The Tampon Taboo

Sign in Indonesia, Source: Flikr Creative Commons

For girls everywhere menstruation is a rite of passage. Menstruation is a healthy, normal bodily function that affects half of our population -- the overwhelming majority of our women, at some point in time. But for too many girls worldwide this shared experience is a source of shame, restriction and if badly managed -- illness. Menstruation is an age-old phenomenon and across the developed world we’ve built awareness, products and systems to manage menstrual hygiene to enable women to live their lives seamlessly. Even with such support we can still argue that menstruation is something we’d rather not talk about in the developed world  -- but in the developing world, the stigma around menstruation has led to an invisibility around it that can really hold our girls and women back.

According to the Geneva-based Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), even sectors such as water and sanitation which “routinely deal with unmentionables such as excreta, ignore girl’s and women’s need for safe spaces to manage menstrual hygiene and mechanisms for safe disposal of materials used to absorb menstrual blood.” As we all know, ignoring a problem -- or menstruation -- does not make it go away. NGO Plan International and A C Nielsen conducted a study and estimated that there are 355 million menstruating women in India -- but only 12% of them use sanitary napkins. The study even found that 23% of Indian girls drop out of school after reaching puberty, with irreversible effects on their health, well-being and participation in society. Millions of girls and women instead rely on old rags, dried leaves and grass, ash, sand or newspaper to manage their monthly menstrual flows -- shrouded by shame and disgust on a vital bodily function.

Columbia University,  Millennium Promise and the social enterprise, Be Girl also hosted pilots for menstrual hygiene products and one of their participants, Patience, a 15-year-old girl from Ruhiira, Uganda told them “you suffer a lot; in case you stamp [stain] the boys can make fun of you which causes you to lose your self-esteem […] it’s embarrassing when you are washing your soiled clothes. It makes you not even want to go to school.” The washing of stained rags or clothing can also bring shame, especially in areas of water scarcity. Be Girl reports that in rural Africa, 40% of school girls miss up to 5 school days a month, or 30% of the school year. WaterAid found that 82% of their surveyed girls in Malawi did now know about menstruation before it started; girls across their surveyed countries were found to be excluded from water sources during menstruation, and even prohibited from washing and bathing in some communities making what is often a difficult week even more difficult to bear.

Source: WaterAid

Given the success of feminine hygiene and menstruation products, and the important role it has played in women's empowerment history, it would appear that the private sector could have significant market opportunity if they can break this taboo for women and girls -- who are expected to require the products for more tham 50 years. Sanitary products must be designed to be affordable; disposable tampons and sanitary towels are often priced out of reach of low- and even middle-income families if supply is scarce. Euromonitor International found that women in India, with average earnings of US $750 per annum earns below the $1,000 per annum deemed necessary to easily purchase disposable menstruation products. Moreover, systems to support menstrual hygiene are necessary, products alone aren’t the solution: appropriately designed and managed community spaces and importantly education on female reproductive health.

To make this happen, WSSCC believes that breaking the silence around the taboo of menstruation is a crucial first step. Girls should be informed and encouraged to talk and discuss menstruation in an informed and positive manner to prepare them emotionally and physically for the onset of menstruation and their monthly menstrual periods. Families need the education to support their girls and women. WaterAid has also compiled a phenomenal guide, Menstrual Hygiene Matters, with nine modules and tool kits -- an essential resource -- to improve menstrual hygienic for women and girls in lower and middle-income countries.

WaterAid found that well designed and appropriate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities that address menstrual hygiene can make a significant difference to the schooling experience of adolescent girls
(Photo: WaterAid/ASM Shafiqur Rahman) 

As WSSCC spokesperson, Archana Patkar,  powerfully argues: “Women are the progenitors of the human race […] Menstruation is therefore something of which they can and should be proud, so each and every one of us should work to improve the lives and life chances for women who do not have access to clean materials, water and safe disposal facilities; who cannot talk about their experiences; or are never asked if they can help define a solution.”

