proper maternity law.
Some unions have won certain benefits, including SACCU, which has won good maternity benefits. They have six months of maternity benefits fully paid by the A biweekly magazine published under, the auspices of the Fourth International One year subscription: $47 send to:
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Scan page 13
prepared to place their hopes in negotia-