In 1997, 10 specialists on the informal economy met to plan a collaborative project that would bring together multiple constituencies in support of women workers in the informal economy. While most of WIEGO’s key features were part of the original plan, the transformation of the project into a global network far exceeds the expectations of our founders.
In April 1997, 10 specialists on the informal economy – a mix of practitioners, scholars, statisticians, and policymakers – met to plan a collaborative project in support of women workers and entrepreneurs in the informal economy.
The group consisted of:
The founders named the project Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (or WIEGO, for short).
The first WIEGO research projects were begun in 1998. The first study was of street trade in South Africa, which led to a follow-up study on street trade in four African countries. The book on Street Trade in South Africa was launched in Durban in 2000. In 1998, WIEGO was commissioned to produce two papers on informal employment, poverty and gender for the World Development Report 2000/1: one a review of available statistics, the other of existing literature.
In 1999, after planning meetings with organizations of workers in informal employment, researchers and statisticians, WIEGO launched five core programmes: Organization and Representation, Statistics, Global Trade, Urban Policies and Social Protection. In 2015, we added another core programme on Law.
In 2000, with SEWA, UNIFEM and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, WIEGO organized a regional conference on home-based workers in Kathmandu, Nepal. The participants drafted and signed the Kathmandu Declaration. HomeNet South Asia (HNSA) was founded at a post-conference meeting.
StreetNet International was founded in Durban, South Africa, in November 2002, with support from SEWA and WIEGO. Through its constitution, StreetNet International ensures that women are represented in all its events and leadership structures.
In June 2002, the International Labour Organization held a General Discussion on Decent Work and the Informal Economy at its annual tripartite conference. WIEGO co-organized six regional workshops with worker organizations and trade unions to generate a common Platform of Demands. The Conclusions to the Discussion recognized workers in informal employment as legitimate workers and acknowledged that own-account workers should be considered workers (not employers) in the tripartite system.
In 2002, WIEGO prepared Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, published by the International Labour Organization, which included estimates of informal employment in developing regions based on data from 25 countries, and introduced the application of the concept of informal employment to developed countries, with related indicators.
In 2003, a coalition of trade unions and worker organizations in the WIEGO network – the Ghana Trades Union Congress, HomeNet Thailand, the Nigerian Labour Congress, the Self-Employed Women’s Association, and StreetNet – convened the first global conference on “Organizing Informal Workers” in Ahmedabad, India. The WIEGO network coalition also organized two regional conferences in Africa on the topic: with the ILO in Dakar, Senegal, in 2005, and with the Ghana Trades Union Congress in Accra, Ghana, in 2006.
Working closely with the International Labour Organization and the UN Statistical Commission’s International Expert Group on Informal Statistics, WIEGO was a driving force contributing to the development of an internationally recognized statistical concept of informal employment, and its adoption by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 2003. The definition of informal employment includes the self-employed in informal enterprises as well as wage workers in informal jobs.
To bridge the perspectives in academic and policy debates on employment, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) of India, Cornell University and WIEGO jointly organized a series of five Exposure-Dialogue Programmes.
WIEGO was invited by UNIFEM to prepare the 2005 edition of its flagship publication, Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty.
In 2006, WIEGO served on an international planning committee led by the Dutch NGO IRENE, which facilitated the first global conference of domestic workers, held in the Netherlands. The conference participants agreed to advocate for an ILO domestic worker convention and to explore the idea of forming a global network.
In 2006, at WIEGO’s fourth General Assembly in Durban, South Africa, 100 WIEGO members from 25 countries representing our three constituencies (organizations of workers in informal employment; researchers and statisticians; and development practitioners) ratified the WIEGO constitution.
WIEGO co-organized the first World Conference of Waste Pickers, held in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2008. Participants from 30 countries included waste pickers and representatives from NGOs, development agencies, private enterprise and government.
