WUNRN

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From Birthing Justice: Women Creating

  Economic & Social Alternatives

Beverly Bell & Other Worlds

 

WOMEN'S REALITIES, CHALLENGES, HOPE, ACTIVISM & MOVEMENTS IN TODAY'S COMPLEX "GLOBALIZED" WORLD

 

Under globalization, women have been pushed to the margins of unforgiving economies. The poverty is largely feminized, which means that women bear the burden disproportionately, since the needs of the whole household are their responsibility. As scarcity increases, so do women's burdens. It is largely up to women to work extra hard to compensate for the health care and education that many low-income country governments do not cover, and due many times to pressures from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In times of conflict, women and children are the majority of refugees and displaced.

 

It is largely up to women to secure adequate food for their families amidst a global food crisis. Globalization has brought about a "race to the bottom." So that countries can be "competitive," rights to fair wages and worker safety are often not protected. Globalization has also pushed an estimated 1.75 million women into a growing international sex trade. Women are challenged and suffer in many ways in today's political economy, but Profit Rules!!

 

While women can absolutely be victimized by the global economy, they are, indeed, not strictly victims. No one stands to gain more from finding ways out of the current economic model than poor women, except their even more vulnerable children. Because of this, many women have stepped forward as advocates, activists, and visionaries. They are bringing strength, imagination, and creativity to make another world possible.

 

Women are finding ways to protect themselves in society and in politics, and to shift female power in those realms. Women are increasingly vocal and visible in movements to build alternatives and to protect historic cultures against global capitalism and the threat it brings to cultural survival. Women are increasingly demanding attention in multiple ways, to their own human rights, equality, empowerment, and social justice.

 

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