WOMEN, INK. BOOKLINK #51

September 2005
Alice Quinn

WOMEN, WORK AND POVERTY Welcome to the Women, Ink. Booklink, the monthly e-mail update on what's new in the Women, Ink. collection This month, we are featuring a new title by the United Nations Development Program for Women (UNIFEM) which has just been published: Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women , Work and Poverty and are also including descriptions of two other titles in the Women, Ink. collection that relate to this topic. Please visit our newly redesigned and user-friendly website at http://www.womenink.org to place your next order. See ordering information at bottom of page.   FEATURED TITLE…FEATURED TITLE…FEATURED TITLE Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz, with Renana Jhabvala and Christine Bonner This report, by UNIFEM, marks the fifth anniversary of the UN Millennium Declaration and the tenth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. It argues that unless governments and policymakers pay more attention to employment, and its links to poverty, the campaign to make poverty history will not succeed, and the hope for gender equality will flounder on the reality of women's growing economic insecurity. Progress of the World's Women: Women, Work and Poverty makes the case for an increased focus on women's informal employment as a key pathway to reducing poverty and strengthening women's economic security. It provides the latest available data on the size and composition of the informal economy and compares national data on average earnings and poverty risk across different segments of the informal and formal workplaces in six developing countries and one developed country to show the links between employment, gender and poverty. It looks at the costs and benefits of informal work and their consequences for women's economic security. Finally, it provides a strategic framework-with good practice examples-for how to promote decent work for women informal workers, and shows why strong organizations of workers in the informal sector are vital to effective policy reforms. Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty is being recognized as an important contribution by many participants in the development sector. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals and Director of the Millennium Project notes: "Women, Work and Poverty is an innovative study that advances our understanding of the inter-relationship of employment, gender and poverty in low-income countries. The starting point is that the usual labour market categories of official data, based on formal employment relations, are wholly inadequate when a large proportion of workers in low-income countries work in informal employment relations. The measurement distortions, and hence perception and policy mistakes, are greatest with regard to the work of women, whose work is often unrecorded, and especially precarious and poorly remunerated. This study offers new perspectives and new tools which will contribute to improved data collection, better public policy and hence more equitable and effective poverty reduction strategies in the years ahead." Ela Bhatt, Founder of SEWA (Self-Employed Women's Association, India states: "Since 1972, when we started SEWA, we have worked hard to bring our members-working poor women in the informal sector-into the mainstream of the labour movement, the women's movement, and economic planning. We have struggled, in many cases with support from UNIFEM, for their visibility in national statistics and their voice in local, national, and international policy-making bodies. Progress of the World's Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty represents another important milestone in this struggle." This report can and should be used as a call to action to help advocates, policy makers, governments and the international community "make poverty history." UNIFEM. 2005. ISBN: 1-932827-26-9. 112 Pages. WE723. US$17.95   Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Markets Edited by Marilyn Carr Much has been written about the negative impact of globalization on the world's poor, and especially on women. But globalization also opens up new economic opportunities if poor women producers and workers are enabled to take advantage of them. This edited volume brings together six case studies which describe how women have been successfully integrated into Global Markets. These include: a cocoa cooperative of 45,000 producers in Ghana who are co-owners of a chocolate company in the UK; family-based cooperatives in Samoa which produce organic virgin coconut oil for export; small enterprises in Mozambique which are helping to regenerate the cashew processing and export industry; thousands of wage workers in global value chains which export deciduous fruits from South Africa; ready made garments from Bangladesh; and newly created call centres in India. Each case study is written by a team of international and national researchers and aims to present decision makers with concrete examples which spread the gains of globalization to poor working women through shifting the balance of access, power and returns within global value chains. 2004. 217 pages. ISBN 0-85092-798-6. WE665 US$ 22.50   Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction: A handbook for policy-makers and other stakeholders Martha Alter Chen, Joann Vanek and Marilyn Carr In this book, the authors highlight the lack of attention to employment, and especially informal employment, in poverty reduction strategies and point to the links between being informally employed, being a woman or a man, and being poor. They do this within the context of major changes related to economic restructuring and liberalization and map out the impacts on different categories of informal producers and workers. The book draws widely on recent data and evidence of the global research policy network called Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) as well as the knowledge and experience of the grassroots organizations in the network. Liberally scattered with practical examples, it provides a convincing case for an increased emphasis on informal employment and gender in poverty reduction strategies, and sets out a strategic framework that offers guidelines for policy makers seeking to follow this approach. 2004. 250 pages. ISBN 0-85092-797-8. WE666 US$ 24.95   If you have friends and colleagues whom you think will find the Booklinks useful, please let us know. To subscribe to Booklink, send an e-mail to wink@womenink.org and type the word "subscribe" in the subject line. ORDERING INFORMATION All orders need to be prepaid by credit card (MasterCard/Visa), cheque (US dollars drawn on a US bank) or direct deposit into Women, Ink.‚Äôs bank account (Chase Bank, New York #152012761). We don‚Äôt advise e-mailing your credit card number for security reasons; instead, fax it to us at 212-661-2704 or order on-line at http://www.womenink.org.  Special shipping and handling rate for above titles only (please mention Booklink in your order): North America - US$5.00 for the first book, US$2.00 for each additional book; elsewhere - US$6.00 first, $3 each add‚Äôl (surface). Contact us for rates for airmail or courier service. Women, Ink., 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA Alice Quinn, Programme Coordinator, Tel: 212-687-8633 ext. 207; Mary Wong, Sales Manager Tel: 212-687-8633 ext. 204, Fax: 212-661-2704, E-mail: wink@womenink.org Web site: http://www.womenink.org Women, Ink. 777 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017, USA Tel: 212-687-8633 ext. 204; Fax: 212-661-2704 E-mail: wink@womenink.org, Web site: http://www.womenink.org Women, Ink. empowers women worldwide with knowledge to transform communities Booklinks are made possible by funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)