by Jessica Reed
To close this blog I will post about openDemocracy’s poDcast # 22, in which Solana Larsen talks to oD columnist and blogger Patricia Daniel, Ricken Patel from Avaaz.org in New York, German journalist Jan Hendrik Becker. Together they discuss the different ways world citizens have been getting involved in the G8 summit – and the alternative one as well. You can listen to the poDcast here.
As Patricia Daniel summarised in yesterday’s blog entry, only a few of the points our bloggers have made are on the G8 agenda. And if the help does come, it will be too little. Any grassroot development within the micro-economics and climate change fields are likely not to be considered. One hopeful note: the pledge to provide more funding to combat HIV/AIDS is encouraging, and even surprised Patricia.
This blog has gathered the voice of academics, journalists and activists worldwide for more than 20 days. A lot has been explained and advocated for with great enthusiasm; 40 entries, 20 bloggers and dozens of e-mails later, we hope that openDemocracy has provided a much-needed platform for debating the advancement of gender equity.
In addition there are 2 other articles published last week:
Tina Wallace G8: the aid gap
Susan Fried Women won’t wait
We welcome any comments regarding the blog: please post your thoughts here, or e-mail any feedback at jessica.reed@opendemocracy.net.
Filed under: 50:50, Africa, aid and development, economic empowerment, environment, HIV/AIDS, human rights, Nobel Women's Initiative, sexual and reproductive health rights (SHRH), women's rights
by Patricia Daniel
You can access all the summit declarations on the official website and download them as pdf documents. But I advise you not to bother. They mainly contain bland statements which commit the G8 to nothing. In general they say: “we note that this is an important issue and we agree to talk about it again at a later date.” And as far as women specifically are concerned, I have already been through the documents with my gender lens and pulled the relevant paragraphs out for you. There aren’t many and they’re all from the declaration on Africa.
So, here’s my immediate review of what came out of the G8 summit for women, based on the five key concerns we identified in the open letter. We invite our bloggers to comment in more detail.
Combat structural economic exclusion
More of the same on the global economy – in fact possibly a lot more if the emerging economies go into G8 partnership agreements. One very bland reference to women:
“The G8 emphasize the importance of the political and economic empowerment of women as a contribution to sustainable growth and responsible government. We are promoting the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan and welcome this and further initiatives supporting our African partners’ efforts to foster the economic empowerment of women such as those taken by the United Nations.”Paragraph 29, Growth and Responsibility for Africa
Reverse the marginalisation of women
This is really all I could find:
“Education is a fundamental driver for national development and economic growth, providing a skilled labour force, and promoting equity, enterprise, and prosperity. Education also promotes good health, empowers girls and women, and leads to healthier families. We are committed to working with partner governments and the private sector to expand opportunities for disadvantaged girls and boys, including beyond the classrooms, to learn 21st century skills and increase their participation in society. We reaffirm that no country seriously committed to “Education for All” will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by lack of resources.”
Paragraph 37, Growth and Responsibility for Africa
Climate change – sustainable development
A lot of hot air and no reference to women – or any new approach to grassroots development.
Health, HIV/AIDS and women’s rights
I’m surprised. There’s some detailed analysis here, a shift in discourse and a concrete pledge to provide more funding. But $60 billion over four years is to be shared between the whole African continent and Eastern European countries, so it’s not terribly generous. And we still need to see if the money materialises. Nevertheless I see this as a real success for women’s campaigning and a personal success for Bundesministerin Heidemarie Wiezcorek-Zeul who has championed these issues in Germany these past six months.
“50. Recognizing the growing feminization of the AIDS epidemic, the G8 in cooperation with partner governments support a gender-sensitive response by the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) with the goal of ensuring that greater attention and appropriate resources are allocated by the Fund to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care that addresses the needs of women and girls. Coverage of prevention of mother to child transmission programs (PMTCT) currently stands at only 11%. In the overall context of scaling up towards the goal of universal access and strengthening of health systems we will contribute substantially with other donors to work towards the goal of providing universal coverage of PMTCT programs by 2010. The cost to reach this target, as estimated by UNICEF, is US$ 1,5 billion. The G8 together with other donors will work towards meeting the needed re-sources for paediatric treatments in the context of universal access, at a cost of US$ 1,8 billion till 2010, estimated by UNICEF. We will also scale up efforts to reduce the gaps, in the area of maternal and child health care and voluntary family planning, an estimated US$ 1,5 billion.51. By achieving the MDG on education, 700,000 new HIV-infections could be pre-vented every year. Education not only improves the understanding for infectious dis-eases but also improves women’s and girls’ economic prospects and empowers them. The G8 will take concrete steps to support education programs especially for girls, to promote knowledge about sexuality and reproductive health and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. The G8 will support the nationwide inclusion of appropriate HIV/AIDS-related information and life-skills information in school curricula, in the context of nationally owned sector plans as well as prevention information with regard to malaria and other relevant health topics.
52. The G8 will emphasize the importance of programs to promote and protect human rights of women and girls as well as the prevention of sexual violence and coercion especially in the context of preventing HIV/AIDS infections. We welcome the commitment expressed by African partners aiming at promoting the rights and role of women and girls. We will also work to support additional concerted efforts to stop sexual exploitation and gender-based violence. 53. The G8 will take concrete steps to work toward improving the link between HIV/AIDS activities and sexual and reproductive health and voluntary family planning programs, to improve access to health care, including preventing mother-to-child transmission, and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by adopting a multi-sectoral approach and by fostering community involvement and participation.”
From Growth and Responsibility in Africa
Education for gender equality and women’s rights
See above. As regards our suggestion that men take responsibility for the every day challenges faced by women: I’m tempted to say that the seven male G8 leaders showed some quaint old-fashioned gallantry vis-à-vis Angela Merkel’s tough presidency role and came to unexpectedly amicable agreements in order to see her attractively perky smile when she gets her own way reflected in all the summit photographs. After all, why not? They don’t really have any intention of following through anyway.
Peace and security
We didn’t include this in our open letter, but subsequent bloggers have raised a number of issues. Absolutely no reference to women or the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in any of the relevant documents (for example, on Darfur). No, wait, I’m wrong, here it is:
“At the 8th African Partnership Forum in Berlin, we have jointly with our African partners discussed important recommendations regarding climate change, investment, peace and security as well as gender equality.”
Final paragraph, G8 Africa Partnership, Summary of G8 Africa Personal Representatives’ Joint Progress Report (Annex to Growth and Responsibility in Africa)
Conclusion
The most interesting and constructive discussions about the future took place outside the fence round Heiligendamm, at the alternative summit in Rostock, at the Nobel Women’s Initiative gathering in Galway, in women’s social movements on different continents, at the World Social Forum in Nairobi – and here in the women’s openSummit blog.
Who needs the G8 anyway to tell us how to run the world?
Filed under: 50:50
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
The alternative G8 summit ended with some inspirational speeches about the way forward. Ana Esther Ceceña from Mexico City University talked about:
The development of new communities without borders (for example, via the internet) so that we can develop a shared history – and a shared future. We shouldn’t just be talking about the struggle against the US, against the G8, against transnational corporations. It’s bigger than that. It’s about our own emancipation: what we are fighting for. What are we constructing? What new types of relationships? What new ways of living in the world?
In the words of one of Latin America’s great philosophers, Bob Marley – “only yourself can set you free.”
Filed under: 50:50
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
Vandana Shiva, winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1993, wears her sari instead of cheap blue jeans from China.
In her closing speech, she spoke about the Indian cotton farmers now committing suicide: because of GM they have no seeds left.
“Those using resources beyond their needs constitutes theft, because it takes away resources from those who have a right to them. This theft must be stopped. Consumerism has brought in economies of genocide. The first right of humanity is to produce, to construct, to create – not to consume. The G8 won’t give that to us: we have to do it for ourselves.”
by Maura Stephens, journalist and humanitarian, coauthor of “Collateral Damage: The Iraqi People”
The world’s only incarcerated Nobel Laureate, the democracy leader of Burma, sits imprisoned in her own home. She has, this time, been kept from the world since May 2003. Aung San Suu Kyi was not present at last week’s Nobel Women’s Initiative, founded in 2006 by the other six living female Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
It should be no surprise that the plight of this great woman and her country are subjects long paid lip service to by the United States and other nations, and indeed by the United Nations under Kofi Annan. But that’s all there has been, really: lip service. Perhaps new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will do better.
The UN Security Council must be the place where meaningful action on Burma is taken. But four of the G8 nations sit on the UN Security Council: France, the UK, the USA, and Russia. (Only China, of the five permanent UNSC members, is not represented on the G8.) China and Russia are unwilling to even allow Burma to be discussed in the UNSC.
But right now there’s the opportunity for the G8 to take an official stand about Burma. All the G8 nations except for Russia are willing (and in some cases, such as the United States, eager) to take action against the brutal military regime in Burma — a regime that routinely, officially, and blatantly practices torture, rape, forced labour (slavery), child conscription, the burning of entire villages, and the proscription of anyone who does not toe the political line of the military.
This is an opportune time for the other seven nations to work to convince Russia that the world must insist on full transparency by the Burmese regime and the admittance of international journalists, the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, the establishment of a multinational oversight body with full access to monitor the human rights situation, the immediate cessation of all Burmese regime-sponsored hostilities against the Burmese people, and the beginning of a political dialogue and national reconciliation process.
With Russia’s understanding that Burma’s human rights violations are totally separate from its own human rights situation, perhaps it will be persuaded that it is okay to act against the Burmese regime. And with Russia won over, China may well cave in.
So I urge the G8 nations to discuss Burma immediately, and to begin to work on Russia within this forum, where 7 versus 1 makes for better convincing than 3 versus 2 in the UN Security Council. Aung San Suu Kyi and her suffering people deserve the attention of the world, and the clock is ticking away.
Filed under: 50:50
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
There is a team of award-winning African journalists here covering the G8 summit and the alternative summit, in collaboration with the Panos Institute, on their blog AfricaVox 2007 .The aim is to see whether the G8 are really listening to African voices, as the official press service claims Germany is doing.
I spoke to Zinhle Mapumulo, a reporter with the Sowetan in South Africa, who covers health issues and has a weekly women’s page. Zinhle was inspired to go into the media by the one black woman television presenter working during apartheid, Noxolo Grootboom. After finally opting for print journalism, she has previously covered youth issues, lifestyle and women in enterprise as well as spending two years in her native province of Kwazulu Natal as bureau chief for Sowetan news. So, what’s her particular motivation in covering the G8 this year?