What I Talk About When I Talk About Money

Source: Flickr Creative Commons

“Money is never just about money” argues a leading financial services designer, James Moed, over a dinner attended by financial inclusion professionals hosted by Women Advancing Microfinance UK. "Instead," he explains, "it’s pretty much always about something else." In conversation with James, who has over 11 years of experience in helping innovation leaders and design teams understand people’s complex behaviours around money, we learnt how we can use Human Centered Design (HCD) to promote global financial inclusion -- an issue particularly pertinent to the world’s women.  According to the UNDP, 6 out of 10 of the world’s poorest people are women; women may comprise more than 50% of the world’s population but only own 1% of the world’s wealth. Some 75% of the world’s women are without access to bank loans as they have unpaid or insecure jobs and are not entitled to property ownership.

This blog will share some of the insights from James’ experiences having advised companies, governments, startups, and social enterprises, most recently as the Director for Financial Service Design at the London office of IDEO, a global innovation consultancy.

First, what is human-centered design (HCD)?

HCD applies the design process to create innovative solutions based on observations on humans. The HCD process begins by examining the needs, dreams and behaviours of people relevant to a prospective solution. A solution can be a product, a service, an environment, an organization or a mode of interaction. HCD focuses on desirability (what do people desire?), feasibility (what is technically and organizationally feasible?) and viability (what is financially possible?). It is an iterative process -- borrowing from the designer who observes, prototypes, tests and then repeats until an appropriate solution is reached. James describes the approach as "building to learn," creating imperfect examples of solutions to be tested by user experience instead of aiming to launch the perfectly formed solution straightaway.

Original Invitation for the HCD event with WAM UK

How can HCD help promote women in financial inclusion?

HCD depends on human observation and often women and girls have been ignored in the design of financial products and services. Even if they haven’t been explicitly ignored, then perhaps not enough nuance to their culture could have supported their financial exclusion. Such as failing to pay attention to what women and girls feel like they can and cannot say in interviews and surveys. Moreover, there is a big difference between what people say they will do, and what they actually do -- especially when it comes to money. HCD promotes user insight, so adopting an approach to always consider gender in the target user group is vital and can be extremely telling. Designing solutions with women’s behaviours, aspirations and needs specifically in mind can lead to women-inclusive financial solutions.

What kind of HCD insights on women do we have?

Investing in women has a multiplier effect

One of the major observations in microfinance -- the provision of financial service to the under and unbanked -- is based on gender. Women’s World Banking found that, "when a woman generates her own income -- and this holds true no matter what the  country -- she re-invests her profits in ways that  can make long-term, inter-generational change: the  education of her children, health care for her family and improving the quality of her family’s housing”. As James highlighted in our conversation, time and time again in his fieldwork, he saw that for women "finances are less about her own interests, but for others." Financial inclusion for women does not only empower the woman user, but often has positive impact on her wider community.

Source: Flickr Creative Commons

For some women illiquidity is attractive

Mind boggling at first, especially when we consider the gender discrimination that has led to three quarters of the world’s women unbanked, women may actually prefer access to financial services with features of illiquidity in some circumstances. Liquid cash could be dangerous to a woman’s wealth if socially she is obligated to financially help out family members and friends if they ask. It may be hard for a woman to not hand over her cash to her husband for example or her friend in financial difficulty -- it could bring stigma, perhaps attack if she says no. However a savings account with fixed non-withdrawal periods, or other features to lock funds away, could provide a socially acceptable excuse. In providing illiquidity in formal financial services, it could attract women who otherwise would prefer to store their wealth in more illiquid forms such as gold and livestock or hidden away in difficult to reach places. Illiquidity could not only protect wealth from the saver’s own impulses, and the demands of those around her.

Women experience high emotional return for good financial management

A recurring theme in James’ work saw that the rewards for good financial management were beyond financial for women -- this applies to women across the economic spectrum. Juntos Finazas, which was borne out of a class project from the Stanford Design School, helps Spanish speakers save via SMS. The founders saw that SMS was the right technology to help low-income Latinos as they tend to use mobile devices more than other groups and are substantial SMS users. Around 72% of successful Juntos Finazas savers said at sign up that they had never saved successfully before. Importantly, in feedback, users cite that using the tool to help them save has made them feel like better mothers, better daughters -- the return is more than extra money leftover in an account.

