Building National Campaigns: Activists, Alliances, and How Change Happens (Oxfam Skills and Practice Series)

Women workers are an increasing part of the global labor force that is at work but trapped in poverty. Poor quality employment drives inequality and threatens sustainable development and gender equality. Women’s organizations and trade unions have developed many strategies to try to improve the conditions of women workers and respect for women. These include worker education and awareness raising, protests against abuses, research, international solidarity, and worker organizing. High-profile campaigning has become an important strategy for making change. Yet in many contexts, it is unclear to organizations how to build their capacity to do campaigning.

Using case studies from five campaigns in America, Colombia, Morocco, Nicaragua, and Sri Lanka, this book describes Oxfam International’s experience in supporting existing national initiatives with global research on the relationship between trade, employment, development, and gender equality. The authors describe and analyze what happened, and how it happened, in the five case-study countries. All faced enormous obstacles, and were able to overcome them through innovation, new ways of working in alliance, and patient persistence towards an end goal.

The information in this book will be interesting and helpful, not just to campaigners on women’s labor rights, but to those campaigning on other issues, who could also usefully adopt the learning points and examples of good practice. This book does not contain a recipe for instant campaigning success; what is offered here is a menu, from which the reader can pick whatever seems appropriate and useful.