“Firstly I wanted the opportunity to experience the whole sandwich – the demos, the debates – and to ask all the questions we don’t get to ask back in South Africa. Then, as a woman, I feel there’s never any in-depth coverage of women: I want to know how do the G8 contributions, how do their pledges benefit me and my 2 year-old daughter – and other African women and their children – how is this process going to help us?”
Zinhle went out on the demo at the airport when Bush arrived Tuesday evening. “I wanted to see the action. We don’t get to see this kind of confrontation now in South Africa – the violence, the police. I wanted to talk to the demonstrators.” But she came away with some concerns. “They say they want attention from the world about Africa’s problems. But when I asked them, they don’t know anything about Africa. I felt it wasn’t genuine, they’re doing it for the hype, just to be a rebel.” She told one of them: “Your struggle is not about us, it’s about you. You should be feeling some kind of spiritual connection with us.”
Nevertheless she has seen some connections herself that she didn’t know about before: for example the stigma around HIV/AIDS. She attended a youth AIDS workshop where one HIV+ male German explained how he felt when he went to see the doctor for a check-up and was told to wait until all the other patients had finished. His HIV+ friend was paying privately for his own ARV treatment because he didn’t want his employer to know his status. “I was shocked that this is normal in Germany. We don’t think things like this happen in developed countries.”
She was disappointed, however, that at the press briefing for the alternative summit, not one word was mentioned about HIV/AIDS. “For us in South Africa this is the number one issue – how much are we getting for ARV treatment? (climate change is not such an urgent concern). This especially touches women – because we are suffering from HIV/AIDS more than men. And there’s still stigma about that, for example, no-one will report the fact that their little daughter has been raped, but that’s one cause of infection.”
Her final comment for the G8: “Women’s empowerment is the key to development in Africa. That’s what I’d like them to focus on. How will their pledges empower us?”
—————–
As climate change is high on the G8 agenda, AfricaVox also brings first-hand accounts from women and men of the effects of drought in Ethiopia (Desert Voices). The project is part of Panos London’s oral testimony programme and involved a number of journalists and community members.
Filed under: 50:50
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
Here’s the latest example of police security at the anti-G8 week in Rostock, Wednesday evening.
7.30pm
I’m in a taxi taking me along the harbour road to my hotel when we see the line of police vehicles. You can see clearly in the first video that there is nothing behind them but a few people sitting or strolling in the evening sunshine. I stop filming because the traffic has come to a sudden halt just by a large group of police officers and my intention is not to antagonise anyone.
“What’s going on?” asks the taxi-driver, as bemused as I am. The traffic starts moving again; it is the police vans that go on and on…
8.00pm
I’m in my hotel room (blogging of course) when a big black police helicopter starts circling low over the hotel. It continues circling for half an hour (no, I don’t think they’re after me but it is incredibly noisy).
8.30pm
Alles geht los, as we say in German. Everything starts happening. The open-air music concert begins down by the harbour. Sounds like nice music. People march up and down a bit and then go to sleep in orderly fashion under the stars. And that’s it. That’s the start of the 24 hour blockade. Using the methods of civil disobedience, a range of groups (church, youth, environment, radical left) aim to block the summit’s access roads and in so doing ‘will not allow the police to create an escalation.’
Glad I’m not a German police officer.
Filed under: 50:50, alternatives G8, G8, human rights, prostitution, women's rights
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
This is one of those depressing stories that the G8 leaders ought to be considering, especially, in this case, Germany and Russia. This is where trade liberalisation intersects with man-made environmental damage at the crossroads of woman as the ultimate commodity.
I attended a workshop organised by Terre des Femmes on the links between free trade and the so-called sex trade (I think the term sanitises the activity). I learned a few statistics: 400,000 prostitutes in Germany, 35% of them trafficked. More than one million German men go to prostitutes daily. Migrant women are more popular. For German prostitutes, the stigma means they can’t talk about their work and so can’t get support and get out of it. For migrant women, the choices are even more limited. Terre des Femmes campaigns on their behalf and also runs an awareness campaign for men (the clients).
But what have Chernobyl children got to do with the sex trade? An inspiring woman from the University of Minsk in Belarus, Dr Irina Gruschewaja, explained. The eastern part of Belarus, which borders on Russia, was contaminated 21 years ago by the Chernobyl disaster. 250,000 children were sent away to be cared for in seven different countries, including Germany, in order to provide a safe environment where they could grow up until the area at home was considered clear.
That benevolence has been turned around. From the end of the 1990s, a lot of those children, now beautiful young women, are being trafficked to Germany as prostitutes. Why does it happen? There’s no work at home. Even if young women get work, they’re earning only 55% of what men earn – and that’s not a lot. Prices of basic food like bread and milk are high in a ratio to wages. In the countryside you’d be lucky to earn 100 euros, compared to 3500 euros in Germany.
Then come nice smart German men with a smile and an offer you can’t refuse.
“How should these girls be suspicious?” asks Irina. “They’ve lived in Germany as children. They were treated with affection and care. Everyone was friendly to them. They still expect the same – and this expectation is being abused.”
Coercion is defined by European law as “abuse of a position of vulnerability; abuse of authority; labour bondage; theft, isolation, deception; illegal holding of money or documents.” It doesn’t have to be use of direct force.
“We don’t want to tell our girls, don’t go to the west,” says Irina. “We know the work – and the money – is there. There’s no chance for them here, even to get work in the city. But we still haven’t developed a situation where a woman is free to make her own decisions and to seek out real prospects for herself.”
Since the Belarus government tightened up controls two years ago, young people have not been able to travel to the west, even to a conference or on holiday. But the border is open with Russia – so that’s where Belarus girls are being trafficked to now.
Irina, who has been running the Malinowka Advice Centre outside Minsk for eight years, still has a good word for some aspects of globalisation:
“If it wasn’t for globalisation we wouldn’t have the network with Terre des Femmes that raises money to help with education and awareness-raising for our girls and young women. In addition, I’ve had the chance to come to the alternative summit! And it’s great to be here with other women. I need their moral support in order to continue our work.”
The film shows the daily lives of women workers in Chinese sweatshops. Evelyn Bahr also talked about the Campaign for Clean Clothes and possible ways to act.
“Running on Empty”
The film follows the stories of three mothers with children under the age of two – in Ethiopia and the UK – and their daily struggle to feed their children. Save the Children’s research has shown that predictable cash transfers to mothers can make a significant difference in reducing chronic hunger of children. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
by Mohau Pheko
All nations have intellectual property rights essential for protecting innovation, knowledge and creativity. This is essential in the area of medicines, inventions and new technologies. In order to deliver essential services such as healthcare, education, water and other essential services, the state buys services and goods to fulfill their obligations to citizens through a government procurement system. There are key sectors of industry where a government needs to seek investment to either establish or strengthen its industrial development strategy.
If a state trades away its intellectual property rights, allowing more industrialized countries to have more rights in the ownership of a nation’s knowledge, invention and new technologies can we still call it a sovereign state? If it allows foreign corporations to compete with local small companies for tenders in supplying government with goods on an equal footing, what one should pose will happen to efforts to empower women and affirmative action programmes put in place to bridge the inequalities of the past in the economy?
The G8 through many of it’s trade agreements such as the Singapore issues and Economic Partnership Agreements is weakening the African state. If the state allows foreign investors a status equal to that of citizens in the ownership of key sector of the economy, can we still call such a nation economically viable and sovereign?
In reviewing some of the G8’s existing free trade agreement one notes that the architecture can go far beyond trade. Some of them are long on foreign policy objectives and short on substantive trade liberalisation. Kwame Nkrumah in Neo-Colonialism, the Last State of Imperialism, reminds are that the “essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trapping of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”
How sovereign is a nation that has no control or ownership over the key sectors of its economy? How sovereign is a nation that can no longer be a social provider because it has traded away the right to educate, provide healthcare, and affirm potential entrepreneurs in its economy?
The covert action, and hard-nosed attitude of the G8 countries in their trade talks Africa symbolize the neo-colonial or economic colonial era Africa as a whole is faced with. Under the old pretense that if Africa gives the G8 countries concessions in the areas of intellectual property, government procurement and investment, which is important for G8 companies doing business on the African continent, African countries in turn, will enjoy new levels of economic growth. Judging the over 2,300 bilateral free trade agreements that exist in the world today, nothing could be further from the truth.
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
The alternative summit got off to a good start with the opening podium yesterday. Held in the lovely Nikolaikirche (St Nicholas Church) it attracted even more participants than the organisers expected, so many that, at one point, there were people literally sitting in the rafters.
The rousing keynote speech was given by Jean Ziegler on the main theme of the summit: Rethinking Globalisation. He was given a standing ovation. As the teenage girls giving out leaflets at the door told me: TINA (there is no alternative) is dead.
The panel consisted of three women, which augurs well for the summit to include a gender perspective.
In their own words:
Thuli Makama, Yonge Nawe Environmental Action Group, Swaziland on development in Africa:
It’s important to remember that the resources are there in Africa but they are being taken over by other countries, for their own comfort. Women even need to compete with transnational companies in order to have access to water. There are alternatives to climate change, they’re in the Kyoto Protocol. But these aren’t accepted by the US. One nation’s needs reign supreme. Now in Africa we are being asked to give up our lands to grow products so they can make bio-fuel to solve their problems. Meanwhile we can’t put food on our own table.
Annelie Buntenbach, DGB, Germany’s Federation of Trade Unions emphasised the fact that:
Although we belong to a rich country, one of the global players, we still have problems, there are also children in need in Germany. Labour conditions are getting worse, there is little job security – and women in particular are vulnerable in the ever-growing informal sector which so far has been ignored by government. Ordinary people are caught – and connected – in the chain of the international economy. We need to develop solidarity between workers through trade unions and with other organsiations.
Madjiguene Cisse, Sans Papiers, Senegal spoke about the link between development and migration.
Our own governments are part of the problem. We have the impression that they’re not there for us. Senegal has treaties with Spain and France, which mean that migrants are sent back home. Meanwhile we have EU frontier police in West Africa. Women’s organisations are now really beginning to mobilise, to establish their own rights in the market. We used the World Social Forum (WSF) this year as an opportunity to get together, to build solidarity and strength – and for the first time to exchange ideas on how can Africa develop.