When the Early Morning Market in Warwick Junction, Durban, was threatened by commercial development, local market traders and street vendors with the support of NGO Asiye eTafuleni and the local Legal Resource Centre – plus an alliance of academics, StreetNet International and WIEGO – mounted a campaign and successfully filed two legal cases to defend the rights of street vendors and market traders to public space.
In 2008, a collaboration of worker organizations and support organizations coordinated by WIEGO launched a global Inclusive Cities project designed to strengthen the capacity of organizations of urban workers in informal employment to engage with cities to demand more inclusive policies, plans, procurement and services.
Advocacy efforts by HomeNet Thailand, the Association of Informal Workers, and a consortium of Thai partner organizations resulted in the passage of the Homeworkers Protection Act (in 2010); the Social Security Act Article 40 (in 2011) and the Ministerial Regulation on Protection of Domestic Workers (in 2011). WIEGO has supported ongoing campaigns in Thailand to gain legal and social protections for workers in informal employment by providing advocacy training and technical advice.
In 2009 and 2010, WIEGO led a study of the impact of the global economic crisis on urban workers in informal employment, carried out by worker organizations in more than 10 cities around the world. The findings from both the first and second rounds of the study were cited in the UN Secretary General’s report on the impact of the crisis.
In 2011, with the national movement of waste pickers in Brazil (Movimento Nacional de Catadores de Materiais Recicláveis), the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Nenuca Institute for Sustainable Development, WIEGO launched a project on Gender and Waste to reflect on gender dynamics within the movement and its affiliates. The project enabled women waste pickers to participate more actively in decision-making roles and processes within their cooperatives and the national movement.
In June 2011, the International Labour Conference adopted Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. This followed a five-year campaign by the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN) with the ILO, WIEGO, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers and other allies. The Convention mandates that domestic workers should be recognized as workers entitled to the same protections as other workers.
In 2011, Lima, Perú, became the first city in WIEGO’s Focal Cities project. Two years earlier, WIEGO had launched a social protection project in Perú and Mexico, designed to bring the voices of workers in informal employment into policy debates on social protection. The project increased understanding of informal employment and workers in both countries, and strengthened the advocacy skills of worker leaders. WIEGO now has four focal cities – Accra, Dakar, Lima and Mexico City, as well as focused work in Delhi and Belo Horizonte.
In March 2011, WIEGO held a two-day agenda-setting research conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Sixty researchers from 17 countries took part in the conference that focused on informality from the perspective of different disciplines, countries, themes and groups of workers.
In 2012, WIEGO launched its own Publication Series, including Working Papers, Briefs (Legal, Policy, Organizing, Statistical, and Technical) and Workers’ Lives profiles. It has since grown to include Resource Documents as well as Law and Informality Insights.
In 2012, WIEGO carried out an Informal Economy Monitoring Study with local researchers and worker organizations in 10 cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The study found that city policies and practices are the main driver of change; wider economic trends as well as value chain dynamics also drive change; workers in informal employment respond to negative changes by reducing expenditures, diversifying sources of income and extending working hours; and the main institutional source of support is the worker organizations to which the sample respondents belong.
In October 2013, the International Domestic Workers Network was transformed into a formal federation at its Founding Congress in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the congress, WIEGO facilitated the ratification of the constitution and the election of the leadership. As of 2024, the International Domestic Workers Federation has 88 affiliates from 68 countries, representing over 675,000 domestic worker members.
For many years, the Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá (Bogotá Waste Pickers Association) advocated to change government policies and practices around waste management. In 2013, after a series of Constitutional Court victories, a payment scheme went into effect in Bogotá which paid waste pickers for their services in reclaiming recyclable materials and allowed them to continue to save, sort and process these materials for sale. With the national and Bogotá waste picker associations, WIEGO promoted waste pickers’ recognition as public service providers in other cities across Colombia. By 2019, 92 municipalities had at least one waste picker organization providing the public service of recycling.
