WUNRN
AWID - Association for Women's
Rights in Development
FUNDING FOR WOMEN'S LABOUR RIGHTS -
MEXICO & CENTRAL AMERICA
AWID
interviews Lynda Yanz* from the Maquila Solidarity Network about their latest
research on funding for women’s labour rights in Mexico and Central America.
By Rochelle
Jones - AWID
AWID:
Could you tell us briefly about the Maquila Solidarity Network?
Lynda Yanz
(LY): Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) is a labour and women’s rights
organization that promotes improved wages and working conditions and a better
quality of life for workers in the global garment supply chain. We support
groups working for this goal in Mexico, Central America, Asia and other
“producing” countries. MSN also engages in corporate campaigning, networking
and coalition building, and policy advocacy to pressure for improvements.
AWID: I
understand you have been conducting some research on funding trends for women’s
labour rights? Could you tell us about this research and what prompted it?
LY: The
research was motivated by the observation that many of the workers’ and women’s
rights groups, with whom we were working, were encountering major problems in
securing funds – and in fact – we were detecting that the amount of funding was
decreasing (especially in Mexico). Groups were struggling to survive. We spent
a lot of time on a group by group basis trying to support them through the
process of writing proposals, identifying potential funders, etc, but decided
to take a more strategic approach – to work with AWID, Semillas (the Mexico
women’s fund) and the Central American Women’s Fund – with the aim of leverage
more money for the work and to increase groups’ capacities to engage with
donors. Since many of the groups are small, with limited capacity to directly
engage with international funders, we established a pilot project with Semillas
to establish a labour rights fund. The Central American Women’s Fund has for
some time been interested in a similar initiative. We decided to work together.
We decided
that an important first would be to identify the key actors in labour rights
work in Mexico and Central America and to identify the donors who are funding
their work. We wanted to understand the priorities and challenges facing the
groups and donors. We wanted find out, if the trend of cutting back on funding
for work on labour rights, was real. We were also interested in whether donors
are more reluctant to fund labour rights work than previously, and if so, why.
In addition to interviewing and consulting with many women’s and mix labour
rights organizations, we carried out interviews with 12 donors who support work
in Mexico and/or Central America.
AWID:
What are the critical issues facing women’s labour rights organizations and how
are they currently being (under)funded?
LY: In
Mexico, there is not enough money going in to women’s labour rights work. The
groups are small, they receive small grants and have to scramble money from
multiple sources. This means a lot of administrative work, which takes up
resources from actual campaigning.
Central
American groups face very different kind of challenges. They have more funding
and larger organizations, but some funders there try to drive their own
priorities rather than support groups own process to define priorities. Some
donors attempt to influence political agenda or pressure groups to collaborate
with other groups, even though they don’t necessarily feel that they share the
same mission and values with those groups.
AWID: Who
is funding labour rights work presently and what are donors’ challenges and
priorities?
LY: The
small grassroots organizations in Mexico get much less money from fewer
organizations than groups in Central America, who receive more European grants
and also money from the US government (tied to the free-trade agreement CAFTA).
Women’s
labour rights work is challenging for the donors, because what is needed is a
long-term commitment in order to bring about change. When local organizations
are small, like in Mexico, it can be difficult for a donor to make
international grants, support advocacy and communicate with the groups. Some
funders seem not to understand labour issues and shy away from them, because of
negative perceptions around trade unions and because labour rights is “highly
politicized.”
AWID: How
do you hope to influence these challenges?
LY: The two
new labour rights funds – from Semillas and the Central American Women’s Funds
represent very important initiatives. Both funds, along with AWID and MSN are
committed to making sure the issue of women’s economic rights (including labour
rights) gets back more squarely on the donor agenda. At the same time, we are
working with a small and very committed group of funders, who are committed try
working with us to leverage more money for labour rights work. And throughout
the process, we’ll be working closely with labour rights groups to strengthen
their capacities.
AWID:
What are some of the main findings of the research so far?
LY: One key
finding was that Mexico and Central America are very different in terms of what
the local labour rights groups are like and what kind of funding they attract.
In Central America, the groups are big, strong national organizations and they
receive significantly larger amount of money from donors than the Mexican
groups, primarily through European foundations, and recently, millions of
dollars from the US. Mexican labour rights actors are more often small local
groups with a shortage of funding.
Another
interesting discovery was that donors, who have a hands-on approach and local
staff tend to support grassroots groups directly, while funders with limited
staff contact in the region that give out sizable grants, prefer to support
large national and international groups. When these donors fund smaller
grassroots organizations, they often do it through intermediaries, which helps
them to avoid legal requirements and reduce administrative burden that is
associated with multiple small grants. A further advantage of using
intermediaries is that they often add value by capacity building and leveraging
additional funds.
One big
challenge that came up in the research is that it is difficult to build a case
for funding women’s labour rights work: donors do not always see why it is
important and how it is groundbreaking work. While donors are very happy with
their partner organizations and individual pieces of their work, they are not
satisfied with the big picture. Movement building is very slow, the political
and corporate context is challenging and it is hard to identify “wins” in the
work: it is possible to do everything right, and still a factory closes.
AWID:
What will you be doing with the outcomes?
LY: We find
it very important to support and strengthen the women’s labour rights in
finding new money for their work. We also need to lobby funders. We could work
with existing funders to reach out for new ones.
In the
interviews, we heard from several donors that an overarching strategy would be
needed to build a cohesive and proactive movement. As part of the strategy,
positive messages should be developed to attract new funders and an evaluation
framework that identifies “wins” in a different way needs to be created.
Crucial to all of this will be having a group of interested funders working
with us to help formulate our strategy and reach out to other funders.
*Lynda
Yanz
is a founding member and coordinator of the Maquila Solidarity Network, a
Canadian based labour and women's rights advocacy organization formed in 1994.
For the last number of years, MSN has focused on the garment industry working
to support garment workers' efforts to improve working conditions through
policy advocacy, corporate campaigning and engagement, participation in
multi-stakeholder initiatives to promote corporate accountability, and local
labour rights capacity building. In Mexico and Central America, MSN has worked
closely with women’s and labour rights groups over 20 years.
Lynda has a
long history of activism in the women’s movement and on issues related to
labour rights and international solidarity. She is the author and editor of
numerous articles and publications on the globalized garment industry and on
the strengths and weaknesses corporate engagement as a tool for improving
working conditions.
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