Challenges for Feminism in a Globalized World
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Key issues for thinking about globalization from a gender perspective

Victoria Tauli Corpuz^*

In order to think about the current process of globalization and to understand the increasing incorporation of our countries and our lives in this process marked by hegemonic parameters, I want to present two key issues that distinguish these social dynamics. First of all, we know that the main philosophy of the principal actors of globalization -whether the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the finance ministries of all the industrialized countries- is that “one size fits all”. The proposal they have is to enlarge the global market economy and that all of us should fit into this framework. I think this is one clear development that we have seen in these past five years, especially after the WTO has come into being.

The second point is the issue of conflict and peace. After September 11, the world has changed and when president George Bush says “if you are not with us then you are against us”, it is really an exhortation to follow their whole system: their economic system, their culture, their civilization, because otherwise we are against them.

These are the two issues we really have to think about, because this is what we feminists around the world want to challenge. To do so, we have to come up with really concrete proposals in order to change this situation.

First, I think it is really an imperative for us to understand the nature of these global institutions that now are ruling the world: the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. For instance, we really have to look into the agreements the WTO is pushing and we have to do it from a gender perspective and also from the perspective of the third world, or the South, or the perspective of the indigenous people. We have to look very carefully at each agreement.

Let us look, for example, into the agricultural agreements of the WTO, which allow the full trade liberalization of agricultural products. Already much research has shown that there is dumping of cheap imported highly-subsidised products from the North, and this dumping has dislocated the livelihoods of traditional people in the South, such as small farmers, and has displaced women from their traditional ways of sustenance. For instance, in the Philippines, the oranges that were cultivated by women farmers have been replaced, nowadays, by those coming from China or New Zealand, which can be even 50% cheaper than those oranges produced in the Philippines. So, how can local women compete and sell their products? This make us think that maybe these agreements are giving many more advantages to all these agricultural products coming from the North, while punishing countries from the South that try to erect some barriers to the import of these products. This situation has to be changed.

Another agreement we have to think about is the intellectual property agreement, which allows for the patenting of life forms. One of the consequences of this agreement is that now AIDS medication has become extremely expensive. For many of us, this is an issue of life or death. In South Africa, many people struggled because they were not allowed to buy the cheap AIDS medicines from India, now that the huge pharmaceutical companies have patent rights over AIDS medicines. Then, those countries that need those cheap medicines should be allowed to get them.

Unfortunately, even if there are life and death issues that are coming in everyday life, I really have not found women in this kind of movements and struggles. Personally, I think this is an indication that either we really do not understand fully well these agreements and how they are affecting women in the poorest parts of the world, or we understand them but simply we cannot articulate the gender analysis or perspective for those particular issues. We tend to ignore these issues and we tend to go back to topics we are experts on. There is no doubt that issues like domestic violence or human rights arguments are really important and we have to continue debating about them; however, we also have to look into broader and different areas, because many of them are now the ones influencing very much the day-to-day activities that women are involved with.

We are also missing our chance to look into the poverty reduction strategies implemented by the IMF and the World Bank, and to study how sensitive or dangerous they are for women. This is one of the big challenges that we are facing now. After the crisis in Asia and now in Argentina, we have seen how financial liberalization has destroyed the economies of some countries; therefore, we have to look into the financial architecture that is being proposed by the IMF and see how this is going to affect women’s lives.

The second key issue is related to conflict. We know that there are more intra-state conflicts than nation-to-nation conflicts. And we also know that, after negotiations have taken place, somehow these conflicts have ended. Nevertheless, the problem is that women are not at all involved in all these negotiations and agreements or in the analysis of these conflicts, their roots and how to address them. Two years ago, in the Philippines, we held a conference on conflict resolution, peace and third world development. We looked into the involvement of women in peace processes and we found that they are doing a lot. For instance, in northern India, women who are members of different tribes that have always been fighting, are finding ways to sort out their differences while their men are shooting at each other. These women are trying to build bridges between each other because they are thinking about the future of their community. Still, these women will not be included in conflict negotiations.

I also believe that after September 11th, the United States feels they have the legitimate right to go and bomb any country, and it seems that, according to the US perspective, our countries are potential rivers of terrorism. In the Philippines, recently the United States sent 600 US military men and gave 400 million dollars of military aid, in order to support the Philippines government in fighting against the rebel terrorists in the south. The real story is that the US government wants to open up all these areas and it is a very convenient reason for them to use the profile of support and war against terrorism to be able to open them up and to allow these operations to come in.

I want to end by saying that now, as we have seen, globalization is really the increasing monopolization of control, of wealth and power, for a few corporations in the world, and they are the ones deciding or at least influencing the strongest agreements of the World Bank and the WTO. We see that these big corporations are entering our countries more and more and they are the ones controlling everything: food, agriculture, energy and water.

It is really our role to shout against this increasing corporative hegemony and ask for accountability for more real democracy. We also should think that small corporations, small firms, and small traditional livelihood have the right to exist because, unless we do not have this pluralism in the way we produce our livelihood and consume our goods, we are really going to end up in a world which is ruled by the market. This is the last thing we want to see, because usually the market and these huge corporations homogenize our lives. The risk is to end up as consumers, with no power at all, not even with the right to choose, and with shrinking democratic spaces. These are the key challenges we have to address in globalization and this demands a tremendous amount of work from us.

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