2012 HWW Annual Report

In 2012, Homeworkers Worldwide continued to campaign for rights and recognition for homebased workers around the world.

Here in the UK government cuts and policies have been having a particularly negative impact on women, and their ability to earn a decent living. Our work in the UK focussed on the development of the WWINN network, providing both lobbying opportunities and practical sessions on employment and enterprise for the groups involved.

In India we have been working with partners to explore ways informal women workers can fight back against forms of employment that exploit and discriminate against them in term of gender, age and caste. In many cases these exploitative practices are linked to major international retailers, including those based here in the UK and we have been using our membership of the ETI to exert pressure on those companies on the top of the chain, as well as building and organising with the workers at the end of these chains.

Elsewhere we have continued to build and strengthen solidarity links between homeworkers and other informal workers around the world. In much of the world, the economic and political climate is particularly difficult for such work, but these challenges make the determination of women workers to stand up for their rights all the more important.