We’re envisioning a world where gender discrimination is history.
Gender-based violence affects 1 in 3 women and girls during their lifetime. Women face specific challenges in exploitative labor conditions, such as lower wages in comparison to their male counterparts, gender-based violence, and limited access to legal resource. Together with female survivors of gender-based workplace violence, our worker and survivor investigators document cases of sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, and exploitation of women workers, particularly in major global supply chains in emerging economies. We also help women workers organize to demand workplaces free of violence and discrimination.
Our in-depth research has delved into gender based-discrimination and gender-based violence at work through our Democracy at Work key pillar of work. With personal lived experience, our investigators are able to gather firsthand testimonies from women workers that have experienced the gendered dimension of labour exploitation, lending an understanding ear to their experiences and amplifying their voices to the thousands that can implement incremental policy changes over time.
Through advocacy with organizations like the International Labour Organization and partnerships like with the International Domestic Workers Federation, we pave the way for systemic change that ensures greater protection for women and girls in both national and international labor markets. We work particularly closely with other human rights bodies to call for reforms that address gender inequality, enforce labor rights protections, and hold corporations and governments accountable for practices that disproportionately harm women. We recognize the intersectional challenges faced by women and others who are also migrants or racial or ethnic minorities because of their gender. Our work often explores how gender intersects with other forms of oppression, ensuring that the specific needs of diverse women survivors are addressed.
Our outreach extends particularly to domestic workers, garment workers, and workers in hospitality given how these industries particularly prey on women workers. Workers share their personal stories with us, like one worker in Bangladesh who described the harrowing work conditions she faces:
“We have a daily target to reach. The supervisor fixes our daily target. I make 60-80 pieces per hour. I can only go to the restroom after finishing my hourly target. When a lot of work piles up, they don’t let us go anywhere. They verbally abuse us. I work for 10-12 hours a day at my sewing machine.”
We campaign to ensure that governments works with stakeholders, including unions and workers to examine the underlying causes of exploitation in these industries and call on investments and transitions to labour markets with greater transparency and collaboration between agencies and communities, and champion implementation of due diligence legislation that holds businesses, finance and the public sector to account when they fail to prevent supply chain abuses.
Our promise to you is to continue to shed light on the particular experiences of women workers worldwide through investigations, reports, and advocacy on a global stage. Together, we envision a world where gender is no longer a determinant of vulnerability to rights abuses.