RURAL WOMEN in the ERA OF GLOBALISATION

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RURAL WOMEN in the ERA OF GLOBALISATION

• REGIONAL CONSULTATION JULY 30 AUG 2, 2007

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Women in agriculture

• Majority of rural women are farmers or
  agricultural workers (feminisation of
  agriculture)
• Most of farm work is done by women
• As farmers, women in food production ensure the
  survival of millions of people in all regions.
• Womens livelihood strategies, and their support
  and means of food security are diverse and
  complex, from cultivating field crops to
  livestock rearing, to home gardening and fishing.
  
• The vitality of womens knowledge of
  agricultural systems is significant and is a tool
  for womens empowerment.

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Patriarchy
Social and Cultural Women skills, knowledge and
work Not acknowledged Remains invisible Womens
work is never done

• Political and economic
• Women lack political and
• economic power
• Women lack of decision making
• Feminisation of Poverty
• Feminisation of Agriculture
• Low wages
• Women lack access to land and productive
  resources
• Women make up 51 percent of the population
• They carry out two thirds of all work hours
• They earn 10 percent of the worlds income
• And own less than 1 percent of the worlds assets

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Land and productive resources
Our struggle for land is a struggle for our
lives

• The first clarion demand of peasant and
  indigenous women is the right over land and
  productive resources
• And the necessary support to ensure their food
  and economic security.

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• Globalization
• Integration into global market opening of
  markets for trade.
• Deregulation processes to induce liberalization
  into trade and investment.
• Restructuring of economies to meet trade
  conditions.
• Changing face of production goals no more for
  local market and consumption.
• Technological growth especially information
  technology Bill Gates monopoly.
• IFI including WB/IMF promote globalisation
  failed experiments that has destroyed the lives
  and livelihoods of milllions rural women
• WTO negotiotions stalled and Bilateral agreements
  (FTAs)
• War on Terror or Resource Wars and Wars against
  peoples resistance

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CORPORATE AGRICULTURE, CONTRACT FARMING

• Control all aspect of agriculture
• Corporatisation of agriculture, leading to
  concentration of land in a few hands and loss of
  land among others, especially small-scale women
  farmers
• Control the basis of food production Seeds and
  land and Inputs pesticides, fertilizers
• Production --- contract farming
• Processing and packaging
• Retailing
• Infrastructure including transportation and
  storage
• Increase in plantation crops eg. Oil palm for
  biofuel

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Seeds in the hands women

• NOW CONTROLLED BY
• A FEW TNCS 50 of market controlled by 10 seed
  corporations
• Genetic engineering -herbicide tolerant rice,
  golden rice, human genes in rice
• Monopoly controlled through patents
• ? Rice genome mapping controlled by Syngenta
• ? Global seed market US15B/year
• ? Dupont and Monsanto control 15 percent of
  the global seeds market.
• ? hundreds of patents on rice and thousands of
  patents on thousands crops

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Who benefits?

• 5 grain trading enterprises control more than 75
  percent of the world market for cereals.
• In agriculture, 5 companies control almost 75
  percent of the US32 billion trade in
  agrochemicals.
• The top 10 seed corporations control 50 of the
  commercial seed market valued at 23 billion.
• 100 of the transgenic seed market is controlled
  by five TNCs Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, DuPont,
  Dow

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Globalisation in food and agriculture

• Elimination of government subsidies
• Dumping in developing countries
• ? Low price ?bankruptcies ? increased
• landlessness ? increased hunger and
  malnutrition ? pushed to marginal areas or
  migrate to cities to forced migration ? jobless
  ? poverty

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• Impact on rural women
• Loss of food security in farming families due to
  loss of income, and from the increasing
  cultivation of cash crops, leading to greater
  hunger and deprivation among women farmers and
  wage workers and specially girl children.
• Increased workload both on the farms and at home
  for women.
• Low-wage, long and back-breaking labour for women
  in the new market-oriented farming systems

• Displacement of women in agriculture-
• Contractual/ informal labour
• Loss of skills and value to their work
• Increasing unemployment
• Increasing poverty and hunger
• Erosion of food biodiversity

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Impact on rural women

• Low-paid workers in the corporate farms
• Creation of so-called womens jobs (menial,
  drudgery) at slave wages
• Contractualisation of labour
• Impact on womens health
• Increased health risks for women from the
  intensive use of pesticides
• Loss of control over crucial resources like seeds
  which were mainly the womens special domain
• DEBT INCREASES suicides and rural crisis
• Land grabbing due to debt and development (eg.
  AP and Singur, India, bukidnon farmers)
• Forced migration and Feminization of Migration
• Trafficking
• Women and AIDS
• Women in Armed Conflict and Increased
  Militarization

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Three levels of struggles

• Local Movements face daily struggles to advance
  food sovereignty, struggle for land, and are
  fighting landlords, and agents of TNCs
  (governments or private entities)
• National level struggles (laws and regulations)
  confront governments, national and foreign TNCs,
• International level we confront and oppose
  imperialist globalisation policies and
  instruments, governments and the TNCs that drive
  the agenda

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Reclaiming our Rights FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND
DEMOCRACY

• To Land and Resources
• To Self Determination at the Farm Level to
  National Levels
• To Democracy
• To Food
• To secure livelihoods and just wages
• To health
• Decision making

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RESISTANCE

• Feudalism
• Patriarchy
• Fundamentalism
• Casteism
• Racism
• Discrimination
• Corporate Agriculture / Contract farming
• Control and Dominance of TNCs
• WTO and globalisation
• Militarisation and
• State violence