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I. The Global Crisis
In the ten years since the UN Women's Conference
in Nairobi at the end of the Decade of Women, the world has changed
so much as to become almost unrecognizable. Among these changes
are:
- The accelerating destruction of the environment, which makes
earth's survival an open question.
- A catastrophic subsistence crisis in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, brought about by the failures of the growth model of
development and the imposition of structural adjustment policies,
aided by the corruption of local ruling elites. Uneven development,
conflicts over resources, and the threat of starvation have fanned
ethnic rivalries, aggravated domestic tensions, and led to an
unprecedented increase in the international traffic in women and
children. Although Africa is the worst hit, even parts of Eastern
Europe are now feeling a subsistence crisis, due to dislocations
caused by war and their rush into market capitalism.
- Vast movements of population from the countryside to the city
and the global South 2 to
the North in search of employment or fleeing war and famine. While
these migrations have accelerated the disintegration of traditional
forms of the family and fed ethnic and racial conflicts, they
have also laid a potential foundation for new, culturally diverse
societies.
- The end to the Cold War period's uneasy equilibrium between
socialist and capitalist "camps," and the triumph of
the discourse of the North in its most extreme form—the dog-eat-dog
world view of 19th century free market capitalism. In North America
and the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe, social
and trade union protections and welfare state benefits of all
kinds are being rolled back to encourage capital accumulation,
which will supposedly create jobs. The consequences are devastating
for children, the aged, and the women who must care for both in
economies that offer them few options but unemployment, prostitution,
and crime.
- The release of previously stockpiled Cold War weapons and nuclear
technology into the world, facilitating an epidemic of wars and
civil conflicts in the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia,
Africa, West Asia, South Asia, and Latin America, leaving hundreds
of thousands dead and creating vast refugee populations alienated
from their land and self-sufficient production. A parallel development,
especially in Latin America, has been the formation of paramilitary
groups and narco-mafias that conduct private wars and land grabs
against indigenous peoples, "dissidents," "subversives,"
and even street children. In response, some civil societies are
becoming increasingly militarized, with large parts of the population
buying arms as an answer to criminality, particularly where the
state is perceived as inept or itself criminal.
- The growing dominance of transnational corporations as a global
force not accountable to any state or international body, ruling
partly by economic domination and partly through a global monoculture
that marginalizes or wipes out local and individual forms of cultural
expression and autonomy.
- The rise of religious fundamentalism, regional nationalisms,
and communalism as political movements targeting women and ethnic
minorities. The increasing internationalization and collusion
of these movements raises the possibility of a worldwide reactionary
movement similar to fascism in the 1920s and 30s.
The last ten years have also seen positive developments like
the democratic revolution in South Africa, the dismantling of
military dictatorships in Latin America, the fall of the Berlin
Wall, and the growth of civil societies in Eastern Europe. Struggles
for social and economic justice, minority rights, national liberation,
and the rights of indigenous peoples have begun to be linked by
three international movements:
- A world movement for human rights, including the rights of
women, with visible impact on UN Conferences in Vienna, Cairo
and Copenhagen. Despite an early history of being used as an instrument
of Northern state policy, the international human rights movement
has in recent years shown its potential to humanize justice by
coupling demands for economic and social rights with personal
and cultural ones.
- A world movement for ecology which links the future of humanity
with that of other species and the planet itself, in which feminists
opposed to the growth model of economic development have begun
to articulate an alternative that links sustainable livelihoods,
bio- and cultural diversity, and gender rights.
- The international women's movement,
of which we are a part. Like any broad movement, this has contradictions
over policy, priorities, and vision, yet it alone has the potential
to create the conditions that will allow women to have a voice
in determining their own fate and the fate of the world.
2 This is the
term in current international usage for what was formerly called
the Third World or the "developing world."back
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