In consultation with IDEO, the successful Keep the Change savings program from Bank of America originated from the observation that women were more satisfied by the act of saving than the interest rates offered on savings itself. The program was therefore designed to emphasize the action of saving rather than focusing on the potential reward. Keep the Change automatically rounds up purchases on the Bank of America debit card and transfers the difference to a savings account, building up a savings balance subtly over time. Since its launch in 2005, the program has led to 12 million new customers building up an additional $3.1 billion of savings.

Financial planning can save lives

Having a financial plan in place affords protection for life’s shocks, and in some cases can make the difference between life and death. Although still imperfect, there are now maternity saving programs to help women save money over time to access skilled maternal care. In Kenya, where only 43% of births occur in health facilities and many Kenyans still lack access to basic maternity care and health insurance, medical payment can be a life-threatening barrier for mother and child. Changamka, established in 2008, developed a smartcard program which allows women to set saving goals and save via the mobile payments service, M-PESA. The program is a dedicated maternal savings program which locks the deposited funds for maternity expenses only. USAID has written up a case study on this project, which can be accessed here.

With financial technology advancing globally the practice of HCD, people are placed back in the center of experience to build lasting solutions. With 75% of women worldwide without access to financial services -- and importantly, the lack of understanding and emphasis upon their needs as cause and effect of their exclusion -- HCD can provide an attractive framework to unlock their considerable potential.

For more information on the topic connect with @jamesmoed, @WAM_UK, and @lisavwong on Twitter. Other interesting links on HCD and financial inclusion include:

• A CGAP video on bringing savings products to market
• The HCD toolkit by IDEO
• Free online course on HCD by +Acumen and IDEO.

Human Rights and the "Other"

Credit: International Network of Liberal Women

In recent weeks, Human Rights Watch and Bill Gates released two reports on global poverty and the most pressing rights struggles of 2013. In Davos, some of the highest-earning and most powerful leaders of the world convened for the World Economic Forum.

Yet, as I live my life here in Paris, having completed a Master's degree focusing on human rights at the end of last year while at the same time undergoing a heart surgery, I contemplate what human rights means to me personally versus others. How much overlap is there between developing versus developed nations? How can I fully live within and access my own rights in a country that is not even my own? What I have come up with as I train in the park near my pink cottage, sending resume after resume, networking, flying to Rome to be with my French boyfriend who works for the United Nations and is also seeking long-term employment in his own country, trying to build the rest of a dream after significant resiliency most of my life, is how blurred the line is between those in need of accessing and fully realizing human rights standards. These are the people I love, live near, and work alongside.

The past few days the American news has been shaped by an announcement that AOL had reversed a decision regarding 401ks to its employees after a media frenzy regarding CEO Tim Armstrong's comment that,

Two things that happened in 2012. We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.

The mother of the "distressed baby," Novelist Deanna Fei, published an eloquent and very brave response to her husband's employer in Slate magazine. Her husband, Peter S. Goodman, is the Executive Business and and Global News Editor of AOL's Huffington Post. The Goodmans are known to me because Arnold and Elise Goodman, the grandparents of the "distressed baby" girl, were the couple who gave me very my first job in publishing when I was nineteen years old. I worked from their home as their Literary Agency Assistant, and the position was a lifelong dream for this rural girl from a chaotic childhood with little resources earning and financing my undergraduate degree in Manhattan. I filed their contracts, letters to their children, answered their phone calls from the authors of the What to Expect When You're Expecting series, sent out rejection letters, and learned about publishing from two people who had made a wonderful life from it. They had a beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, two wonderful children, and to my young eyes they were living the good life.

Enter the life of their own grandchild. As an advocate for children's health, I was aghast reading the AOL CEO's comment but was not surprised. The state of healthcare in my own country is one of the most brutal abuses of rights in a wealthy and developed nation that exists. So is the cost of education. Enter where I live currently so as to actually complete a Master's degree before I turned 35. When I had my heart surgery last year, I was also a student who paid nothing to have that surgery. I had suffered from supraventricular tachycardia since I was seventeen years old but still went on to race ultramarathons and build running teams in support of women and children's health. But around the end of 2012, as my hormones shifted and I worked freelance while earning my degree and trained teams of ex-pat runners, I began to have heart episodes much more frequently. When my sisters' were visiting me last March and I looked up at my baby sister's worried face sprawled on a Parisian sidewalk in full-on tachycardia, I began to think the time had come to fix my heart. Then I read online that when I am pregnant someday my baby would also go without oxygen and experience the same horrendous effects I did when the tachycardia occurred plus it could affect the child's development; I knew it was time to have heart surgery.