One outcome of WIEGO’s advocacy work with worker organizations in Lima, Perú, for a national law to protect the self-employed was the establishment of a simplified registration and progressive tax system (NRUS) for own-account workers. Under this system, once they register, own-account workers are taxed on a low-tiered scale and three months later they receive free health insurance.
WIEGO Working Paper No. 2. Statistics on the Informal Economy: Definitions, Regional Estimates & Challenges presents regional estimates of informal employment based on an analytic approach with direct measures from 40 developing countries and indirect measures from 80 countries.
A city ordinance to regulate and protect street trade in Metropolitan Lima was approved after a consultation process with more than 100 street vendor organizations across Lima facilitated by WIEGO. The ordinance promoted the affiliation of vendors to a health insurance programme; prioritized licences for women heads of poor households; created a tripartite body (comprised of vendors, the City and neighbours) to oversee any decisions related to street vending; and mandated a pilot mobile child-care facility for street vendors.
In February 2015, in New Delhi, India, more than 100 home-based workers and supporters from 24 countries gathered for the first global conference of home-based workers, co-organized by HomeNet South Asia and WIEGO. The conference culminated in the first global declaration of home-based workers – the Delhi Declaration – which outlined the common demands of home-based workers on key issues as well as regional plans for working together.
The ILO Recommendation 204 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy contains many provisions that worker leaders advocated for, including recognition that informal livelihoods should be preserved during the transition to formality, and that workers need regulated access to public space and to natural resources to pursue their livelihoods. In the three-year process leading up to the adoption of the Recommendation, WIEGO organized regional workshops where workers in informal employment gave their input into a WIEGO Network Platform, and facilitated delegations of worker leaders at the International Labour Conferences in 2014 and 2015 when the Recommendation was discussed and approved.
In 2015, a judge in the Durban High Court ruled in favour of a street vendor whose goods had been confiscated by local police. This judgment represented an enormous victory for John Makwicana and his fellow street vendors and market traders across South Africa as the judge acknowledged that street vendors are engaged in legitimate activities but remain vulnerable to unfair practices by local authorities and that confiscation of their goods is “illegal, immoral and unconstitutional.” With the local Legal Resource Centre, which argued the case, and Asiye eTafuleni, which works with street vendors in Durban, WIEGO helped prepare the case and provided evidence during the court proceedings.
WIEGO was involved throughout the two-year consultative process leading to the UN Habitat III summit in Quito, Ecuador: advocating for the integration of workers in informal employment into the New Urban Agenda. Among this work, WIEGO facilitated worker delegations at preparatory committee meetings and the summit, where they spoke at many events. The resultant New Urban Agenda includes a commitment to recognizing workers’ contributions to cities and to preserving and enhancing their livelihoods.
The UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel for Women’s Economic Empowerment brought together leaders from civil society, the private sector and the public sector to identify drivers of women’s economic empowerment (or disempowerment) and to define an agenda for improving economic outcomes for women. WIEGO’s contribution was our focus on women workers in informal employment, on collective voice and action, and on the intersection of gender, work status and class as key determinants of women’s empowerment (or disempowerment).
New Solutions is a journal of occupational health with a worker-oriented focus. WIEGO was invited to co-edit a special issue of the journal on the health and safety of workers in informal employment, which was published in August 2016.
WIEGO was invited by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) to edit a special issue of Environment and Urbanization on Urban Livelihoods, published in October 2016 to coincide with Habitat III. The issue was dedicated to Zodwa Khumalo, a traditional healer and worker leader fondly known as “Ma Dlamini” from the Warwick Junction market in Durban, South Africa, who died in July 2016.
As a result of advocacy efforts by membership-based organizations of workers in informal employment in Accra, Ghana, during the 2016 presidential election, with support from WIEGO, an agreement was reached with the incoming political party to abolish a punitive toll imposed on market head porters, or kayayei. In March 2017, the new government made good on its promise and announced the lifting of the toll.
