By Devi Leiper

With Labor Day fast approaching, I’ve been thinking about women’s work. At the Global Fund for Women, I am proud to live for the women’s human rights movement, but also work for the movement.

In the past few weeks, the struggles of Asian women workers have made news headlines. In Cambodia, at least nine women garment workers were injured in a clash between striking workers and police in riot gear over the suspension of a key union official. This suspension is part of a long history where union officials have been unjustly arrested, harassed, and assassinated. Yet our grantee partners in Cambodia continue to organize and assemble to ‘build solidarity’ and ‘raise women’s voices,’ which have yielded over the years important gains in higher wages and better work conditions.

In Bangladesh, some 80 workers, including women, were injured by rubber bullets and teargas fired by police. These textile workers were disappointed by the new minimum wage law that raised salaries to $43 a month from $24 a month, the lowest industry salary in the world. The raise wasn’t sufficient; workers say they need at least $72 a month for a decent quality of life, especially since most are still reeling from last year’s global food crisis.

In addition to demanding better pay, Bangladeshi workers are demanding decent working conditions at factories owned by companies like Marks & Spencer, JC Penney, Wal-Mart and H&M. Like Cambodia, the work environment for labor groups is extremely hostile. Government officials and their security forces use excessive force to quell demonstrators. The government has targeted groups working on women workers’ labor rights in Bangladesh – accusing them of inciting violence, stripping their license to operate as a non-government organization, and forcing leaders into hiding.

While the global garment industry has rapidly increased the number of women in the workplace in countries like Cambodia and Bangladesh, women’s economic and labor rights are still to be recognized and realized. On Labor Day, let’s remember the plight of women workers struggling for these basic human rights all around the world.

Devi Leiper is part of the Program Team at the Global Fund for Women

Guest Post By Rafia Zakaria

As Pakistan’s flood crisis continues into its fourth week, it is the women who are suffering the most. Millions displaced by the flood waters languish with few resources to alleviate their suffering. According to statistics compiled by the Reproductive Health in Crisis Consortium, nearly 85 percent of flood survivors in camps are women [PDF]. In some cases, this is because men stayed behind to guard the homes and livestock while women and children were evacuated; in others, it’s because families got separated while on the move. With nearly 20 million people displaced by the floods and perhaps 6 million made homeless, the havoc wreaked on Pakistani women is unimaginable.

By Preeti Mangala Shekar

Usually quiet on weekends, the Global Fund office was bustling last Saturday when we held a panel discussion on the India-Pakistan, “Indo-Pak,” peace processes. Nearly 50 people from throughout the bay area attended on the 64th anniversary of Pakistan and India’s independence from British rule.

Fatma Emam is a young feminist activist working on women’s rights in Cairo, Egypt. She is lead researcher of Nazra for Feminist Studies, a young feminist-led research organization, and a GFW grantee partner, seeking to highlight a younger voice within the human rights and feminist movements in Egypt. Brownie is Fatma’s blog which she updates regularly with news and reflections on young feminist activism in the Arab world. Read her recent blog post highlighting burnout among young feminists through her personal reflections, that she also shared with the young Feminist Wire Community hoping that it will resonate with other activists. Read full post

Guest blog source: Brownie and AWID’s Young Feminist Wire

By Iris Garcia

I am not what they call an early adapter when it comes to technology; I joined Facebook a few months ago, use a desktop at home, and my mobile phone can be considered a fossil. My political perspective on technology: the world’s problems will not be solved by technological innovation alone, and that many benefits of technological advancements have an associated negative cost, be it environmental, social, or economic.

By Dianne Gallo

Earlier this month, I traveled to Port-au-Prince as a part of a GFW delegation to learn about the current situation of women in Haiti and to learn how we can best support women’s roles in decision-making throughout the reconstruction process. 

By Preeti Mangala Shekar

Earlier this year on a trip to India, I met Aniruddh Vasudevan, a phenomenal gay rights activist in my home city of Chennai. Aniruddh's infectious zest to transform India’s pervasive homophobia and decriminalize homosexuality in Chennai energized me at a time when I was struggling to see how my perspectives and capacity as an activist based in the global north could support movements and work back home in India.

By Maame Yelbert-Obeng

The World Cup may have ended this week in South Africa, but thanks to the Global Girl Media (GGM), the voices and life experiences of South African girls will live on.

By Eryn Mathewson

On a Tuesday evening in June, my colleagues and I modeled five different costumes that reflected the different ways militarism affects our lives. The fashion show was part of the Transnational Feminist Organizing to Resist Militarism event at our office, which also included grantees from Guam and Colombia who shared how their communities were being impacted by militarism.

“We have leadership development schools for our children because they will decide if they will participate in these wars or not,” said Claudia Castellenos, a human rights lawyer from Popular Feminine Organization Against the War and for Peace in Colombia.

Claudia was among three GFW grantees who we supported to attend the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit, where over 15,000 activists participated in 1,000 self-organized workshops on building social change and movements in the U.S. The motto of the World Social Forum is “Another World is Possible,” whereas the USSF motto is, “But Another U.S. is Necessary.”