Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing & Organizing (WIEGO)

What is WIEGO?

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) is a global action-research-policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor in the informal economy, especially women.

Economic empowerment of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy is at the heart of WIEGO’s mission. We believe all workers should have equal economic opportunities and rights and be able to determine the conditions of their work and lives.

WIEGO is comprised of organizations of informal workers and of individual researchers and development professionals engaged in or concerned with informal employment. We seek to improve the status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy by:

  • helping to strengthen membership-based organizations (MBOs) of informal workers and to build sector-specific networks of such organizations
  • highlighting the size, composition, characteristics, and contribution of the informal economy through improved statistics and research
  • promoting policy dialogues and processes that include representatives of informal worker organizations
  • promoting more equitable working conditions and more inclusive global trade, social protection, and urban planning policies

WIEGO has five core Programmes (below) as well as Global Projects and Special Initiatives.

We seek to involve membership-based organizations (MBOs) of informal workers in the identification, prioritization and design of all of our activities. We also seek to disseminate the findings, data, and case studies generated – and related lessons learned – as widely as possible.

Why WIEGO?

The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that, in 2009, one in five workers worldwide – 630 million or so workers – lived with their families at or below the US $1.25 a day poverty level: 40 million than before the global economic crisis began in late 2008. The vast majority of these working poor earn their living in the informal economy where, on average, earnings are low and risks are high. WIEGO believes that reducing poverty and inequality is possible only by raising the earnings and lowering the risks of those who work in the informal economy. The challenge is great as, over the past two decades, informal employment has persisted or grown in most countries, emerging in unexpected places and in new guises.

The WIEGO network was founded in April 1997 by a group of ten activists, researchers, and development professionals who had long worked on the informal economy. They shared a concern that the working poor in the informal economy, especially women, are not well understood, valued, or supported in policy circles or by the international development community.

Those who join the WIEGO network are motivated by this same concern. Together, the members, directors, and team of employees and consultants who comprise WIEGO seek:

  • to put work, workers and workers’ organizations at the center of economic development policies and processes
  • to investigate how different groups of the working poor in the informal economy – especially women – are linked to the formal economy and to the global economy, and with what consequences
  • to examine the quantity and quality of employment opportunities created by different patterns of economic growth and global integration
  • to identify appropriate policies, regulations, and practices to manage and govern the employment arrangements of the working poor in the informal economy

For more details, see Defining Features of WIEGO.

Voice, Visibility and Validity

WIEGO serves the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy by helping to increase their:

  • VOICE through building and strengthening organizations of informal workers, networking and linking such organizations, and helping these workers gain representation in the policymaking and rule-setting bodies that affect their work and lives
  • VISIBILITY by sponsoring and undertaking research, convening and participating in research conferences, and helping develop and improve official labour force and other economic statistics on the informal economy
  • VALIDITY by promoting mainstream recognition of the working poor in the informal economy as legitimate economic agents who contribute to the economy and are, thereby, legitimate targets of economic and social policies; and by promoting their incorporation into policy-making and rule-setting processes

For more information, see:

Who We Are: WIEGO Members, Board, and Team.
What We Do: WIEGO’s Core Programmes, Global Projects, and Special Initiatives.
How We Are Structured:  Our network, management and fiscal structure.
Where We Work : A world map depicting where WIEGO Members, Board, Team, and activities were located in 2010.