Power of Pencil and Crayon: Meet Visionary Artist Minnie Evans

“Nobody in the world can teach me because they don’t know how to teach me. Nobody!

“My teacher? God has sent me teacher, angel sent me [teacher] and directed me what to do. I don’t know how I did it.

“We will be like the angels in heaven!”


Watching a short documentary on self-taught visionary artist, Minnie Evans— The Angel That Stand by Me, what still resonates to me is Minnie Evans’ constant laughter and her determined voice in proclaiming God’s power over her art-making. In her drawing, she depicted a world of mythical creatures and nature embedded with spiritual symbols. What amazes me is her tireless observation of Airlie Garden where she worked as a gatekeeper for twenty-seven years. She saw beyond the natural beauty to a utopia, or a heaven. Evans never forgot her ancestral trace in slavery from her great grandmother's grandmother who was enslaved from Trinidad to North Carolina.

I first learned about Evans’ art at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. Co-founder, retired executive director of Intuit and my friend, Cleo Wilson, is a collector of Evans’ art. As I further explored Evans’ art, I found it had a much more profound meaning. I approached Cleo to find out why she chose Evans’ art for her collection and ways Evans’ art influenced her.

Ng-He: When was your first encounter of Minnie Evans’ art? 

Wilson: I don't really remember when I first encountered Minnie Evans’ work. It may
have been at Luise Ross Gallery in New York. I purchased a piece there 15 or 20 years ago. I had seen work by Sister Gertrude Morgan (another self-taught African-American artist) and I was drawn to the art created by women, specifically African American women. I wanted to add Minnie Evans to my collection.

Ng-He: What does Evans’ art speak to you?

Wilson: Minnie Evans art is full of hope and beauty, which speaks to me. It was created by a woman who lived in poverty and hardship, but was able to transcend her situation through the creation of art. It inspires me. Aside from being one of her best and largest works, the dates on the piece are 1946, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1967, show that she worked on it for 21 years. It shows that she was not satisfied with her first iteration of the work, but continued to improve on it by painting and collaging previous work to make a large beautiful work of art.

 

Minnie Evans, Untitled, 1967, (1946, 1958, 1960, 1962), Graphite, oil, waxed crayon and collage on canvas board, 

21 x 26 ½ inches, Collection Cleo F. Wilson, Photo by Cheri Eisenberg

Minne Evans’ persistence in art is inseparable with her religious belief and iron will of overcoming life hardships. Her art is relatively small but delicately layered with a great range of color. Spending days after days observing closely and being tirelessly curious about the beauty of the natural world. She once said, “Green is God’s theme color…600 and some shades of green.” Such level of attention to detail is mind-blowing.

For me, Minnie Evans’ art is a journey through her ancestral past, even as far as the birth of the earth. By the use of crayon, she expressed her passion for life, the good one and the bad one. Minnie Evans’ son once asked her how she felt about being famous. Evans simply replied, “I can’t realize it!” Modesty and resilience is what makes me love Evans’ art.

The Quilting Women of Gee's Bend

I am not a quilter but something about quilting always captivates me. The patches of fabrics of various patterns and colors, the handmade stitches, the “imperfect” lines and shapes. In the culture where I was brought up, traditional Chinese quilts are often used as a gift for newborns; friends and family are invited to contribute a patch of cloth with a wish for the baby. They are called Bai Jia Bei (in translation "One Hundred Good Wishes Quil"t). The quilts contains symbols of luck, energy, and good wishes. They are to be passed down from generation to generation, just like those in America.

Family Planning: Whose Business?

This is a story of a family who live on less than $5 a day.  Mama and Papa have six children.  Mama would have seven but she lost the first one. She’s not sure why he died but she has never had enough food in the house, and with close pregnancy spacing she was not able to breastfeed the child that died for very long.  Even now, there is not much food to go around and so many mouths to feed.  Mama is exhausted. She needs an operation, because of the fistula she developed when having her third baby. Mama and Papa do not have the money for this operation; it would leave them without food to eat and they are already hungry. Their oldest child Mala has to help care for the other children.  Mama would like her to get some education but it is also expensive plus who will help her with the household chores? Papa is too busy in the fields.  Mama wishes she could have less children but doesn’t know how that is possible.  