The alternative summit has followed the format of the WSF – with a list of key themes to be explored through panels and workshops and a final podium where outcomes will be presented. Peter Wahl of WEED described it as an opportunity to use “intellectual power”. Let’s see how it goes. Although the organisers have invited participants from 40 countries worldwide, the majority of people here are German or European, so I’m not quite sure if it’s the way to move the whole world forward.
Diana Fong’s report on Deutsche Welle has a World Bank spokesperson claiming ‘the issue is how we can achieve better globalisation’ but it seems to be more of the same…
Filed under: 50:50
by Patricia Daniel at the G8
All is calm at the moment in Rostock, the town is lovely and the townspeople, despite everything, are friendly. They tell me the violence, though inexcusable, was localised. It has given the police the excuse to search people at the station – and police vehicles are in clear presence around the town, at every junction; they even blockaded Monday’s demonstration on migration and refugees. Bush arrived safely last night, I’m not sure if he even saw the 1000 protesters as they were kept so far away, but both police and protesters made an effort to keep the peace.
So the recycled photos of violence in Berlin tabloids – which were calling Rostock “a war zone like Lebanon” – were, as I suspected, a little deceptive. But violence certainly did occur. I spoke to a woman selling copies of Marx 21. “We still don’t know where those young men with shopping trolleys of stones even came from. You can’t help thinking they might be agents provocateurs. In any case, the press got the pictures they were looking for – and the government used the pictures to criminalise the ant-G8 movement, and to deflect attention away from the content of what we have to say.”
by Anasuya Sengupta
My day (and sometimes night) job is working with police officers in India on issues of violence against women and children; I coordinate a UNICEF partnership with the Karnataka State Police. One of the most critical aspects of this work is, as Anindita so succinctly described elsewhere on this blog, analysing the impact of our socially entrenched gender-based norms. The lack of value for our girl children – and if they’re lucky, for the women they grow up to be – has meant that we have lost, in our female population, the size of a small to middling European country.
But this post is not about genderocide. It is about that and more. It is about asking our governments – particularly the all powerful G8 – that in this context of ‘terrorism’, of an almost universal culture of production and consumption around ‘fear’ and ‘mistrust’, they analyse honestly and courageously their own contributions to a growing set of fundamentalisms: economic, religious, cultural, social and sexual. Women (and children) are often hit hardest by these fundamentalisms.
Identities are complex; we acknowledge that readily but seem willing to sacrifice that complexity for simplified categorisations and easy classification. More than ever, our language of ‘us’ and ‘them’ divides us over and over again, in the conversations we have, the advertisements we watch, the TV series we devour. And our politicians, our priests, our ulemas, our leaders – those who claim to represent us in all our complexity – speak the language of divisions, of fissures, best of all.
A young Muslim friend of mine lives in Gujarat, India. She explores, every day, what it means to be a woman, a Muslim, a young person, an artist, in the maelstrom of fundamentalism that is the Gujarat of today. She struggles with what it means to be a citizen: either of this country or of the globalised world. What does citizenship mean if you live constantly in the shadow of fear? Not just the fear of physical abuse, but worse still, the violence attached to labels? For her, wearing the hijaab is both an act of courage and a unintended performance: she is just never quite sure of her audience or its response.
There is complexity in hate-mongering too. In India, as possibly elsewhere, it seems as though the language of ‘empowerment’ for women has been claimed and reconstructed to mean ‘power’ rather than ‘dignity’ or ‘equality’ or ‘pluralism’. Not all our women politicians are feminist, and not all our fundamentalists are male.
These are not only issues of government. But they are issues for governments; our states are contributing, in no small measure, to these voices of fundamentalisms, of alienation. And worse still: sometimes it is they who create the vocabulary.
Anasuya Sengupta works on issues of gender justice in Karnataka, India. She blogs at Gladly Beyond Any Distance.
Picture via FlickR
by Maura Stephens, journalist and humanitarian, coauthor of “Collateral Damage: The Iraqi People”, February 2003
There are many things the G8 should be paying attention to because they matter to the 51 percent or so of us on the Earth who are female. Tops among them, I believe, are global climate change and bringing peace to the Middle East.
I’ll address the first point in this essay. If I recall correctly, the G6 (later G7 with the addition of Canada, and then G8 with the addition of Russia) was initially formed in response to the oil crisis of 1973. But it would be 2005 before this body issued a statement on global climate change, essentially saying that it agreed with the consensus of the International Panel on Climate Change.
That’s really rather a pathetic step. These 8 countries, which control 65 percent of the world’s economy, have got to do more. And do it now, not make proclamations about what they will do in the future once some other factors fall into place. And they must pressure other nations to come along — including the most resistant “developed” countries.
Global climate change is the big bear in the closet, the one looming disaster that will almost certainly bring unplanned class equity to most of the world. Those who now live in wealthy seaside dwellings may well not have homes 10 years from now, and those who live in artificially irrigated desert oases will likely be engaged in wars of a new and different sort: water wars. And those who are already poor, living in fishing villages or huge cities situated on water, will continue to pay high prices. They already have: witness the devastation in numerous countries following the Indian Ocean earthquake that triggered the Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004, and the hurricane-pummeled, poorly maintained infrastructure that flattened mostly poor areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, USA, in 2005. The beautiful islands of Iceland and Ireland (my homeland, that economically booming gem of the EU) will most likely no longer enjoy the temperate climes they have been blessed with, thanks to the changes in the warming North Atlantic currents.
Some of these changes cannot be averted by island nations. Yet many can. All countries must first take responsibility for themselves, and then recognise they have a responsibility to the other countries of their regions and the entire planet Earth.
Ireland, to use an example dear to my heart, will not only be harmed by direct environmental effects of global climate change, according to several studies. The near future brings about many possible threats to Ireland, as an EPA report points out. Yet Ireland is brazenly continuing its rate of economic expansion and has actually increased its greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent above 1990 levels, nearly twice the increase the government committed to under the Kyoto Protocol. The current head of government, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern (who with his Fianna Fail party was re-elected, with a majority in the Dail, or Parliament, in May 2007), turned down requests from environmental organisations to discuss their participation in sociopolitical partnership. The G8 and indeed the EU need to tell Ireland and other would-be scofflaw countries that this cannot be tolerated.
Coastal flooding, availability of fresh water, and food supply are all important factors in a region’s adaptive capacity and resilience, so a population’s income and technological capabilities must be taken into account when forecasting its vulnerability to ill effects of climate change. In societies where women predominate, especially women raising young children—because of war or displacement—fewer strong bodies are available to mount storm buttresses, build wells and sewers and other methods for procuring drinking water and properly channeling waste streams, and to work farms for food production.
We must step up and make real change now. All of us, in rich countries especially, must change our living styles, our consumption habits, our expectations of endless more. Ireland is just one example. Unfortunately, now the people of Ireland and other “later-developed nations,” have caught up and even surpassed the biggest offender, the United States, in gross overconsumption and waste.
To paraphrase a great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, Women must be the change we want to see in the world. And there is no time to lose.
by Jessica Reed
Speaking of peace-making processes which might be evolving at the G8, here is a link of interest: last week openDemocracy had the privilege to be present at the Nobel Women’s initiative conference in Ireland, which we documented.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative was established in 2006 by sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire.
The six women – representing North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa – have decided to bring together our extraordinary experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality.
The NWI/openDemocracy blog is a diary of the event written by four rapporteurs, NWI participants and openDemocracy’s program director Jane Gabriel.
There are different ways of approaching the fence, which has become the symbol for protesters, a source of provocation for those, unfortunately, inclined to violent action and a statement of exclusion to all of civil society. Artists without borders have come together to transcend the fence, the power it stands for – and the violence – with a range of activities from international art installations, through street theatre and cross-cultural concerts, to unexpected interactions at the fence itself. With the help of giant power puppets you can get the G8 leaders to say what you want to hear. And the world parliament of clowns founded by Antoschka aims to bring ‘a wave of wisdom and a smile’ to the proceedings. I’m hoping this kind of creativity wins out.
The stile: Francis Zeischegg, Berlin
Stitching the wound: Bankok Project
Stories under occupation:Al Kasaba theatre, Ramallah
Clowns protest at Wittstock
Guest at the fence:Powerhasi (Superbunny)
by Patricia Daniel
I have official press accreditation to go inside the fence to the G8 summit itself. But I am more interested in the alternative summit outside. As I did when I blogged the World Social Forum in Nairobi 2007, I’d like to focus on the extent to which women are involved in the process and what they are saying. I also want to gauge how well the bridge has been built between Nairobi and Heiligendamm – one of the intentions of the G8NGO Platform – in terms of civil society networking and strategising. But I have mixed feelings setting off from Berlin to Rostock, with the escalation of violence that began on Saturday and continued Monday. I’m not afraid for my own safety but those (yes, at least 99% male) protesters have cast a dark shadow over what should have a positive week for global civil society action – using aggression against the aggressors rather than, like the majority of men and women here, celebrating the collective vision that a different world is possible. I’d welcome other women’s comments on this. Readers who wish to keep up with events in detail can check out the ticker news from Indymedia which gives a rather different account of the proceedings to Germany’s official press website.
by Ancila Adrian-Paul, PhoenixConsulting UK and openDemocracy blogger
It is a pleasure to share space with you again in this Women and the G8 blog.
The G8 represents approximately 65 percent of the world’s economy. The ministerial meetings organized annually in the country of leadership for that year, discuss both global and mutual issues – with topics ranging from health and foreign affairs to justice, terrorism and climate change. Afghanistan should be of priority interest to this forum as all of the governments listed above are involved in its reconstruction in one way or another. Afghan women should be of particular interest since their oppression was cited as one of the overriding reasons why the country was bombed.
As some of you may remember, during the 1325 blog in 2005, I had just gone to Afghanistan to work for the German based non-governmental charity – medica mondiale – a group of women advocating for the human rights of women in conflict and post-conflict scenarios and focusing on sexual violence against women and the attendant psycho-social issues affecting such women. Initially, I was going to be there for 6 months but ended up spending 19 months. I finally left Afghanistan in February this year (2007). In this blog, I want to share with you some of my overriding memories of the country, to give you a flavour of life there and an indication of the situation of women.
