GAATW E-bulletin: Issue 1, January 2023
- Category: E-Bulletin
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from GAATW International Secretariat!
We hope that 2023 has begun well for you.
We all know now that COVID-19, like many other viruses, is going to stay with us. It is still mutating so there is a need to be careful. Many people are still struggling with long COVID. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have also impacted economies and costs of living have increased globally. Unemployment is now a reality for many. Educational institutions, especially public schools which cater to children from working class families, are trying to cope with the aftermath of long periods of school closures. Thankfully, some states have taken the welcome step of strengthening social protection measures. Some are continuing to provide the supports that began during the pandemic. We do hope that such measures will continue, and more states will step up their support to the people most in need.
This year, the GAATW International Secretariat will focus on completing some of the activities that were delayed due to the pandemic. Our researches on socio-economic inclusion and reintegration of women migrants and trafficked persons have been completed.
GAATW E-bulletin: Issue 3, October 2022
- Category: E-Bulletin
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from GAATW International Secretariat!
We hope this finds you well and not too busy. The opening up of international borders has made it possible to attend meetings once again and in the past several months we were busy organising several convenings for project partners. Following a consultation with our research partners from Europe and Southeast Asia in May, we held Women Workers Forums with colleagues from South and Southeast Asia in July and August. We also visited the work areas of our partners in India and Sri Lanka and travelled to Geneva with several members for meetings with UN delegations ahead of their countries’ Universal Periodic Reviews. In-person meetings have reconfirmed our feelings about the limitations of virtual interactions. However, we've also learnt that certain discussions can be held virtually and given the rising cost of fuel we must think carefully before planning each trip.
Conversations with women workers and community organisers in the two sub-regional forums strengthened our belief in grassroots organising. We also realised that there is a need to work closely with community workers and enhance their capacity to do their work better.
Boletín en español, Agosto 2022
- Category: E-Bulletin
Queridas amigas y amigos,
¡Saludos desde Yakarta, Bangkok, Sofía, Ginebra y Bahía Blanca!
Desde nuestro último boletín electrónico, hemos dado la bienvenida a nuestro equipo a varias colegas nuevas: Milena y Nadia, que trabajan de forma remota, y Sumati, Srishty, Su Mon, Maya, Charlotte y Jennifer, que se unieron a nosotras en Bangkok. ¡Estamos emocionadas de tener nuevamente una oficina llena de feministas enérgicas y comprometidas!
En los últimos meses, nos hemos preocupado cada vez más por las ramificaciones de la "crisis del costo de vida" para las mujeres migrantes y trabajadoras de bajos salarios. Justo cuando el mundo comienza a recuperarse de la pandemia de COVID- 19, estamos viendo aumentos dramáticos en el costo de los alimentos, el combustible y otros bienes, y la consiguiente escasez de artículos de primera necesidad. Las razones de esto son bien conocidas: la invasión rusa de Ucrania, el aumento de la deuda pública y la reducción de la actividad económica debido al COVID-19, el aumento de las tasas de interés y la crisis climática, entre otros. Pero también parece que hay algo intrínsecamente erróneo en la forma en que se organizan nuestras economías si siempre pasamos de una crisis a otra.
GAATW E-bulletin: Issue 2, June 2022
- Category: E-Bulletin
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from Jakarta, Bangkok, Sofia, Geneva, and Bahía Blanca!
Since our last e-bulletin, we have welcomed several new colleagues to our team – Milena and Nadia who are working remotely, and Sumati, Srishty, Su Mon, Maya, Charlotte, and Jennifer who joined us in Bangkok. We are excited to have an office full of energetic and committed feminists again!
In the last few months, we have become increasingly concerned about the ramifications of the ‘cost of living crisis’ for women migrant and low-wage workers. Just as the world is beginning to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are now seeing dramatic increases in the cost of food, fuel, and other goods, and the accompanying shortages of basic necessities. The reasons for these are well-known – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increased government debt and reduced economic activity due to COVID-19, rising interest rates, and the climate crisis, among others. But it also seems like there is something inherently wrong with the way our economies are organised if we are moving from one crisis straight into another.
Boletín en español, Junio 2022
- Category: E-Bulletin
Queridas amigas y amigos,
¡Cálidos saludos desde Bangkok y esperamos que hayan tenido un buen comienzo de año! Teníamos planeado publicar nuestro primer boletín en español a comienzos de 2022, pero por diversos motivos nos hemos retrasado y recién hemos logrado publicarlo en junio.
El mundo pasó otro año a la sombra de la pandemia de COVID-19. Lloramos la pérdida de amistades que sucumbieron al virus. Miramos con horror mientras los gobiernos, una vez más, fallaron en proteger la vida y el sustento de las personas. Nos acostumbramos a nuevas palabras y frases que se introdujeron en el vocabulario cotidiano – pasaportes COVID, nacionalismo de vacunas, mandatos de mascarillas, aislamientos en “burbujas” , dosis de refuerzo… Aprendimos nuevas letras del alfabeto griego.
