Climate change and environmental degradation have exacerbated gender inequality and worsened existing inequities resulting from resource scarcity, conflict and climate-related shocks. Women workers—particularly those in the informal economy—bear significant burdens due to the impacts of the climate crisis.
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Trade union women, activists and advocates gathered on March 17 for a virtual panel to discuss the impacts of climate change on women workers and the importance of their inclusion in developing climate solutions. The panel was sponsored by HomeNet International, HomeNet South Asia, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Rutgers Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), StreetNet, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers and the Solidarity Center.
Sonia Mistry, Solidarity Center Global Lead on Climate Change and Just Transition, moderated the panel. She framed the discussion, saying, “There is no denying that the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world, with many of the worst impacts being experienced by those who have contributed least to the problem.” Mistry outlined the panel’s objectives, including highlighting the impact of climate change on women workers, emphasizing the role of workers and their organizations as critical partners in driving worker-responsive climate solutions, and recognizing that climate action requires coalition-building across social movements.
Navya D’Souza, Regional Coordinator for HomeNet South Asia, spoke about how climate change affects women workers in South Asia, where her organization represents 900,000 workers, 95 percent of whom are women. “Climate change is also a very, very gendered issue,’ she said. And home-based workers are seeing “an exponential increase in their already unfair burden of care work. This affects their ability to participate in the labor market.”
D’Souza said climate change also means more dangerous working conditions for home-based women workers. “Heat is rising, and because heat is rising, it affects our productivity,” she said. “We cannot work when it is too hot, and in urban settings, we live in crowded slum settlements. There is no respite from the heat, and we can’t go outside and work because it’s hot outside as well.”
D’Souza said HomeNet South Asia studied the impacts of climate change in South Asia by reaching out to 200 women across five locations in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. The study found that:
66 percent reported a loss of income due to heat and water stressors.
33 percent reported health implications, such as waterborne diseases, and increased healthcare spending.
47 percent reported an increase in unpaid care work, making it difficult for them to operate in the labor market.
A home-based worker focused on tailoring, pearl stringing and applying Kundan stones on fabric work, Sushma Mishra spoke of how climate change has impacted her work. “The roof of my house is made of cement, so it is very hot,” she said. “We face a very difficult situation in cold weather. It is very cold so we have to use electricity when working inside the house. We have to use lights. And there is no ventilation. There are no windows in the house. So that is a major challenge we are facing.”
Due to climate change, the frequency and severity of natural disasters also impact women workers. Albertina Simango, Vice President of Associação da Economia Informal de Moçambique (AEIMO) said, “Here in Mozambique particularly, because of the country’s geographic location, we have been suffering many natural events provoked by climate change. Just to give you an example, in less than 20 years, we have been hit by more than 15 climate events.”
Natural disasters, Simango said, have caused a steep increase in the growth of the informal sector. “Unfortunately, women are the base of the pyramid. The vulnerability of informal women workers is so bad that even children are affected,” she said. “I feel very sad to see women who lose everything they had because of climate events, and afterward they have to have their children negotiate and do business to help support the families.”
Additionally, women workers often work longer hours and face violence and harassment due to traditional gender roles.”They have to work very, very long hours to support their families. Some of them have to work 18 hours a day. This means getting up at 5 a.m. when it’s still dark and going back home at 9 p.m.”
According to Rina Begum, President of the Bangladesh Waste Pickers Union, environmental workers like waste pickers get short shrift. “Waste pickers keep the city clean, but they don’t get good prices. We have no value. If the government provided jobs, we could have a better life.”
In Brazil, Carmen Helena Ferreira Foro, secretary-general, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), said that the effects of climate change are exacerbated by industrial projects that do not consider the impact and are slow to benefit indigenous populations. “Everything is interconnected,” Foro said, “deforestation, water problems, rains — all the causes and effects of climate change impact the livelihoods of indigenous populations.”
“I am a family farmer from a part of the Amazon. I have to daily live with large projects in the Amazon region. They do not consider people’s lives. They exploit them and never redistribute the meaning of this energy,” she said.
“It took us 20 years to get any energy after they built a dam,” she said. “And now we are undergoing a new phase of building a waterway in the same river that was already affected.”
Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, Regional Manager of the Shifting the Power Coalition, wrapped up the discussion by emphasizing the importance of including women workers in planning responses to climate-related disasters. “We’ve been working to ensure that women who have the knowledge, skills and capacity can articulate their needs and be at the table as they want to, and to be able to lead in disaster planning and response.
“The response aspect of disaster management is critical because the economic strategy, the recovery strategy, is vital at that stage,” Bhagwan-Rolls said. “The post-disaster needs assessment requires the feminist analysis, requires the visibility of women, particularly women workers in all the diversities presented by the speakers today.”
Despite modest gains in some regions in the world over the past two decades, women are more likely than men to become and remain unemployed, have fewer chances to participate in the workforce and often must accept dangerous, low-paying jobs, according to Women at Work: Trends 2016, a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
But when women join together to win living wages and decent working conditions through a union or association, women empower themselves and each other in the struggle for economic fairness for themselves, their families and their communities.
