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Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

GAATW Logo

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

News

The COVID-19 Crisis is a Wake-up Call to Rethink the World of Work

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Statement by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women on the occasion of International Workers' Day

This year we are celebrating International Workers’ Day in the midst of a global pandemic. A virus ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has turned everyone’s lives upside down. At the time of writing, the novel corona virus or COVID-19, as it has come to be known, has claimed almost 230,000 lives and infected more than 3 million people. The number is still growing, healthcare systems are struggling to cope with the impact and an economic recession is just round the corner. The pandemic has rendered billions of people jobless, homeless and without food security. According to an ILO estimate, full or partial lockdown measures affect almost 2.7 billion workers, representing around 81 per cent of the world’s workforce.

As we grapple with the evolving situation, a few things are clear: this virus has exposed the stark inequalities in our societies and the abysmal scenario in the world of work. It is clear, if ever there was any doubt, that most governments have prioritised profit over people. It is perhaps not surprising that discrimination and structural violence towards care workers, migrants in low-paid jobs and workers in the informal economy are seen even in the COVID-19 containment measures. Indeed, the lingering images over the last several weeks are of the exodus of migrant workers from cities under lockdown, stranded workers huddled up in makeshift accommodations queuing up for food, workers harassed by law enforcement, women facing violence in their homes and farmers with their wasted harvest and unsold produce.

Women, the Unpaid Care Workers

On this May Day we renew our solidarity with the unpaid care workers, most of whom are women. Many of whom are also in paid jobs. While COVID-19 has closed avenues for paid work for many women, there has been a huge increase in their unpaid care work burden. Before COVID-19, women were doing three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men. Now with children out of school, men out of work, paid care workers not allowed into homes and heightened care needs of older persons, that burden has increased multifold for women across classes and countries. To make matters worse, there are reports of steady rise in domestic violence and child abuse during the lockdown. Confined within their homes, women have lost their peer support and many state and NGO- run shelters are now closed.

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End Gender-Based Violence against Women Migrant workers

Statement by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women on International Women’s Day 2020

EndVAWWW

Women migrant workers experience a continuum of gender-based violence and harassment, ranging from insults to severe physical abuse, sexual assault, psychological abuse, bullying and intimidation.

This gender-based violence cannot be considered in isolation from the patriarchal stereotypes about women’s place in society, the value of their labour, and the violence that women are subjected to throughout their lives. 

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Violence and harassment faced by women migrant workers in Latin America

2019 Menuda manera de ganarnos la vidaWomen migrant workers across Latin America endure extreme violence in order to be able to provide for their families, according to research carried out among workers in the garment, domestic, service, sex and hawking sectors.

Economic precarity was the driving factor for accepting poverty wages and poor working conditions:

  • Workers in maquilas (garment factories) in Guatemala and Brazil work around 12 hours per day, locked in factories until production targets are reached, for as little as 200 US dollars a month.
  • Some live-in domestic workers in Colombia work seven days a week, up to 15 hours a day, with salaries under minimum wages and in some cases with no salary at all.

All participants said that the constant economic instability and job insecurity in which they find themselves makes them accept conditions that in another context they would never have imagined enduring.

The research aimed to explore gender-based violence in the world of work from the perspective of women migrant workers. The 172 women interviewed by eight Latin American civil society organisations reported experiencing a spectrum of violence and discrimination, through dynamics created by patriarchal societies and families, racism and xenophobia and an entrenched neoliberal capitalist economy. This is creating a ‘new normal’ of permanent precarity through a lack of social coverage, poverty wages, exploitative working conditions and job insecurity. 

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Against the Grain: Fighting Corporate Agriculture through Women’s Solidarity

Leah Sullivan

Thirty years ago, the village of Pastapur was struggling. Dalit and Adivasi (indigenous) people who lived there did so in poverty, surviving from tiny plots of inhospitable land. Many more were landless agricultural labourers, eking out a living from neighboring farms. Hunger was a constant threat, and young people left for life in the city. Today, this has all changed. 

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