Trading Away Our Rights: Women Working in Global Supply Chains

Globalization and trade have drawn millions of women in developing countries into paid work. Their labor is contributing to rising global prosperity and to the profits of some of the world’s most powerful companies. But women workers are systematically being denied their fair share of the benefits from their labor. Failure to address this injustice will perpetuate a model of globalization that is failing poor people.

This report reveals the double standards at the heart of the corporate practices that are emerging under globalization. Companies’ demands for faster, more flexible, and cheaper production in their supply chains are undermining the very labor standards that they claim to be promoting. Women workers – and their families – pay the price. Many face insecure contracts, intense production pressure and intimidation in the workplace. Governments, competing to attract investment and boost exports, have too often exacerbated the problem. Instead of strengthening protection for labor rights, they have simply traded them away.

Oxfam and partner organizations around the world are campaigning to end these double standards and to make trade work for women workers.