Women and globalisation

By Mythily Sivaraman

SUCCESSIVE WORLD women's conferences, beginning from Mexico in 1975, have seen a gradual widening of the understanding of gender as an inclusive concept of economic, political and socio-cultural issues impacting it in varied ways. At Mexico, one saw the gender issues placed only in an exclusive social frame. It was at the 1995 conference in Beijing that poverty emerged as an issue of some consideration in comprehending and fighting gender oppression. Feminisation of poverty found a mention in its conclusions, but its structural causes were not gone into in detail. Comments were made with some caution: ``Macro-economic policies and programmes, including structural adjustment, have not always been designed to take account of their impact on women and girl-children, especially those living in poverty.'' Talking of globalisation, the Platform For Action (PFA) adopted at the Conference noted that there were ``trends that exacerbated inequalities between men and women'', but preferred reticence: ``More analysis needs to be done of the impact of globalisation on women's economic status''.

However, as the effects of liberalisation started to become evident, disappointment set in and criticisms became vocal in conferences and the media. This was referred to as ``undoubtedly one of the great debates of the 1990s'' by the World Development Report 2000-01 of the World Bank, which also admitted that market liberalisation has come to be ``vigorously contested'' everywhere. The women's movement was not impervious to it.

The outcome document of the June 2000 Beijing+5 conference at the U.N. - called to review the implementation of the PFA - was more outspoken in its assessment: ``in a large number of developing countries changes have adversely impacted women... while globalisation has brought greater economic opportunities and autonomy to some women, many others have been marginalised owing to deepening inequalities among and within the countries.'' This, despite vigorous attempts by the developed countries to blunt the edge of such criticism. This stridency obviously reflected the ground experience of women across the globe in recent years.

Another reflection of this experience is the World March of Women-2000 (WMW), representing 6,000 organisations from five continents, which has a given a call to observe October 17 as Elimination of World Poverty and of Violence against Women Day. The texts relating to the call - each demand spelt out in great detail - and the sharply-worded indictment of the WB/IMF policies in the memorandum presented to the heads of these very institutions mince no words in accusing the market economy ideology of aggravating poverty and violence against women the world over. The guilty have been clearly identified, charges presented forcefully, remedial measures suggested and alternate models of development offered.

It is not that there is anything new in these concerns, not expressed elsewhere by others. But never before, in major mobilisations, have these been placed as concerns of the international women's movement. These were seen exclusively as economic and political issues, rarely as gender related. The WMW has now taken the Beijing assessment and agenda further to its logical conclusion. The positions taken by the WMW constitute, comparatively, the most comprehensive ideological critique made to date in the international women's movement of the forces that cause and aggravate poverty and their varied manifestations of violence. The March on October 17 takes the ``great debate'' of liberalisation to the streets, where people the worldover are articulating their feelings. The March is a forceful expression of solidarity with their anguish and their aspirations.

Comparing its own exercise with that of the Beijing PFA, the WMW says, ``The analysis proposed by the PFA makes no direct criticism of neo-liberal capitalism. However, several of the measures proposed to Governments could have the effect, if they were applied efficiently, of limiting the subordination of political and social life to market dictates. The WMW wants to go one step further in identifying neo-liberal capitalism and patriarchy as structural causes of poverty and forms of violence against all women.'' The wider context in which women's victimisation is to be seen is the highly iniquitous world economic and political order.

While not denying the potential of globalisation to lead to solidarity and cooperation among peoples and cultures, the WMW says that it is ``perverted by the will of the world's powerful to dominate''. In such a system, rights become subordinated to the dictates of the market and profit. International institutions - IMF, WB, WTO, OECD - are not merely unable to eliminate poverty; they, in fact, perpetuate it by imposing inhuman structural adjustments on populations. The structural adjustment programme (SAP) comes in for the most severe indictment for its devastating impact on women: ``while on the surface, SAP was gender neutral, in reality they were more demanding of women than of men as much as in the formal sector as in the unstructured sector. We are witnessing shifting of roles and responsibilities held by the State to the private domain and therefore to women. In Latin America, it is estimated that since the SAP in the 1980s women work one hour more a day on average of the equivalent of an extra day per week, which is enormous''. Such assessments are taken from studies by U.N. bodies themselves.

The WMW offers not merely criticisms, but solutions as well. Wiping out poverty is an economic task of gargantuan dimensions. Where will the money come from? To this, as to several others before them, WMW has many answers. One such is levying the Tobin (American economist and a Nobel Laureate) tax, a small tax of 0.1 to 0.5 per cent to be levied on speculative currency transactions. Such unhindered gambling has wrought havoc on national currencies and plunged countries into recession as happened to Mexico, Brazil and South East Asia.

Another means of raising resources is to ensure that the developed countries pay 0.7 per cent of their GNP as development assistance, as they piously committed themselves to. This ratio plummeted to 0.25 per cent in 1996. The U.N. estimates that if the current rate of decline is maintained, Overseas Development Assistance will disappear altogether in another 15 years! It is instructive to note that the U.S., which is putting the heat on the rest of the world to fall in line with globalisation, is not itself adhering to a decision taken at the global level - in fact, it leads the list of the countries paying the least as aid! Yet another way of mopping up resources for poverty elimination is to write off the debts of poor countries and ensuring that this money is diverted to fighting poverty.

Defining violence - the other theme of the March - as the ``violation or nullification of the enforcement by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms'', the March claims that this is inherent in the path of development, which is one of unbridled economic liberalism and consumerism.

On October 17, the marchers demand that financial dictates be subordinated to social values, that economics be subordinated to politics and women's individual and collective rights be respected; that the new world economic order be founded on new democratic institutions subordinated to the political power of the international community (not only the G-7), constituted with gender parity; that what is sorely needed is structural transformation, not adjustment.

It is reported that the President of the World Bank said recently: ``something is wrong when 20 per cent of the richest individuals own 80 per cent of the world's wealth''. The WMW have, for his benefit, catalogued the reasons for this and have, for good measure, advised him that it is ``urgently necessary to examine paths other than the ones already taken, that are maintaining inequality and violence against women''. The international women's movement has certainly come of age.

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