Critical Moment, Signs of Resistance and Evolving Strategies
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development. Copyright © 2003 Society for International Development (www.sidint.org). 1011-6370 (200306) 46:2; 117–120; 033518. NB When citing this article please use both volume and issue numbers. SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)
Last Word
Statement: World Social Forum III, Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 2003 WOMEN’S I N T E R N AT I O N A L COALITION FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE (WICEJ)
Critical moments, signs of resistance and evolving strategies Global women’s movements are at a new political moment. This is a context that challenges us to evaluate our analysis and strategies. As a people-centred, gender aware, sustainable and equitable development agenda is sidelined by the neo-liberal corporate agenda, women have increased their presence in new international arenas. These include monitoring the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional trade blocks; corporate campaigns; as well as support for the World Social Forum. The Women’s International Coalition for Economic Justice (WICEJ) is a space that links women’s organizations and builds relationships between the issues of women’s rights, women’s economic justice, women’s multiple discrimination and peace and security. WICEJ is assessing new strategic venues for action, and ways for women to collaborate across venues to advance economic justice and all women’s human rights. We are working to build bridges among feminists and women’s groups who organize around health, violence and reproductive rights, and those who organize around development, macro-economic policy and economic justice – bridges across regions of the world, bridges among women in trade unions and women’s NGOs, and bridges across lines of race, ethnicity, caste, class and sexual orientation. We see the emergence of a diverse movement for global justice, represented in the World Social Forum, as a sign of hope, resistance and alternatives in this time of crisis. We recognize the ways in which social movements have drawn on women’s vision and organizing experience. We have been concerned about
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development 46(2): Last Word women’s marginalization within social movements. We welcome advances in feminist leadership in the third World Social Forum and urge that this be strengthened at the international, regional and local levels of the Forum, to strengthen the Forum process as a whole. There are key events and developments that shape this current moment:
access to resources that assure life choices leading to reproductive health and well-being. Increasingly, corporate globalization and fundamentalisms are leaving deep marks on women’s reproductive and productive bodies in a shifting ‘body politics’ that commodifies and controls women’s bodies.
Rise of fundamentalisms
Militarism and the ‘war on terrorism’
Women are being hemmed in by two forces: One is the push for a corporate-led globalization with a ‘fundamentalist’ notion that there is only one economic model fo
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