Imagine a country with mountains that reach to the sky. I am talking about the Hindu Kush mountains. Imagine a capital city nestles between barren hills, icy and treacherous in the winter. A city that becomes green and fruitful, ripe with pollen, flowers, fruit and a multitude of dust participles in the spring and summer. Afghanistan is a country of extremes – bitterly cold during the long winter months and frighteningly hot and humid during the summer months. Imagine a feudal and tribal society that despite its poverty has a piquant and otherworldly charm and romantic allure that belies the grim reality of women’s unequal status. Afghanistan is a country of many marvels and many riches – the foremost of which are undoubtedly its women.
Women in Afghanistan face significant odds. According to the 2005 annual report of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) headed by its well-known chair Dr Sima Samar, over 90 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Poverty is chronic and is made worse by continuous drought as well as the deleterious effects of over 25 years of conflict. In this country, the feminization of poverty takes a very brutal face. Women were prevented from working during the Taliban regime and were kept inside the house – unable to attend school, seek gainful employment or at times even to take their children to the hospital. The situation has changed for some, but not for others.
While some women – especially in Kabul (the capital city), Mazar-i-Sharif (the large northern city) and in Herat (the intellectual stronghold to the West) on the border with Iran, are able to work and have a degree of unprecedented freedom, others in cities in the South such as in Kandahar and Helmand are often not so fortunate.
Undoubtedly, since the fall of the Taliban and the signing of the Bonn Agreement in 2002, Afghan women have made significant gains. Some of these include the 25 percent inclusion of women in parliament (in both the Upper and Lower houses) – a higher percentage than found in our own parliament in the United Kingdom! Afghan women are also Provincial Governors. For example, Bamyan in the central region is headed by a former woman minister – Dr Soraya Sarabi. Women are organizing their own village and community councils – which in some areas, have the burden of dealing with the high percentage of violence and brutality perpetrated against women. Unfortunately, these gains are not enough and are mitigated by the tribal, cultural and other customs that lead to many of the estimated 50 000 widowed Afghan women becoming beggars. Add to this, Afghanistan’s place among the countries in the world with the highest maternal mortality rate. In fact the remote and largely inaccessible province of Badakshan, on the border with China is reputed to be the worst affected.
My time there enabled me to visit several provinces and to interact with women at different levels of society and from both rural villages as well as within cities – including the three cities named above. The work in which I was involved, leading the political lobby and advocacy work of medica mondiale, enabled me and the Afghan team working with me to support the Ministry for Women’s Affairs and the Ministry for Public Health in many ways – including by conducting issue based research and targeted recommendations for lobby and advocacy work.
One very important research project that was conducted in 2006 was a three-month project on suicide among Afghan women which includes various forms, the most insidious of which is self-burning (self-immolation) and that occurs mainly among Afghan women and girls between the ages of 12 – 45 years. The research highlighted the fact that approximately 80 percent of these women and girls commit self-immolation due to violence and brutality of various types – including widespread forced and early marriages. The research led to a three-day regional conference bringing together participants from Afghan government and society as well as from neighbouring countries including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iraqi Kurdistan.
by Patricia Daniel
As the police crack down on alleged terrorism, Sven Giegold of Attac says: “the world is increasingly terrorised by the economy.” There’s an ever-wider range of organisations involved in the anti-G8 protests against globalisation. Representatives from forty countries worldwide have been invited to participate in the alternative G8 summit which takes place 5th to 7th June in Rostock (I’ll be there to cover it). Flor Martinez coordinates a rural development project in the north of Nicaragua – a region where one telephone serves 21,000 inhabitants. Due to ‘free’ trade agreements with the US, Central American countries are forced to increase agricultural production for the north American market rather than using their land to grow basic food such as rice and maize for local consumption.
In an interview to the press this weekend she says:
It’s not acceptable that a minority should decide the fate of the rest of us. They have the economic power, but we have the social power. The only problem is that we haven’t yet learnt how to use it.
by Patricia Daniel
The first rally of the week-long anti-G8 protests, which began today in Rostock, started off in a light-hearted atmosphere, with balloons, giant puppets, banners and drummers.
Unfortunately it was by marred by violence when a small minority of protesters attacked police vehicles, setting one on fire. The police retaliated with the use of water cannons and physical violence – a ratio of at least six police officers to one protester, as shown widely on German television. It’s a bad start to the week, undermining the work put in by the organisers and the intentions of the vast majority of protesters who are here to demonstrate peacefully.
I’m afraid the violence was predictable, a self-fulfilling prophesy, largely driven by the confrontational behaviour of the police, raids on alleged ‘ terrorists’ and their massive presence around Heiligendamm. Not to mention their increased presence in all major cities where demonstrations have taken place over the past month, leading up to the G8 – and where police, overdressed for the occasion in brand new riot gear, have outnumbered the protesters. The police have also introduced a ‘demonstration-free’ zone of I kilometre around the security fence surrounding the G8 summit venue of Heiligendamm. In addition to that, the government is moving to pass legislation to ban demonstrations altogether – which is due to be decided this coming week.
So in taking away people’s freedom to demonstrate, I can’t help feeling that the police and the government have been responsible for provoking the violence. All I’ve seen is an unnecessary show of macho power. As Bettina Vestring writes in today’s Berliner Zeiting:
“The G8 stand for everything bad in the world. They are powerful, they are arrogant and the walls behind which they come together get higher every year.”
It’s clear there’s no physical threat from most of the protesters. What was the German government afraid of? People asking questions, taking shared responsibility for the future of the world, acting creatively, having fun?
by Patricia Daniel
We know that women tend to be too busy multi-tasking to write at length. But we welcome your comments on the open letter. Did we get it right? What did we leave out? What else is there to say? The blog remains open for another week, until the end of the G8 summit on 8th June. I’ll be blogging from Germany on how things unfold. There is still time to add your voice…
Filed under: 50:50
by Jessica Reed
openDemocracy is publishing an open letter gathering the thoughts and advice that our women bloggers have passed our way during those past two weeks. They have given us their time and expertise on what should be tackled with much more efficiency by our world leaders to finally reach gender equality. This letter, drafted by Patricia Daniel, will be sent to the media, G8 leaders and ambassadors. We urge you to pass this letter along as well, as widely as possible, so the voices of women across the world can be heard.
Open letter to G8: gender at the top of the agenda
by Patricia Daniel
For the first time, gender equality has been on the G8′s agenda this year, under Germany’s presidency. Women’s rights and women’s role in development have been championed by Bundesministerin Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in collaboration with civil society and in official discussion forums prior to the G8 summit of 6-8 June 2007.
At local, national and international levels, in gatherings and via the internet, women have been coming together to develop one collective voice for greater impact and to create democratic spaces through which their voices can be heard. So openDemocracy invited some of those women to blog in our Women’s openSummit, to discuss matters of concern for women worldwide, and to challenge the G8 leaders to consider a women’s perspective. As the summit itself approaches, this open letter puts their key points to the G8.
1. Tackle structural economic exclusion
Comprising 70% of the world’s poor, women continue to suffer marginalisation and discrimination within the current free market model. Globalisation increases inequalities not only in purely economic terms but also in the social, political and private spheres. The World Bank has put micro-credit on the agenda, as the answer to women’s economic empowerment, but the solution is not so simple. The reality of women’s lives is the intersection between lack of education, poor health, lack of choice, exclusion from decision-making, lack of citizenship, the effects of civil conflict, and enforced migration – all of which contribute to their economic and political exclusion.
2. Fight climate change – support sustainable development
Climate change poses a fundamental threat to the world economy. Its greatest impact is on the poorest and most vulnerable, exacerbating inequalities, increasing women’s workload and placing even more demands on their role as societies’ shock absorbers. As the incidence of natural disasters rises, development money is diverted into emergency relief and humanitarian aid. Conflict is triggered and exacerbated by the increasing scarcity of resources like oil and water (Iraq, Darfur). In the face of such major challenges, we need a holistic approach to development, from the grassroots upwards, which involves self-management by communities themselves. One productive area of focus is renewable sources of energy – locally produced, owned and managed – good for reducing women’s workload and enhancing their involvement in decision-making.
3. Reverse women’s marginalisation
Women are one of the world’s most precious resources, at the heart of family and community resilience. But often they are not valued. Women urge the leaders of the G8 to acknowledge the fact that gender equality is critical to development and that women’s continuing marginalisation must be reversed. The G8 have the power to support equitable economic development in Africa. Evidence from women suggests that including emerging economies such as India and China in three-way partnerships with Africa is not a model leaders should adopt – as economic reforms in those countries have further marginalized women workers in addition to worsening their labour conditions. They demand governance bodies’ commitment to equitable budget disbursement and proper accountability to ensure that international goals set for the improvement of the status of women are achieved. This requires a different approach to development, a different view of the world. Women’s empowerment depends on a web of strategies and support mechanisms, and on collective action. Real democratisation needs to obtain to policy making at all levels, including international trade agreements, so that women’s voices are taken into account.
4. Combat gender-based violence
The devaluing of women reaches an extreme in India, where female foeticide brings the sex ratio to 927 girls to 1000 boys. An estimated 1 billion female human beings worldwide are victims of violence. Gender-based abuse, according to the UN definition, includes rape, female genital mutilation, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, and sexual harassment at work. Immigrant women living within G8 countries can be particularly vulnerable – isolated, not speaking the language and unaware of their rights. Laws in G8 countries against female genital mutilation need to be mirrored by ratification and implementation of the same laws in African countries. Gender-based violence is a form of discrimination and a gross human rights violation, which undermines women’s struggle for economic and social empowerment, and is also exacerbated by conflict. Violence and the denial of rights are key factors in the spread of HIV/Aids: without recognising this, G8-led strategies to combat the pandemic, especially in Africa, will continue to be unsuccessful. The fight against gender-based discrimination and violence must also take in sexual orientation. Homosexuals continue to be subject to violence and intimidation, often forcing them to lead lives of fear and secrecy. In Zimbabwe (unbelievably just selected to chair the United Nations commission on sustainable development) Mugabe has said that homosexuals have no rights at all.
5. Educate populations about women’s and gender rights
Serious investment needs to be made in education about women’s and gender rights, both for women and men. An increase in women’s status enhances community well-being, and can give women an equal role in tackling commonly held problems. Men’s groups in different continents have taken responsibility themselves for raising awareness about violence against women and the everyday challenges faced by women – why not the G8 leaders (or at least seven of them)?
