[asia-apec 377] Re: International Women's Day Call To Count Costs Of Freemarket Polic

[Gatt Watchdog]

Path: corso!gattwd
From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: International Women's Day Call To Count Costs Of Freemarket Policies
Message-ID: <4XN63D1w165w at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz>
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 97 17:33:14 +1200
Reply-To: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog)
Organization: PlaNet Gaia Otautahi


GATT Watchdog,
PO Box 1905
Otautahi (Christchurch) 8015
Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Ph 64 3 3662803
Fax 64 3 3668035



Media Release

6 March 1997

For Immediate Use
International Women's Day Call To Count Costs of Freemarket
Policies on Women

A spokeswoman for fair trade group GATT Watchdog says that
International Women's Day (March 8th) should be a time to count
the unacceptable costs of trade liberalisation policies and free
market reforms to women's lives in New Zealand and around the
world.

Leigh Cookson of GATT Watchdog says that market reforms and free
trade have greatly contributed to the "feminisation of
poverty" here and overseas.

"International Women's Day owes its birth to the militant actions
of women workers of the 1800s, especially in the USA and Germany.
This year we should take stock of the real costs of implementing
trading arrangements like the GATT/WTO and NAFTA, but also
celebrate the fact that worldwide, women are at the forefront of
resisting globalisation and working out just and genuinely
sustainable alternatives to this model of development."

"Globalisation is based on women's exploitation in both the paid
labour force and the unpaid work that we do.  Women's experiences
aren't seen by the economists who pronounce on restructuring and
the 'need' to open up economies to international competition, nor
by politicians who implement policies which do so.  Ordinary women
are usually left out of policy debates of vital importance to our
everyday lives.  Top-down economic policies put an overemphasis on
the supremacy of 'the market', profits and a globalisation process
that rewards the powerful whilst marginalising much of
humanity," she says.

"In 1997, gender inequalities should be seen in the context of the
globalisation of the economy.  Women disproportionately bear the
burden of market reforms and trade liberalisation. More women than
ever have become their family's sole breadwinners.  Women make up
a high proportion of workers in the informal sector and other
precarious forms of employment."

In industrialised countries, between 65-90% of part-time workers
are women.  In South East Asia, women in the export-manufacturing
industries are paid significantly less than men.  In Singapore
women earnt 72% of men's wages, while in Hong Kong and Korea that
figure was 63% and 57% respectively.  Women are typically paid
between 70-90% (UK), 80% (NZ), and 90% (Australia) of men's wages
(ILO Statistics, August 1995).  Yet the economic indicators which
politicians refer to when boasting of economic recovery ignore
this disparity in incomes.

"The GATT/WTO trade liberalisation measures, which include the
imposition of an unjust "trade-related" intellectual property
rights regime, and the import of agricultural products are causing
the displacement of millions of small subsistence farmers, mainly
women, and are destroying local food economies.  Peasant women
farmers in the Asia Pacific region are innovators and protectors
of seeds and genetic resources.  But intellectual property regimes
imposed by free trade deals like GATT are taking seed away from
the custody of peasant women and turning it into the property of
transnational corporations.  Women farmers are already invisible
and marginalised in many ways and being further dispossessed of
their power, control and knowledge," said Ms Cookson.

"Third World countries are being forced to become open markets for
transnational corporations' products.  Domestic subsidies are
reduced and small farmers ruined as the North dumps its food
surpluses.  Many of these are women who are forced to the cities,
into unsafe, low-paid jobs in export-oriented industries, owned by
transnational corporations seeking the rights to invest anywhere
where labour and natural resources are cheapest, and where
environmental standards are dangerously low.  In South East Asia
and the maquiladora assembly plants on the US-Mexican border,
women are favoured over men and work in poor conditions for a
pittance.  And the largest number of NAFTA-related layoffs in the
USA were in the electronic and apparel industries, both of which
employ a high proportion of women," she says.

In New Zealand, a 1993 Service Workers Union survey showed that
40% of women members suffered a drop in household income since
1991.  This trend continues.  Women are over-represented in the
part-time, temporary, and low-wage workforce.  Women's community
role is taken for granted as the state divests itself of
responsibilities in healthcare, welfare, education and housing, as
market forces widen the rich-poor divide and women take on unpaid
unrecognised work.

"Much of the social cost of economic deregulation to make New
Zealand attractive to foreign investment is being borne by women.
The majority of workers in the New Zealand clothing and footwear
industries which continue to be decimated by the reduction of
tariffs and the influx of imports have been women.  Many of those
who have lost their jobs have been forced into unemployment or
low-paid homeworking.  Those who still have jobs have seen their
conditions and job security eroded.  The introduction of market
principles in health and education, benefit cuts, and labour
legislation like the Employment Contracts Act have increased the
burden on women.  Pay equity remains a far-off dream.  Despite the
rhetoric about integrating women into the workforce, this has
amounted to few real gains for us.  Morever, women who are forced
into dependence by the structural inequalities of the market
economy are blamed for their impoverished state.  the hard-won
rights of women are being rolled back in favour of the rights of
the market.  And the National/New Zealand First Coalition
government shows every sign of further entrenching the social
deficit of the free market model," concluded Ms Cookson.

For further comment, contact:

Leigh Cookson  (GATT Watchdog)

Ph 03 3662803
Fax 03 3668035
Email gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz

Dr Jane Kelsey (Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group)

ph 09 3737599 ext 8006
Fax 09 373 7471
Email j.kelsey at auckland.ac.nz

Gillian Southey (GATT Watchdog)

Ph 04 3843587
Fax 04 801 6001
Email gsouthey at actrix.gen.nz



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