Empowering Immigrant Women and Continuing to Aid Those in Need

This past March was Women's History Month and MassCOSH’s Worker Center honored it in part by holding a training for immigrant women on sexual harassment at work and how to recognize sex and gender discrimination.

The training was educational while also allowing the participants to feel empowered by one another in their fight for good jobs for all. The online event included special guest Isabel Lopez from the Brockton Workers Alliance, who detailed her fight to organize immigrant women around a case of sexual harassment and gender discrimination on the job. The training was especially important because workplace harassment and discrimination have been exacerbated by the pandemic due to work being much harder to get, empowering bad employers to treat immigrant women unjustly. The Worker Center has also found that during the pandemic immigrant women have faced elevated rates of domestic violence and high amounts of lost income due to female workers taking on the role of caretaker for sick family members. 

The training also served to help educate immigrant women on how to access and navigate digital resources, including how to use Zoom, skills that have become essential as so much of our lives have shifted online.

In addition to the training, MassCOSH partnered with Jobs with Justice and other aid groups to provide direct aid to mothers, who, due to the pandemic, are having a hard time covering necessities. This past March, the Worker Center helped give away diapers in East Boston, with very appreciative families receiving approximately 100 diapers per child.