Women deserve better

February 9 2004 - Big brand companies and retailers in the fashion and food industries are driving down employment conditions for millions of women workers around the world, according to a new study by international agency Oxfam.

Marie Clarke Walker, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress has congratulated Oxfam for their outstanding report Trading Away Our Rights. "This report confirms what Canadian working women already know: employment for women is most often precarious. Women workers know it, we have research to prove it but still it does not seems to register when business decisions or political decisions are made," says Clarke Walker.

The report has been released in many capitals across the world. Trading Away Our Rights: Women Working in Global Supply Chains combines research from 12 case- studies, in several countries including Canada, together with interviews with more than 1,000 workers, factory and farm owners, global brands, importers, exporters, union and government officials. The overwhelming conclusion of the research: in both rich and poor countries, is that the prevailing patterns of trade make women poorer. Women are expected to work more, earn cash and give care at home but they only make themselves more vulnerable to lose their health, break up their families and undermine the prospects of future generations.

"This is where globalisation is failing in its potential to lift people out of poverty and support development," says Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign director Phil Bloomer. "There is a widening gap between the rhetoric of global corporate social responsibility and the reality of the corporate business model. Many corporations have codes of conduct to hold their suppliers accountable for labour standards, but their own ruthless buying strategies often make it impossible for these standards to be met."

The report concludes that companies use their power at the top of global supply chains to squeeze their suppliers to deliver. The pressure is dumped immediately onto women workers in the form of ever-longer hours at faster work rates, often in poor conditions and with no job security. The report says that millions of women are being denied their fair share of the benefits of globalisation as a result.

Bloomer says: "Today’s business ethos is ‘make it quick, make it flexible, make it cheap’. Anyone appalled by terrible labor conditions in the world today should be asking, ‘so who turned up the heat?’ The workers at the bottom of the global supply chains are helping to fuel national export growth and shareholders’ returns - but their jobs are being made ever more insecure, unhealthy and exhausting and their rights weakened. This must change."

"Jobs in labor-intensive industries are celebrated as empowering women," Bloomer says. "While we welcome the fact that millions of women are getting a wage, the wage alone doesn’t free them from poverty. Instead they’re being burnt-out by working harder, faster, over longer hours and with few health, maternity or union rights. This is a poor strategy for improving women’s lives."

Clarke Walker, a participant in the joint news conference of Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Québec, says: "When we think about precarious work we usually conjure up images of other countries. But it's a mistake. The average annual income of a women working in Canada is less than $24 000. More than half of all women working in this country make less than $20 000 a year. This is precarious work. It's on the rise. And it is the work that women are doing right here in Canada."

"The labour movement commends Oxfam and we gladly join with them in saying that women workers deserve more and deserve better," Clarke Walker concluded.