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Merry Christmas!
’Twas the lead-up to Christmas, and all through The Big Issue, we’re celebrating the season with warmth and Big Wish Yous. Melbourne vendor Con is our cover Claus, helping to spread the joy of The Big Wish You: an annual compilation of vendors’ messages of gratitude, reflections on the year that was, and their hopes for 2025. Across an extra eight pages, it’s an edition packed with stories capturing every facet of the most wonderful time of the year – Scrooge himself couldn’t resist.
More than 53,000 Australian women experience homelessness every night without safe or secure housing. And we know the largest causes of homelessness in Australia are domestic violence and family violence, which overwhelmingly affects women and children. Eleven years ago, The Big Issue saw an urgent need to expand our social enterprises and provide safe, female-friendly employment opportunities to women.
The Women’s Workforce was established to meet this need and began by providing employment opportunities to women experiencing marginalisation and disadvantage through packing and sending subscription copies of The Big Issue magazine.
Women are employed by The Big Issue to pack magazines for distribution to subscribers every fortnight, giving them an income as well as access to training, mentoring and support. Women also complete social procurement work.
The Women’s Workforce operates in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. More than 190 women have been employed to pack more than 800,000 magazines for subscribers.
Take out a subscription for yourself, a gift or for your business!
Visit our shop to find out more.
Becoming part of the Women’s Workforce
Each woman employed by the Women’s Workforce is proudly working to positively change their lives. If you are interested in becoming part of the Women’s Workforce please click here to learn more and get in touch.
“Today I received my first Big Issue in the post! Now that I am not travelling into the city each day for work, I have missed seeing the vendors and catching up on the latest issues. It has been wonderful to spend my lunchtime sitting in the sun and absorbing the varied and interesting articles” – The Big Issue subscriber
“I feel safe, it’s a safe place and I feel accepted which is really major, because I’ve never felt that I’ve been accepted in my life. It’s really welcoming and I feel really comfortable, they’ve been an amazing support” – Women’s Workforce employee
800,000 Magazines Packed
$1.1m Earned By Employees
200 Women Employed