This narrative is typical for women in developing countries all over the world. Already burdened with the tribulations of being poor and struggling day-to-day, they face further struggles through lack of education, higher risk of death due to childbirth, problems related to under-nutrition, and a vicious cycle that entraps their children into the same ring of poverty. This is not a specific cultural issue; this is an issue of universal female empowerment. It is well-documented that more educated women have less pregnancies and most women with large unplanned families want less children.

Female empowerment is not difficult to achieve. Despite the current negative rhetoric in the United States and United Kingdom around family planning, some developing countries have shown that politicians need not dictate to women about family planning, and that family planning does not equal abortion. Less children mean there are less mouths to feed, so the mother can focus on fully satisfying the nutritional needs of her smaller family as well as herself. It also means she has more time to focus on her economic needs, by working on the side she can supplement the household income and better lift herself and her family out of poverty. This begins to break the vicious circle, as it often enables her daughters to have a chance at achieving an education, which further empowers them to be agents of their own body and life.

This is the side of the story that the U.S. Presidential election rarely touches upon. The right-wing conservatives that make family planning an issue only about abortion directly feed into rhetoric that disables the empowerment of women. This also contradicts policy and evidence-based initiatives that have proved time and time again that family planning increases the quality of life of a woman. The Global Gag Rule, enacted by George Bush Senior and then reinstated by his son, was aimed at abortion but also ended up restricting contraception access. As a result, unintended pregnancies in areas that receive US aid actually increased. How can a policy that contributes to the vicious cycle of women in poverty possibly be empowering for women?

Despite these challenges, we have seen some tremendous gains in women’s empowerment in the last thirty years, even within family planning programs. In the mid 1970’s, Bangladesh had one of the highest fertility rates in the world with the average woman bearing seven children. By 2004, using a coordinated effort of making contraceptives readily available and implementing a peer-to-peer support program that visited women at home to provide follow up, fertility per woman had reduced from an average of seven children to an average of three.  Further success has been seen through NGO’s such as BRAC. By using grassroots measures to influence policy, we can empower women and lift them out of poverty, but family planning is an integral part of the solution. We can’t let the argument about abortion mask gains for universal female empowerment.  

Senegal's Revolutionary Rap Diva - Sister Fa

Image Credit: Cinemapolitica

Senegal's array of talented rap artists is one of the reasons the country has been name the global hip-hop mecca.

Rap artists have been at the forefront of the country's African Spring by using their lyrical genius to transform the hearts of minds of the youth to take the streets and demand an end to corruption, poverty, rising unemployment, and the abuse of women.

One rapper who is really making a dent in the scene is none other than, Sister Fa.

Fa's lyrical style interweaves images from her everyday life, including issues of HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation, women's rights in Senegal, and poverty.

Here's a snippet from the Guardian of Sister Fa's view on the continued ritual of female genital mutilation (FGM):

I am an artist, a rapper and an activist, and because [FGM] affected my life so much, I want to talk about it. I still remember the day when it happened. I also know that things are changing and that when people understand they have a choice, they are able to change. There is hope for the future. I am just trying to speak for the many women who don't have an opportunity to raise their own voices. I am giving them a voice through my music.

This is a critical but neglected issue that deserves global attention. The extremely painful and often disabling consequences of female genital cutting are not only damaging to individual girls and women, but also affect their families and livelihoods. The UK is working in countries such as Kenya, Somalia and Senegal to help communities end this practice, and is looking at how we might do more to support its complete abandonment.

In terms of accolades, Sister Fa was named Best Newcomer of the Year at the Senegalese Hip-Hop awards.

It's with pleasure to introduce Sister Fa. Enjoy these two videos!

America's Working Poor: More "Nickel and Dimed" than Ever

Earlier this month, the tenth-anniversary edition of Barbara Ehrenreich's "undercover" investigation on how the working poor survive, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, was released.

To write the book, Ehrenreich, a published author and journalist with a Ph.D. in cell biology, told employers that she was a recent divorcee with only a high school education. She worked several minimum wage jobs over the course of one year--as a waitress, hotel maid, and Walmart employee--to show how difficult it is for low wage workers to support themselves. Her conclusion: in America, you can't.

