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2000 - Sexism and Globalization, 2000 Good Reasons to March
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Today only 6 countries can boast the following: close to complete sexual equality in the area of secondary education, 30% representation of women in elected government positions, roughly 50% of non-agricultural jobs occupied by women. In nearly 100 years, only 24 women have been elected as head of State, and 10.5% of all seats in parliament in the world are held by women. Around 80% of the 27 million refugees around the planet are women. Two thirds of the 300 million children who have no access to education are girls. . Out of almost a billion people who are unable to read and write, two thirds of them are women. Over 200,000 women die every year as a result of back street abortions. Women produce 80% of the food in the poorest areas of the world; in some places, this figure is as high as 95%. Officially, 110 million girls worldwide between the ages of 5 and 14 work, and this does not include domestic tasks.
Violence committed specifically against the female sex is tolerated:
the guilty are not punished; their crime is tacitly pardoned
Millions of women around the world, regardless of their socio-economic background, level of education, culture or religion, are victims of violence that has no other basis than gender. Only the form and intensity of the violence differs from one woman to another. Violence against women cannot be justified by custom, religion, cultural practice or political authority. Violence committed specifically against women takes place within the family ("battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation") and in the community ("rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution"). Violence against women is too often condoned by States; at times they are even the perpetrators. It is strikingly visible in its organized form as a weapon of war during armed conflict.
- Every year, over 4 million women in the United States are victims of physical violence committed by a husband, lover or acquaintance. - Every year in Russia, 14,000 women are killed by their husband or other male family member. Some 20-50% of women in the world are, to varying degrees, victims of wife assault.
"Whatever we call them, these crimes are committed all over the world. They happen whenever a man considers a woman to be his property and seeks to demonstrate this mistaken assumption by the abusive and cruel use of force." Honour killing is an ancient practice whereby a man supposedly saves the family honour by killing any female relative who is suspected of having had sexual relations outside marriage, even if the woman was raped.
- In 1997, approximately 300 women were assassinated to save the family "honour" in one province of Pakistan alone.
Across the planet, an estimated 5000 women and young girls are victims of "honour" crimes each year.
Sources:
"Rape is a crime of the patriarchy committed against women."
Women are most at risk for rape in their own homes and from their male acquaintances. Marital rape is considered a crime in only 17 States around the planet. It is estimated that the incidence of rape is 50 times higher than what is reported. Evaluation of the proportion of reported rapes resulting in conviction varies from country to country-from at least 3% in South Africa to roughly 16% in the United States. There are no reliable statistics on the global incidence of rape; those that do exist present a misleadingly low estimation of this social phenomenon.
Most published studies on the subject report that women are most often raped by a man they know. According to national statistics in the United States, one woman is raped every 6 minutes.
Sources:
Excision consists of the removal of the clitoris and labia minora. It is practised in 40 countries, mainly in Eastern and Western Africa, the Arab peninsula and Asia, and increasingly, in immigrant communities in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and Europe. Infibulation consists of an additional mutilation: the labia majora are cut off and the sides are stitched together from one end to the other. A tiny opening is left to permit the passage of menstrual blood and urine. Once married, the "infibulated" woman is cut with a sharp instrument to enable sexual activity. The opening is not nearly large enough, however, for childbirth. The opening is then increased; after the child is born, it is closed to its earlier dimensions, and so on. In addition, various other forms of violence are wreaked on women's genitals "for cultural reasons or for therapeutic ends," such as piercing, perforation or cutting of the clitoris; scraping or cutting the vaginal opening; introduction into the vagina of corrosive substances or plants designed to provoke bleeding or to tighten or shorten the vagina (official definitions of the WHO).
Sources:
"Implicit in the term "trade in women,"
used to describe both a domestic and foreign phenomenon, is that these
women are already possessions."
The traffic in women and girls is reaching alarming proportions today, especially in Asia and more recently in Eastern Europe.
Sex tourism to developing countries is an extremely well organized
business in the United States and in many European and other
industrialized countries. It operates between countries, often with the
cooperation of border guards.
Sources:
Female infanticide is the assassination of a baby girl in the weeks following birth.
Son preference is the phenomenon where boys are valued above girls both
socially and economically. We see various expressions of this: abortion
of the female fetus, murder of a newborn, and preferential treatment of
boys with respect to food, health care and basic education, while
girls' needs in these areas are neglected. Although they are officially
prohibited, prenatal sex selection tests are increasingly popular in
China, India and the Republic of Korea.
In some countries, the bride's family must pay a dowry before the
marriage takes place. Non-payment of the agreed upon sum may result in
violence. Bride burning occurs when the husband arranges an "accident"
(often an explosion at the stove), because he considers that the
obligatory dowry (the presents received from his in-laws) was
insufficient.
Sources:
"Armed conflict exacerbates what has been tolerated until now in peacetime: women's bodies still function as booty."
