Grassroots Center on Women In Work
Program Supporter: Gates Foundation
Implementing Partners: Tunisia Inclusive Labor Initiative (TILI), Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers (AUKMW), Bodaboda Tuktuk and Taxi Workers Union—Kenya (BOTTAX—Kenya), Ambira Jua Kali Artisians, Mingo Self-Help Group, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Petty Traders and Informal Workers Union of Liberia (FEPTIWUL), Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses de l’Economie Informelle du Côte d’ivoire (FETTEI- CI), The Informal Economy Workers’ Forum Ghana (INFORUM), Syndicat des Travailleurs Domestiques et Indépendants de l'Economie Informelle du Rwanda (SYTRIECI), The South Africa Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU)
The voices of informal women workers have often been overlooked, primarily when high-level economic and development policies have been issued at the top levels of international institutions and government. The Grassroots Center on Women in Work (the Center, or GCWW) aims to develop mechanisms to gather and disseminate data knowledge at the grassroots and local level to inform and develop policies that directly impact women’s worker rights and women’s economic empowerment. The Center serves as the knowledge hub focused on women’s work and economic empowerment within GFI’s Inclusive Labor Institute (ILI).
In the first two years of the program, the Center worked to develop a model of grassroots data collection through collaboration with SEWA and TILI. The Center has worked with a network of grassroots-based women’s organizations to gather and disseminate data and knowledge at the local level to develop and inform public policies and programs to improve women’s economic empowerment and worker rights. The Center partnered with six formal and informal worker unions to conduct a cross-country study focused on women’s leadership in the informal economy, and a comprehensive study on organizing informal workers in Kenya. The initiative is developing and beta-testing a digital platform to house this research and share resources between the regional unions, organizations, and affinity groups in Africa, and international affiliates.
GCWW closely engaged stakeholders across regions in Africa, India, and South and Latin America, managing relationships to build trust, knowledge, and consensus within a framework of structured activities and deliverables. This included forming the Council of African Unions of Informal Workers (the Council), with informal worker union leaders from seven African countries (Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Liberia, South Africa, Ivory Coast, and Tunisia) to be an advisory group for women in work, raise awareness on issues related to women informal workers, support universal social protections, enhance the use and access to research from local, grassroots partners, and collaborate to advocate for policy change in their regions. In India, GCWW works with SEWA to investigate the intersection of climate and women workers to generate green solutions and economic resilience.
The program is currently focused on scaling up through three progressive tracks of work that first build knowledge skills and apply these skills to collect grassroots data, which is then leveraged to enable policy action.