WIEGO’s Statistics Programme worked with the International Labour Organization as it compiled the first-ever global estimates of informal employment. In 2018, the research was published by the ILO in Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture (3rd edition, see the 2002 entry for information on the earlier editions) and summarized in WIEGO’s Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Brief. The global picture shows that 61% of the world’s workers are informal and more than two billion people earn their livelihood in the informal economy. The brief’s user-friendly format facilitates wide understanding of the size, components and characteristics of the informal economy worldwide.
WIEGO had a hand in making big changes to the International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE) that could lead to better national policies benefitting workers in informal employment. At the 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in 2018, the new ICSE-18 was adopted, replacing an outdated international standard that no longer reflected the reality of the global labour force. “The future of work in the world is informal,” WIEGO co-founder Marty Chen told participants at the ICLS. “The ability to collect data on informality is crucial for better policy.” Among the most important changes to the ICSE was a new category, dependent contractor, which reflects aspects of both self-employment and wage employment. This category has special relevance to homeworkers.
In September 2018, the exhibition “Invisible Workers” opened at el Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia (the Museum of Memory and Tolerance) in Mexico City. This exhibition, with photos taken by Dean Saffron, reveals the precarious working conditions of waste pickers in Mexico City. WIEGO Focal Cities Mexico City team facilitated this work and also produced an e-book. This initiative raised awareness of the contributions of waste pickers and their rights and needs.
WIEGO’s Law Programme and Organization and Representation Programme partnered with the IDWF to develop a Domestic Workers’ Toolkit, which was improved through feedback from workshop participants. The Domestic Workers’ Legal Toolkit contains an organizers’ manual that provides information on the ILO Domestic Workers Convention (C189) and its accompanying Recommendation (R201). The Toolkit was updated and adapted for the Caribbean Region.
In 2019, the Convention on Eliminating Violence and Harassment in the World of Work was adopted at the International Labour Conference, establishing “the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment” as a labour right that can be drawn on to protect workers around the globe. This was a significant victory for workers in informal employment –especially women – whose organizations worked hard to ensure that the Convention (C190) would protect particularly vulnerable workers, including those in private spaces such as homes. Worker leaders representing domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers successfully proposed the inclusion of language that names public authorities and refers to the state’s responsibility to ensure proper implementation.
WIEGO works closely with waste picker organizations to support their integration into cities’ waste management systems, including through our Reducing Waste in Coastal Cities Project. In 2019, the Municipal Cleaning Agency of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, transferred its door-to-door collection of recyclables to six cooperatives and each received a truck, the result of a long struggle by catadores. In Argentina, the National Waste Picker Federation’s Amanecer de los Cartoneros cooperative, with support from WIEGO and government, gave 2,000 waste pickers access to formal processing centres where waste can be more responsibly managed. Every month, this prevents 8.5 tons of plastic from entering waterways.
In response to the needs of worker organizations, and local advocates working with the WIEGO Focal Cities teams, WIEGO’s Statistics Programme prepared Statistical Briefs that provide key indicators of informal employment and key categories of workers at the geographic levels of main city or cities, urban and national in an easily accessible format.
In April 2020, WIEGO mobilized its resources to design and implement two studies – a rapid appraisal with our institutional members and a mixed-method study with partners – to assess the impact of COVID-19 on workers in informal employment in 12 cities. This gave workers data that was crucial to their efforts to convince governments to include them in pandemic relief measures and their advocacy for better working conditions. Together with worker organizations in the multi-city COVID-19 Crisis and the Informal Economy study, WIEGO listened to the experiences of workers and unpacked the hardship, injustice and possibility for transformation within the economic system laid bare by the pandemic. HomeNet South Asia and HomeNet Thailand used the study survey questionnaire to undertake further studies of home-based workers in 17 additional cities, thereby increasing understanding of the challenges workers face.