“Labor and community organizing can shift power relationships, change working conditions and address barriers to full and equal participation in the labor market,” according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center and Rutgers University’s Center for Women’s Global Leadership, “Transforming Women’s Work: Policies for an Inclusive Economic Agenda.”
With Solidarity Center support, women around the world are joining and leading unions, advocating for themselves and their co-workers and standing up for the rights of all workers worldwide.
Despite modest gains in some regions in the world over the past two decades, women are more likely than men to become and remain unemployed, have fewer chances to participate in the workforce and often must accept dangerous, low-paying jobs, according to Women at Work: Trends 2016, a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
But when women join together to win living wages and decent working conditions through a union or association, women empower themselves and each other in the struggle for economic fairness for themselves, their families and their communities.
“Labor and community organizing can shift power relationships, change working conditions and address barriers to full and equal participation in the labor market,” according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, Solidarity Center and Rutgers University’s Center for Women’s Global Leadership, “Transforming Women’s Work: Policies for an Inclusive Economic Agenda.”
With Solidarity Center support, women around the world are joining and leading unions, advocating for themselves and their co-workers and standing up for the rights of all workers worldwide.
Nyaradzo Tavarwisa makes and sells peanut butter for her home-based business, Dovi World in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. Nyaradzo, a member of the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations (ZCIEA), a Solidarity Center ally, helps other women ZCIEA members learn the skills involved in the small business. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Bangladesh garment worker Rina operates a sewing machine at Aliza Fashions Ltd. Rina and her co-workers are among dozens of workers throughout the garment industry who have taken part in Solidarity Center fire safety trainings. Credit: Solidarity Center/Balmi Chisim
This photo of a winding machine driver and construction union member in Kyrgyzstan is among winning images in a 2016 International Women’s Day contest held by the Center on Labor Relations Research (CISTO). Winning photographs from the event, co-sponsored by the Solidarity Center, were on display at the Federation of Trade Unions of Kyrgyzstan. Credit: Djanaliev Nazar
Kindergarten teacher Khadeja Othman holds a bachelor’s degree from Al Yarmouk University in Jordan and teaches in Ramallah’s Bet Our Al Tahta village. As a member of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, Othman has taken part in many training workshops sponsored by her union and the Solidarity Center. Credit: Solidarity Center/Alaa Salih
A single mother of three and a union steward with the mine workers union, Ruth Rivera, 45, travels through the Fénix mine in La Paz, Mexico. With Solidarity Center support, Rivera and her female co-workers formed Women Miners of Steel to give women a greater voice at the workplace. Credit: Solidarity Center/Robert Armocida
Lucy Nyangasi, 26, a domestic worker in Nairobi is a member of the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotel, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers (KUDHEIHA), which is helping informal economy workers get rights on the job. Credit: Solidarity Center/Kate Holt
Thein Thein Aye, 23 and Khin Thit Lwin, 30, work at Shwe Mi Plastics Factory in Yangoon, where they are paid $135 per month. Both moved to the city from their villages, where jobs are scarce, and recently joined the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar, a long-time Solidarity Center ally. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jeanne Hallacy
In Harare, where Dzidai Magada Mwarozva is director of Human Resources at Destiny Electronics, the National Union of Metal and Allied Industries in Zimbabwe (NUMAIZ), a Solidarity Center partner, represents office workers and truck drivers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Filipina domestic workers who migrated to Jordan for work demonstrate their rights under Jordanian law after taking part in a Solidarity Center-sponsored workshop on combatting trafficking in persons. Credit: Solidarity Center/Francesca Ricciardone
Palm oil workers in San Martin, Peru, bike the Palma del Espino planation where they work and live with their families. The workers in San Martin are represented by two unions, and the Solidarity Center works with them to provide training and education for worker support on the job. Credit: Solidaity Center/Oscar Durand
In Sri Lanka, nurses have a voice on the job through the Government Nursing Officers Association (GNOA), a Solidarity Center ally. Credit: Solidarity Center/Pushpa Kumara
Marisol Rodriguez, who sells medicinal herbs at a San Cristobal market in the Dominican Republic, is among street informal economy workers the Solidarity Center reaches in 35 countries through training to build economic empowerment. Credit: Ricardo Rojas/Solidarity Center
Rural women contribute roughly half of the world’s food, and are especially vulnerable to workplace exploitation. In South Africa, cabbage planters and other farm workers have a voice on the job through the Food and Allied Workers Union. Credit: Solidarity Center/Jemal Countess
Algerian nurses at the Hôpital Ben Aknoun are represented by SNAPAP, the country’s largest public-employee union. The Solidarity Center supports SNAPAP’s work with unemployed youth, marginalized and vulnerable women workers and contract (temporary) workers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Zoubir Aksouh
Bangladesh women garment workers make 20 percent less than their male counterparts and are often physically and sexually harassed. Yet women comprise 80 percent of the country’s 4 million garment workers, and the garment industry accounts for more than 80 percent of Bangladesh’s export earnings, according to Solidarity Center Senior Program Officer Lily Gomes, speaking on a panel yesterday at the 2016 Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) forum in Bahia, Brazil.
