World Banana Forum & Gender Equity

Task Force on Gender Equity

The World Banana Forum Task Force on Gender Equity (GE-TF) has been set up to ensure that gender equity is pushed forward as a cross-cutting theme across the various activities of the WBF and its three working groups.

The Task Force seeks to contribute towards a better understanding of gender issues and the realities faced by female workers along the global banana chain whilst ensuring that women representatives of the global banana industry are present and active in all decision-making processes that affect them.

Task Force key outputs:

If you are interested in becoming a member of the Task Force on Gender Equity, please email Anna Cooper on solidarity@bananalink.org.uk

A Multi-Stakeholder Meeting on Gender Equity in the Banana Industry in November 2017, which preceded the Third Global Conference of the WBF, – see below for details.

A Global Women’s Strategy Meeting on Gender Equity in the Banana Industry, funded by Fairtrade Germany and hosted by Fairtrade International in Bonn, December 2015

A series of publications on ‘Women in the Banana Export Industry’ (2015) – a Global Overview and Regional Reports for Latin America, West and Central Africa and the Caribbean, funded by the FAO.

Specific chapters on advances for women workers included in the WBF publication ‘Labour relations: Successful cases within the banana industry‘, May 2014

Two capacity building workshops for women and male trade union and small producer leaders in Latin America (held in Panama, March 2013) and in Africa (held in Cameroon, September 2013) to empower participants to actively engage in the WBF and its three working groups.

The adaptation of the WBF Charter to incorporate gender equity as a cross-cutting theme

Multi-Stakeholder Strategy Meeting on Gender Equity
in the Banana Industry

The World Banana Forum’s (WBF) Multi-stakeholder strategy meeting on Gender Equity in the Banana Industry which took place in Geneva Switzerland on 7 November 2017, at which Banana Link coordinated the participation of delegates from trade unions and small producer organisations from the Global South.

Nearly 100 people gathered to share expertise about and develop proposals for future work to achieve gender equity in the industry. The breadth of participation and depth of discussion reflect the significant range of work currently being undertaken by the WBF Task Force on Gender Equity, from developing terms of reference for OHSE risk assessment for pregnant women and nursing mothers to identifying the causal factors that create the gender pay gap. Working groups discussed five thematic areas;

women’s empowerment,
women’s employment,
the gender pay gap,
Occupational Health and Safety and
sexual harassment and Gender Based Violence.

The meeting formulated a set of Proposals for joint action plan on gender equality 2017 -19 which were presented to the World Banana Forum conference the following morning.

Materials from the Gender equity meeting are available below.