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.
With the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections drawing to a close, we asked Mozn Hassan, who’s based in Cairo, for her feminist perspective and analysis on results to date.
Mozn, who will vote in the second round, is an Egyptian activist and executive director of grantee-partner, Nazra for Feminist Studies. Since the January uprisings, Egyptian women and girls have taken center stage in the country’s democratic revolution, challenging the common stereotype of Arab women as being powerless, submissive and isolated from political events. Nazra embodies the spirit of the Egyptian revolution. The group is bold, fearless, and hungry for justice and equality.
Global Fund: Are women turning out in higher numbers to vote?
Mozn: My analysis is that women in rural and Upper Egypt were used to vote, and that men mobilized those women to vote. This time, the number [of women voters] was higher in these places. While there is no gender analysis yet for [why] they went to vote, or who they voted for, it is significant that middle and upper middle class women went to vote for the first time.
Global Fund: Did Nazra receive any news from people who protested voting, or had difficulty voting?
Mozn: Some people did boycott the elections after mass violence happened in Tahrir Square days before the election, but this was not a huge number. Women human rights defenders who answered Nazra’s hotline [received calls about voting] violations and [complaints about] people handing out [campaign] materials.
Global Fund: It looks like the Muslim Brotherhood will come out strong in the election. What does this mean for women’s rights in Egypt?
Mozn: Islamic groups like the Muslim Brothers and Salafists will get a high number in parliament. Salafists are more radical, and I think this could be dangerous for women on social levels. People who voted for these groups are going to put moral and social pressure on women in the public space and on a political level.
I don’t think we will lose the laws we’ve gained [such as divorce rights, custody rights and inheritance laws], but we will definitely not gain more. [These groups] are also creating legal discourse against women, civil liberties and human rights defenders, especially women human rights defenders.
Global Fund: You were recently quoted in Al Jazeera by saying, “I'm worried about the kind of women that will join parliament. Many of them are women who are against women." What is your opinion of the quota for female parliamentarians?
Mozn: This is about not seeing women’s participation as only numbers. It is important to see their discourse and engagement on a political level. This will make people trust women to represent them [in regards to] women's issues… It is always harder to have women against women' rights than men who are doing so.
Global Fund: How does Nazra's Women Political Participation Academy support female candidates?
Mozn: Through training, empowerment and capacity building, we supported Sanaa Al Said, a woman from Upper Egypt who has won in her district. She now has a chance, through the proportional representational electoral law, to gain a seat in parliament on behalf of the labor contingent. This work is an added value to the feminist movement.
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.
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.
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.
Millions of women worked side by side with men — free from sexual harassment — on the streets of Egypt, Tunisia and across the Middle East and North Africa to demand their political rights.
Overnight, the world watched young, old and veiled women, often stereotyped as powerless, become fighters for democracy. We could finally imagine a region where women had the same rights and responsibilities as men.
Yet, along with the euphoria of dismantling authoritarian political structures, and efforts to enshrine women’s rights in new constitutions, women were keenly aware of the challenges ahead.
“It is truly wonderful, unbelievable. The impossible is after all possible and achievable,” — Hoda Elsadda, Global Fund for Women board member, from Cairo’s Tahrir Square
Peaceful protests were met with government-sponsored violence. In Egypt, women were harassed, accused of promoting western agendas, and told by fundamentalists to go home and leave public spaces for men.
Undeterred, women's groups worked together to make sure gender equality is reflected in the new constitution. Global Fund advisors and grantees, like the Nadim Center and Center for Egyptian Women Legal Assistance Foundation, helped form new feminist coalitions.
In Tunisia, Association Engagement Citoyen mobilized women for the upcoming elections by building on their success with the Tunis Declaration, which calls for equality between women and men and constitutional and legal reforms to prohibit discrimination. In a rapidly changing political landscape, the Mediterranean Women’s Fund convened women’s rights activists from across the region to share information and strategies.
The uprisings offered precious moments of transformation. Women seized them by reclaiming public spaces to bring down repressive regimes that denied women and men agency. Women were transformed, just like their countries: now, they see the future of their country as their business and who governs them as their democratic right. Revolutionary indeed.
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.
With the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections drawing to a close, we asked Mozn Hassan, who’s based in Cairo, for her feminist perspective and analysis on results to date.
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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