Call to action
Women have waited long enough, and the world itself is running out of time. On behalf of our openSummit participants, we urge the G8 to take up this challenge. The 2007 summit in Heiligendamm provides an opportunity to make a real commitment to addressing gender inequality: in other words, to make a real difference to our shared future.
Filed under: 50:50, abortion, feminism, genocide, sexual and reproductive health rights (SHRH), sexual education
by Aurelie Placais – journalism student in China
Being a foreign student in China where 70% of the international students are South Korean, I have learnt some very interesting details about South Korea ; especially concerning sexual and reproductive rights in this developed country.
The first questions I asked were really simple to me, but the answers I got were quite surprising. Amongst the topics that come on the table, the conception of the wedding came first.
For the majority of the older generation, the arranged marriage was the norm. No matter if the married couple loved each other, they had to come from the same social background and it was usually chosen when they were only children. “My husband’s mother got married at 18 years old, she didn’t choose her husband and didn’t know if they would like each other; they never did and she has suffered a lot”; told me Jin Ya, a married woman in her 30’s with two children.
For the new generation things have changed, but not incredibly so: tradition is still a very heavy burden where marriage is controlled by the parents. If they don’t agree with their children’s choice, the wedding won’t happen. They also consider that there should be no sexual relation before marriage, let alone unmarried couple living together or having children. When I pop up the question, Han sounded so astonished: “of course your parents won’t agree if you live together before getting married! Maybe some people do so now, but it is a secret, they wouldn’t tell anyone.” She is 22 and has been with her boyfriend for two years now. He came to China with her and they want to get married but even thousand miles away from their parents, they don’t dare living together.
When it comes to sexual relations, things are a bit different. Although their parents would not tolerate it, most young students already had experienced it. Most of them already had several boyfriends and had sex with some of them. According to Han this evolution was made possible by the television that broadcasts series showing examples of young unmarried couple having sex: “it is very easy to know that you can do it and how to do it”.
I then asked for the contraception they usually use and this is where I was surprised: condoms are not easy to ask for in the pharmacy, birth control pills are “dangerous for the health” and they don’t trust them and last but not least they did not know if abortion was legal or not. Of course they cannot ask this kind of questions to their parents: “it’s very difficult to talk about this problem, we can only talk with our closest friends, and the information is so hard to get” told me Kim and Yu. Even at school, they don’t have any any available information.
Officially, abortion is legally permitted but only up to the eighth week of gestation, and only in cases of transmitted or genetically diseases, incest, rape or when the health of the mother is at great risk. However, abortion is routinely used as a form of contraception. Between 1.5 and 2 million abortions are performed annually; it is the second highest number of abortions in the world. That may explains why the women I asked didn’t know if it was legal or not. Legislation is disconnected from reality.
It is true that the other means of contraception are not as well spread as they should be, and some efforts to teach women about safe sex, condoms, pills and other birth control methods have to be made – especially since information on sexually transmitted diseases is lacking.
But more importantly, eighty percent of abortions are done for gender-selection purposes – to abort female fetuses:
Many women in South Korea are torn between demands of age-old social tradition that obligates them to bear sons and growing appreciation of females in Korean Society; approximately one of every 12 fetuses is aborted each year because of its sex (NY Times, reg. req).
South Korea indeed shares the same catastrophe as India and China: according to their tradition, women are better off giving birth to boys, and abortion is a very discrete way to get rid of unwanted female foetus. Currently being the opposite of what it is supposed to be, abortion is not a way to emancipate women and to give them the choice to decide by themselves wether or not they want to give birth; it is a way to perpetuate masculine domination through the control of the child’s sex.
by Liliana Pagu, president of the Women’s Association of Romania, and the National coordinator of the Network of organisations by/for women in Romania.
I am the promoter of the Democratic Movement of the Romanian Women, and organized the Women’s Democratic Front (temporary post-revolutionary organization) in December 28th, 1989. Through a TV broadcast message, I mobilized women in the entire country to change the old communist forms of women organizations and to unite our efforts to a new, historical stage in Romania’s history.
This year celebrates 17 years of involvement in the civil society’s life and of struggle to achieve a proper status for women in Romania. The first democratic organisation for women was founded in the days of the Romanian Revolution in December 1989, as a result of the need to organize, represent and protect the rights of women in Romania.
The Women’s Association in Romania purpose is to group all women in Romania together, regardless of their residence, age, nationality, religion, political conviction, profession, putting forward the awareness-raising of women when it comes to:
- their responsibilities when participating in the economic, socio-political and cultural activities
- specific problems influenced by Romanian society
- specific rights which women can benefit from
In Romania women represent 51% of the entire population of the country. But, even after twelve years of democracy, they still are a “minority majority” waiting for its proper place in society. Since gender equality is a basic criterion for the adherence of Romania to the European Union, the women’s movement can play an active role in this process.
The transition period in Romania, as well as in the other former socialist countries, has generated multiple problems for women:
- low purchasing power means
- high rate of unemployment and poverty
- deepening of the social inequality
- increased involvement of women in pornography, traffic and prostitution
The costs of the prolonged transition are growing permanently and have a negative impact on social and economic development. All the consequences of a chaotic transition affect the equality of opportunities of all citizens to take part at the economic life.
Women in Europe, especially in East Central European countries, are still poorly represented in politics and in the economical decision making process, and still earn less money than men for the same job. Parity participation in decision making depends on the equal representation of women and men in decision-making bodies at all levels in political, economic, social and cultural life and requires, in particular, their equal representation in positions of responsibility and positions where decisions are made – in Romania it is a nice dream!
What can women do to change this situation?
Women can act to hold their governments accountable. Until governments don’t understand that women want social changes to happen not only for their benefit, but also in the benefit of their families and children, all well-meaning declarations are worth little more than the paper they are printed on.
We, women, have to be aware of the power that we represent.
We have to organize ourselves because we are able to guarantee the unity and integrity of the society in the crisis periods or during catastrophes. Women in Romania want to intensify the co-operation between the government and non-governmental sector in our country, in the region and with the international organizations, in order to develop recommendations for systematic policy in this area, so that European integration will succeed.
In 17 years of existence, we have developed national and international programs and projects; held training courses and activities; organized advocacy seminars and campaigns in the areas of: civic education, gender equality, health, promotion of tolerance and non-violation, elimination of poverty and discrimination and adult education and development of international partnerships.
In general, the projects of our association deal with different themes, all which lead to the consolidation of women’s role, especially with regard to their rights to be involved in the community and to be implicated in the process of decision-making in all aspects of life: civil, political, economical, social and cultural.
We are fighting to influence the authorities, mass-media and the public opinion in regard to women’s rights and gender equality in order to eliminate poverty and all other forms of discrimination and violence towards women. Societies that wish to advance to a higher level of stability have to assure women the feeling of integrity and dignity within their own countries.
What we would like politicians to do and work on to help gender equality? They have to put in practice the concept of gender equality and to respect our contribution to the development of the Romanian society.
Filed under: 50:50
by Dr. Daisy Naomono, UWONET (Uganda)
Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) is an advocacy and lobbying Network of national women’s NGO’s and individuals, operating in coalition with other NGOs, networks, institutions, and individuals in Uganda. The network was galvanised into formation by activities at National and International level.
At national level, Uganda was undertaking a constitution making process and women groups mobilised women to submit memoranda to the Constitutional Commission. It was deemed necessary to have large representation of women in the Constituent Assembly which was going to discuss the Constitution to ensure the capturing of women’s needs and aspirations. Concurrently, many women’s organisations were providing very key services to women such as credit, bursaries for girl children, legal aid, legal education, Aids counseling, etc. Several women NGOs were individually challenging prevailing structures and scrutinizing laws and policies for gender responsiveness. In all this activity, one crucial factor lacked - the need to bring together individual organizational voices into one collective voice for greater impact.
Internationally, women from all continents and countries were gearing up for the 1995 World Conference. The women of Uganda came together to deliberate and research the issues and country’s progress on women in fields of economics and politics. The need for a collective voice before, during and after Beijing was stressed. UWONET was thus created to provide women a democratic space through which their voice would be heard and through which policies at different levels would take into consideration their needs and aspirations.
We have grown from an 8 member organization with one person to 8 full time staff with 17 members. The organisation that was meant to promote networking and information exchange among its members, donors, government and other stakeholders has undergone metamorphosis to cater for the existing gap in policy advocacy. UWONET concretised on building the lobbying and advocacy capacity of its members, thus becoming the major champion for women rights in Uganda. Together with its member organisations, we have realised commendable success in shaping the attitudes of people at grassroots, national, regional and international levels. Some notable successes have included; increased numbers of women in decision making positions, inclusion of women’s concerns in the economic discussions which has translated into increased budgetary allocations to gender concerns.
We demand for commitment from the bodies of governance to actual budget disbursements and accountability to ensure that set goals in the improvement of women’s status is achieved.
Filed under: 50:50, Africa, aid and development, Angela Merkel, economic empowerment, G8
by Patricia Daniel
Last week there was a historic photo opportunity at the opening of the Africa Partnership Forum in Berlin, when Germany’s first woman chancellor Angela Merkel shook hands with Africa’s only female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. There’s a long way to go before we see 50% women in governments around the world. And there’s also a big question over whether economic decisions at the G8 summit will actually benefit Africa (and women) rather than the G8. So the photograph may be all we get. But in my image search I came across Ellen having a chat with George W Bush, possibly when last in the US lobbying him for debt cancellation. And several of her on the day she was inaugurated President of Liberia, which, of all of them, has been the best opportunity for change so far.
by Patricia Daniel
As we did for our coverage of the United Nations Commission for the Status of Women we googled to see who else was talking to – or about – the G8 from a women’s perspective this year.
In fact what we picked up were a number of links to initiatives that happened around the Gleneagles (Scotland) G8 summit in 2005. These included wimmin vs G8 and Action Aid’s travelling exhibition – portraits and statements from 8 women worldwide to the G8 – which was carried in the protests in Scotland. The international human rights organisation MADRE held a meeting with Maasai women in Kenya about what they demanded from G8 while worldpulse magazine covered women’s experiences of the anti-G8 Gleneagles events.
We found much less on the 2006 summit in St Petersburg, notably AWID’s coverage of global economic justice and women – and a BBC report on flametree about the ‘poor G8 summit’ held in northern Mali at the same time.
This year so far there are a number of calls from different organisations to women to raise their voice on specific issues in relation to the G8, some of which we have highlighted in our blog. For example, genanet’s call on climate change and the declaration ‘women won’t wait’ from the international community of women living with HIV/Aids (ICW) who also made 8 requests back in 2005.
