Economic Justice, Social Protection, and Decent work for all Women!

In the launch of the Asia-Pacific Beijing+30 Civil Society Report this November 19, 2023 at United Nations Conference Centre Bangkok, Clarice Canonizado of Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants presented key issues and recommendations on gender-affirmative economic justice and rights, social protection, and decent work.

Clarice, who is also a part of the B+30 CSO Steering Committee, tackled structural barriers and violence that impede women and gender-diverse people’s enjoyment of economic justice, rights, and independence persist across the world from home to workplaces.

As a migrant advocate, she put an emphasis on the neoliberal policies that reinforce forced migration and demanded the advancement of decent work for women in their diversities, including migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, forcibly displaced persons, and internally displaced persons.

The full statement is as follows:

Structural barriers and violence that impede women and gender-diverse people’s enjoyment of economic justice, rights, and independence persist across the world from home to workplaces. This includes hurdles to educational achievement and bodily autonomy, disproportionate care burdens, and work-related discrimination which is even more exacerbated for transgender, gender diverse, non-binary communities, and women with disabilities.

At the core of this, neoliberalism is instrumentalized to perpetuate gendered exploitation in the form of labor and resource extraction from marginalized communities in the region and other parts of the global South to feed corporations and states in the global North.

While development has somehow progressed in the last five years, it has not been equally shared due to the current economic framework imposed on many communities – particularly for women in low-paid and informal work, landless women, migrant women, among others.

In the workplace, women in their diversities are more likely to face discrimination, gender-based violence, low wages, dire working conditions, and few prospects for promotion. Furthermore, the number of women in informal work has risen in the last few years/decades. Oftentimes, they are not included in labor protections which undermine freedom of association and collective bargaining. And if the option of self-employment and entrepreneurship surface, existing business models, trends, policies and programs are not sensitive to gender and disability inclusion.

This is the same for migrant women who bear the brunt of neoliberal policies and development strategies that reinforce forced migration internally and internationally. Labor export programs of specific countries are merely focused on maximizing cheap labor of women from the global South, while at the same time, touting their programs as drivers of national development despite the overlapping dangers and risks they pose on marginalized communities. Even worse, women experience economic, financial and humanitarian crises are confronted by barriers to decent work while their social and political rights are also being slashed.

With no right to land, rural, maritime, and Indigenous women are restricted in accessing crucial resources – affecting food sovereignty and agricultural production. Financial schemes, such as microfinance initiatives, only contribute to debt burdens of women and do not really support sustainable livelihood opportunities.

Amidst all the issues mentioned, robust social protection frameworks continue to exclude women, LGBTQI+ people, and disabled women. This is linked to economic trends that increasingly lean towards privatization of essential services and redirection of funding towards brazen militarization. In addition, although gender-responsive policies on employment and economic opportunities are already in place in some countries, implementation is strikingly lacking – which does not help in forwarding gender equality.

Noting all the structural issues, women’s organizations call on governments, the private sector, international institutions and IFIs to…

1. Redistribute the burden of paid and unpaid care work and labour, most often shouldered by all women and girls by providing support systems, strengthening public services and promoting the human right to care as a collective social responsibility.

2. Advance decent work for women in their diversities, including migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, forcibly displaced persons, and internally displaced persons.

3. Increase multi-year, core, sustainable, accessible, and flexible gender transformative funding directed towards economic rights and justice of women in their diversities, including the movements and formations they belong.

4. Increase decent work opportunities for women in their diversities, protect their freedom of association, and provide accessible legal mechanisms to combat workplace discrimination, harassment, and violence.

5. Ensure accessible gender-transformative social protection such as on food security, social security, education, healthcare, childcare, ender care, disability care and many others

6. And in terms of policy-making, we call on said actors to uphold rights and participation of women in decision-making on land access and ownership.