63rd Commission on the Status of Women

High Level UN Women 

13 March 2019 (3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.)

Social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure: Policy coherence for the empowerment of women in informal employment

While the need to extend social protection to women in informal employment is now widely recognized, the synergies and trade-offs between social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure for informal workers remain underexplored. Urban policies and regulations, for example, often cast informal workers as undesirable and restrict their use of public spaces, such as roadsides or markets, potentially undermining the benefits of social protection programmes aimed at stabilizing women’s incomes. Strengthening policy coherence—across sectors and levels of government—is hence critical to make social protection systems, public services and sustainable infrastructure work for women in informal employment. The panel will explore synergies, tensions and pathways to policy coherence for the empowerment of women in informal employment. It will engage member states, international organizations and civil society, including grassroots organizations of women informal workers, in an interactive discussion with the audience. View recording on UN Web TV

11 March 2019 (11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.)

Conference Room A

Promoting Rights-based Social Protection Policies for Gender Equality: A Prerequisite for Social Justice and Sustainable Development

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) has organised a panel discussion around the theme, Promoting Rights-based Social Protection Policies for Gender Equality: A Prerequisite for Social Justice and Sustainable Development. The panel which features experts from international organisations, and government ministries is intended to provide a platform to share achievements in the promotion of rights-based social protection policies for gender equality. Director of WIEGO’s Social Protection Programme, Dr. Laura Alfers, will present on the Rights of Informal Workers in the provision of rights based social protection from a gender perspective. Read agenda

11 March 2019 (11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.)

Conference Room A

The Rights of Domestic Workers across Latin America and the Caribbean: Advances and Challenges Following the Adoption of ILO Convention 189

Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, the International Domestic Workers’ Federation, CARE and UN Women will host an interactive panel to showcase means and public policies to advance the rights of domestic workers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Register

12 March 2019 (12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.)

Church Center for the United Nations, 10th Floor

Creating Shared Strategies for Sustainable Development: A Multi-Stakeholder Workshop

The Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund (VGIF) hosted a discussion on grassroots organizing and has invited WIEGO to share its experience of working with women informal workers and their organizations. WIEGO members will have the opportunity to discuss some of the emerging outcomes of the child care campaign.

12 March, 2019 (5:00p.m.)

Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, 320 E 43rd St, New York, NY 10017

Screening of Roma

Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar award-winning film ROMA tells the story of Cleo, an indigenous woman who works as a live-in domestic worker for a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City. Though the film is set 50 years ago, the complexities of Cleo’s reality–the unsung heroism of her work, the duality of intimacy and distance within a family–are familiar to the more than 70 million domestic workers around the globe today. For these workers, most of whom are women, the film is both a deeply personal opportunity to see their stories on the big screen and to shine a spotlight on their broader fight for dignity, respect, and inclusion.

On 12 March 2019, the International Domestic Workers Federation and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, along with co-hosts the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations, hosted a screening of ROMA, which was preceded by a reception and short panel discussion with domestic worker leaders from around the world about the resonant power of the film, and opportunities to join in their fight to win new protections for this long-invisible workforce. 

19 March 2019 (10:00 a.m.)

Church Center for the United Nations, 8th Floor

Dignifying Lives and Empowering Women in Waste Management

The innovative gender-sensitive solid waste management approaches being employed by Practical Action and its partners will be on showcase when the UK development charity hosts a side event, ‘Dignifying lives and empowering women in waste management’ on March 19 during CSW63.

Participants from Practical Action, including South Asia programme teams, will share gender-sensitive learning and recommendations from work with informal waste workers in Nepal, Kenya and initial findings from the Dignifying Lives project which has recently begun in Bangladesh.

WIEGO’s Global Focal Cities Coordinator, Jenna Harvey will share relevant learning from WIEGO’s programmatic work, to demonstrate the power of female waste pickers’’ collective action both globally and in cities where WIEGO works, and to share lessons on mobilizing women workers to advocate for their economic rights.