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.”
In the face of deepening inequality, militarization, and conservative backlash, with hard-won gains being reversed, women’s human rights movements find themselves needing to innovate their strategies and actions. Women’s linking and organizing initiatives are critical not only as a means of building consensus, but also as a way of preserving and sustaining the women’s movements themselves.
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.
Medea Khmelidze stands before young women from across Europe and Central Asia. Her peers speak over 15 different native languages; all are under the age of 30.
“I looked around the room at the power, talent and intelligence of the group of women around me, and thought to myself, ‘Wow, we make a very powerful and somewhat intimidating force’,” Khmelidze of Georgia wrote in her blog for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID).
Khmelidze was one of 36 women who attended a two-day convening of the Young Women’s Dialogue on Resource Mobilization and Movement Building in Tbilisi, Georgia in October 2010.
Supported in part by Global Fund for Women, and organized by AWID, this gathering was one of the first meetings of its kind in the region; a precursor to AWID’s Regional Strategy Meeting on Resource Mobilization for Women’s Rights. The ambitious agenda included: gender-based violence, LGBT rights, women’s political participation, sex education and feminist research production.
“I sat amongst young, determined, confident, and very talented women. It makes me inspired to know that many young women are out there organizing on similar issues as mine,” wrote Khmelidze. Since the 1990s, through numerous challenges, women-led groups in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have become a force for advancing gender equality and justice. So much so, that established feminist activists collaborate with a vibrant community of young activists to challenge and advance the feminist agenda.
By supporting these gatherings, the Global Fund helps give activists the space to strategize together. After the meeting, the young women left with the understanding that human resources, connections and volunteers are as important as financial resources.
“The power is in the diversity, and with diversity comes new knowledge and new truths,” Khmelidze blogged.
On the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, GFW's Whitney Graham and Elena I. Nicklasson explore the maternal health implications of the unfolding Fukushima nuclear crisis in an op-ed published by Inter Press Service. Their piece outlines the impact on women's health and lessons learned from Chernobyl, as well as steps the Japanese government should take to protect women's reproductive health. Learn more »
Early this year, twelve U.S.-based Global Fund for Women supporters traveled with us to Colombia to stand in solidarity with the Colombian women’s rights movements. We traveled to the northern states of Bolivar, Atlantico and La Guajira to meet extraordinary women’s rights groups working under extremely difficult conditions to build a different Colombia.
Young grantees in Colombia. Photo by Christine Switzer.
Over the past 45 years, the war in Colombia has evolved from a conflict over ideology to one driven by economic interests and territorial control. In our meetings with grantee partners, we learned how the Colombian military is colluding with paramilitary death squads to seize territory and natural resources largely from indigenous communities on behalf of multinational economic interests. We learned about their struggles for justice, and particularly how Plan Colombia, which has provided $6 billion in U.S. aid to the Colombian military, has been impacting their lives.
Women’s rights groups report that in Colombia, a woman dies every two days from “political” causes and that every fourteen days, a woman is the victim of forced disappearance. They told us that rebel and paramilitary groups have been torturing civilians, raping women and girls, as well as mutilating and executing them. Women have even been forced to observe war crimes committed against their families.
Colombia boasts a strong, vibrant and diverse women’s movement. Yet, amid an increasingly conservative climate, the Colombian women’s movements are facing systematic attempts to control women’s freedom and violate their security. From human rights defenders to sexual and reproductive rights activists to those seeking justice for women survivors of sexual violence, all are under heightened assault.
At the same time, we witnessed the strength, courage and resilience of Colombian women, who, despite their so-called absence from official “peace negotiations,” have been at the center of civil and political unrest. In spite of repeated attacks, disappearances, kidnappings and threats on their lives, women’s groups continue to organize, develop agendas for peace, and lobby for their implementation. We returned inspired by their courage and struggle for justice in the midst of armed conflict.
While the trip did involve educating donors about their philanthropic investments and discussions on how to mobilize more resources for women’s movements, the real goal was to build bridges between the women, who together, are helping to improve the conditions in their communities. In Colombia, we learned that in this exquisitely connected world, it is never a question of “critical mass,” but always about “critical connections.”
A young pregnant woman in rural Tanzania prepares to give birth at home with a traditional birth attendant (TBA), a common experience for most expectant Tanzanian mothers. But the baby is big and the young mother may face complications in delivery, so the TBA recommends that the woman give birth at a nearby health facility.
