Women's Rights Officer

The Women's Rights Officer is one of the seven Association Officers elected by SRC. At present the position is open to both women and men but it has been traditionally held by women, si nee it is unlikely that any male (no matter how, sympathetic) could be as effective in this position as a women. There are a number of reasons for this which will be dealt with later, all of them political.

Like most other SRC officers, the work of the Women's Right Officer is nearly all of a political nature. Almost her only administrative responsibility for VUWSA is to sit on the Creche Sub-Committee which meets twice yearly. She is also responsible for the VUWSA Women's Rights budget of $100. This is provided for her use in any campaigns or activities on women's rights.

The Women's Rights Officer sits on the Women' Rights Action Committee (WRAC) of NZUSA. This is a national body set up to co-ordinate campus activity on women's rights which meets 5 times a year, providing publicity and ideas for campus action. It is the responsibility of the Wome Rights Officer to bring these campaigns back and to action them on campus. This can involve distribution of publicty leaflets and posters, the holding of forums, seminars, organising meetings and various other activities such as street theatre.

In accordance with SRC policy the Women's Rights Officer may be called upon to action specific Victoria policy on a campus rather than national level. An example of this was a campaign started around the Creche in 1978. This was organised on a purely campus level since the conditions in the Creche at Victoria were not present at any other university.

It should be emphasised here that the main respo reponsibilty of the Women's Rights Officer is [unclear: acts] to action SRC policy. She is not free to campaign on her own beliefs but must subjugate these if necessary.

In all this work one of her major roles is to build campus women groups, through campaigns etc., and to involve and educate as many people as possible on women's rights. In the past abortion action groups have been kept seperate from 'women only' groups in order to allow men to participate in the former. If the Women's Rights Officer was a man, then it would be almost impossible for him to build a strong campus women's group since many interested women would be turned off by seeing a man leading campaigns on women's rights. It would be yet another example of our sexist society in which men occupy almost all leadership positions, however, seeing a women leading campaigns does help other women realise that they too could have the ability to participate in political action.

It is usual for the Women's Rights Officer to give regular reports to SRC on her activities. In this way SRC is kept up to date with action on women's rights and students are made aware that there are things happening which they could be involved in. She is expected to be available to students who want to hear about women's rights.

There is not a great deal of check kept on the SRC Officers — how much they actually do is up to the individual concerned. Not all things that I have mentioned are compulsory, they are merely my my ideas of some of the things which should be done by the Women's Rights Officer. But in the long run, the effectiveness and the work done in this position will only be determined by the enthusiasm and perseverance of the individual, within the context of the political state of the Association.