 The
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Women in Canada
Women
Challenge Corporate Globalization
Around the world women are challenging the corporate brand of globalization because it threatens our environment, our communities and our children's futures. We gather in our homes, in our town halls and on our streets to voice opposition to an agenda that promotes inequity and injustice. We cannot and will not stop until that agenda is stopped. Though the corporate controlled media would have had us believe that Seattle was nothing but a gang of hooligans bent on destroying the city, it was so much more. Women were there, with others, to denounce the WTO because it's women who bear the brunt of the crisis in international capital. Women and other disadvantaged groups around the world face growing unemployment, insecurity and dire poverty as millions and millions of workers are downsized. Women also took to the streets for The World March for Women, promoted as "a march to fight poverty and violence against women." The march mobilized hundreds of thousands of women, globally, to demonstrate women's support for an agenda of peace and shared community. This agenda is in direct opposition to the 'bottom line' agenda of the IMF, the World Bank and their ilk. Again, the corporate controlled media in North America downplayed the importance of the issues. They gave little attention to women's concerns and provided very little coverage of the many events held on the continent. Still, women's work to halt corporate greed has not stopped. Women continue to challenge the corporatization of our world. Some attend strategy sessions, some write letters, some lobby politicians. Others become politicians. That's what Nettie Wiebe did. For almost four months, she worked to become Leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP), the party that currently (and barely) controls government in the province of Saskatchewan. Traditionally, the NDP has been progressive in its policies and actions, but the last decade or more has seen it become more and more accepting of the neo-liberal agenda. Nettie's campaign for leadership drove a wedge into that. Nettie spoke clearly and solidly against the corporatization of our globe. Nettie, a farmer, a university professor, and a former President and CEO of the National Farmer's Union of Canada, is the North American representative to Via Campesina, a world wide movement that "unites landless peasants, small and medium-sized producers, agricultural workers, rural women and indigenous communities in the struggle against the globalization of the economy." Nettie's expertise, intelligence and pragmatism challenged the six other candidates as well as the NDP membership to examine the corporate global agenda, how it impacts our lives, our communities, and our world. Nettie opened her campaign with a recognition of the importance of people: We are interdependent and that means that we must work more carefully at ensuring that all of us who live here have a hand in shaping the key components of our society - young people, students, aboriginal peoples, seniors, women, rural, as well as urban people [...] People in Saskatchewan have values they cherish[,] that they want expressed in public policy. A few of the key values would include: civilized, egalitarian, secure, and environmentally-healthy. The policies that a government institutes need to reflect these values.Nettie took every opportunity during the campaign to point out that corporate globalization attempts to undermine these values. It impacts our food system, healthcare, education, labour standards, and the environment. The acceleration of corporate control of global commerce and policy brings a weakening of laws created to protect the environment and human dignity. An example brought out during the campaign was globalization's effect on Saskatchewan's rural families: The farm crisis and the destruction of rural Canada is caused, to a significant extent, by a world trading system that gives far too much power to agri-business corporations and allows them to capture wealth that should nourish farm families and Saskatchewan communities. Globalization forces farmers to ceaselessly restructure and to adapt. We've been adapting and adapting and far too many farmers have been adapted right out of the business.Proponents of globalization push deals and trade agreements that require us to "park democracy at the door." The agreements call for "free" trade--trade that limits democracy, that greatly restricts what people and their governments can do to provide services and to ensure fairness. In her policy paper, Nettie called for the provincial government to say no, "to use its constitutional powers to block the implementation of trade and investment deals, such as the GATS, the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) where those agreements affect provincial powers." We must not only stop these agreements, but also start visioning the future. How do we want our globe to work together? How can we help each other to reach our human and social potential? Had Nettie won the leadership contest our province, our country and, indeed, our globe would be far better off for it. She placed a solid third and while that's not the best-case scenario, it is one that saw the progressive voices of Saskatchewan come together and, we trust, stay together. Of course not all of us can become politicians. But we can be creative and vocal in this struggle. If we are concerned about the economic, legal, and political status of women in the emerging global economy, we need to challenge the corporate version of globalization in whatever way we can. We must ensure our voices are heard. Resources http://www.law.indiana.edu/glsj/vol4/no1/amapgp.html http://www.info.com.ph/~globalzn/lisa.htm http://www.ffq.qc.ca/marche2000/en/index.html http://www.indymedia.org/features_main.php3 About
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Website http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/mitchb Email: wagmitfam@sk.sympatico.ca Rural
Women in Canada
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