When women workers form unions, they improve their working conditions. But it is also necessary for women to shift the gender dynamics, says Gomes. Women now make up more than 61 percent of union leadership in the factory-level unions that have formed in recent years, and women also are participating in Solidarity Center gender trainings, which focus on women’s economic empowerment. Following recent trainings, for example, many women garment workers opened their first bank accounts, and are increasingly becoming more active in their unions.
Bangladesh women also are among the many workers migrating to other countries for jobs, and panelist Lily Jahan, chairwoman of Bangladesh Obivashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA), discussed the group’s training and support of workers, many of them women, who travel to other countries for work.
BOMSA, a migrant worker rights organization, provides workers with pre-departure training about how to protect their rights at work in the countries where they will work, she says, and also provides child care and access to school for the workers’ children.
Bangladesh women workers also are seeking allies in their struggle across the global feminist movement, says Gomes, and panelists sought ideas and support from participants, who included a range of women’s rights activists.
Says Gomes: “We will be connected. We are women. We will make the world hear our voice.”
A year after the deadly factory fire that killed 112 garment workers at Tazreen Fashions Ltd. in Bangladesh, survivors and the families of those killed and injured say they have been forgotten by the factory owner, international buyers and the government.
In interviews with Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, many survivors said they were so injured in the blaze and escape from the building that they are unable to work again. Yet the compensation they received after the disaster—if they received any assistance at all—was not sufficient to cover initial medical bills, let alone pay for the expensive, ongoing care many need. Some were the sole breadwinners and, without the ability to work and with no financial assistance to see them through their recoveries, their families often go hungry, they cannot afford to send their children to school and many even risk losing their homes.
“I am not able to work and I don’t think that I will be able to work anymore,” said Shahanaz Begum. “Now, my life seems worthless.”
Like nearly all Tazreen garment workers who made it out of the burning multistory building alive on November 24, 2012, Shahanaz survived by jumping through a window. Windows—most of them barred—were the only exit because the factory had no fire escapes and staircases were locked or led to the burning storage room on the first floor. And like all survivors with whom the Solidarity Center spoke, Shahanaz said a factory manager told her she could not leave. She left anyway, searching through the smoke and darkness for a way out until she was forced to jump.
Now, Shahanaz said, “I cannot see through my right eye. I have problems in my spinal cord and can’t even walk properly. I cannot sit properly as my left leg was broken, my right leg is filled with blood clots and I cannot lift heavy weights.”
Shahanaz’s daughter, Tahera, also worked at Tazreen and suffers debiltating physical and emotional trauma. Shahanaz’s husband married a second wife after the disaster and now provides her with little financial support. As a result, she no longer takes her medicine because she cannot afford it. And she is unable to pay her rent. The compensation she received from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Employers Association and two private organizations was used up paying for the extensive treatment she required in four separate hospitals.
According to news reports, Tazreen Fashions earned $36 million annually supplying garments to major buyers in the West. Yet the burning material that engulfed the building was not properly stored in a fireproof facility. Stairwells were locked, fire escapes nonexistent and no safety equipment was available to fight the blaze. Tazreen garment workers know the fire was preventable—yet so far, no one has been held accountable. And the garment workers who survived, and the families of those who did not, say they have been abandoned. As Anjuara, a Tazreen survivor said, the Bangladesh government has not compensated victims, but it offered condolences. “Our factory owner did not even express condolences to us,” she said.
After the Tazreen tragedy last year, ABC News summed up the situation: “Bangladesh has become a favorite of many American retailers, drawn by the cheapest labor in the world, as low as 21 cents an hour, producing clothes in crowded conditions that would be illegal in the U.S. In the past five years, more than 700 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires.”
In a country, a region and an industry where death on the job has become routine, all those involved along the garment supply chain continued business as usual after the Tazreen disaster. Since Tazreen, Solidarity Center staff has tracked 51 garment factory fire incidents, with some two dozen workers killed and more than 700 people—most of them women—injured.
Only after the Rana Plaza building collapsed outside Dhaka in late April, killing more than 1,200 garment workers, have concrete steps been taken to address deadly factory working conditions. Nearly 100 clothing brands have signed on to the Accord on Building and Fire Safety, a new and binding agreement that covers 1,800 factories in Bangladesh, mandates that both brands and the companies they source from fix building and fire hazards and ensures unions are a key part of this process. In another step forward, the government has allowed 60 unions to register—and if the unions are not resisted by employers, they will have the ability to improve the safety and health of vulnerable and impoverished workers who cannot fight alone for their rights.
But none of these moves help the Tazreen survivors. “Leading a better life is not only the hope of rich people but also the poor people like us,” said Morsheda, 25, a sewing machine operator at Tazreen, who is too injured to work and whose husband’s meager income in a garment factory cannot support them. “Garment owners have much money, they have the capability to run so many garment factories, they have nothing to lose. But we poor have lost everything.”
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