[asia-apec 815] Final Programme

[GABRIELA]

Dear Sisters and Friends,

Below is the final programme for the Workshop on Strategies, Gains and
Challenges in Women's Struggle Against Globalization which is one of the
simultaneous workshops in the 3rd International Women's Conference Against
APEC to be held on Nov 8-9, 1998 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

You are invited to attend the conference and the workshop, and stay on for
the Asia-Pacific Peoples' Assembly (APPA) on November 10-15. See you in
Kuala Lumpur!


WORKSHOP ON STRATEGIES, GAINS  AND CHALLENGES 
IN WOMEN'S STRUGGLE AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
November 8 (2:30 - 10:00 p.m.)

Sponsored by 
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD)
GABRIELA
(National Alliance of Women's Organizations in the Philippines)
Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED), Madras
Tamilnadu Women's Forum

Objectives

To learn from one another's strategies and gains in the women's struggle
against globalization.

To determine challenges for in the women's struggle against globalization.

To determine burning issues that will be the basis for regional and/or
international women's action in the next  years.

Programme 

02:30	Introduction 
	by Elisa Tita Lubi, APWLD and GABRIELA, Workshop Moderator

03:00	Resist Imperialist Globalization: A Challenge to Women
	by Dr. Pao-Yu Ching, university professor and social activist, 
	U.S. and Taiwan

03:20	Impact of Globalization and Challenges for South Asian Women
	by Nimalka Fernando, President, IMADR

03:40	Rural Women's Caravan against Fundamentalism
	by Sarawathy, Tamilnadu Women's Forum, India

04:20	Tea Break

04:40	The Indonesian Situation
	by women from Kalyanamitra Foundation, Aceh, West Papua and East Timor

05:40	Women Organizing in the Philippines		
	· Organizing Women Workers
	  by Nenita Miranda, Secretary General, KMK (Women Workers' Movement)
	· Organizing Women Youth & Students
	  by Maricel Gavina, Secretary General, GABRIELA Youth

06:20	From the Point of View of Socialist Women
	by Joan Hinton
	a former nuclear physicist who has worked in agriculture in China 
	in the past 50 years

07:00	Dinner

08:00	Legal Strategies in the Hands of Women
	by Rani Jethmalani
	Lawyer and APWLD Founding Member	

08:20	Open Forum:  Issues
	             Resolutions
	             Action plans for regional and international 
			  women's campaigns

10:00	Adjourn

---------------------------------

Rationale

Women have been in the forefront of the struggle against globalization.
This comes as no surprise as women shoulder the heaviest burdens of
denationalization, liberalization, deregulation and privatization, the main
components of the globalization scheme that throw women and men to the
sharkteeth of the so-called free market. 

Women workers suffer mass lay-offs, insecurity of tenure due to
casualization and contractualization, slave wages, debilitating working
conditions, sexual harassment and violations of their right to strike and
unionize. Rural and indigenous women continue to be deprived of their right
to own land  
due to monopoly land ownership by big landowners and agrocorporations, land
conversion to tourist resorts, residential subdivisions and so-called
industrial centers, crop conversion to export products, and maldevelopment
projects like logging , mining by multinational corporations and
construction of huge dams. Urban poor communities are driven away from
their communities as their houses are demolished to give way to commercial
centers. 

Women have to work even longer hours to keep their families afloat with
additional income that can absorb currency devaluation and spiraling prices
of basic commodities and social services. Small wonder that women from
various sectors are forced to go abroad to earn a living, despite the low
wages, terrible working conditions, violation of contracts, racial
discrimination, cultural trauma, the loneliness of being away from their
loved ones and even physical and sexual violence.  Some women are also
forced into prostitution in their own countries and abroad.

 Globalization, instead of easing, only intensifies the global economic and
financial crisis. It benefits a few, not the majority of the peoples of the
world. It is the handiwork of the centers of global power - the US, Japan
and the European Union led by Germany - and the multi national and
transnational corporations (MNCs/TNCs), all of them expanding their wealth
and power to further exploit and dominate the poorer nations. They have
their client states of the Third World and the local ruling elite as their
partners.

"The current economic and political agenda in the Asia-Pacific region
disempowers women, feminizes poverty and disintegrates families and
communities. It has also given rise to dangerous 'anti-globalisation
forces' based on narrow, chauvinistic nationalisms. In South Asia,
fundamentalism increases violence against women. In East Asia,
'nationalist' reactions to the crisis amplify harsh treatment of migrant
workers. In Australia, the lobby against Asian immigration escalates. These
emerging local and national trends are especially worrying for women."
(Rag, 1 Jul 1998).
 
It is therefore important to share and replicate pro-people and pro-women
strategies of resistance and alternatives to globalization as more and more
women and men among the workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, urban poor
communities, youth & students, professionals, church people, health sector,
teachers, government employees and local entrepreneurs have become aware of
the true nature and ill effects of globalization. More and more have taken
up the fight against globalization: the Assembly of the Poor in Thailand,
Wheat Revival Movement in South Korea, anti-dam campaign in Malaysia and
Cambodia, the Cordillera people's campaign against open pit mining in the
Philippines, campaigns against trafficking of women and the International
People's Campaign Against Imperialist Globalization led by the Philippine
people's movement.

APWLD, GABRIELA, SRED and the Tamilnadu Women's Forum are sponsoring the
workshop Strategies, Gains and Challenges in the Women's Struggle Against
Globalization to provide a venue through which women can: (1) share
effective strategies that some of them have used in resisting
globalization; (2) get inspired by the small but growing victories that
they have gained; and (3) discuss how they can meet the challenges of the
years to come.#