April 2002 - Steps : The March... to be continued

The March of Women has become an essential partner to other social movements that are struggling against current globalization. The landless peasants movement, the Grito de los Excluidos (Cry of the Excluded), undocumented workers committees, and groups fighting for integration of immigrant women worked and demonstrated with the World March of Women in the United States and in Europe.

Photo : Adding the feminist voice to the chorus against neoliberal globalization. Pictured: The march at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, 2002 edition.

In December 1999, women of the March demonstrated in Seattle during the World Trade Organization talks. In Geneva, at the Alternative Summit to the UN's Social Summit (Copenhagen +5) held in June 2000, they organized a workshop about the impact of neoliberal globalization on women. At a demonstration in the streets of Geneva, they held signs that read: "Against neoliberal and sexist globalization."

Protest march against the Free Trade Area of the Americas during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, 2002.

The March also participated in the Peoples' Summit of the Americas in Québec City, Canada, in April 2001 and in the World Social Forums held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001 and February 2002. For the second forum, women organized a seminar entitled: "A Feminist Alternative for Another World" and a conference on violence against women. For the Forum of 2003, women of the March are planning an International Tribunal on Violence Against Women and a declaration of social movements on violence against women.

In 2001, during the G8 meeting (meeting of the eight most highly industrialized countries of the planet) in Genoa, Italy, Italian women were much in evidence. They also led the demonstration held in Rome in November 2001 to close a meeting protesting militarism and the economic and social war "not because we are the main victims, but because we have shown-and we continue to show-that we represent some of the principal agents for change in the process of building another world," commented one woman.