Background

In recent years, the world witnessed by far the worst manifestation of imperialist crisis with the global financial and economic crisis. While corporations and financial institutions suffer immense losses including bankruptcy, the more devastating impact were suffered by the working class people when nearly 212 million were left jobless.

Long before the global financial crisis, economies in the Asia Pacific, whose governments adhere to neo-liberal policies, had been suffering from the impact of globalization. In fact, the Asia-Pacific region has most of the world’s hungry; 642 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition. In particular, economic crises always gravely hit the women in Asia where most women are found in the most vulnerable sectors. Privatisation, monopolies and pro-profit reforms in the health sector are slowly dismantling public health care services, making it ineffective, inaccessible and unaffordable to women in rural areas and youth. Most Asian women are within the agricultural production and small-scale fisheries (especially in South Asia) and still constitute the majority of temporary, casual, seasonal and contract labourers, and low-skilled workers.

The consequent climate crisis, as a result of MNC/TNC plunder and abuse of natural resources, impact heavily on women. Aside from the displacement and dislocation of rural women from their land and productive resources, women and children run fourteen times the risk of dying from natural disasters than men (Women’s Environment and Development Organization).

As always the case, world economic crises spawn political crises, both locally and worldwide. Wars of aggression and military intervention initiated and sponsored by the United States government had caused innumerable death and suffering, including the harrowing sexual abuse of women in situations of war and militarism.

The US government also leads the ideological war to sow disunity among the people's resisting their political and economic dominance. Particular to women and women's movements, corporate globalization props the view that women's oppression is contained within the bounds of gender relations and obscures the reality that, in modern history, corporate globalization sustains patriarchy. “It intensifies, shapes and gives patriarchy its current form to serve the imperialist and the ruling elites and makes women more vulnerable to exploitation, oppression and violence.”¹

Yet the current global crisis became a fertile ground for people's resistance including women's resistance. Rural women do this from a situation of multiple oppression or worse, working more for less pay, having less or no access to land and resources and more family responsibilities. Rural women continue to bear the brunt of patriarchal values and backward social systems.

Rural women are in the front lines fighting for freedom, justice and survival. Peasant and indigenous women through their organisations had taken to various forms of resistance to defend their lands and ancestral territories against corporations and landlords. The struggle even includes taking over abandoned agricultural lands. Women workers joined and even lead strikes to fight for higher wages and protect their rights to work.  Rural women are human rights defenders asserting their economic, social and cultural rights -- from rights to food, water and other productive resources, health, nutrition, education, traditional knowledge to decent income and jobs as well as civil political rights including right to self-determination.

Women around the world are organising to resist imperialist globalization towards ending the exploitation and oppression of rural women and, the working class, in general. Women workers, peasants, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, Dalits, youth, academe are all organizing, sharing strategies, perspectives and struggles to reclaim their rights and build alternative societies. Women are mobilizing locally and internationally around their specific issues and in a global framework.

Borne of the women's continued resistance against imperialist globalization was the Asian Rural Women's Regional Consultation held in the Philippines in 2007 (of 52 Asian women from 14 countries) followed by the Asian Rural Women’s Conference in 2008 held in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu, India. The 2008 conference forged unity among the 700 rural women leaders, national women’s groups, regional networks representing peasants, agricultural workers, indigenous women, Dalit women, workers and migrants from around 21 countries in Asia and the Pacific. These processes paved the way in the formation of the Asian Rural Women's Coalition (ARWC) in March 2008.

From then to present, ARWC had immensely contributed in putting forward the struggle for rights and interests of rural women in Asia, through supporting initiatives of Asian women within their countries (supporting advocacy work and local/national consultations, eg the State-level Conference of Dalit Women in India; GABRIELA’s national-level consultations); sharing information at the regional and international levels thru the ARWC list serve; and linking struggles of Asian rural women including active participation in regional and international fora, conferences and formations (recently, the formation of the International Women’s Alliance). In July 2010, ARWC co-sponsored the Conference on Women Resisting Crisis and War: A conference on the impacts and women’s responses to the economic and climate crises and war of the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN). In August 2010, ARWC also became active during the Montreal International Women’s Conference. ARWC is also engaged in the international policy advocacy work through the Civil Society Forum of the FAO’s Committee on Food Security and developing the CSO’s Guideline on Land and Natural Resources Tenure for the FAO.

