Women and Trade: Waking Up In Seattle
by Marilyn Clement
When Denise O’Brian, an Iowa farmer and member of United Methodist Women, headed to Seattle, Wash., late last year, she joined tens of thousands of women and men from around the world to protest activities of the World Trade Organization.
While Ms. O’Brian was focused on the impact of current trade directions on agriculture, especially on family farms, she came prepared to work in coalition with those concerned about interlocking issues surrounding trade -- agriculture, environmental, labor and gender justice issues. She also came aware that all these issues impact women’s livelihood, health and exercise of human rights.
"There are only 1.9 million farmers left in the United States," Ms. O’Brian said. "Only by joining together, will we be able to take control of our lives again."
Joining together for a just economic system was the theme of those who came to protest the WTO. While media coverage of their protest focused on a few violent incidents, the real news was that the Seattle meeting marked the coalescing of a movement of people of the world to demand fair labor practices, restoration of human rights to all people, sustainable environmental practices, equitable distribution of wealth and resources -– all toward building a world economy that benefits all people, not just a corporate elite.
Demonstrators included farmers; students; church people, lay and clergy; peace and environmental activists; labor unions; and women’s groups. They came in opposition to a "new round" of trade negotiations by the WTO. They came seeking drastic change or disbanding of the WTO.
They returned home from Seattle pleased that the WTO adjourned without reaching consensus on future trade negotiations or agreements. And they returned home having built networks with diverse people and groups from many nations, which will allow continued work toward a global economy that includes all people.
Though optimistic, demonstrators remained clear that the corporate powers that set the rules for and drive the global economy are a formidable opponent. Coming together in Seattle gave them an opportunity to look closely at economic issues. For women, that meant looking at how trade policies impact their lives and the lives of their families and communities.
A complaint filed with the WTO against Guatemala, in the name of free trade, threatens to overturn a hard-fought battle to stop marketing of infant formula in developing nations.
Many members of United Methodist Women participated in the boycott of Nestle in the 1970s and 1980s. They, along with other child advocates, worked to push Nestle to discontinue its campaign to get women in developing nations to replace breast-feeding with formula feeding.
In Guatemala, Nestle was distributing pamphlets showing healthy, robust babies and models dressed as nurses and doctors urging mothers to reject old-fashioned breast-feeding for the modern method –- formula feeding.
From Nestle’s perspective, the sales campaign worked. Guatemalan mothers switched to formula. From the babies’ perspective, the campaign was disastrous.
Clean water for mixing the infant formula was unavailable in many places. Mothers couldn’t afford to purchase a constant supply of formula so began diluting what they had to stretch it thus diluting its nutritional value. Babies failed to thrive. In fact, many become ill. Some died.
Thousands of people boycotted Nestle’s products until the company agreed to change its marketing tactics. The protest took 15 years.
Now that victory for the babies and mothers of Guatemala and other developing nations is threatened because companies see such consumer pressure as blocking free trade.
This is only one of dozens of cases reported during workshops held by WTO protestors in Seattle. In the five years since the creation of the WTO, there have been about 180 such complaints brought before judges named by the WTO –- judges not elected or appointed under any democratic authority.
At the heart of such situations is the concept of free trade, which has been so named by the corporate world because it allows multinational corporations to do business tax-free. With no taxes –- called tariffs in the world of international commerce –- to pay, corporations enjoy larger profits.
Under WTO free-trade guidelines, corporations will not be required to pay tariffs to any country when they move goods, raw materials and people around the world. Countries, including the United States, will be required to lower environmental, labor and human-rights standards whenever national, regional or local laws are deemed unfair barriers to trade –- regulations that stand in the way of maximum profits.
Such trade is not free to citizens of WTO member countries who will have to pay increased taxes for education, health care, national security, justice, roads and other infrastructure –- costs previously shared by corporate-paid tariffs.
The impact of reduced tariff income will be especially detrimental to impoverished countries that desperately need the money for schools, roads, health care and clean water.
Elizabeth Charles, a banana farmer from St. Lucia, came to Seattle with financial assistance from the Women’s Division to tell her story of economic hardship because of WTO policy.
Before formation of the WTO, independent small banana farmers –- many of them women -- in former European colonies in the Caribbean benefitted from European Union policy that ensured a small percentage of bananas imported to Europe would come from the islands. The agreement helped Caribbean banana farmers like Ms. Charles who own small plots of land sustain themselves and their families.
A complaint brought to the WTO by the Clinton Administration on behalf of Chiquita Bananas forced the European Union to abandon the policy in favor of buying bananas from Chiquita’s Central American plantations. The complaint was brought in the name of free trade without barriers.
Even as Ms. Charles and her Caribbean neighbors lost their livelihood so too did the environment lose in the WTO decision. While the Caribbean farmers had developed environmentally-sustainable farming methods, multinational corporations depend on massive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, which deplete the natural nutrients of soil and pollute water and food supplies.
Others policies of the WTO, some in support of World Bank and International Monetary policies, further threaten the livelihood of independent farmers, many of whom are women, around the world.
