A/HRC/26/39 industries are a locus for corporate abuse and violation of human rights, and most of the victims are women. 70. Export processing zones are delineated industrial estates with special incentives set up to attract foreign business and trade. They are feminized work enclaves in which women make up the majority of workers, up to 100 per cent in some cases. Women workers face particularly harsh employment conditions. Normal labour laws are usually not applied. Whether de jure or de facto, there is a lack of union organization and, typically, women’s wages are 20–50 per cent lower than men’s. Furthermore, these zones are a health hazard for women, with overextended working hours, rights violations relating to pregnancy protection, maternity leave or childcare, and sexual harassment. 71. Sweatshop and home work sectors exploit cheap, informal labour, largely from female workers. Businesses subcontract more than 300 million home workers in developing countries, hired to work at home in textiles, electronics, packaging and processing, for a piece rate without labour rights protections. A cut of earnings is also taken by middlemen. Women make up 85–90 per cent of sweatshop workers. Employers often force them to take pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave. Thousands of women work in garment factories, with the constant threat of fatal sweatshop fires largely because of corporate costsaving decisions. 72. Extractive industries, as well as, increasingly, biofuel, agribusiness and real estate projects, are land intensive, and land dispossession has disproportionately displaced women. Women, who make up 70–80 per cent of the world’s small-scale farmers, lose their livelihood, often do not receive compensation paid to landowners, who are male, and are the last in line for formal employment in the industries. As primary carers, they are deprived of shelter and the ability to feed their families. The arrival of a transient, largely male workforce also increases prostitution, sexual violence and sexually transmitted disease. Mismanagement of extractive projects can also lead to severe violations of human rights that are manifested in unique ways for women, including murder, torture, rape and sexual violence at the hands of security forces brought in to impose order. Gender-mainstreaming corporate responsibility 73. There are some initial efforts, although sporadic and preliminary, to gendermainstream corporate responsibility. 74. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has, for instance, held States responsible for denying equal access for women to private health providers. One binational trade agreement, supported by the ILO, linked access to markets in importing countries with improved labour conditions for the largely female garment workers in the exporting country. There are examples of corporate initiatives to provide childcare, career development and training for female workers in overseas garment industries, or to prevent use of ultrasound equipment, which may be used to increase sexselective abortion. 75. Additionally, civil society and women workers have been important agents for change. They have, for example, created drop-in centres where young women garment workers learn about their labour rights, and they have organized and achieved widespread change in conditions of agricultural workers, previously similar to slavery practices. 76. Civil society representatives have joined a handful of business leaders to form the Business and Human Rights Reference Group, which has begun to elaborate how gender fits into the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 15