Asian rural women comprise the majority of world women's population and, thus, play a critical role in the fight against imperialist globalization. The intensifying crisis brought by globalization warrants an intensified resistance. Towards this that ARWC, also in commemoration of the 100th year of the International Women's Day in March 2011, furthers its mission to strengthen the unity and advance the struggle of Asian rural women.

Theme: 100 Years of Asian Women's Resistance: Rights, Empowerment and Liberation

Objectives:

1. To commemorate and celebrate the centenary of the International Toiling Women’s Day, gather Asian women from various sectors (formal and informal workers, peasants and agricultural workers, indigenous women, Dalits, pastoralists, fisherfolk, migrants, minorities, etc) to discuss and share new trends, emerging issues and challenges;
2. To share strategies and draw lessons on women's resistance and movements from different countries;
3. To develop new strategies forging greater unity and cooperation in resisting globalization at the local and regional and inter-regional levels;
4. Strengthen women’s solidarity to reclaim our rights.

Content:

1. New trends, emerging issues and challenges of gender and rights oppression / violence being experienced by women in Asia as a result of the intensifying crisis
2. Various resistance and lessons (strengths and weaknesses) in the women's movement; including sectoral resistance i.e. peasant women's struggle, indigenous/Dalit women's struggle; workers’ struggle, etc.
3. New strategies and alternatives for stronger regional and inter-regional unity and linking with international women's organizations (i.e. International Women's Alliance).

>About the Conference

Asian women leaders and representatives from various sectors (formal and informal workers, peasants and agricultural workers, indigenous women, Dalits, pastoralists, fisherfolk, migrants, minorities, etc), including support groups, academia and other stakeholders working on women’s rights and issues will take part in the 2-day conference to be held on 29-30 March 2011 in Tamil Nadu, India.

As build-up activity for the conference, coordinated national actions will be held on March 8. The groups will bring their messages to the regional conference in India.

The conference will have panel discussions, simultaneous workshops, speak outs and skills-sharing. A public meeting will also be held on March 31 2011.

Day 1 will focus on the theme: Trends, Emerging Issues and Impact; and the Various Resistance, Challenges and Lessons in the women’s movements and sectors. Presentations and workshops will tackle the issues of:

1. Migration, workers and the global economic crisis
2. Climate change
3. Corporate control on land and resources
4. War and militarisation
5. Ethnic and class conflicts
6. Sexual and reproductive health and rights

Day 2 will revolve around Developing New Strategies and Alternatives for stronger regional and inter-regional unities of women’s organisations and movements.

Proponent

The Steering Committee (SC) of the Asian Rural Women’s Coalition (ARWC) is organising this activity and the Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED) as its local host in India.

The SC ARWC is composed of 12 member groups of national formations/alliances and regional organisations working on women’s issues on various fronts. The SC members include national alliances: Tamil Nadu Women's Forum (TNWF) and Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED) in India; Tenaganita in Malaysia; Human Development Organization (HDO) in Sri Lanka; INNABUYOG and GABRIELA National Alliance of Women's Organization in the Philippines; and the All Nepal Women's Alliance (ANWA) in Nepal. Regional network include Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), Committee for Asian Women (CAW), Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM Asia); the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP).

For more information: Email: secretariat@asianruralwomen.net
www.asianruralwomen.net

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¹ Liza Maza, “Moving Forward the Militant Global Women's Movement in the 21st Century”, Keynote Address at the Montreal International Women's Conference, August 13-15, 2010 (Canada).