women workers

Average global CEO pay hit $4.3 million in 2024, reveals new analysis from Oxfam ahead of International Workers’ Day (1 May). This is a 50 percent real-term increase from $2.9 million in 2019 (adjusted for inflation) —a rise that far outpaces the real wage growth of the average worker, who saw a 0.9 percent increase over the same five-year period in the countries where CEO pay data is available.

While inequality was already deeply unfair before the pandemic, it has now reached shocking proportions. COVID-19 has cost global workers $3.7 trillion in lost income, and women and young workers have been hardest hit. Few places reveal this trend more clearly than supermarket supply chains.

This briefing aims to share the insights Oxfam gained from interviews conducted with 26 experts on the subject of what works for women to represent themselves effectively. It outlines practical steps that companies can take to enable women to be heard in the workplace and fulfil their potential.

As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, vulnerable workers in the informal sector in the Horn East and Central Africa region have been hit hard and are being pushed on the edge of poverty. Read the story of Atsede, a mother of two, working as a vegetable street vendor in Ethiopia and fighting every day to bring food for her children.

Food workers throughout global supply chains are on the frontline of the coronavirus. The epidemic adds another crisis onto the almost permanent state of economic crisis in their lives. Now more than ever supermarkets and their suppliers must protect the rights of all the workers and producers who are risking their lives to keep food on our tables.

The situation facing working women, their changing patterns of work and the hardships and disadvantages they face have a profound potential to reshape the world we live in. This report seeks to explore the challenges and opportunities facing Europe’s working women, particularly those in precarious and low-paid work.

The seafood industry is worth more than $150bn per year. But it comes at an unacceptable price: the suffering of the people who produce it. In Southeast Asia, workers describe the harsh conditions that are far too common in this industry. Stand with them and help us reveal what’s behind the price of food we eat.

 

Lan, 32, works in a factory in southern Vietnam, which produces shoes for global fashion brands. She works six days a week for at least nine hours a day, earning around $1 per hour. Read her story and stand with her in the fight against inequality.

Despite some important progress in recent years, in no country have women achieved economic equality with men, and women are still more likely than men to live in poverty. Gender inequality in work costs women in developing countries $9 trillion a year – a sum which would provide a massive boost to the global economy.

A new era of high and volatile food prices is causing life-changing shifts in society, according to Oxfam and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in a joint report published today.