National Labour Rights for Women - July 2014
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ABSTRACT:
From 2012 to 2016, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the WageIndicator Foundation and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) are running the Labour Rights for Women project with national trade union confederations and WageIndicator teams in twelve developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Six African countries participate in the Labour Rights for Women project (Egypt, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda), three Asian countries (India, Indonesia and Pakistan) and three Latin American nations (Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru).
Labour Rights for Women is one of the female leadership (FLOW) projects of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aims to empower female workers by raising awareness of labour rights, empowering women to improve their own work situation and improve legislation. In this context, the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands publishes three overview reports covering the ratification of relevant ILO conventions by the countries in the project, national legislation important to women workers and gaps in the legal setting of the respective countries. This is the second of those reports.
The report focuses on the legislation that exists in the twelve countries in the Labour Rights for Women Project. In order to retain its practical value, this report does not provide an exhaustive list of all relevant legislation and policy in the twelve countries, but an impression of the most important rights that women should be able to rely on. In chapter two, we start by a description of those different sections of labour law that are crucial for decent work around the world and then continue to provide brief reports for each country in chapter three. We hope this overview may provide an outline of the general framework of laws affecting working women
We do so in the firm belief, that in order to improve working conditions on the ground, one must start from awareness of those rights that already exist. While ample room for improvement exists (the most latent cases of which will be discussed in the third report), achieving compliance with current legislation is one of the foremost tasks in realising decent work for millions of women in these twelve countries.