In July 2020, the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa used WIEGO’s health guidelines for street vendors in a court case to secure the opening of markets in Cape Town. The guidelines helped demonstrate that traders take health concerns seriously, including those related to COVID-19. The case was won and the ruling allowed street vendors to start working again. The guidelines were prepared together with occupational health professors, food security experts, NGO Asiye eTafuleni and trader leaders. WIEGO’s interventions in South Africa’s COVID-19 support package contributed to other policy victories too: the declaration of food vending as an essential service and the design of a cash grant that included workers in informal employment.
The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future is the result of two decades of pioneering work by WIEGO. This 34-chapter open-access book brings together leading scholars to investigate conceptual shifts, research findings and policy debates on the informal economy. It also focuses on specific groups of workers to provide a grounded insight into disciplinary debates. Ultimately, the book calls for a paradigm shift in how the informal economy is perceived to reflect the realities of informal work in the Global South, as well as the informal practices of the state and capital, not just labour.
The February 2021 launch of HomeNet International – a global network for home-based workers – was the culmination of more than 20 years of organization building. Home-based workers’ organizations from four regions found creative ways to continue their work on building a democratic, representative global network, even while navigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers in informal employment. The network aims to build solidarity, share knowledge and information, take up home-based worker issues globally, raise a global voice in spaces such as the International Labour Organization, and to provide support to all regions and affiliate organizations. WIEGO supported the formation of HomeNet International with capacity building, knowledge generation, statistics and network building.
In Delhi, WIEGO joined a diverse coalition of allies who together formed the Main Bhi Dilli (“I, too, am Delhi”) Campaign to advocate for the need for a more participatory and inclusive approach to the next Delhi master plan, which sets the tone for the city’s development for the next 20 years, until 2041. As a result of the campaign’s advocacy efforts, the Indian city has opened up its most inclusive public consultation process yet – accepting for the first time citizen input on the master plan before the release of a draft.
In 2021, WIEGO published findings that nearly two-thirds of the world’s home-based workers are in Asia & the Pacific, and 57% are women. Globally, 260 million women and men produce goods or provide services from in or around their homes: 86% (224 million) are in developing and emerging countries and 14% (35 million) in developed countries. Home-Based Workers in the World: A Statistical Profile – the outcome of WIEGO’s collaboration with the ILO and HomeNet International – presents statistics on the numbers of home-based workers and their share of employment by geographic regions and country income groups, the characteristics of their work (industry sector, occupation and status in employment) as well as their personal characteristics (educations and hours of work).
Recognizing the importance of democratic organizing, the Ford Foundation announced in November 2021 a five-year, USD25-million grant to the WIEGO Network to support a global movement calling on governments to invest in protections for workers in informal employment. The groups supported by the grant – including HomeNet International, the International Domestic Workers Federation and StreetNet International – represent more than 2.5 million people. “The economy we envision is one in which these workers have a voice, through their democratic, membership-based organizations, in policymaking and rule-setting and in which they as workers, and the contributions and value of their work, are recognized,” said WIEGO’s international coordinator, Sally Roever.
In a historical moment for the waste pickers movement, informal recyclers were mentioned for the first time in a United Nations environmental resolution, in the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2022. The text says that their contribution in collecting, sorting and recycling plastics in many countries is recognized, and it further states that we need to learn from the best practices in informal and cooperative settings. Soledad Mella, representative of the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers (GlobalRec) and president of the Asociación Movimiento Nacional de Recicladores de Chile (ANARCH), addressed the plenary.
HomeNet International hosted its second congress – and first-ever in-person congress – in Kathmandu, Nepal, where home-based workers from around the globe came together to discuss key thematic areas of home-based workers’ work, elect a new governing body and deepen solidarity among workers. During the congress, HomeNet International’s first Declaration was endorsed by the delegates representing affiliate organizations.
The International Alliance of Waste Pickers held its first-ever Elective Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where waste pickers from around the world met to elect the organization’s office bearers, approve resolutions and discuss issues affecting the sector. The Congress represents an important milestone in waste pickers’ global networking and organizing, which dates back to 2008.
