America, the Environment, and the Global Economy
Spring 1997-- Global Human
Ecology:
America, the Environment, and the Global Economy
Question for Discussion: How
will ending the global environmental crisis improve women's lives
and the health of their communities?
Reading: Close to Home,
pp. 144-161
Internet Sites and Documents:
A WOMEN'S DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
UNIFEM Calls for Women's Agenda
The United Nations and the Status of Women
SUSTAINING LIFE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE
QUALITY OF
EVERYDAY LIVING
Revitalizing Africa for the 21st Century: an agenda for renewal
Food Aid Strategies for Women in Development
Women's Issues in World Bank Lending
Let's look at UNIFEM's "Women's Development Agenda for the 21st Century."
UNIFEM Calls for Women's Agenda
Noeleen Heyzer, new director of the United Nations Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM), is calling for world leaders to
strengthen their response to global crises that jeopardize human
development by encouraging "women's active and full
participation in the entire development process."
Addressing the 49th General Assembly in New York, Ms. Heyzer, who
was appointed in October 1994, said that fundamental shifts in
development thinking, planning and practice are needed to
confront the political, environmental and population changes that
threaten "our very
survival as a human race."
Many of these shifts are embodied in an emerging Women's
Development Agenda for the 21st Century, which she described as
an agenda "not just for women but, more significantly, a
vision by women for the transformation of the global development
agenda."
Shaped by "the collective concerns and hopes of women"
at a series of international conferences, including the 1992
Earth Summit in Rio, the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in
Vienna and the 1994 International Conference on Population and
Development in Cairo, the revised agenda, according to Ms.
Heyzer, seeks to "prevent and undo the mistakes of past
development" through the creation of "new institutions,
new social
values and new community structures."
Based on a principle of social justice that addresses women's
entitlement to and control over resources, this agenda would
empower women to reshape policies "through their active and
full participation in the entire development process."
Among its key provisions are challenges to do the following:
1.) Find new pathways of development that address the realities of women's lives and benefit women directly.
2). Create policies that incorporate women's needs and perspectives in order to sustain their livelihoods.
3). Build stable lives and healthy
communities for women affected by migration.
4). Protect women in situations of conflict and violence.
5). Promote ethical principles of
good governance that recognize women's leadership and
decision-making role.
Ms. Heyzer also called on the world's governments to
substantially increase their support for women through UNIFEM as
it moves to a critical new phase of its work in preparation for
the Fourth World Conference on Women (WCW) in Beijing in
September 1995.
"With the help of governments, and the continued alliances
with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)," Ms. Heyzer said,
"UNIFEM can help turn this development agenda into reality
in the 21th century. Women have suffered most from development
policies that fail to address
their multiple needs as workers, mothers and caregivers."
The number of rural women living in poverty for instance has
nearly doubled in the last 20 years; today, women constitute at
least 60 percent of the world's one billion rural poor.
UNIFEM works to support the efforts of women in the developing
world to improve the quality of life both for women and men.
Acknowledged worldwide as a bridge between the women's movement
and governments, UNIFEM has also played a major role in putting
the women's agenda on the global map. Before and during the
gathering in Vienna, the Fund
worked with women's groups worldwide and served as a link between
them. To help ensure that the platforms resulting from future
conferences will be consensus documents that address the women's
key development issues, UNIFEM's 10 regional offices are
currently working
with women's groups, governments, NGO's and other U.N. agencies
around the world.
A WOMEN'S DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
There is an urgent need for women
to articulate their own agenda for change which will not only
address their specific needs and concerns, but as well transform
the processes that have generated such problematic consequences
for both women and men--and for their children. As we draw
towards the close of this century, such a women's development
agenda is emerging. It builds from the work of those who are
seeking a development path that would address more generally the
basic need of the poor for secure livelihoods. It is important
that women bring their distinctive perspectives and realities to
bear in this search to assure that one
development mistake is not simply replaced by another.