The US-based health and equality organisation CHANGE have recently been successful in lobbying the World Bank on women’s sexual and reproductive rights – proving that online campaigning does work.
Also of interest are the German site WDEV (World Economy and Development) blogging G8 (it’s in English) and a post on the World Bank private sector blog about women on the G8 agenda.
So, please continue to send us your own links and updates along with your comments and blog entries.
by Mona Bricke - G8 NGO Platform Coordinator - who works with the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development and is member of Genanet (Gender, Environment, Sustainability)
Everybody is talking about Climate Change. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is no exception with her decision to make it the number one priority at this year’s G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Since the Stern Report has made it clear that there is a slim margin of only a few years to address a host of pressing issues such as global warming and the ensuing increasingly catastrophic weather conditions, melting of the polar caps and rising sea levels, even tabloids such as the German „Bildzeitung“, not formerly known to be the avant guard of progressive thinking, are painting alarming pictures of a world-wide climate catastrophe in their headlines.
Heads of state and of business have suddenly awoken to a threat that has been building up for decades. It is not as if climate change were a new problem: the scientific community has been making dire predictions about climate change for a long time, with only a few environmentalists heeding them. What seems to have awoken the powers that be is the threat climate change poses to the world economy. Suddenly, insurance companies are siding with environmentalists and UN-commissions in a bid to limit the global increase in temperature to two degrees Celsius through binding emmissions reductions on the part of industrialised countries.
This can, of course, be seen as a good thing. One might argue that only if the outcry about climate change reaches the highest national and international levels, will true changes happen. But as a feminist I am keeping a wary eye on these new-formed coalitions. Are they truly going to address what is needed: a crucial turning around of the political agenda instead of the adjustments we are witnessing at the moment, such as emmissions reductions and efforts towards „adaptation to climate change“, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a sop offered to developing countries, as they and their poorest inhabitants (still overwhelmingly women and children), are the ones who will bear the brunt of climate change. I don’t want to be misunderstood here: adaptation is important, in order to keep millions of people from dying in floods and droughts during the difficult decades we are facing. But it is not enough by far!
We need to start thinking outside the box, if we really want to change the world in a way that will make it livable for all, not only for those who can buy themselves protection from the consequences of climate change. If we muddle on like we have been doing, adjusting one thing here, tweaking another there, there will be no systemic change towards a sustainable lifestyle for all. And here is where I see a feminist agenda as crucial: feminists throughout the centuries and especially since the eighties of the 20th century have fought for a sustainable lifestyle and for an economic and political system based on solidarity instead of what it is based on at the moment: the neoliberal dogma of economic growth and privatisation at whatever costs to humanity and future generations.
The political and economic system we are living in and working with now is blind: blind to injustice, blind to the welfare of the underprivileged and, most esentially, there is no place in it for taking the future into account – it cannot, because putting economic gain before all other considerations is innate in the system. The whole world, even up to the air we are breathing (emmission certificates) and the information we are sharing (intellectual property rights) is being turned into commodities. Some, like the German Ministry for the Environment, present this as a step forward, because only what has a price can be protected within a market economy (or capitalism, to use the oldfashioned term).
Why do we accept this? Why is there so little talk of a true revolution, an energy revolution and a social revolution in the best sense – a turning of the tide, another world? Because we have been suckered into believing that there is no alternative to the neoliberal dogma of the supremacy of market forces. Most nongovernmental organisations no longer dare to think outside the box. Many think that, as Communism and Socialism are dead, there is no use in thinking about alternatives as we are seemingly living in the best of all possible worlds, as imperfect as it may be.
So what to do, if we decide not to accept this? Where can we go from here? We are facing a crisis of immense dimensions and we have to begin at the beginning: What social movements, radical environmentalists and feminists all over the world are trying to do is to rethink the relationship between human beings and nature and amongst each other. How do we change our consumer patterns in order to reach a just worldwide distribution of energy, power, money and goods? Raw materials and energy have always come at a high price to the producing countries and the poor in developing countries. They have payed for the extremely energy intensive lifestyle in industrialised countries with wages that were not enough to live on, ecological devastation of their countries and now, with the consequences of climate change, they are paying double.
It may be that a radical shift away from centralised sources of energy such as oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy towards sustainable and decentralised sources such as renewables (wind, solar energy, water) will lead to the paradigmatic shift I am hoping for. Incidentally, this shift would also favour women in developing countries, as energy sources such as windmills and solar panels strengthen their participation in decision making and ownership. Our world economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, so much so that wars like the one in Iraq are being fought in order to gain or maintain control of certain areas with a wealth of fossil fuels.
But even this shift away from fossil fuels may not be enough to assure the necessary structural changes. Maybe, just as I am sure that we have to decentralise energy production, we also need to decentralise our thinking: the kind of revolution I am talking about may have to be a gradual revolution, which begins at many points at once, be it a the protests against this year’s meeting of the G8 in Heiligendamm, be it with the budding women’s movements in Africa I witnessed at the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January of this year.
I want to close with the adage of the Mexican Zapatistas: „We learn while we are walking“. What we need, is the courage to make this true – to never stop believing that another, a just and equitable world is possible and that we have to go on striving for it, even though we may not yet know exactly when we are going to arrive there and what this new world is going to look like. After all, what have we got to lose? If we do nothing, we are truly doomed, so the only way out is forward.
For information on G8-activities and protests click here
There is a new article on openDemocracy this week by Roselynn Musa Advocacy Officer at the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) in Nairobi, Kenya.
As politicians, police and protestors make ready for the G8 summit in Germany, she challenges those directing the globalisation process to address how it affects African women’s lives, and entrenches inequality.
In Africa, globalisation builds on a history of slavery, colonialism and exploitation – a fact many recognize to have a continuing impact on the continent’s experiences of the global economy. But globalisation also interacts with a history of gender inequality, casting a long shadow over the present and the futures of Africa’s women. This combination harshly limits the lives and hopes of the female half of the population, while holding back a whole continent’s people.
Far from being a disembodied force, globalisation takes place through people, organizations and institutions, who together determine its direction. Equality and fundamental human rights are now enshrined in the basic instruments of today’s international community and are central to our vision of a democratic society. But the fine words of these documents stand in sharp contrast to the daily reality of millions of women.
Of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty today, 70 percent are women; the majority of the world’s refugees are women; female illiteracy is invariably higher than male illiteracy. Women and girl children are treated as commodities in cross border prostitution rackets and the pornography industry. Millions of girls are still subject to genital mutilation, while women in every country are regular victims of domestic violence…
To read the rest of this article click here
by Jessica Reed
In between posts from our women bloggers I will take the quick opportunity to blog about an aspiring project: FEMNET -the African Women’s Development and Communication Network- has built an original and impressive campaign titled “Men to Men project“. The aim is to create a core of male supporters for the long-term campaign to eliminate gender based violence (GBV) and raise awareness concerning the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
In their own words:
[Men to Men] is a strategy in which gender-sensitized men reach out to other men through organised outreach activities such as sensitization seminars, creating awareness on issues of gender equality, GBV and HIV/AIDS. This strategy also promotes inter-gender dialogues at the community level.
This strikes me as a great initiative to underline that gender based violence cannot end thanks to the efforts of women alone. Men reaching out to other men to raise awareness, and men realising the challenges faced by women on an everyday basis is one of the key to gender equality.
by Anindita Sengupta, freelance journalist and writer, India
There are plenty of murmurs but not enough people are talking about it. Something deeply horrifying is happening in India: Gender Cleansing. India is systematically wiping out her female population. This is not an exaggeration. This is not a joke. I am not being clever. According to a 2006 UNICEF report, 80% of India’s districts have recorded declining child sex ratios since 1991. Thousands of girl-children are killed before or at birth. The all-India sex ratio is 927 girls for 1,000 boys, which puts the country right at the bottom of the global charts, worse off than countries like Nigeria (965) and neighbour
Pakistan (958).
Gita Aravamudan whose book Disappearing Daughters: The Tragedy of Female Foeticide has just been published talks in her book about how our hugely skewed sex ratio is due to advanced pre-natal diagnostic techniques. But the real revelation is that educated people are more likely to kill their female fetuses, not less. According to Aravamudan, two generations of girls in India have already been murdered in the womb. This is not “family planning”. This is organized genocide, aided and abetted by sophisticated medical technology.
“The only women likely to keep their daughters are the truly independent-minded women, not just the financially independent”, she told me over coffee when we met to discuss the book. “Often women have abortion after abortion, even when they don’t want to” she said, recounting her meetings with women in different parts of the country. Mostly, this is because of pressure from the husband and in-laws. Women are scared of facing anger at home. They are scared of being thrown out of their houses. They are tired, defeated and trapped by the need to retain a modicum of peace in their domestic lives. It is tragic that in a country where God is often female, there is no place for girls in the home. Dowry is a large part of the problem, but so are issues of lineage, family name, inheritance, social attitudes towards women and the deeply ingrained belief that women are inferior.
“This is genocide. This is gender cleansing. There is no doubt about it,” said Donna Fernandez of Vimochana, an organization that works against violence against women, and a stalwart of the women’s rights movement in India. Fernandez believes that we need to begin by referring to it truthfully instead of euphemizing the problem. This does seem a necessary first step—to accept the magnitude of the problem and find the words that will adequately express the tragedy, evoke the horror and the devastation. This is as bad, or worse, than any holocaust that humankind has known. Why aren’t more people talking about it? Why aren’t world leaders declaiming it? Why isn’t there visible the shock, the fury, the sadness that usually accompanies any mass murder? Why is it important only to a handful of academics and development workers?
India needs to be taught, encouraged, cajoled, coaxed and, if necessary, compelled to value its women. It is imperative that we the Indian woman’s self esteem, her strength, her ability to feel safe, to live, to thrive is built. Every tool we have at our disposal—art, entertainment, popular television, media, religion, spirituality, law, policy and education must be marshaled to say just this: the woman is important. She is necessary. Value her.
India must be stopped from killing her women.
Anindita Sengupta is a freelance journalist and writer in Bangalore, India, and blogs at Noah’s Ark Broken.