Structural-adjustment policies, which require production of food for export not domestic use to pay national debt, and genetic altering of crops and animals pose threats.
A farmer from the Philippines who came to Seattle said structural adjustment and the withdrawal of farm subsidies in the name of free trade are forcing farmers in his country off their land. For every farmer who has land, there are seven who are landless, he said.
Loans made to developing nations in the 1970s and 1980s, which led to debt, were often used to purchase weapons from industrialized nations. Those weapons are being used in today’s ethnic and border-related power struggles.
Genetics and farming
Farmers who came to Seattle expressed dismay at being forced by economics to plant genetically-altered seeds only to discover that people around the world are rejecting these seeds –- known as terminator seeds –- because they will not germinate a second year.
Protestors speaking as food consumers voiced concern that people around the world are being fed genetically-altered foods without knowing or agreeing to it. Farmers and consumers in Seattle agreed labeling is needed so people can choose whether or not to eat these foods.
While labeling sounded reasonable, protestors learned even labeling may be considered an unfair barrier to trade by the WTO. The organization’s "Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement" prohibits WTO member countries from using measures relating to product characteristics, labeling and packaging as disguised measures to protect domestic industries from foreign competition.
The European Union, which has been vocal in its rejection of beef raised with bovine growth hormone and other altered foods, has been ordered by the WTO to lower its barriers to these products or pay heavy fines. The WTO directive was prompted by complaint from powerful countries in the North.
Policies that favor multinational corporate farming enterprises threaten even more than people’s livelihood and the environment. A Japanese farmer who traveled to Seattle spoke of his spiritual connection to the land:
"These plants are not just a field of rice to me. When I see their heads nodding in the breeze, I say, ‘Hello, Mr. Rice. Hello, Ms. Rice.’"
Thandiwe Nkomo of Zimbabwe traveled to Seattle with financial assistance from the Women’s Division to explain how WTO policies are impacting rural development and women in her nation.
Ms. Nkomo, like many African women, must support her family through agriculture, a task that is becoming more and more difficult because of trade policies developed by world powers to recover developing-nations’ debt.
Rather than growing food for her family and neighbors, Ms. Nkomo must grow food for export. Government resources –- training, loans, seeds –- go to export farmers.
Ms. Nkomo, along with farmers in many nations, are saying:
"We produce what we don’t use, and we use what we don’t produce."
They are forced to grow or produce goods for cash sale to other countries and forced to buy food and other necessities from other countries, usually the industrialized countries.
While Ms. Nkomo and other farmers in Zimbabwe are seeking an end to such trade policies, they aren’t standing still. They have organized an association that facilitates trading within the country thus ensuring food and seed to areas stricken by drought.
South Africa is an example of a country with newly-elected democratic leadership that cannot make progress because of long-term debt. Loans made to an undemocratic South African government during apartheid years must be repaid by the new government with scarce dollars –- dollars needed to develop infrastructure, provide health care, build schools, ensure safety and sanitation to the nation’s people.
Debt and its accompanying structural-adjustment directives, born of poverty and the cause of ongoing poverty, make it difficult for developing nations to challenge or overturn trade policies and momentum.
Countries of the South go along with the unfair trade system because they are desperate for income. They are being told free trade is their future. If they don’t get on board with the free-market global economy now, it will be too late. Trade will not come to their land.
They’ve also been told the only way out of debt toward increasing national income is to export more goods.
In a discussion in Seattle, an indigenous woman from El Salvador debated a delegate to the WTO who is a member of the British Parliament. Their topic: "Who is rich and who is poor."
The British Parliamentarian said he could not understand why everyone was not happy about the WTO and free trade since the intention was to make all countries rich like the northern countries.
The woman from El Salvador responded:
"You are not rich, and we are not poor. You have been enriched, and we have been impoverished by the policies of the North from colonialism to slavery to the policies of the World Trade Organization."
She went on to say people of the South don’t want to be rich in the way people of the North are, particularly when it comes to the issue of sustainability of life and natural resources.
For many developing countries, WTO policies boil down to a system that robs them of natural resources, including plants and organisms they have used for medicinal purposes for years. Free-trade promoters are discovering and claiming these resources as intellectual property.
WTO talks in Seattle collapsed without accord. Demonstrators’ voices were heard by some delegates and sectors of the public. So what next?
Citizens who believe in self-government and democracy, like those who came to Seattle to protest the WTO and people of faith, including members of United Methodist Women, are key to a just global economy. They must become better informed so they can evaluate the World Trade Organization and determine if another method of economic development and trade can better serve the needs and aspirations of all human beings.
WTO protestors offered multiple approaches to this ongoing debate. Some believed the best strategy is to try to reform the WTO. Others wanted to work to abolish it. All called for more transparency and democratic participation in world-trade decisions.
Marilyn Clement is executive secretary for economic justice for the Women’s Division. She was in Seattle, Wash., in December 1999 for the World Trade Organization meeting.