In every region, women are joining the paid workforce in record numbers. And in every region, our rights as women workers are systematically denied. Six million women in the Philippines 20 percent of the working-age population migrate overseas as domestic workers often working seven days a week for substandard salaries and experiencing abuse and harassment. Ninety percent of women workers in India are in the informal economy, working as street vendors, rag pickers and incense rollers with little protection for their rights under labor laws. We are nurses in Detroit and seamstresses in Delhi; Women active in the union movement in Colombia suffer the highest rate of assassination in the world. Women working in free trade zones in northern Mexico often must take pregnancy tests and may be required to take birth control pills. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is decimating the workforce, especially young women and women in their prime work years. The majority of these women do not have the right to affordable health care. Women in the United States have no right to paid maternity leave, unlike women in every other industrialized country. Government workers in São Paolo and farm workers in southern France; In the United Kingdom, more women are working as home-based workers, using their homes as their workplaces with little regulation and few protections. Danger to the health and safety of China s industrial workforce is a key women s issue. Fires in toy and clothing factories are reminiscent of working conditions in the West 100 years ago. Street vendors in Harare and factory workers in Huainan. As many as 50,000 women are trafficked each year into the United States to serve the sex industry and work in sweatshops. As Bulgaria makes the transition to a market economy, women suffer the highest rates of unemployment and often experience unfair dismissal, hiring practices and wage discrimination.
THE DEMAND FOR WOMEN S RIGHTS IS GROWING AROUND THE WORLD. Women everywhere are fighting for their rights. In Afghanistan, women are reclaiming their right to an education and to participate in government. In Jordan, women are fighting to eliminate honor killings that allow family members to kill a female relative if they feel she has brought dishonor to the family. Women in Lesotho are fighting for the right to own land. WOMEN ALSO ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS AS WORKERS: INDONESIA Sweatshops/Indonesia Millions of women work in low-paid and dangerous jobs in Indonesia. Working as garment workers for big companies, they make only 16 cents an hour and work 70 hours a week. Living under an authoritarian regime, protests seemed to be out of the question. A young union organizer, Dita Sari, began to work with women in the garment industry. At age 23, she was sentenced to five years in prison in 1996 for sedition after leading 20,000 striking workers in a nonviolent march to protest labor conditions. She continued to lead her movement from prison. But growing pressure from her members and an international outcry forced the authorities to release Dita Sari after three years. She once again is organizing women workers and is the president of the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle, a trade union federation in Indonesia. 74,000 women home health aides in Los Angeles fought for 10 years to be recognized as workers and gain the right to bargain for better pay. Women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, are mobilizing to protect young factory workers from a wave of killings. Nearly 500,000 women in India have built a powerful union of women working in the informal economy.
MEXICO Violence/Ciudad Juárez, Mexico For years, hundreds of thousands of young women have migrated from the countryside of Mexico to work in the maquiladoras (assembly plants) on the U.S./Mexico border. Low pay, long hours and dangerous working conditions characterize the work of these women, whose living conditions are often as appalling as their jobs. An unexplained cluster of brutality in Ciudad Juárez brings additional horror to this picture, as hundreds of young women have been raped, murdered or have disappeared around the maquiladoras in the past decade, often on their way to or from work. Government authorities have failed to carry out an effective investigation, and most employers have made little effort to improve safety conditions for the workers and their communities. But activists like Julia Quiñonez said Basta ya! ( Enough! ) when eight bodies were found in a field across the road from the Ciudad Juárez Maquiladora Association. Quiñonez, a former maquila worker, leads the Border Committee of Women Workers. Working with unions and women s organizations on both sides of the border, the group mobilizes workers and public support, putting pressure on state and local authorities and employers. In Ciudad Juárez, these activists have organized vigils, demonstrations, marches, pressure campaigns and support groups to demand justice for the victims and protection for the workers. IRELAND Privatizing Public Services/Ireland When the government decided to contract out all support services in Northern Ireland hospitals, the jobs of 11,000 workers, most of them women, were at stake and so was the ability to provide health care. It seemed a foregone conclusion that jobs would be lost and the low-wage women workers felt unable to confront the international health conglomerate that intended to buy many of the hospital services. But UNISON, the union of public-sector employees, led by Inez McCormack, fought a yearlong battle based on showing the unseen value of women s work in health care and building alliances with the community and with unions in the United States and Europe. The women trade unionists confronted the company at its annual general shareholder meeting. They saved the hospitals and developed a new generation of women leaders.
SOUTH AFRICA Work in the Informal Economy/South Africa UNITED STATES Low-Wage Workers/United States As stable public-sector jobs are eliminated through privatizing public services, more women are turning to informal work to survive. In South Africa, as in other countries in Africa, 90 percent of women workers are informal workers: street vendors, home-based garment workers or child care providers in their homes. Their work provides subsistence for their families but is not recognized as formal employment so they have no access to legal protections or benefits. But women workers in South Africa s informal economy have created a union that meets their needs the Self-Employed Women s Union (SEWU). The original organizers had roots in the trade union movement. Led by SEWU President Zodwa Khumalo, a street vendor, they fight for better working conditions and have influenced city governments to regulate street trade, taking into account the social and economic needs of street vendors. Twenty thousand hotel workers in Las Vegas, most of them women, filled a stadium to vote overwhelmingly to strike the casino industry to protect their health care and lighten the oppressive workload of hotel housekeepers. Their show of strength was so powerful that management backed down and agreed to the strongest contract in the industry. With the support of former maid and current local union president of the Culinary Workers Union/Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees, Geoconda Arguello-Kline, the union of maids, waitresses and others has become a powerful voice in the region s economy and has created stable, middleclass jobs for thousands of working families.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Bring the concerns of the world s working women into the mainstream of popular culture, advocacy, academia and governance. Promote the core labor rights of the International Labor Organization of the United Nations as the foundation of working women s rights: To WORK free from discrimination, To REJECT child labor, HELP MAKE THE VOICES OF WORKING WOMEN HEARD AROUND THE WORLD. To REFUSE forced labor, To ORGANIZE, enjoy freedom of association and bargain collectively. Support the fight for women s rights as workers around the world. For more information, visit our website at www.aflcio.org/issuepolitics/ globaleconomy/women.cfm. AFL-CIO www.aflcio.org Amnesty International www.amnesty.org Association for Women s Rights in Development www.awid.org BehindTheLabel.org www.behindthelabel.org Center for Women s Global Leadership www.cwgl.rutgers.edu Education International www.ei-ie.org HomeNet www.homenetww.org.uk Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org International Confederation of Free Trade Unions* www.icftu.org International Labor Rights Fund www.laborrights.org Maquila Solidarity Network www.maquilasolidarity.org National Labor Committee www.nlcnet.org Public Services International www.world-psi.org The Solidarity Center www.solidaritycenter.org StreetNet Association www.streetnet.org.za Union Network International www.union-network.org United Students Against Sweatshops www.usasnet.org United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) www.unifem.undp.org Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) www.wiego.org Worker Rights Consortium www.workersrights.org VOICES International Labor Organization www.ilo.org * See links to the Equality Department and the Women for Unions-Unions for Women Campaign
Women s rights and workers rights are two branches nurtured by the same tree human rights. They are intrinsically linked. Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights AFL-CIO Women in the Global Economy 815 16th St., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20006 www.aflcio.org womensrights@aflcio.org