A conversation with Zehra Khan on the founding of Pakistan’s first trade union for home-based women workers. In 2005, Zehra Khan, then a graduate student at the University of Karachi, began a research project with a fellow student on home-based workers in Pakistan’s textile and garments industry. They discovered that most of these workers were women, who contributed significantly to the country’s economy as well as to the local and global textile and garments supply chains. Yet they were underpaid and without any legal rights because the country’s laws did not recognize them as workers. “All these women,” Khan told me, “were skilled workers, but they had no money or support so they were in a vulnerable position.” Khan would go on to form the Home-Based Women Workers’ Federation (HBWWF), where she continues to serve as general secretary.
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