Issue 10: Women Workers Organise

Written on 05 June 2023.

Dear friends,

We are pleased to bring you the May 2023 issue of Our Work, Our Lives which focusses on women workers’ organising. GAATW Front May 2023 resize

In this issue we hear from community organisers and union leaders affiliated to AMKAS-Nepal, ARM-Lebanon, CHRCD-Sri Lanka, DoWan-Sierra Leone, ESCO-Sri Lanka, JALA PRT- Indonesia, OKUP-Bangladesh, OPSI-Indonesia, Tarangini-Nepal, WINS-India, WOFOWON-Nepal, MAP-Thailand, PTS-India and Yasanti-Indonesia.

Women who have returned after working as domestic workers (or in other low waged jobs) in foreign countries have collectivised to demand stronger social protection and a safe and fair labour migration regime. They are currently self-employed or working as daily wage labourers in their home countries. Even when there are accusations from male family members that they are ‘wasting time in girly gossip’, returnee women migrants have sought out each other’s company. Many of them have also enjoyed working in their communities. “I joined DoWan to avoid loneliness at home and get skills training to find a job,” says Kadiatu Patricia Ado from Sierra Leone. “Earlier I was known as someone’s daughter, sister, wife, or mother. Now I am a well-known face in my community, even in my district. I am one of the trusted persons in my society,” says Indira Kharel from AMKAS-Nepal. “Despite lack of recognition from the government, we have been able to create a culture of mutual support amongst ourselves and find a social niche for ourselves,” members of the Kurunegala Migrant Societies tell us.

There are stories of organising and unionising from women domestic workers, home-based workers, porters, entertainment workers, farmers, and sex workers. “When we started speaking as a group, things did change sometimes. Not big changes but at least the behaviour of male colleagues and employers changed a little. When we started to respect ourselves, we noticed that people also treated us with some respect in public places,” Ayushma KC, an entertainment worker leader from WOFOWON tells us. Erna Maria from Jogja City Homeworkers Federation explains that by joining the union, she learnt about workers’ rights and how to fight for it. Her words are echoed by members of the women farmers’ cooperative in Tirupati, India who say, “We thought that if we present our situation to policy makers as a group, there is greater possibility of being taken seriously.”

Issue 9: Celebrating Women Leaders

Written on 24 March 2023.

Dear friends, 2023 OWOL issue9

We are back with the March 2023 issue of Our Work, Our Lives after a gap of one year. From now onwards, the e-magazine will be published bi-monthly.

As before, it will bring the voices, concerns and priorities of women workers.

In preparation for this issue, we requested our members and partners from organised groups of women workers to respond to two simple questions. We wanted to know what significance, if any, 8 March has for them and what their priorities for 2023 are. Twenty-five contributions from twelve countries across Asia, Europe and Latin America reached us. It was heart-warming to note that 8 March is celebrated by all the groups to strengthen women’s movements for social justice. For all our contributors, the day is also a celebration of womanhood, of friendship and solidarity. Priorities range from long-term visions for a life of dignity and equality to more specific ones of collective well-being, just wages, insurance benefits and freedom to organise. We hope you enjoy reading the magazine as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Do write to us with your comments, suggestions, or stories for upcoming issues at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Warmly,

GAATW-IS team

Read the full issue in PDF or view using FlipHTML5

Heroes, Victims, or Slaves? Workers! Strengthening migrant and trafficked women’s rights to inclusive re/integration in Southeast Asia and Europe

Written on 02 March 2023.

In the past two decades, the migration and trafficking of women from Southeast Asia to Europe has received relatively little attention from donors, policymakers, and NGOs, compared to other migration routes. Yet Southeast Asian women continue going to Europe for work or marriage. What is their journey? Do they settle in Europe and how do they live there? Do they return to their home countries and how do they resume the life they had left behind? How do communities, societies, and governments view migrant and trafficked women?

Our new report explores these questions not only to find their answers but also to challenge what we know and how we think about women, migration, labour, and trafficking today. It describes the main challenges that migrant and trafficked women from Southeast Asia face in their socioeconomic inclusion (or re/integration) in Europe and upon return to their country of origin. It highlights examples of government and NGO programmes to support women’s socioeconomic inclusion or re/integration, as well as the women’s own understanding of the meaning of these words. It concludes with a number of broad recommendations to governments in countries of origin and destination to ensure that women’s migration benefits not only governments, businesses, and brokers, but, most of all, the women themselves.

Building Communities of Resistance: Reflections from grassroots organisations around the world

Written on 17 October 2022.

This report is the result of a collective effort to pause, look inwards, and reflect on the process of transformative change. It collates a series of insights, challenges, and lessons learnt by and with ten grassroots organisations from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. These organisations work closely with different communities – refugees, LGBTIQ+ people, farmers, domestic workers, girls, and adolescents – and engage in movement-building work.

The report summarises their approaches to co-creating knowledge with communities and their principles and strategies of storytelling, meaningful participation and active listening, and building the collective power of communities and movements. It highlights our shared commitment to support marginalised groups towards realising their change agendas in a participatory, equitable, and democratic manner.

‘I spent many days on the road but I made it here’: Socioeconomic inclusion of migrant and trafficked women in South America

Written on 13 September 2022.

This report highlights how migrant women's experiences of social inclusion and access to the labour market are shaped by their gender, ethnicity, and migration status.

After difficult migration journeys, including spending days on the road, sleeping on the streets, going without food, facing racist or xenophobic behaviours, and fear of sexual attacks, many women found themselves employed in occupations that were below their skill levels and therefore turned to employment in the informal economy which was often gendered work in the domestic, care and cleaning sectors. In these working conditions, women were often subjected to limited or no access to social protections and labour rights, abuse, exploitation, and mistreatment.

Furthermore, women were still expected to perform responsibilities of unpaid care work of care giving and household work for their families in addition to being breadwinners which can affect their physical, mental, and emotional health and cause “time poverty” where the very idea of free time does not exist. Oftentimes, even if women were given the opportunity to access government social programmes there were often barriers such as complex paperwork and procedures, lack of information about them among migrants, language barriers, and racist attitudes.