San Francisco, CA — As funds dry up for reproductive health worldwide and as the U.S. Congress threatens to de-fund Planned Parenthood, the Global Fund for Women gave over $1.75 million in grants to 129 women-led groups in 59 countries around the world in our spring docket. Over 40% of these grants were distributed among women’s groups working to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights for women.
Despite hopeful news from a 2010 Lancet study that maternal deaths have fallen by more than 35 percent in the past 30 years, the number of maternal deaths is still too high. In 2008, 342,900 women died from complications in pregnancy or during childbirth; 80 percent were from 21 developing countries. Many of those deaths could have been prevented with proper obstetric care.
Teacher with the Cameroon Medical Women Association instructs women in sexual health
GFW Accomplishments
Over 24 years, the Global Fund for Women has
Supported advocacy for women’s reproductive rights in 94 countries, including successful efforts to legalize abortion in Mexico City and Colombia.
Invested in the first “out” lesbian groups in several countries, including China, Croatia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Slovenia, Thailand, and Turkey.
Sustained hundreds of lesbian rights organizations, including those operating in at least 10 nations that criminalize homosexuality.
Another challenge facing the global women’s movement is that in many parts of the world, women's bodies and their sexuality is denied, hidden and controlled by men, governments and religious institutions. Many countries have recently introduced laws restricting women’s control over their bodies, including anti-abortion and discriminatory laws governing women’s sexual preferences.
Vision
Imagine a world where all women could make decisions over their own bodies as fully empowered participants in societies. Women would have the right to bodily integrity and access to quality health services—free of discrimination, coercion and violence. At the GFW, we believe that a woman has the undeniable right to make decisions over her body about her body, including the number and spacing of her children or to interrupt a pregnancy. GFW supports women’s groups in 172 countries carry out this vision to advance women’s health, sexual preferences and reproductive rights.
Our Grantmaking
GFW provides grants to courageous, determined women’s rights activists working daily to preserve and expand women’s rights to health, and the freedom to fully express their sexual and reproductive choices. Our grantee partners often put their own lives at risk by pushing against governments and religious institutions in their efforts to reach the most vulnerable and marginalized populations. In their work with adolescent girls, rural women, indigenous women, sex workers, HIV-positive women, and lesbians and transgender individuals, our grantee partners are fostering a cultural and political landscape in which girls and women can make informed choices about their sexuality, reproductive capacity and health.
GFW takes a holistic approach in our grantmaking by prioritizing two broad themes: advancing women’s health and ensuring women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
GFW grantees Advance Women’s Health by ensuring that women have access to quality health care at all stages of their lives. Here are some of the ways they do this »
Offer women regular check-ups and screening by gynecologists, and are often the only ones in their villages running reproductive health clinics.
Provide and advocate for maternal health through pre- and post-natal care, nutrition, safe birthing and access to midwives.
Advocate for the primary health of their children and the prevention of early childhood marriage.
Seek greater understanding of the impact of environmental degradation, contamination, and climate change on women’s health.
Ensure that women living with HIV/AIDS have rights, as do their survivors and those who care for them. Women’s groups work tirelessly to ensure women living with HIV/AIDS have access to treatment, counseling, and life-saving medication.
Engage at the policy level, working to ensure governments prioritize funding comprehensive health services for women and to reform the health industry to be more gender-inclusive and promoting greater investments into women’s health research and services in national budgets. They advocate for parental rights, such as maternity and paternity leave, nursing rooms and regulations to protect the rights of pregnant women and working mothers.
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GFW grantees Advance Sexual and Reproductive Rights by working to »
Educate women and girls on the full range of contraceptives available and how to use them safely.
Ensure that respect, protection, and fulfillment of women’s reproductive rights is policy and the law.
Explore sexual identity and work to change the cultural and political debate on sexual orientation and gender identity, challenging both conservative elements of society and mainstream women’s movements.
Address notions of femininity and masculinity and their cultural and physical expression in society.
Make connections between HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence.
Protect women's right to reproductive choice. Work to decriminalize and expand access to safe abortion.
Build alliances between the women’s and LBTQ rights’ movements to oppose sexual oppression by governments and religious institutions.
Support sexual minorities’ right to freedom of sexual expression in the face of formidable challenges from the church, state and even factions within the women’s movement.