The book was a powerful investigation that, ironically, was conducted at a time of enormous economic prosperity for most Americans.

Ten years later, as the unemployment rate rises and America's credit ratings sink, federal lawmakers in the U.S. are cutting social programs at an alarming rate. Programs which keep people out of extreme poverty, or at least lessen the impact. In the midst of this, the message of Nickel and Dimed is one that seems willfully ignored by most Americans; it is the message that employment does not cure poverty. It is also the message that, as the wealthiest citizens and corporations proceed to make record profits, they use the backs of the working poor to hoist themselves up.

As Ehrenreich points out in the book:

When someone works for less pay than she can live on...she has made a great sacrifice for you...The 'working poor'...are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone.

Ehrenreich is prominently featured in the 2007 documentary, "The American Ruling Class," waitressing at a diner. The following is an entertaining clip that recaps some of what was in the book, and cleverly morphs into a musical:

Valzhyna Mort: How Can This Exist on Earth?

Valzhyna Mort from Laura Hope-Gill on Vimeo.

In this month’s issue of Poetry Magazine, I stumbled across a name I couldn’t even attempt to pronounce. While this may not seem like a notable occasion, in a magazine known as “the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world,” running across a name so unabashedly un-Anglicized is reason to take note. Besides an annual translation issue, the magazine doesn’t deal much outside of the English language. When it does, it indicates that the artist in question is someone who has truly transcended country borders in order to garner international attention.

The poet--Valzhyna Mort--was born and raised in Belarus but is currently living in D.C., according to her Poetry Foundation biography. Her biography also confirmed my suspicions of Mort being an international sensation, though it at the same time suggested her unwavering nationalism. Though Mort has released acclaimed works in many individual countries, she continues to compose all of her poems in her native Belarusian in an attempt to revive and preserve the language.

A little bit more digging revealed that Mort is truly an electrifying poet, in almost every way that the word can be used. Her infamous readings are rivaled only by her equally enthralling subject matter. Though Mort, unlike Anjuman, doesn’t seem too worried about preserving the beauty of her language, what her work in translation does betray is a palpable effort to maintain a certain rawness, a plain-style sincerity that ensures her troubling and often disturbing imagery is maintained:

“even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch”

--From Belarusian

In just a few words, Mort communicates the poverty, helplessness, and abject hopelessness that pervaded her generation and her country. Her intricate and bizarre imagery reinforces the other-worldliness of their situation, asking always: how is it possible that these conditions could exist on earth? With all her travel and success and ascension into high-brow literary circles, it is remarkable that she has not stopped asking this question. It makes our inability--or perhaps refusal--to answer that much more palpable.

Watch Mort read part of Belarusian in the video above.

[Valzhyna Mort at the Poetry Foundation]

[Valzhyna Mort]

African Women Fall Victim to a New Form of Slavery

Slavery is very much a part of today’s global economy. It rivals and in some regions eclipses the international drug trade. There are nearly twenty-seven million slaves worldwide, generating $1.3 billionin annual profits. Some estimates show a world slave population as high as two hundred million.

During previous eras where slavery was common, the new owner was given a deed or title to its newly acquired property similar to the receipt a cashier hands over to the customer whose recently purchased goods.

The kafeel system could be likened to that deed or title in that the labour sending countries agree to the relinquishing of their workers passports upon arrival in the destination country. The kafeel or kafala system is a sponsorship system that only allows expatriate workers to enter, work in, and leave certain countries with the permission of their sponsor or employers, who are locals to that country. It's common in countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where migrant domestic workers are common.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are an estimated six million women working as maids in the Middle East. African countries like Ethiopia, Madagascar, Sudan as well as other various East and West African countries provide the bulk of household and cleaning services.

Languishing in Injustice

The main women’s prison in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli maintains a stagnant pool of migrant women many, who have spent more than a year awaiting the possibility of having their cases being brought before a judge. Few have access to institutional support from their embassies or consulates.

Waiting outside were two female Lebanese prison guards who were not exactly thrilled to see visitors.

“They have a gang ranking system in here and the Blacks are on the lowest level and the Filipinos are on the higher level,” says one Ethiopian detainee in her native language of Amharic. “The guards tell us to call our families so that they will send us money, which would make our time in jails easier.”