Filed under: 50:50, aid and development, economic empowerment, globalisation, mico-credit
by Sundra Flansburg and Natalie Elwell, World Neighbors
With the award last December of a Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammed Yunis, founder of the Grameen Bank, micro-credit has received another round of accolades and promotions as an answer to widespread poverty around the world. Give poor women access to small bank loans, so the thinking goes, and they can start micro-businesses and improve their livelihoods by competing better in free markets.
Admittedly, this is an oversimplification of Yunis’s and other micro-credit advocates’ efforts. Another version of this thinking comes recently as microfinance, and is promoted by a new group of “social entrepreneurs” who tend to rephrase goals of ending poverty with ones promoting economic empowerment. While we think that there is a place for micro-credit and micro-finance in efforts to end poverty, we believe that there are some fundamental flaws in thinking of this approach as a key one in ending poverty and improving the lives of poor women.
We urge the G8 to recognize the complexity, and especially the social aspects, of poverty in addition to the dollar aspects, and support a web of strategies that combine to build skills and capacity, reduce vulnerability and benefit women and their communities in a sustainable way.
Why Micro-Credit Isn’t the Answer
Part of the problem with micro-credit rests not with the real benefits it provides to a certain segment of the population, but rather with the expectation by some that it is the answer to rural poverty. This belief shows a lack of understanding of the complex nature of poverty. Capitalizing micro-businesses is one piece of the solution, but without a wider, holistic effort, this kind of credit will mainly benefit the entrepreneurs and slightly less poor who are able to develop business plans and make them work.
Another significant issue with micro-credit is the fact that in the vast majority of cases, control of capital stays outside the community and the money itself reverts to an outside institution. Therefore, micro-credit tends to focus on individual successes and neglects the possibilities and power of collective action and work. When control rests outside the community, it is easy to lose sight of the welfare of the borrowers and focus only on better “returns on investment.”
Additionally, micro-credit models often fail to build borrowers’ capacity to do anything but develop a market analysis and basic business plan. A large number of the world’s poor women are marginalized within their communities and even their families, and lack confidence and experience in trying something new. They have responsibility not only for contributing to family income but to caring for children and the ill, collecting water and fuel wood, preparing their family’s meals, maintaining the home and any number of assorted family responsibilities. If the bigger picture of workload and marginalization is not addressed in a significant way throughout the process, women will continue to struggle with an impossible burden.
Finally, micro-credit, but especially microfinance, rest on an unexamined assumption that free markets are the answer to social problems like poverty. They leave unchallenged the idea that the poor only need a hand up at the start and will then be able to compete with large businesses in producing and selling their wares. Susan Feiner and Drucilla Barker point out that micro-credit on its own ignores the structural reasons that women are poor and neglects the social and political work needed to ensure that women business owners and workers improve their lot and enjoy basic human rights.
(more after the jump)
by Veena Hassan, Human Institutional Development Forum (HIDF) in Bangalore, India
It is rather a coincidence that I have been thinking about women and technology from past few days. Actually, the process began with filter paper for making coffee. Here in India, we were using a piece of cotton cloth specially kept for filtering coffee. Later came the percolator and the most popular metal filters. The metal filters, manual or electrical are a kind of permanent(or at least for a decade!) investment. After the use it is cleaned and kept ready for the next use.
Recently, I discovered that there are filter papers available for the same purpose. In this filtering is faster and washing is much much less. But every time I make coffee, I shall be throwing away a piece of paper without being able to contribute towards growing trees in any way.
This led me to thinking how do we arrive at technology for women? (Coffee making is not an exclusive technology for women!). I believe that how do we percieve physical action and mental activites guides our invention or for a lay person, selection of particular tecnology. The attempt here is to arrive at a balance. Balance between the body and the mind.
From times immemorial, housework has been mostly a women’s domain. A spere where most of the “reproductive” activites are carried out. First of all these reproductive activities were called “drudgery.” This definition, according to me has largely misled our approach to technology that is so-called related to women.
Reproduction as in procreation has been the essence of human existence on this earth. So are other reproductive activities. The question here is that how can an essential activity be termed as drudgery? As I have to use more and more of electrical appliances in the kitchen like mixer grinder, I am getting more and more nostalgic about how much I enjoyed grinding in the stone! Use of electrical appliances especially in the kitchen in the beginning used to be a matter of choice. With increased demand for physical space, increased importance for the activities that bring returns in financial terms, and the lifestyle resulting from it, there is no choice, it is inevitable!
As I am I writing the above lines, another thought crosses my mind. Haven’t women moved out of the kitchen long ago? Does technology for women essentially mean kitchen appliances? The anwer is ‘yes’ to the first question with a slight correction. Women who have moved out of the kitchen are very few. But most women if not all have moved out along with/despite kitchen. So how do we consider the entire topic of “women and technology” matters most.
Filed under: abortion, sexual and reproductive health rights (SHRH), sexual education, women's rights
by Miriam Pérez, Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
Note: As the recent decision by the US Senate to ban the so-called “partial birth abortion” procedure, many start to fear for the reproductive rights of women. Women’s sexual and reproductive health rights (SHRH) are too often used as a battleground for political ideologies. In reality, all governmental decisions regarding sexual health directly affect women, and especially those who cannot afford medical care. We would like to see bodies of governance worldwide making SHRC related decisions with women in mind. In this entry, Miriam Perez tells us why sexual education matters.
This Valentine’s day, instead of celebrating it with my girlfriend throwing a pity party with my single friends or even moping bitterly about not having plans, I spent it with my boss. With a run-down Best Western as our temporary home base, we spent five days with a group of 25 amazing women living on the US/Mexico border who face life with great strength, and taught me the real meaning of reproductive justice.
Our work in the Rio Grande Valley was enabled by an amazing group of promotoras (from Migrant Health Promotion) who work with immigrant women living in colonias on the border—small trailer parks with minimalist houses and little else. The women in these colonias face significant adversity: in addition to the realities of living in serious poverty, the families cannot even get the city to recognize their existence and provide the most basic of services: trash removal, sewage disposal and public transportation.
We began our time in the Valley in one of these colonias, at a weekly community meeting held on a front porch. The meeting included a visit from the head nurse of the Women’s Hospital in the area, who did glucose tests on everyone. These visits by health care workers are extremely important, since most of the women have no access to health insurance (being undocumented and impoverished) on top of their lack of access to transportation. Pregnancy is usually is the only time they do get regular care from a physician and even that care is minimal at best.
The reproductive justice training which began the next day, called Latinas Organizing for Leadership and Advocacy, was one that had been done five times before in five different cities, but we knew this one would be entirely different. We were unsure of the politics of these women—they were not the second generation openly pro-choice Latinas we were used to working with. These women were all mothers, mostly amas de casa, most likely religious and maybe anti-choice. Our training is primarily focused on reproductive health and rights, the history of abortion and contraception in the United States and Latina involvement in the fight for reproductive justice.
Despite the fact that day one ended with the worst nightmare for a pro-choice activist: a really frank and predominantly anti-choice discussion about abortion; those three days of training were probably among the most fulfilling I have had. We worried that we would alienate them by bringing up the topic, and half of us expected to show up to an empty room on day two. Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to see that everyone returned, ready for more, with a continued openness and desire for dialogue. While abortion itself continued to be a point of contention, there were many places where we did find significant common ground: particularly around contraception, sex education and gynecological cancer prevention.
We all agreed on a philosophy of women’s health centered around families making educated and informed decisions collectively. Abstinence-only was not their philosophy—they recognized the inevitability of their daughters’ sexual activity, and wanted to know how to give them the tools to be safe. The terminology of reproductive justice (which translated surprisingly well into Spanish— justicia reproductiva) seemed to make sense to them and they took to it with ease.
It was here, on the border, with these women, that after almost six months of working with reproductive justice, using the framework, speaking about it with colleagues and at trainings, that it really clicked for me. When we talk about intersectionality, we’re talking about these women’s lives—which are intensely impacted by their immigration status, by environmental concerns in their neighborhood without sewers or waste removal, by poverty and lack of education. With the well-being of women and families as our center point, we wove together these issues and it became clear that one could not be separated from another. These women understood this intrinsically, because it is the reality of their lives, and I was able to make sense of it through the short time I spent with them.
Miriam Pérez is the Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in New York City and blogs at Radical Doula.
by D. Narasimha Reddy, Centre for Handloom Information and Policy Advocacy
Note: One of the points high up on Angela Merkel’s agenda is the development of three-way economic partnerships between G8 countries, African countries and ‘emerging economies’ like Brazil, China and India. Is this a good idea? Here, Narasimha Reddy from the pioneering Centre for Handloom Information and Policy Advocacy in India describes how this unique woman-dominated industry is affected by globalisation, liberalisation and economic reforms, adverse government policies and discriminatory competition…
The handloom sector is unique in India. It has been the most popular manufacturing sector in the previous centuries, and has been the mainstay of rural industrialisation in India. Handloom sector has been catering to the clothing needs of India, and various other countries for centuries altogether. Modern textile industry has grown on this sector, through mechanization and modernization. However, the most modern industry follows the principles of weaving set by the traditional handloom weaver. Unlike any other industrial endeavour, handloom sector still continues alongside the most modern textile machinery.
There are number of factors that have contributed to such resilience. Principal among them is that the weaving is household profession, passed on through generations. In these households, women play an important role. Women weavers have been the principal stabilisation force through years of crises and problems for the handloom sector.
The handloom sector is only the manufacturing sector wherein one finds large number of women producing products which are worn by large number of women. Women producing for women is a unique feature of the handloom sector.
Despite such features, which are outwardly unique, women weavers were never given the primacy they require. Their role in production was never acknowledged beyond the confines of the home. Their work most often went unpaid. Governments never recognised formally as a target group. Even the private initiatives of NGOs, or fashion boutiques, tend to ignore their contribution and role. The most radical to rightist political mobilization structures in handloom sector are devoid of any issues and participation of women. Women participation in political mobilization is completely nil.
Women constitute a major workforce in the handloom sector. Also, most of the handloom products are meant for women. Thus, handloom sector is the unique sector, wherein 60 percent of the women produce almost 70 percent of women products. However, their working, living and wage conditions need to be improved. They need to be empowered in various ways. Almost all the government schemes, projects and programmes on handloom sector have been and continue to bypass this major workforce through various means. They do not have identity cards, which are the principal means through which government welfare measures are sought to be implemented. There is no scheme, or project, or programme which addresses their needs.
