Your money AND your life : the World Trade Organization’s premise, 2003

Who are we?

The World March of Women is a global network for feminist action, focussing mainly on the struggles against poverty and violence against women. We believe in the globalization of solidarity; we value the diversity of the women’s movement; we believe in the leadership of women; the importance of debating our ideas and strategies with other feminist groups and social movements; the importance of an international autonomous women’s movement that is transparent, democratic and creative; and the necessary alliance with other social movements.

Initiated by the Fédération des femmes du Québec (Canada) in 1996, the World March of Women rapidly became established itself as a worldwide movement, gaining the support of nearly 6000 women’s groups in 163 countries and territories around the planet.

Our aims

• Strengthen and maintain a vast solidarity movement of grass-roots women’s groups so that the March constitutes a gesture of affirmation by women of the world.
• Promote equality between women and men and between peoples.
• Support a vast process of popular education so that all women can analyze for themselves the causes of their oppression, and imagine possible alternatives.
• To highlight the common demands and alternatives issuing from global women’s movements on the local, national, regional and international levels, relating to the issues of poverty and violence against women.
• Bring political pressure to bear on governments and multilateral political insti-tutions (e.g., the UN) so that they institute the changes necessary for improving the status of women and women’s quality of life globally, and so that they pursue a disarmament and peaceful conflict resolution policy.
• Challenge the international financial, economic and military institutions (IMF, NATO, WTO, WB, etc.) responsible for impoverishing and marginalizing women and intensifying the violence committed against us, and formulate proposals for alternative institutions.
• Convince the general public, other social sectors and social movements to institute the changes necessary for improving the status of women and women’s quality of life the world over.

We’ll be in CANCÚN!

From the beginning of the World March of Women in the Year 2000, we participated actively within the vast world movement advocating another kind of globalization.

That’s why we’ll be in Cancún, alongside the other women’s networks, at the International Forum on Women’s Rights in Trade Agreements. The Forum is part of the Peoples’ Forum for Alternatives to the WTO (World Trade Organization) that will be held before and during the 5th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Cancún (Mexico) in September 2003.

We’ll be in Cancún to denounce the neoliberal trade and military policies imposed on our peoples, which have a devastating impact on almost all aspects of life. These policies will have repercussions for future generations in the form of generalized poverty, especially among peoples in the South (in the North poverty is also on the rise). With them comes heightened violence against women whereupon we ourselves and our rights are turned into merchandise. The WTO has only one model of trade negotiations, which it intends to impose on us, and we refuse to accept it. We have summed up the model’s premise as “Your money and your life!”

We’ll be in Cancún to make progress together in strengthening our ability to mobilize, our impact on neoliberal economic and militaristic policies, and our proposals for alternative solutions. From our feminist perspective in solidarity and for the environment, we are determined to fight as an international force to build another world.

We’ll be in Cancún for the demonstrations on the International Day of Mourning for economic, military and gender wars, which will be held everywhere on September 11. But in addition, we and all the international social networks are planning an International Day of Action both in Cancún and the rest of the world to derail the WTO on September 13.

LET’S ALL BE THERE!

WTO trade policies and women

Economic globalization and trade policies affect men and women in all societies but in different, unequal ways according to the specific roles and tasks assigned to each within the current system of economic production and social reproduction.

This is why we think it important to analyze economic processes taking into account these differences and inequalities; we must denounce and do away with them. In our opinion it is important to demand assurances that national policies linked to regional and international agreements do not have an adverse impact on the new and traditional economic activities of women, as the Beijing Plataform (1995) states. Eight years after Beijing, the women of the world are poorer, more mistreated and more marginalized from the spaces of real power.

The WTO is a powerful international organization that applies unfair trade policies and has as a stated objective to reduce the power of the State and promote the “freest” possible circulation of goods and services around the planet. What is more, the developed countries and multinational companies dominate WTO negotiations; they pressure governments so that they can obtain agreements that put their interests above all others. The WTO strengthens all forms of inequality: between countries in the North and South; between classes, races and ethnic groups; and between women and men. Gender equality does not exist in the WTO.

We conceive of a different economy based on fair trade and socially productive investments that are ecologically responsible. We advocate debt cancellation for the Third World countries, an end to structural adjustment programs, effective means to do away with financial crime and tax havens, and a tax on financial transactions such as the Tobin tax.

This “creative utopia”—the only realistic one—motivates us, mobilizes us and commits us as women of the world to continue our March!

That’s why we are already on the move toward 2005!

Considering the urgent need to propose economic, political, social and cultural alternatives to make another world possible, one that is founded on gender equality and equality of all human beings and peoples, and the respect of our planet’s environment; and considering the necessity to debate our visions of this other world among ourselves as women and with allied organizations, locally, nationally, regionally and internationally, we adopted a new international action of the World March of Women that will be carried out in 2005.

The action will include three components: drawing up a Women’s Global Charter for Humanity through a process of popular education based on the 17 world demands of the March; organizing relay marches starting on March 8, 2005, within participating coun-tries, from one country to another, and one world region to another, to publicize our Charter and gather support for the alternatives being proposed by feminists; and producing a solidarity quilt made of pieces of cloth on which each participant will be invited to illustrate her dream for humanity. The pieces of cloth will be joined together to form a quilt and used during the simultaneous global actions that will take place at the end of 2005.

The Charter will be used in a variety of actions, at the national, regional and international levels, when women will address their domestic governments and the international institutions. We will also use this document with allied social movements to advance our alternatives in those circles.