With tears in their eyes, the women press their hands against the glass barrier: physical contact with visitors is forbidden for inmates but this simple gesture signals their gratitude at the simple gifts of food, clothes, shampoo and feminine products brought to them by Yurda - a self-proclaimed social worker, community leader and domestic worker who has been in Lebanon for over eleven years – who has dedicated her free time to organizing donations.

Mixed in with criminals and murderers, many of these women were caught on the streets without papers after running away from their employers because of abuse, rape, starvation, forced confinement or accused of stealing.

“Female migrant workers are losing years off their lives by sitting in detention and one way of preventing this is by allowing the worker to keep their aqama (working papers) and original passport and let the employer retain the photocopy,” says Kenyan activist Naimeh Pelot.

Modern Day Slavery

Lacking legal protections, domestic workers are among the most exploited and abused workers in the world.

Rights advocates have long argued that exclusion from labour laws and recruitment-related abuses has left domestic workers in the Middle East vulnerable to exploitation, sexual abuse, forced labour, debt bondage, trafficking and conditions akin to slavery.

However, a new ILO Convention on Domestic Workers adopted in June aims to ensure that these women are treated as human beings.

“When male migrant workers come to work in construction or other service and industry sectors in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, they are protected under the labour law. Even if they don’t have full rights their work is recognized as work under the law, which is not the case for domestic workers,” said Simel Esim, Gender Specialist in the ILO's Regional Office for the Arab States in an interview.

“Jordan and Lebanon are the only countries where Ministries of Labour are in charge of a significant number of the institutional responsibilities regarding migrant domestic workers,” adds Esim.

“In the case of the GCC countries the oversight of domestic workers is under the jurisdiction of the Ministries of Interior instead of the Ministries of Labour, which leaves domestic workers outside the purview of the labour law. The emphasis on domestic workers is, therefore about their recognition as workers, with equal rights to workers in other sectors.”

The new convention requires governments to regulate private employment agencies that impose heavy debt burdens or misinform migrant domestic workers about their jobs, prohibit the practice of deducting domestic workers’ salaries to pay recruitment fees, investigate complaints and labour inspection in private homes.

Today recruitment agencies eager to cash in on this lucrative labour market lure these vulnerable women into debt bondage. Rights groups report that agency fees ranging from $200 to $400, must be paid before departure. However, for most women their first few salaries go toward repaying the debt.

“Policies relating to trafficking need to fall more in line with the reality of forced migration globally because most migrant workers are not the stereotypical sex worker chained to a bed,” Pardis Mahdavi, author of "Gridlock: Labour, Migration and Human Trafficking" said. “In fact they are men and women that are tied to metaphorical chains like debt and poverty that forces these workers to migrate and remain in poor working conditions.”

Feminization of Poverty

Madagascan female migrants enjoy a rare day off. Beirut, Lebanon

Soaring food prices coupled with massive land grabs have widened the gender gap between those trapped in poverty, resulting in the feminization of poverty. Women who constitute the majority of the world's poor face greater risks during times of global crisis forcing many to migrate out.

"In terms of the number of people going hungry today, more than 60% are women and girls and the situation of global hunger always has a gender characteristic to it. That means that the most vulnerable people in society are always going to be in the front line," journalist, activist and former policy analyst with the advocacy group Food First, Raj Patel told Her Blueprint.

"When there are already burdens of caring for the elderly, kids, the sick, carrying water and locating fuel coupled with the costs of finding food at higher costs with less money to go around and increased demands to find sources of income, women are structurally in a much harder position to make ends meet."

Right now, the global population is struggling to feed itself, with more than 800 million people lacking adequate food; 1.3 billion living on less than $1 per day and world population figures expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicts the pace of food inflation has surpassed 2008 levels and will rise another four percent this year. Basically if you are poor, now is a particularly precarious time with a twenty-five percent jump in global food costs in 2010 and most countries shelling out nearly $1 trillion on imports in comparison to a twenty percent spike for poorer nations in 2009.

However, women -- who have less access to food, water, health care, land ownership, basic rights, and education to better their living conditions -- are more vulnerable before any global crisis due to their status before disaster hits.

