Men in black suits have traditionally dominated trade talks. They still do, but increasingly, women’s organisations and networks are realising the importance of engaging in trade advocacy to achieve economic and gender justice.

 

At the Hong Kong Ministerial of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) held last 13-18 December 2005, women’s groups — despite the fact that many activists from Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and others were unable to come because they were denied visa — asserted that since women are half of those adversely affected by trade deals being made by governments, women should have a say in how and if these deals are made.

Women say no to WTO

“WTO is causing us deeper hunger and poverty,” was the common call of some 150 women representing various women’s organisations who attended the opening of the Asia Pacific Women’s Village at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on December 14. “We demand WTO to get out of agriculture where most of us derive our livelihood, for WTO to get out of our lives,” chanted the women delegates who represented peasants, indigenous women, Dalits, herders and fishers.

According to the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) which coordinated the event, about 60% of food production in the Asia-Pacific region is done by women. However, the world trade on rice, wheat, sugar, corn, coffee, tea and bananas is controlled by a few transnational corporations (TNCs). APWLD, which is also running a campaign called “Don’t Globalise Hunger,” accused the WTO of acting as an apparatus of the TNCs and of consistently pushing the corporate agenda at the expense of the already marginalised sectors of developing countries. APWLD reported that highly subsidised agricultural products from the US and EU are institutionally dumped on developing countries because of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), causing increased poverty, hunger and deaths, particularly on women from food-producing communities.APWLD further said, “with hunger getting more massive and poverty deepening, more and more women in Asia suffer greater violence as they are pushed to take up low-paying jobs as farm workers and farmhands of rich land owners, forced to give sexual favours in exchange of rice to eat for the next meal, and even out-migrate to foreign lands just to be assured of survival.”

Asia Pacific women likewise took part in an opening march by some 10,000 WTO protesters from all around the globe. A Women’s Tribunal, which was co-coordinated by APWLD, AMIHAN and GABRIELA, was also held on the 16th. And the verdict? Women found the WTO “guilty for crimes committed against women’s livelihood and lives...for causing the bankruptcy of millions of rural women, driving them out of land and agricultural production” and for exposing “women to frightening levels of hunger and malnutrition.”

A “patches of women’s resistance towards global resistance” event was also held on the 16th, where a collection of slogans on women’s resistance to the WTO were sewn together. The collective sewing of the patches symbolised the building of a stronger unity among Asia Pacific women, especially rural women, to resist WTO and be recognised of their right to land and food and the right to be protected from all forms of violence including hunger and poverty. 

Women moved, but did the earth shake?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. The International Gender and Trade Network-Asia (IGTN–Asia) declared the ministerial’s outcomes a failure. The draft ministerial text “will ensure that the global trading system works for the development of corporate profits and shareholder earnings – not developing country economies and their people,” according to IGTN.

As the network’s Naty Bernardino said, “This is not a development round, it is a development round up! The US, EU and their allies have corralled developing countries and forced open their markets in services, industrial goods, and agriculture. Millions of women, workers, farmers, and indigenous groups will lose their livelihoods and lives.”

Constance Walyaro, East Africa Region Focal Point for Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS agrees. For her, “[n]o important outcomes have been achieved for women's rights; we are only more aware that no matter how much we as women in developing countries produce or how hard we work, trade relationships will continue to benefit the rich world the most.”

Sources:

APWLD. 13 December 2005. “Statement: Women's peaceful voices of dissent.” Hong Kong: APWLD.

Familara, Aileen. 17 December 2005. “Women put WTO on Trial.” ISIS onsite reports.

Focus Asia. 16 December 2005. “Women say no to WTO at the Asia Pacific Women’s Village.” Focus Asia <http://www.focusweb.org/india/content/view/775/29/>.

IGTN. 18 December 2005. “Women’s lives at stake: Development lost in latest draft.” Hong Kong: IGTN.

Why women should be concerned with trade
According to Mariama Williams, an international economics and gender consultant connected with the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), trade has broad implications in macro and social developments and social equity policies. She explained in an August 2005 interview by ISIS International, “Trade agreements are moving beyond borders…Once you jump over the border and go into domestic trade, then you’re impacting on local fiscal policies, on monetary policies, on market regulations.”

What this really means, Williams explains, is that trade agreements — whether through the WTO, or through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — also impact on national policies and laws on health and safety, women’s affirmative action, promotion of women entrepreneurs, and others.

Source: Nicole, Raijeli and Tesa de Vela. 2005. “Mariama Williams on feminists engaging in trade advocacy.” Isis International-Manila Women in Action No. 2.