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April 2002 - Seventeen Demands for a Better World
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Seventeen Demands for a Better World"I hope we will succeed in communicating the same enthusiasm when we return home, to unite women in our own countries and transmit our messages beyond Canadian borders to the rest of the world, thereby raising the awareness of women's situation, the violence and poverty of which we are the specific targets and the suffering we must endure. In this way, we will be able to create mutual understanding between women and men the world over regarding women's reality and the current world context." This remark, made by a participant at the first international meeting of the World March of Women in October 1998, illustrates the challenge facing women at that time. The challenge was met by campaigns explaining the two main demands of the March: elimination of poverty in the world and elimination of violence against women. These two themes elicited massive support because they are universal. Although they produce roughly 80% of the food consumed in the poorest regions of the world, women own only 1% of the land on the planet. Compared with men, women hold lower paying jobs and are more vulnerable to economic crises. They receive less formal education: two-thirds of the billion illiterate people in the world are women. Domestic workers are exploited around the planet; domestic work is never officially taken into account-either in statistics or in the calculation of a country's wealth. Women are under-represented in political structures. The figures are just as tragic when it comes to violence against women: rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment in the workplace, the genital excision and mutilation of two million women every year, wife assault, "honour" crimes, and so on. The traffic in women and girls has reached alarming proportions in Asia and Eastern Europe, where nearly 70 million women and children have been victims in a 10-year period. Added to this list are other specific forms of violence such as selective abortion of female fetuses, dowry-related violence, etc. |
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Last modified 2006-03-23 03:09 PM This item is available in Français, English, Español |
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