Wi Mayeo is a community leader: she’s a trusted advocate with policy makers and teaches Thai literacy and computer skills. Wi Mayeo is also a sex worker.
Wi Mayeo reading from Stories of Bad Girls, a compilation of essays written by Empower members.
After moving to a small village in Northern Thailand, Wi worked different jobs before becoming a sex worker. Like many migrant sex workers from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and China, she was denied her right to education. Wi realized that in order to protect herself against exploitation, she needed to learn how to read and write Thai.
While searching for literacy classes, she found the Empower Foundation, a Global Fund for Women grantee partner run by a collective of sex workers. Through Empower, she was able to take advantage of courses such as business, labor rights, and foreign language. With its 30,000-stong membership, the heart and soul of Empower’s work is to eliminate exploitation and decriminalize adult sex work by equipping its members with information and education.
“Human beings need to belong,” said Wi, who is in her mid-twenties and from the ethnic minority group, Akkha. “We all need a community to celebrate together, mourn together, and grow strong together.”
Creating a Safe Community
Women doing sex work in Thailand contribute about seven percent to the country’s total GDP, the largest single contributor -- even above rice sales. The lack of legal protection for an estimated 200,000 sex workers establishes them as a large group of vulnerable and exploitable labor, exposing them to possible injury and dangerous situations.
Empower women broadcasting information about women's health over community radio.
Empower organizes against unfair labor practices and advocates for equal rights. Empower sex workers sit on government committees and advise local policy makers on fair labor laws.
In fact, after years of lobbying, Empower was able to push for the inclusion of sex workers in Thailand’s social security scheme. Now, sex workers like Wi have access to maternity and medical benefits.
Raising the Bar
With the goal of showing policy makers, employers, and society what safe working conditions for sex workers look like, Wi and Empower members raised money to build the Can Do Bar, an entertainment bar owned and operated by Empower. Can Do Bar employees work a maximum of eight hours per night and have one day off per week. Condoms and lubricant are freely available and workers are trained in safe sex education.
The same DJs who spin at the Can Do bar also broadcast information about women’s health, HIV/AIDs, and women’s resources twice a day over the community radio.
“Empower is our community,” said Wi. “It’s a space we own and belong to. We learn, laugh, share and build a place in society for us to stand up together and insist on our human rights.”
Kashindi, a widow and mother of six, has something to celebrate. After her husband’s death, her in-laws pressured her to marry her brother-in-law. When she refused, they responded by selling her house and land. However, with the assistance of Solidarité des Femmes Activistes pour la Défense des Droits Humains [Women Activists in Solidarity for the Defense of Human Rights (SOFAD)], Kashindi got her home back.
Continued armed conflict, lack of rule of law, and high rates of gender-based violence are a daily reality for women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In this context, stories like Kashindi’s are common. SOFAD, one of the Global Fund’s long-term partners in the DRC, has established over 60 peace networks in villages throughout the South Kivu Province. With cadres of trained women’s activists, these networks promote women’s rights, address sexual abuses and even expose weapons at the local level. One such network successfully arbitrated Kashindi’s case.
SOFAD’s peace networks have impacted the lives of over 20,000 women and children in the DRC by arbitrating women’s cases, conducting legal and civic education, and raising awareness of women’s rights at the village level. This is how SOFAD is building the women’s movement: from the ground up.
Marceline Mwamuye had a busy weekend. On top of planting maize and tending to her farm animals, she worked with local fishery experts to dig a pond on her half-acre of land in Kilifi County, an arid region along the coast of Kenya. Marceline will fill the pond with water, and place sacks of manure along the edges to provide nutrients so algae will grow and support a thriving fish population.
We are pleased to share with you our 2010-2011 Annual Report. From victories at the International Labor Organization to the Arab Spring, collective work for women's human rights is bringing change. Our annual report tells the stories. Thanks to you, we continue to rise.
"Each young woman has a voice, and behind this voice, there is a story… if it’s heard at the right place, it could bring change.”
After reading that quote, there was no doubt the Global Fund for Women would support AZUR Développement’s national leadership workshops and feminist technology exchanges.
The exchanges ensure that young women activists in Congo-Brazzaville have the necessary skills to speak on pressing issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and socio-economic development.
Since 2004, AZUR has shaped the national women’s movement through knowledge-sharing on human rights, advocacy and online activism. Program attendees created blogs, published articles in Congo’s largest daily newspaper, and hosted their own workshops on information and communication technologies (ICTs).
One young woman was so inspired by her AZUR experience that she left her job and started an organization promoting HIV/AIDS awareness among Congolese youth. Other graduates collaborated with AZUR to produce a radio program on gender-based violence, which inspired their listeners to send 100 text messages sharing their stories and asking questions.