The employment of rape as a weapon of war is become increasingly evident. Between 250,000 and 400,000 women were raped during the 1972 war of independence in Bangladesh. Accounts of the rape of women and girls in Rwanda between April 1994 and April 1995 range from 15,700 to 250,000. During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of Muslim women detained in camps specifically set up for this purpose, were raped and forcibly impregnated. Gang rape, often followed by the massacre of the victims was committed on an even large scale during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Only recently, women of Chinese origin were the main targets during the riots in Indonesia in May 1998. Today, the main victims of armed conflicts are civilians (women and children), not soldiers. The United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China-all of whom detain the right to veto in the UN Security Council-are responsible for around 85% of all arms sales around the planet.
Sources:
L. Heise, "Violence Against Women: The Hidden Health Burden," working paper of the World Bank, Washington, DC, 1994
"You want to know my definition of poverty?
The definition is right in front of you. Look at me. I live alone. I don't have enough food. I have neither proper housing nor clothing. There is no safe water nearby. Look at my swollen legs. I can't go to the clinic; it is too far to walk. What definition of poverty do you think I can give you That would be better than what you can see for yourself?" Poverty is not inevitable, nor is the fact that women are the main victims. Women constitute 70% of the poorest people in the world. The impact of current economic globalization is being denounced more and more, but women are not specifically mentioned. Yet the impact of global macro-economic policies is not the same for women as for men.
The president of Nike has a personal fortune of US$4.5 billion,
including an annual salary of US$1 million. An Indonesian woman working
for Nike in one of the many subcontractors' factories dotted around the
world (75,000 workers in all, of whom 70% are women between 17 and 21)
earns the equivalent of US$360 per year. This means she has to work for
15 centuries to earn the president's annual salary!
Out of a world economy of $30,000 billion, $24,000 billion is made in developed countries. This means that 20% of the planet's population controls 80% of its wealth.
The world population has reached almost 6 billion. According to the
World Bank, 1.5 billion people were living on less than US$1 per day at
the end of 1999 and roughly 3 billion people were living on less that
US$2 per day.
Women and girls own less than 1% of the planet's wealth; they furnish 70% of the work hours and receive only 10% of the income.
There are 850 free economic zones in the world. Here,
innumerable manufacturing plants employ an estimated 27 million women
and men. These production zones are characterized by high numbers of
young women (90% of all workers), extremely low wages, long work days
(between 12 and 14 hours), a total lack of social services and
unpleasant and dangerous working conditions. In other words, minimum
labour standards and basic organizing rights are non-existent.
IMPOSITION OF PART-TIME WORK The growth of part-time work in countries of the North may be compared to the soaring development of informal labour in the South where women are also over-represented. In both cases, these jobs are (especially non-public sector jobs, notably jobs in the business and service sectors) often unstable; poorly paid; with virtually no possibility of promotion or career development; with meager or non-existent fringe benefits. Indeed, in the fight against unemployment, industrialized countries mostly seem to be depending on "job sharing" through women's part-time labour.
Nearly 70% of the work done around the planet is unpaid work:
accomplished by women, it includes gathering food and living
necessities, education and social relations, housework, gardening and
field work.
The remaining two thirds of the work is done without pay by women and it is absent from economic statistics. Exactly the reverse is true for men. The estimated value of unpaid work is $11 billion, or almost half of the total annual production globally. According to the International Labour Office, women in "developing countries" contribute between 31 and 42 hours of unpaid work per week, while men only contribute between 5 and 15 hours.
Starting at the age of five, girls in "developing countries" work between 4 and 16 hours per days performing domestic tasks.
Unequal pay is often more deeply entrenched in industrialized
countries. For example, in Kenya, average salaries for women working
outside the agricultural sector represent 84% those of men, while in
Japan, women earn only 51% of what men earn.
It is estimated that over 585,000 women die every year due to preventable complications associated with pregnancy, birth or abortion performed under poor sanitary conditions. These are not simple accidents or natural occurrences; these deaths can be avoided by demanding action at the political, medical/health and legislative levels. Some 99% of these high maternal death rates concern countries in the South; South Asia is at the top of the list, followed by Africa and Latin America. The proportion of women who die in pregnancy is 1 out of every 21 women in Africa versus one out of 10,000 women in Northern Europe.
In all countries of the South, a woman has 1 in 48 chances of dying
from complications linked to pregnancy or childbirth, while in the
industrialized world, she has one chance in 1800. The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements - Habitat (UNCHS) states that in cities of developing countries, at least 600 million people live in unhealthy, even dangerous housing. Since women and children spend more time at home than men, they are the first to suffer from these harmful conditions
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that the governments of Sub-Saharan Africa pay their creditors in the North four times as much as they invest in health care for their populations. In the same world region, 20% of women suffer from weight insufficiency.
In Tanzania, people's yearly income is US$140 . One child in ten dies before the age of one, but every resident owes rich countries, the IMF or the World Bank, over US$250. In the 1980s, 30% to 40% of Latin American countries' foreign debt was used for arms expenditures. A few years back, the French Parliament voted to spend over 200 billion francs to purchase a complete fleet of Rafale fighter planes; earlier, they decided to offer an increase of only one billion francs to 300,000 nurses who had been on strike for a month.
In 1998, the United Nations and the World Bank estimated that US$225
billion per year would be needed to eliminate extreme poverty and
furnish adequate environmental protection .
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Last modified 2006-04-18 02:06 PM
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