The productive economy depends upon millions of women workers, in both the formal and informal sectors. And women also bear children, care for their families and do domestic work – labour often unrewarded and unrecognised.

Women are increasingly working in global supply chains, including for large UK supermarkets, planting, picking, stitching, packing and cleaning the goods that end up on our shelves.

All too often, poverty wages and poor conditions further entrench the discrimination and inequality that these women face.

As supermarkets strive for lower prices and higher profits, they put huge pressure on their developing country suppliers to deliver more for less.

This pressure is passed on to the women workers, who bear the brunt in the form of low wages, job insecurity and poor working conditions.

It is not an accident that most of the workers in these supply chains are women. The unequal position of women in society, the fact that they are less likely to be involved in trade unions and the fact that women have fewer alternative employment options mean that women workers have less power to negotiate.