Women Working Worldwide became a private limited company on 21st April 1987 (Company Number 2124694). It was registered as a charity in May 2007 (Charity Number 1119101).

The Women Working Worldwide office is located within the Sociology Department of Manchester Metropolitan University which provides payroll, recruitment and facilities management functions.

Decision making in the team is collaborative, starting with the views of partners in producer countries and with partner NGOs. The Project Coodinator has overall responsibility for the team and provides regular reports to each Management Committee meeting. Women Working Worldwide benefits from the support of eminent academics working in the field of women workers rights and development such as Stephanie Barrientos (Univ. of Manchester) and Barbara Evers, who is working closely with the organisation through the Capturing the Gains project. The organisation also collaborates with other charities and NGOs which focus on improving workers rights, including women workers rights. Maggie Burns represents Women Working Worldwide at the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). Women Working Worldwide is governed by a Board of Trustees with relevant knowledge and experience of women’s rights and development work, who also serve as a Management Committee.

Management committee

The Management Committee meets at least once per quarter and additionally according to requirements. Members have key roles/tasks assigned to them, including human resource management functions for the small operational team. The Management Committee are currently recruiting two additional members to augment the skills and capacity of the team. All Management Committee members are also Trustees. Members of the Management Committee and their backgrounds are listed below, in alphabetical order:

Clem Herman – Treasurer

Clem Herman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Systems at the Open University in the UK. She has worked for over 25 years as an educator, practitioner and researcher to support women in ICT and other science, engineering and technology sectors. Before joining the Open University, she was the Director of the Women’s Electronic Village Hall (WEVH) in Manchester, pioneering the use of ICTs to empower women and as a tool to combat social exclusion. Clem is currently running an award winning online course for women returning to technology careers and her most recent research has been about the impact of career breaks for women in European SET companies. She is the editor of the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology.

Helen O’Connell

Helen is a founder member of Women Working Worldwide.  She worked for 27 years in the UK NGO sector, most recently until April 2009 as Head of Policy at One World Action and now works as an independent adviser.  She specialises on policy advocacy at national and international levels and programme development on women’s rights, labour rights, gender equity and democracy in the context of international development and trade.  She has campaigned, advocated and written widely on these issues.  She has extensive representation experience with the government and international policy makers and media, and networking experience within the NGO sector (for example, BOND, UK Gender and Development Network, WIDE). She was awarded an OBE by the British Government in June 2010.

Jessica Mock – Secretary

Jess has worked as local and national campaigner for Labour Behind the Label, from 1998, and also worked as administrator with Women Working Worldwide. Jess rejoined WWW as a management committee member in 2006, after the founder’s (Angela Hale) death. Jess has recently worked as a secondary school teacher of Geography and as a freelance youth and project worker with Rite2No, a climate change education group; she presently works at Sustrans, a sustainable transport initiative based- initiative.

Linda Shaw – Chair

Linda is Head of Research and Project Development at The Co-operative College in Manchester. Linda has been involved with Women Working Worldwide since she was a project worker back in 1989. This was the first funded project for the organisation and was on the textiles and garments sector. After that finished, Linda became a volunteer on the Board. Linda has had a varied portfolio career; she has worked in adult and continuing education for the WEA (Workers Education Association), Manchester University and the Open University, but also worked for the ILO in India and as a freelance for different agencies. She joined the Cooperative College in late 2001 after it had moved to Manchester and now manages (in part) a growing portfolio of international work and projects with the cooperative and mutual sector.

Susie Jacobs – Chair, Staffing Committee

Susie is Reader in Comparative Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University and  Course Leader for the MA Sociology and Global Change. She teaches across a range of subjects including development studies, globalisation, gender and women's studies and 'race', racism and ethnicity. She has researched and published on gender issues in agrarian change and land reforms comparatively and in southern Africa, where she carried out early research. She has also worked and published in the areas of gender and violent conflicts, transnational networks and gender, and ethnicity and 'race' in higher education. Susie organised the memorial workshop for Angela Hale 'Women, Work and Globalisation: Women making Global Connections' at MMU in June, 2006. She joined WWW's MC in November, 2006 and liaises with the Department and the Research Institute at MMU.