March
25, 2013 - TJ Boisseau - Stop Corporate Abuse
Ida Tarbell - Investigative Woman Journalist
What does celebrating Women’s History have to do with challenging corporate abuse? Plenty!
Ida Tarbell brings
down Standard Oil
The first exposer of corporate abuse was a woman named Ida Tarbell. Tarbell was not only among the first female i!vestigative reporters, but she also helped invent the very field of investigative reporting with her stunning exposé of Standard Oil’s illegal rise to monopoly.
Between 1902 and 1904, Tarbell held the nation in rapt attention with her painstaking and meticulously researched magazine articles. She exposed the illegalities of monopoly capitalism and offered a clear analysis of the stranglehold big corporations had on the U.S. economy.
Ida Tarbell unraveled for the public the most complicated economic issues of the day. And like any good journalist, she explained why people should care and pointed to what they could do about it. She can be credited with helping to influence the breaking up of Standard Oil, prompted by the 1911 Supreme Court decision that addressed corporate monopolies.
Ida Tarbell made a difference in her world. For that, we celebrate her this month and every month.
In the footsteps of
Ida Tarbell
The fight against corporate abuse did not end with Ida Tarbell’s exposé of Standard Oil. Corporate Accountability International continues the tradition she began by challenging the abuses, undue influences and stranglehold that corporations continue to have on our economy and our lives—especially women’s lives.
The organization is a part of a long and storied history of women standing up to corporate abuse. Its first campaign drew power and support from women determined to stop Nestlé’s deadly marketing of infant formula to women in the Global South. The resulting massive Nestlé boycott became the first successful international boycott of a global corporation.
From the start Corporate Accountability International has provided a way for women to take action and create change on issues that affect them most immediately: our water, our food and our health.
Water is a women’s
issue
Today women are disproportionally affected by the global water crisis. One in nine people lack access to clean, safe drinking water—and corporations are exploiting the crisis to drive public water into private hands. This invariably leads to skyrocketing rates, massive layoffs, and poor water service and quality.
For women around the world who are primarily responsible for securing their family’s water supplies, the impacts are devastating.
That’s why Corporate Accountability International supports women taking on the corporations and taking back their water access. Water activist Maria Teresa Lauron, for example, challenges water profiteers who have wreaked havoc on water access for residents of her hometown of Manila. Her story is reminiscent of the work of Ida Tarbell.
Last year, Lauron was invited to speak at the World Water Forum. She was placed in the program toe-to-toe with the Gérard Payen, President of Aquafed, the private water trade association. She spoke against water privatization in her country and around the world, as described here on Corporate Accountability International’s blog a few months ago:
“Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction,” she began, gripping her microphone with sweating palms. And as she described the desperate situation faced by millions of Manila residents since the World Bank orchestrated the private takeover of Manila’s municipal water systems, her voice grew steady and strong.
An important Corporate Accountability International ally, Lauron is challenging World-Bank-backed water corporations at the highest levels. It’s just one of the ways Corporate Accountability International’s campaigns make a difference with and for women.
Eating for life
Water is not the only basic right being threatened by corporate greed. Global corporations have also manipulated our food system to reap profit at the expense of nutrition. And with women making more than 80 percent of consumer purchase decisions and controlling 65 percent of global spending, corporations eagerly exploit women’s concerns and needs to pad their bottom line.
In particular, McDonald’s and other junk-food giants aggressively target women in their roles as the primary childcare providers and purchasers of food, especially in low-income communities of color.
Working with women and their families, Corporate Accountability International has shifted the public climate around junk-food marketing and put corporations’ marketing strategies aimed at children in particular on notice. In response, the fast food industry made a range of changes to kids’ meals and kid-focused promotions .
While the industry has taken important steps, the leader, McDonald’s, continues to target children and their mothers with marketing campaigns that promote un-nutritious food. That’s why, right now, Corporate Accountability International is working closely with moms and health professionals to bring an end to such egregious marketing.
Support the work to
change women’s lives
More than a hundred years ago, one courageous woman and her powerful pen toppled a monopoly built on nefarious business practices. Today, Corporate Accountability International carries on the work of Ida Tarbell, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of women to take action to bring a halt to some of the worst corporate abuses of our time.
Make this year’s celebration of Women’s History Month mean something more than a look to the past. Let it be a start to remaking our future. Follow in Ida Tarbell’s footsteps and support women who stand up to corporate abuses that disproportionately target women and their children.
Whether you are sustaining our work through a monthly contribution, taking action on the campaign issues, or spreading the word through social media, thank you for all you do. You make possible Corporate Accountability International’s campaigns to advance women’s human rights and equality around the world.