Through the community review we learned that despite more visibility and awareness on work-related issues, women workers in Mexico continue to face a great deal of violence, sexual harassment, and poverty wages that limit their ability to care for their health and wellbeing and that of their families. But we also learned how workers were taking action and using technology to connect with other workers and record and report violations. The feedback from the Mexican groups has allowed us to greatly improve the sections on discrimination, violence, and reproductive and sexual health.

For example, this feedback has led us to redistribute the content of the section "Women who work in factories" into the sections on "Discrimination," "Violence," and "Sexual and Reproductive Health." Instead of separating out the reality of women workers into a special chapter we decided to strengthen the gender analysis of those 3 sections. By no longer "otherizing" women workers issues we could recognize them as an integral part of workers experience. Many other concrete, but less dramatic, changes have been made as well, and we are now very close to finishing the final draft of that section which will be made available online.

I wanted to end with two general quotes we received from the group after the review:

" Even though we had covered some topics of this book in other workshops, this is an excellent guide book to work with women workers who have not had any previous training on occupational health."
Reyna Ramirez, Colectivo de Obreras Insumisas, Mexico

" This material is very useful because there aren't many educational materials that are within the reach of factory workers. It can be used as reference and for trainings."
Julia Quinones, Comite Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO), Mexico

Twenty-nine participants attended. Some participants hold responsibilities at national level. These were both leaders at various levels and members of the Union which UTGLAWU targeted to achieve the workshop objectives. We aim at providing training to the women in the cotton sector to exchange ideas, information and to consider how to coordinate and advance their issues in the sector. Participants were united in a common interest to improve trade union work on gender issues in the cotton sector.

The Workshop objectives included the following:

1. To create awareness on women’s Rights at the workplace
2. To identify the women’s needs/problems at workplace which need urgent attention
3. To identify the level of compliance with women related Rights at workplace.
4. To identify ways through which the women’s problems can be solved.

Participants came up with the following as recommendable actions to be taken:

• Organising and recruiting more women into the Union
• Encouraging women to take up leadership positions at different levels in the Union
• Continuous training/education of women on their rights and other issues of their concern at work.
• The Union should continue advocating for women to ensure recognition and compliance with their Rights.
• Cooperation and unity among women at the workplace
• Building more capacity among women through training and creating awareness.
• To strengthen the bargaining power for women in the cotton sector.
• Support women into leadership position.
• Improve economic status of women through negotiations with their employers.
• Identify allies among men who can promote women’s interest and concerns.
• To research properly on the cotton value chain value chain on women in the cotton sector to add more values.
• There is need for greater linkages between human rights organizations and women in the cotton sector for mass mobilization and advocacy.
• Need for more training to get into main stream decision making .It is a challenge because women still fight fellow women who are in leadership position and to organize them to vote fellow women.
• It was identified that with training women in the sector can be empowered.