AZUR often cites an adage: “A young woman who has information has the power to change her life and the lives of others.” This perspective informs everything they do in Central Africa, a region recovering from decades of war and political instability.
The rewards of AZUR’s success are numerous. They now have multiple international partners, including Urgent Action Fund Africa and Mama Cash. Executive Director Sylvie Niombo has published widely on ICT use in Congolese civil society and in 2009, became a member of the Global Fund’s Advisory Council.
Young women activists Charmila Thushari of Sri Lanka and Hoeurng Phork of Cambodia live 1700 miles apart, yet they discovered they shared the same struggle. Both were fighting for women’s labor rights in factories back home.
They connected through the Activist School for Feminist Development Communication, a five-day program funded by the Global Fund for Women and organized by grantee partner, ISIS International, in Manila, Philippines.
“In Cambodia it is very difficult to speak out and criticize the government’s labor law; it means taking risks,” said Phork. “At ISIS I built a local and international support network.”
This network includes Thushari and Phork, who work for Global Fund grantee partners Dabindu Collective and Cambodian Women’s Movement Organization, respectively. With a Global Fund grant, these activists, along with ten other young women under 40, shared ways they use media technology, like radio and Twitter, to organize their communities.
Delegates came from across Asia to exchange lessons about competing in the male- dominated world of journalism and communications. Participants also produced videos to help mobilize women in their communities.
“I traveled to a strange place, met lovely people, and learned meaningful things,” said Ou Xiaoo, a participant from Yunnan, China.
The strong relationships built at the Activist School are an important step in transforming the way young women think about the feminist movement across the region and the world. To this day, Phork and Thushari remain connected through an online forum.
“We entered the Activist School as strangers and at the end we became members of one united family,” said Thushari.
To roaring applause, the votes on the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers appeared on the screen: 396 yes, 16 no, 63 abstain. Domestic workers cheered from the ILO Congressional balcony and unfurled a banner, “Congratulations! Now the Domestic Work for Governments: Ratify! Implement!”
“For the first time, domestic workers will no longer be invisible and unrecognized,” wrote Yenny Hurtado of Sindicato Nacional Trabajadoras del Servicio Domestico from Colombia. “It was an incredible experience to be at the ILO negotiating the hours, pay and benefits we want.”
ILO Convention 189 recognizes domestic work as labor with basic human rights protections. It was the result of over three decades of organizing by domestic workers associations, networks, and coalitions including many Global Fund grantee partners. These groups represent some the world’s most exploited workers: women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous people, and migrants. Many earn low wages with no benefits, enduring long hours in unsafe conditions where they are vulnerable to sexual, physical and verbal abuse.
Though isolated in their employer’s homes, women from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean managed to organize locally, build alliances within their countries and across regions, and take their demands all the way to the highest decision-making body on labor: the ILO.
“This is a victory for all domestic workers, but it’s also a victory for the Global Fund for Women as one of the only international organizations that provides support to our struggles,” Rosa Acosta of Astradom wrote to us from Costa Rica. Of the 20 domestic worker delegates to the ILO, 12 were Global Fund grantees, including CARAM Asia, the South African Domestic, Service and Allied Workers Union, and National Union for Domestic Employees from Trinidad and Tobago.
The Global Fund for Women salutes domestic workers for making history!
When was the last time a major world leader devoted an entire speech on the global economy to the empowerment of women? Secretary Clinton’s keynote address at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in San Francisco was powerful and significant: she made a compelling case for women’s participation in economic policy and practice. Her vision and commitment to women’s leadership is exemplified by the fact that the Women and the Economy Summit is the largest convening of world leaders in the Bay Area since the signing of the UN Charter 66 years ago. Since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Secretary Clinton has been a committed advocate for women’s empowerment in government, business and civil society.
In light of this week's historic APEC Women and the Economy Summit, Anasuya Sengupta, Global Fund Regional Director for Asia and Oceania, challenges women leaders in attendance to be a more critical force in shaping a different economic strategy for the region. In her opinion piece, published in San Francisco Chronicle’s Open Forum, Sengupta argues that if women were more involved in legislation and policy around farming, community and environmental stewardship might be prioritized over simple profit. Read more »
An interview with Kavita Ramdas, former President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, describing her recent visit to Pakistan and the conditions in areas ravaged by the floods in 2010.
Kashindi, a widow and mother of six, has something to celebrate. After her husband’s death, her in-laws pressured her to marry her brother-in-law. When she refused, they responded by selling her house and land. However, with the assistance of Solidarité des Femmes Activistes pour la Défense des Droits Humains [Women Activists in Solidarity for the Defense of Human Rights (SOFAD)], Kashindi got her home back.
16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence
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