The women's development agenda embraces gender equity as the
central principle of a new development process in which the
burdens and benefits of development will be shared equally among
women and men. It calls for gender-equitable access to resources,
while taking into account the everyday processes of how people
produce, consume, survive and reproduce in gender-differentiated
ways. The women's development agenda emphasizes both women's
livelihood needs and the key role that women play in maintaining
the ecological sustainability and renewability of finite natural
resources. It seeks to address the root causes of physical
displacement, namely, environmental degradation, land loss, war,
and poverty. It sees peace as a vital foundation of healthy
communities.
Good governance is also a principle of vital importance in the
women's development agenda. Policies coming out of a system of
good governance would be responsive to the livelihood needs and
realities of women and communities, instead of appropriating
development resources to serve powerful private interests at the
expense of the economically and politically
weak. Good governance would recognize that since women commonly
assume a special responsibility for the family and community
interest, they must have a central role in both setting and
implementing policies aimed at creating more just and sustainable
societies.
The women's development agenda is UNIFEM's charter for action--a
mandate for UNIFEM as a vehicle of change through its unique
position at the nexus between the United Nations and the social
movements through which women are expressing their hopes and
aspirations for a
better world. UNIFEM aims to work towards a global framework of
cooperation that will bring together often isolated efforts that
currently exist toward the rethinking of development. We will
also work to advance a holistic view of the interrelated issues
of sustainable development, human rights, population, society,
women, and habitat that respectively
constitute the topics of debate at global conferences in Rio,
Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, and Istanbul on where we, as
a human race, should go from here.
UNIFEM seeks to communicate a message of hope and cooperation
that we may all work together for a better world for everyone,
including generations yet to come.
I have included these excerpts from the UNIFEM declarations about women and development because I believe they provide good summaries of the larger arguments in Close to Home: Women Reconnect Ecology, Health, and Development Worldwide. The environment is a women's issue, especially in the Third World. The growth of the global economy and economic development in many Third World countries has come at the expense of the environment and the health and needs of women and children. The number of Third World women in poverty has actually doubled in the last 20 years. Let's summarize some of the major reasons that Third World women have been disproportionately affected by development and the environmental destruction and pollution it causes:
1) Third World women are often
responsible to provide the food and
resources a family needs to survive.
2). As a result of increasing poverty, their husbands and young men leave their rural villages to work in the growing industrial cities, leaving their women and young children behind.
3). Because women traditionally can't own property or control resources in many of these Third World countries, they are often at a tremendous disadvantage when governments and corporations take the land they have been working on to feed their families.
4). Because women do not receive the same educational opportunities as men, they are often at a disadvantage in competing for jobs and resources to feed their families.
5). Because women have more body fat than men, they absorb more of the dangerous toxic chemicals that pollute the environment than men. These women often pass on these dangerous chemicals to their children in their wombs.
6). Because women traditionally have little political, social, and economic power and status, they are less able to adapt to the social and economic crises created by development.
7). Because women traditionally have been the caregivers and the supporters of children, they have been more sensitive to economic and environmental changes that hurt their families.
8). Because of women's low status, they often receive the fewest resources and support in traditional Third World societies.
9). Women's responsibility to provide for their families has forced them to work harder and harder to find the increasingly scarce resources such as water and wood for fuel they need to feed their families.
10). Finally, the poverty and social and economic problems created by development cause poor Third World women to have larger families, hoping that more children will reduce their increasing burden.
The UNIFEM declaration addresses these problems facing Third World women by demanding that they be given greater political and economic equality with men and that women be allowed and encouraged to participate in politics and government. Only by including women and women's interest in development decisions will Third World women's lives and families be protected. Because development often ignores women's interests, it often damages their lives and their futures. The larger impact of the global environmental crisis can best be understood by studying the lives and problems facing Third World women. Their increasing poverty and suffering is proof that global development is threatening the environment and the human future.