• (20 minutes): The meeting is opened by a union leader who gives a brief presentation covering the following points:
1. The purpose and the context of the study based on the
concept note of the study.
2. The history and the underlying factors of the creation
of the union or the organization.
3. The evolution of its membership, (number of
participants women and men, by age, education
attainment and occupation).
4. And a focus on the union projects, action plan,
objectives, achievements, challenges, and outlook.
• (20 minutes): One or two informal women workers, including one leader, describes their real-life experience:
Work conditions and hardship and the specific barriers and discrimination informal women workers face. The facilitator will kindly ask them to make sure that their claims are evidence based and not based on personal beliefs.
• (20 minutes): Open discussion of the presentations of the previous speakers. Men attending the meeting will be invited to express their opinion about the situation of informal workers especially women and about gender equality.
• (30 minutes): A debate over the possibilities of formalizing at least partly the formal sector and the informal jobs through a new social contract. The new social contract will involve a plan to be implemented gradually over a reasonable horizon (10 years) according to which local and central governments, with the help of grassroot NGOs, make a commitment to provide important missing public services, including health, social security, infrastructure, access to training and finance, etc, while informal workers accept, depending on their income, to pay taxes and a contribution to the national security system. The idea is not to push the informal workers to integrate the fiscal and social security system but simply to explore their willing-
ness to do so and to transit to a more organized and more efficient form of economic activities, and what alternatives they prefer. The facilitator or someone else designated in advance presents the idea before opening the floor to the rest of the participants.
• (30 minutes): Open discussion on how to change social norms and attitudes towards women and to promote women leadership, especially within workers organizations.
This basic question is to be tackled in two steps. First, the answer may be given directly by one or two leading women who succeeded in their professional life (business, politics, academy, art, etc.) and who are willing to share their experience and the main lessons that can be learnt from it. Second, an open discussion on the way forward: the participants are invited to point out what are, from their perspective, the main barriers and consequently the main actions to be planned to improve in a practical way the situation of informal women workers and to help them break the barriers to effective leadership in general and within their organization in particular.