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This book offers a feminist account for women’s work experiences and negotiations in the Global South. Drawing on experiences and ideas from diverse locations—industry, civil society, academia, and activism, among others—the chapters in the book share a common purpose: to unpack the notions of work, fairness, and inclusion as they relate to gendered futures of work. This chapter provides an overview of the book and makes the case for FemWork.

This essay introduces the notion of “FemWork” as an ongoing, reflexive, and collective practice around labour to recentre the marginalized with regards to social and planetary well-being. This demands a realignment of how work and workers are valued. It makes the case that the pathway to feminist labouring comes in the form of inclusive design, care-based networks, collective governance, and empathetic vision.

Superbrands, established global companies, are popular but their business practices are often controversial. Recent crises, from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine, have reignited a key question: How can such global corporations maintain complex supply chains in more ethical and sustainable ways? We discuss these recent developments and ask if superbrands may simply be “too big to be fair” and whether smaller and locally oriented companies could provide a better alternative. Consulting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) experts and reports, we conclude that superbrands from industries like fast fashion face large structural changes to become more sustainable. This often leads to a gap between the vision for higher ethical standards and the actual implementation. Significant reimagination is required to make superbrands fairer and more sustainable, an endeavour we regard as inevitable to create a future of work that is just.

The future of work is at the centre of debates related to the emerging digital society. Concerns range from the inclusion, equity, and dignity of those at the far end of the value chain, who participate on and off platforms, often in the shadows, invisible to policymakers, designers, and consumers. Precarity and informality characterize this largely female workforce, across sectors ranging from artisanal work to salon services to ride hailing and construction. A feminist reimagining of the futures of work—what we term as “FemWork” —is the need of the day and should manifest in multiple and various forms, placing the worker at the core and drawing on her experiences, aspirations, and realities. This volume offers grounded insights from academic, activist, legal, development and design perspectives that can help us think through these inclusive futures and possibly create digital, social, and governance infrastructures of work that are fairer and more meaningful.