Women weavers have been subject to domestic violence and victims of violence in many places. They have also been at the receiving end of discrimination of all types. Whenever handloom sector is in crisis, the burden of carrying through the crisis is the most on women weavers, through increase in physical, psychological and social pressures. Their health condition is a major concern, as also their role in relations of production and also the future of girl children. While performing critical functions in production, their role in decision-making is rather poor.
by Sarah Jackson, EVAW campaign media advisor, UK
A grim thought struck me earlier today: one of the few things that binds women together across the world is their experience of violence. Whereas many forms of gender inequality – and such violence is about inequality, believe me – are rife in some countries, areas, and social groups and all but wiped out in others, violence against women is endemic across the world. It tramples over boundaries of culture, ethnicity, age, wealth and geography, affecting women of all ages and all backgrounds in every corner of the globe, and every walk of life.
Violence against women is commonly confused with domestic violence, but it incorporates much, much more. It includes rape and sexual violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, stalking, sexual exploitation, crimes in the name of ‘honour’, and sexual harassment. Read the UN definition of gender-based abuse.
The sheer scale of the problem is dizzying. At least one in every three women on the planet have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. That’s around 1 billion human beings. Or the population of Latin America, twice over. With odds like this, it could be you. Or your mother, your sister, your daughter, or your friend.
Former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan described violence against women as “the most atrocious manifestation of the systemic discrimination and inequality women continue to face, in law and in their everyday lives, around the world”. And this is the crucial thing I would like the participants of G8 to recognise: violence against women is discrimination. It is caused and perpetuated by the inequality between the sexes, and prevents women from participating in society as equal citizens.
End Violence Against Women is a coalition of organisations and individuals campaigning for the UK Government to take action on all forms of violence against women by developing an integrated strategy that includes measures for prevention as well as cure. The first step, for the UK and for the rest of the world, is to see violence against women for what it is: a form of sex discrimination and a gross violation of fundamental human rights.
by Jessica Reed
The launch article of our “Women talk to the G8″ was published yesterday on openDemocracy.net. In her column “Merkel’s G8: spot the difference”, Patricia Daniel sees the German chancellor at the top and asks: how do women best influcence the political agenda?
When Germany’s first woman chancellor Angela Merkel hosts the G8 summit in June, it will be the first time a woman leader has done so since Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Even an objective observer has got to find that a little bit staggering. Although Merkel has committed herself to a more collaborative style of leadership, like many women who rise to the top she’s a right-wing politician and has not chosen to champion women’s cause. In terms of political outcomes it remains to be seen whether the fact that she’s a woman will make any difference at all.
However, for the first time, gender equality has somehow slipped onto the G8 agenda. German civil society activists can claim credit, not only for including a focus on women, but also on Africa – which Merkel belatedly added to her dual G8 and EU presidency plans in October 2006.
Read the entire article here.
Filed under: Africa, aid and development, climate change, economic empowerment, environment, globalisation
by WOW! Work of Women‘s coordinator Sundra Flansburg and World Neighbours‘ associate vice president Natalie Elwell
Recently released reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) leave little doubt to rational minded people that climate change is happening, and that there is more to come. As we read reports and responses, government statements and reactions, however, the voices of the people who will most feel the effects seem to be lost.
What would we like G8 leaders to hear and support? We agree that many of the topics being debated are important ones for the world to consider and act on. But among the calls for alternative fuels, reduced consumption, carbon sequestering programs and so on, the G8 and others need to understand the urgency of supporting good, effective development work.
For the effects of climate change will hit the people who are already the poorest and most vulnerable. As many have noted, including Benito Müller here on OpenDemocracy, the effects of climate change are likely to exacerbate the world’s already vast inequities. In some cases it will be because those communities will be most impacted by climate disasters. In other cases it will be because those communities will be least able to withstand tragedy and bounce back.
Poor women in these communities will be heavily impacted in a wide range of ways. The women in rural, marginalized villages already work more hours than men, receive fewer benefits and have less decision making power. When water becomes harder to find, it is the women and children who put in the additional hours walking to find it and carry it back to the household. It is a similar situation with fuel wood. When children or spouses fall ill from malaria or other vector-born diseases that will increase in occurrence when water quality goes downhill, it is women who will care for them. It is women who will do without or with less when food is scarce.
Not only do women suffer the brunt of scarcity, they are often blamed for it. As trees and grasses available on family farms are overtaxed and degraded, women charged with providing fuel wood for cooking and fodder for animals are forced to tap into protected sources, which further erodes the land. Many of the people living precariously on these fragile lands are unable to effectively deal with the stress of their changing environment because they are caught in a vicious cycle of marginalization and dependency.
The IPCC report from Working Group II highlights the importance in coming decades of societies’ abilities to adapt to the changes anticipated, as well as those yet to be identified. It also notes the extent to which the ability to adapt is linked to sustainable development.
We – including the G8 – have a choice about where and how we invest in prevention work and responding to climate change. Increasingly, our efforts to address global warming must be internationally focused, pressuring governments and other entities to do their part even when they are reluctant. No doubt international relief work will be increasingly taxed as the anticipated droughts and flooding increase in intensity and number—imagine a Banda Aceh or Katrina every year. But the other side of the equation – development – must continue to be at the top of our agenda.
Basic work like local water sources, improved community health, women’s literacy, a diversity of income-earning possibilities and so on are what may make the difference between a community’s devastation or its being able to pull together to survive, and eventually thrive. There is no magic key or quick solution – whatever Thomas Friedman (1) and Jeffrey Sachsmay believe. Self-sufficiency must be the ultimate outcome and that means that the way development work is carried out is vital.
Over five decades of direct partnering with poor, rural communities around the world, World Neighbors knows that women will not, and cannot, become seriously involved in community development until their workload issues are addressed. And to be effective and sustainable, community development work must be done in partnership with communities and have significant levels of participation from women. So while it may be faster and “easier” for an international development agency to introduce and implement a water project in a village, the odds are that in five years it will be in disrepair. Work must be at the grassroots, build a village’s ability to define both the problems and the solutions, and require investment of something—time, money, skills, labor—from all parties. Additionally, women need to be actively engaged in defining the problem and deciding how to address it, or the “solution” is unlikely to be a real one for the entire community.
When poor women are able to have time for something besides daily survival, it is usually then that they have the possibility of building their skills and moving their families from precarious survival to stability. Attention to women’s involvement improves the sustainability of development efforts, and also more equitably spreads the benefits of development through families and communities. Skills like basic literacy and access to resources for diversifying income earning activities will provide essential adaptation skills, and ones to which both men and women should have equal access.
Sustainable development work can reduce the vulnerability of people and their communities to the harshest consequences of climate change. It is both a moral and financial imperative that the G8 understand the urgency of increased support of sustainable development work that integrates gender equity. As we feel the effects of climate change more and more, women are likely to be both the hardest hit, but also the keys to community resilience.
Sundra Flansburg currently coordinates the Work of Women (WOW!) initiative, a membership organization of World Neighbors that mobilizes support for improving the lives of poor women and their families who live in rural communities throughout the world. She previously developed and directed gender programs at Education Development Center, Inc., in areas including information technology, education and violence prevention.
Natalie Elwell is associate vice president for action learning, communication and gender at World Neighbors. In this role she provides leadership and support to field staff around the world in integrating gender into program work. She has just completed project to synthesize the successful gender work in our diverse program areas into a coherent approach for achieving gender equity and is currently preparing field guide for dissemination.
(1) Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005); Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). See also The Hijacking of the Development Debate: How Friedman and Sachs Got It Wrong by Robin Broad and John Cavanagh (World Policy Journal, summer 2006).
Picture via FlickR.
by Bev Clark, manager of Zimbabwe’s civic and human rights website kubatana.net
Without access to information women from all walks of life experience an impoverished existence fraught with a variety of serious challenges and risks. One way or another, for the last 20 years much of my energy has been spent addressing this problem.
For a long time I produced a newsletter for the gay and lesbian community in Zimbabwe. Back in the late 80s we were considered daring and provocative as well as improper for including explicit information on the subject of HIV/AIDS. The fact that an isolated and marginalized community could access information materials developed specifically for them was very important especially because we live in a country where the authoritarian government either denies the existence of homosexuality, or criminalizes it.
During the time that I edited the gay and lesbian newsletter my offices were raided by the police. About 8 of them arrived with their search warrant, swaggering in and claiming that I was housing pornographic material. This was simply because the material was homosexual in content. After rifling through every drawer and cupboard they eventually left with their “evidence” – a booklet listing worldwide gay, lesbian and bisexual support groups.
Since then, as both a gay and political activist, I’ve spent many nights making my own bonfires. Burning materials which are informative, useful and inspiring, yet which the authorities would seek to harass me for. I’m angry about this. I’m angry because gay and lesbian people shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed, or be made to hide who they are and what they read.
In an old copy of one of our newsletters there’s a piece of writing by Maya Angelou that I’d manipulated in attempt to contextualize her writing for our Zimbabwean environment:
She heard the names,
swirling ribbons in the wind of history:
dyke, queer, pig, homo, poofter, lesbo, faggot,
lezzie, bumboy.
She said,
But my description cannot fit your tongue, for
I have a certain way of being in this world,
and I shall not, I shall not be moved.
I wonder if the G8 has made any attempt to include sexual orientation in their policies? Even if they did, it would have very little effect in reducing the intolerance and hate of Robert Mugabe who has clearly stated that he believes that homosexuals don’t have any rights at all. When I think of the G8 I think of a bunch of men, self-satisfied in their suits and their power-giving statesmen-like speeches which sound really good but couldn’t be more empty.
by Jessica Reed
Welcome to openDemocracy‘s openSummit blog. This page will gather entries from a great diversity of women who want to same thing: improve womens’ and girls’ lives worldwide.
Grassroots activists, NGO representatives, teachers, practitioners and bloggers around the world will tell us about their expectations surrounding the G8 meeting which will take place this June in Germany: based on their experiences and first-hand accounts, readers of this blog will get to read about what works, and what doesn’t. They will share their struggles and victories, as well as giving us practical recommendations on policies which could be changed to truly make an impact on the lives of millions of women, from Zimbabwe to India.
This blog will run from the 15th of May to the 8th of June. We hope to publish an open letter to the G8 which will summarise what we will learn in this blog.
Let’s hope the G8 will listen.
You can read about our 50:50 initiative here. If you want to participate in this blog or suggest a link, please visit the contact page. We encourage comments from women and men alike – however please note that they will be moderated, and therefore might not appear right away.
