|
Background
Rural women's voices
The inequities based on gender are rooted in the organized oppression through class, caste, race and ethnicity. Rural women in Asia continue to face oppression and violence in all forms -- from the impact of globalisation, corporatisation of agriculture, ownership or lack of access to land and resources, fundamentalism, militarisation, state violence to patriarchy.
In India, caste and class discrimination are prevalent with Dalit women and children. More than 160 million Dalits face horrifying discrimination and are treated as less than human. They are given the lowest, menial jobs; humiliated, beaten and raped by so-called upper caste people. Dalit women constantly live in fear for their lives, livelihood, well-being and personal security. Even the lack of effective land ownership prevents women from gaining access to a number of agricultural support services, for example, credit, input supplies and agricultural extension services.
In Nepal, land ownership is dominated by men with a mere 10% of land owned by women. Women are most affected by state violence within a shift from monarchist government to an interim legislature. There are about half a million Nepalese migrant workers who face discrimination in other countries.
In the Philippines, the worsening state of poverty, of landlessness, and of displacement are experienced by peasants and indigenous peoples, with rural women being doubly oppressed. State violence against women has also worsened with women activists constantly harassed and killed. Since 2001, around 80 women activists were killed as attacks against progressive and legitimate groups are irrationally pinpointed by its government as insurgents. Mothers are not spared. There are more than a hundred widows whose husbands were victims of forced disappearances and politically-motivated killings.
In Malaysia, intense exploitation of women migrants, plantation workers and domestic workers continue. There are about 30,000 women who work in the plantation as pesticides sprayers who use very toxic pesticides, some of which are listed as extremely hazardous by the World Health Organisation. Their rights are infringed due to low wages (lower than the male workers), minimal or lack of benefits, job insecurity, use of hazardous technologies, discrimination in homes and work and physical violence.
In Sri Lanka, the lack of a national policy on rural women, lack of women's representation in the parliament, ethnic conflicts, and the impact of the tsunami disaster are but a few challenges that the Tamil and Sinhalese women communities experience. Women are also becoming more displaced living in temporary shelters, as a result of the war conflict. There are also high incidences of women being trafficked and child labour.
Indigenous women in all parts of Asia similarly reflect their fight for identity and self-determination in addition to their struggle for land and productive resources. With corporations and governments encroaching on their land to pave way for the so-called "development", indigenous communities are displaced from their land taking away their right to life and sustainable livelihoods.
Ethnic conflicts and other armed conflicts are displacing thousands of people and destroying natural resources, homes and livelihoods, as in the case of Tamil and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka, and rural women in the Philippines and Palestine. The US-led campaign on the global "war on terror", including wars to gain control of resources as in the case of Iraq, has caused many lives and is being used to suppress people's resistance and legitimate demands through state-initiated or state-supported violence.
International and local players
The conditions of rural women are intricately linked with the international and national contexts. The WTO and its agreements, hand in hand with the International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, have emerged as the institutionalized face of globalization imposing neoliberal policies and "conditionalities" on developing countries. Even though the present negotiations in the WTO have stalled, the US and other G8 countries are intensifying efforts to enter into bilateral free trade deals with Asian countries. These bilateral agreements push developing countries to provide maximum concessions and further liberalise trade and investments.
These agreements and conditionalities are systematically dismantling national policies and regulations safeguarding the rights of people, their health, environment and livelihoods and making natural resources, i.e. land, water, genetic resources into commodities for sale. It is also reducing public expenditure for social services, such as health and education, by the government and moving the control for these services to corporations at the expense of rural poor communities. National policies are being amended to fit into the dictates of liberalized trade.
In food and agriculture, this translates to increased control of land and productive resources by transnational and local corporations, landlords and elites in the country. The large-scale conversion of rice fields, vegetable and fruit gardens, and small mixed farms into cash crops for exports as well as land grabbing for industrial purposes, tourism and infrastructure projects only benefit the large TNCs, landlords and local elites.
These incidences have far-reaching implications and affect women disproportionately. Stakes have become higher for rural women as they become exploited as workers in corporate farms that are expanding into rural areas. As they become informal workers, low wages make them exist far below the poverty line. Women face more and more hazards with highly toxic chemicals and forms of hazardous technologies brought about by monocultures and high-input agriculture. As a result, women's reproductive and health rights and well being are being sacrificed in the altar of globalization. This set-up also results in massive displacement and forced migration of local rural and farming communities who have lived in those lands for decades. Rural women suffer mounting hunger and food insecurity, escalating unemployment and are forced into bonded forms of labour. Forced migration and trafficking of women is also on the rise where these women have few rights and face brutal exploitation, abuse and harassment.
Because rural women are also subjugated by cultural, social and patriarchal norms that have become institutionalised, they are caught in a web of exploitation. In such an unjust system, women peasants, agricultural workers, Dalits, fisherfolk and indigenous women are doubly oppressed and marginalised. The experiences in the communities are very diverse, yet rural women's issues and demands are encased on a common thread to become united and remain vigilant to fight these oppressions, these inequalities, and violence.
Women's resistance: Reclaiming their rights
The struggle of women is the struggle for rights, identity, dignity, empowerment and full potentiality. Rural women are continuously asserting their rights to define and determine food and agricultural policies; their rights to productive and political resources; their right to healthy food and healthy agriculture; and reclaiming their knowledge and control over resources. For women in Asia, it has also meant the assertion of their rights as farmers, as workers, as consumers, as mothers and as women.
Rural women have become involved in different forms of struggle as they carry their fight in their farms, picket lines, street demonstrations, parliaments and urban centers. Women are holding up placards and are in the frontline - from protesting the American war on Iraq, right up to human rights struggles and the fight for freedom and justice in their own lands and workplace. Rural women are resisting corporate-dominated mal-development and trade liberalisation. All over Asia, women peasants, farmers and workers are organising to drive out transnational corporations such as Syngenta and Monsanto. Rural women are demanding food sovereignty. Women farmers are out in the fields practising sustainable agriculture and livelihoods. Rural women are fighting to take control of their bodies and claim their reproductive rights. Rural women are challenging patriarchy within their families and communities. Rural women are challenging national policies to incorporate the women's agenda and become represented in parliaments. Rural women have become leaders, resource persons and speakers.
But it has become urgent more so now for rural women to come together to create a visible force to consolidate these gains and move towards a global women's movement. Rural women are challenged to consolidate the strengths in the resistance against globalization and imperialist forces, highlighting their concerns to avoid being set aside and ignored, and sending out the message that women are resisting injustices and not afraid to let their voices be heard. The rural women's movement is strengthening at the local and national level and is emerging as a global force and it is the will of the women that will determine the change.
|
