A conversation on development alternatives by women and feminists held on the first day of the World Social Forum (WSF), 28 January 2009 in Belem, Brazil was spurred by the huge need for feminists to engage with the debates over alternatives in the face of the exploding global crisis. “More than ever, we have to say what we want,” declared Fatima Melo of REBRIP (Brazilian Network for People’s Integration).

The event launched a year-long effort at articulating feminist analyses and strategies in south-south alternatives leading to the 10^th anniversary of the founding of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), explained its global coordinator, Graciela Rodriguez. The IGTN is a network of feminist gender specialists that provide technical information on gender and trade issues and together with others, act as a political catalyst to enlarge spaces for a critical feminist perspective and global action on trade and globalisation issues.

Taking on the challenge, Mariama Williams, IGTN Research Consultant, said that the important question to ask was: how can feminists and women’s movements reverse the trends unleashed by neo-liberal policies and re-launch development? She then presented what she saw were six keys to unlocking the development box, namely: (1) gender and social justice; (2) government responsibility and accountability for employment; (3) social sustainability that includes ways of ensuring social services, managing social tensions, and deepening participation and democracy; (4) economic justice; (5) ethics in economic and political governance; and (6) self-sufficiency.

For Melo, while thinking of alternatives is important, equally crucial is “to create social and political strengths that would dispute the ways and ideas opened by the crisis… such as, the debate on regulation, new constitutions, regional integration, and environmental justice… Women in the grassroots and in the Amazonia are showing us new notions of development that are rooted on nature and the commons.”

Kristin Sampson of the Center of Concern in Washington DC and coordinator of the US Gender and Trade Network explained how the financial crisis started in her country and lamented the fact that responses so far been about saving financial market actors. Reflecting on the Obama administration that had re-ignited hopes in the American people about change and renewal, she remains unsure how the crisis will be addressed in new ways other than market-based solutions.

Meanwhile, Hassania Chalbi-Drissi from Morocco and co-coordinator for IGTN-Africa emphasized the significance of resistance waged by African women against capitalism, in relation to political restructuring and larger societal transformation as they construct their lives in struggle and in constant search for alternatives.

Supporting the event and process was one of the founding organizations of the IGTN, namely, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a network from the economic south that engage in feminist research and analyses of the global development environment and which is committed to working for economic justice, gender justice and democracy. Gigi Francisco, DAWN general coordinator, spoke of a new geo-political context where big developing countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa and China have emerged as important actors in global governance.

On the one hand these countries are showing new pathways to development, including support in global arenas for women’s rights and sexual and reproductive rights. But on the other hand, these also actively engage in non-transparent and unaccountable global institutions that undermine the political strength and decision-making powers of the rest of the developing countries and thus tend to deny the others of a level playing field in global governance.

The G20 meeting on the global financial crisis that weakened the capacity of the UN member states to address the macroeconomic, systemic and financial issues in more decisive ways at the Review Conference on Financing for Development was cited as a recent case. How newly emerged big South countries will increasingly assert their leadership in the global arena for and in behalf of women’s human rights and overall social progress along alternative development policies, remains to be seen.