Sin embargo, mientras transitamos la primera mitad de este nuevo año, vale la pena tener esperanza y mirar hacia adelante en lugar de mirar atrás. Tenemos planes emocionantes para el avance de los derechos de las mujeres trabajadoras migrantes y locales de bajos salarios y sobrevivientes de trata este año.
Our Work, Our Lives, issue 8: Songs that Women Sing
- Category: Our Work, Our Lives
Dear friends,
The March issue of Our Work, Our Lives focuses on music. Songs and music have always been powerful tools to inspire and mobilise people. They have been an integral part of social justice movements and the feminist movements have a treasure chest of powerful songs. So we thought that in March, when we celebrate International Women’s Day, it would be good to learn about the songs that our colleagues have been inspired by and use in their work. We are delighted that friends from so many countries shared songs, old and new, that they have used in their movements – for protest marches, trainings, celebrations, and solidarity gatherings. These songs raise their voice against patriarchy, discrimination, injustice, and extractivism and call for peace, freedom, and equality. Many songs are creations of groups. Some are full of humor and sarcasm. Some have anger. All are simple and powerful.
Songs have also been important for workers, including women workers. A lot of work that women do is repetitive, monotonous, time consuming, and taxing. They need patience, grit, imagination, love, and care to carry out their tasks, day in and day out. Women workers in traditional societies, like their male counterparts, have made up songs to go with work. They have sung while planting, weeding, cleaning, grinding, knitting, weaving, and putting their babies to sleep. Our friends from Aaina in Odisha, India shared a song performed by a woman farmer which is sung while planting rice.
Many songs have travelled across time and place. Bella Ciao, which many of us may know as a resistance, anti-fascist song, has its roots in the paddy fields of Po Valley in northeast Italy. The original singers of Bella Ciao in the nineteenth century were women mondine (literally “weeders”), who were bemoaning their harsh working conditions. Now the song is available in multiple languages and part of the social justice movements in many parts of the world. Even in the pre-digital era, songs like Bread and Roses and We Shall Overcome, had crossed geographical and linguistic barriers and become global. More recently, the protest march titled “el violador en tu camino” (A rapist in your way) organised by a Chilean feminist collective, LASTESIS, has gone viral and inspired women to hold street protests in many parts of the world including in Delhi and Nairobi.
Our Work, Our Lives, issue 7: Women workers and the climate crisis
- Category: Our Work, Our Lives
Dear friends,
The February 2022 issue of Our Work, Our Lives focuses on the climate crisis. In preparation for this issue, some self-organised groups of women workers within our alliance and our colleagues working with them held group discussions on the topic of climate change and its impacts on lives and livelihoods. We wanted to know what kind of changes women workers have observed over the years, how it impacts them, and what steps they take to address the challenges.
Interestingly, the topic of climate triggered memories of natural disasters among many groups. Kala aur Katha’s group discussion focussed on the super cyclones in Odisha in 1999 and 2019. Malati Behera remembered that fateful day when she lost her husband and 6-year-old daughter to the cyclone. Reminiscing about cyclone Fani that hit the state two decades later, women artisans from the Dom community in Odisha pointed out how even during a cyclone the horrible practice of untouchability was not forgotten.
Jannath Ferdaus, a Bangladeshi migrant worker in the garment sector in Jordan, recalled how the frequent floods and cyclones in her village displaced her family and eventually resulted in her overseas labour migration. Jane Nungari Njoroge, a Kenyan migrant domestic worker in Jordan noted that state support often does not reach to the people in need. The women’s group that Shramajivi Mahila Samity works with shared that the weather pattern has changed: “Summers are longer and harsher than before. The time of sowing of paddy has also changed, forests are no longer dense. The variety of forest produce is also slowly going down”, they said. Badabon Sangho has highlighted the link between the climate crisis, land rights and violence against women.
Our Work, Our Lives, issue 6: Hopes and dreams for 2022
- Category: Our Work, Our Lives
Dear friends,
Greetings of the New Year! Even though so far 2022 feels like Twenty-Twenty-Too, let’s hope that the situation will improve during the year. Hopefully the vaccination rates will increase significantly around the world and some degree of normalcy will return soon.
Our Work, Our Lives has reached its sixth issue which is very encouraging for a publication that relies completely on women workers and our colleagues who work closely with them. The women workers who write for the magazine are part of self-organised or community-based groups. They are at different stages of their collectivisation process. All of them meet regularly to carry out various collaborative activities. Some have facilitated discussions on various social issues and learning themes.
For the January 2022 issue of Our Work, Our Lives, we requested our sisters to share their collective hopes and dreams for the New Year with us. We made some suggestions on how they could go about their Collective Dreaming processes, but each group also had complete freedom to plan their own session in a completely different way.