Oxfam International Climate Change Blog (EN)

While gender equality is enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in legislation in most countries, women’s conditions of participation in markets and their rewards from that participation, still remain woefully unequal to men’s.

Many women work in temporary or informal positions and are therefore “invisible” to laws and regulations.

The tragic collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh has put a spotlight on the poor pay and working conditions endured by millions of people who make our clothes or grow our food.

For many people around the world the first of May is International Workers’ Day, a chance to celebrate the role of workers and labourers in our society. So we thought this would be a good time to look a little harder at how the 'Big 10' food and beverage companies score for their policies towards workers rights on our Behind the Brands companies scorecard. It's a mixed picture.

With your help, Oxfam has been campaigning since September on land grabs, as part of our GROW campaign for food justice. We wanted the World Bank to take some urgently needed action to help end land grabs in many developing countries, which help keep one in eight people on our planet hungry.