Recent statistics indicate that women account for seventy percent of the world's poor. They work two-thirds of the world's working hours, but earn only ten percent of the income and own one percent of the world's property.

During the 1960's, women accounted for nearly forty-five percent of the total migration -- mainly for reunification purposes with their spouses who were already employed abroad. Today, the global financial crisis has forced millions in developing countries into poverty. Resulting in the share of women migrating for employment to increase from 35.3 million in 1960 to 94.5 million in 2005.

Massive land grabs in some African countries, forcing those that would be growing food to feed their families off their lands and into urban areas that are unable to sustain them economically, has resulted in large numbers of migrants getting onto rickety boats and risking their lives to try and migrate out.

“Many people in Madagascar are living in poverty,” said Aimee, who is a self-proclaimed social worker in Lebanon, in an interview with Her Blueprint. “Every day applications are being processed for female migrants seeking work abroad.”

The beauty of migration is that, at the household level, it allows for the individual transaction of remittances because earnings go back to the people who need it the most -- the family.

Stable economies like Libya were a hub for migrant from African countries, Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington told Her Blueprint. Migrants headed out because they were unable to withstand the global recession, climate change huge increases in food prices and staple goods back home.

“Remittances are this sleeping giant in terms of development finance that has awakened. They create a financial tie between people and their communities by helping to build clinics, schools, roads and other infrastructure development projects,” says Woods.

“There are some efforts to harness more the strategic resources from remittances, which have created a space for governments to act independent of external actors like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose interest and loan conditions have failed to serve the needs of Africa.”

According to a World Economic Forum report titled, 'The Global Gender Gap Report 2009,' there is no country where women and men existed equally and concluded that systematic gender discrimination in developing countries must be halted in order for significant economic recovery and growth to occur.

Creating labour policies that protect female migrants and empowering women in their home countries by harnessing the power of remittances to provide decent work will not only fuel economies but lead the world on a path to eradicating poverty and hunger.

CLIO TALKS BACK: How long have we been fighting the war on poverty ?

Clio has been sorting through her many files. This one struck a chord. People nowadays (at least in the U.S.)tend to think that “wars on poverty” were invented quite recently, and that women’s disproportionate poverty is relatively new.

Read, then, to the words of Zoé Gatti de Gamond, a Belgian French-speaking “economic feminist”. Published in 1841-42 in Paris, her book on Charles Fourier and his system laid out arguments that are still relevant in the twenty-first century. Here is what she had to say, nearly 170 years ago:

“The most direct cause of women’s misfortune is poverty ; demanding their freedom means above all demanding reform in the economy of society which will eradicate poverty and give everyone education, a minimum standard of living, and the right to work. It is not only that class called “women of the people” for whom the major source of all their misfortunes is poverty, but rather women of all classes.

“From that comes the subjection of women, their narrow dependence on men, and their reduction to a negative influence. Men have thus materialized love, perverted the angelic nature of women, and created a being who submits to their caprices, their desires – a domesticated animal shaped to their pleasures and to their needs. Using their powers, they have split women into the appearance of two classes: for the privileged group, marriage, the care of the household, and maternal love; for the other, the sad role of seduced woman and of the misfortunate one reduced to the last degree of misery and degradation. Everywhere oppression and nowhere liberty.

“The question is not to decide whether it is fitting to give women political rights or to put them on an equal footing with men when it comes to admission to employment. Rather the question exists above all in the question of poverty; and to make women ready to fill political roles, it is poverty above all that must be effaced. Nor can the independence of women be reconciled with the isolation of households, which prevents even the working woman from being independent.

“The system of Fourier, imperceptibly and smoothly introducing associations within society, resolves all the difficulties in the position of women; without changing legislation or proclaiming new rights, it will regenerate them, silence the sources of corruption and reform with one blow education and morals with the single fact that results naturally from the associational principles of his system: a common education and the independence of women assured by the right to work [employment]; independence rendered possible by the association of households, attractive and harmonious work, and the multiplication of wealth.”

Clio asks you: do you think this is a “utopian” dream or a program for action? What elements can inform our action today?

Source: Zoé Gatti de Gamond, Fourier et son système (Paris: Capelle, 1841-42). pp. 247-66 ff. As translated in Bonnie G. Smith’s text Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (1989), pp. 174-75.