Welcome to BASE21

Neo-liberalism, a particular mode of capital accumulation based on financial globalisation, trade liberalisation, privatisation, deregu-lation and export intensity in the Third World, has not improved the conditions of the world's peoples, in particular, women. It has instead, worsened the oppression of women in which global capital has further exploited the secondary status of women. Women's oppression is rooted in structural inequities that create, perpetuate and thrive on class, gender oppression and racism, instigated by the neo-liberalism.

The specific mode of capital accumulation and the international division of labour may have increased the participation of the female labour force in paid employment, enough for the term 'feminisation of labour' to be introduced. However, this phenomenon has in no way improved the social, political or economic status of women. The mobility of global capital (ie transferring labour-intensive production processes to low-wage regimes of developing countries) and flexibilisation of labour, has relegated women to low-paying, irregular jobs. Denied of employment and social security, women are forced to work under harsh conditions and remain segregated in informal employment. Due to the economic crisis of 1997 and the IMF Structural Adjustment Program in Korea, almost 60% of the labour force is employed on an irregular basis and a majority of them are women. With more and more women joining the huge reserve army of cheap labour, capital is further emboldened to depress all wages, backtrack on labour and social stan-dards and resort to more exploitative labour flexibility schemes.

Refused of stable jobs, more and more women are forced to migrate on order to make a living. However, at the host country, women migrant workers face sexual harassment and violence, racial discrimin-ation and scapegoating, deprivation of labour rights and basic right to organize, and are concentrated in employment which exploit their gender role as care-givers. Or many women have no choice than to resort to the informal economy, including prostitution, sex trade and trafficking. Sex trafficking and the sex industry has proliferated in all areas of the world and now take on an international form, while stigmatisation and criminalis-ation of sex workers still deprive them of very basic human rights.

Also, the WTO trade regime has destroyed the livelihoods of small peasants, in favour of transnational giants of industrialised nations. The WTO has effectively replaced sub-sistence agriculture with cash crop production and dependence on imports that imperil food sovereignty, and has worsened the problem of peasants' access to land and natural resources. Not only has this regime impoverished women in rural areas, but has dislocated them to force many peasant women to migrate to urban centers.

Neo-liberal doctrine of state deregulation and privatization has undermined the rights of the people to get access to public services such as health and education. This especially burdens women in the sense that they cannot afford expensive private services. Also because of the cut in social spending, the responsibility of caring for and nurturing the children and elderly now rests entirely within the household, on women. This has increased the already heavy double burden on women, in production and unpaid domestic work. Furthermore, in a situation where 458 million women worldwide suffer from iron deficiency, 95% of adult women from low income groups weigh less than 50kg, and uncal-culable number suffer from AIDS. Limited access to medical services is literally driving poor women to death.

Capital globalisation also plays a definite part in the increased violence against women. Economic domination of transnational capital is backed by the global political and military machinery of imperialist countries. Militar-ism has subjected women and children to unmitigated human rights abuses, sexual slavery and violence, and prostitution.

In the face of the fact that global capitalism continues to assimilate and promote the remnants of patriarchal systems and stru-ctures, underscores the urgency for building mass women's movement which target the core of the system itself.

Many women's groups and activists have participated in international conventions and national legislations, opening up space for lobbying and advocacy, while pressuring governments to adopt specific legislations aimed at promoting gender equality and immediately improving the status of women. However, these remain largely inadequate, and in some cases they act as justification and palliative of the very system that oppress women. Many governments, the bourgeoisie and the proponents of neo-liberal globalis-ation have adopted the rhetorics of gender equality to obscure the destructive effects of global capitalism, and many women's groups and activists have been mainstreamed and blinded to the real causes of the misery and poverty that women face today.

The intense attack of globalisation on peoples lives has given birth to the resurgence of anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist movements, and there is an increasing number of women and women's groups taking up the challenge of advancing women's demands, as a distinct form of struggle against globalisation. However, despite the fact that gender-biasedness of neo-liberal globalisation has been manifested and exposed, women's issues are still very much left on the sidelines. Especially in Asian countries where tra-ditional patriarchal values still very much rule the minds of those in even in the people's movement, gender issues are considered 'unimportant' and women activists discriminated. It is essential that the movement against globalisation include the demands of Third World women, to fully manifest its potential and form a firm solidarity between women's movement and other social movements of oppressed classes and peoples be formed.

We propose the following agendas and themes for a development of an internationalist work and resistance of women's groups and activists against neo-liberal globalisation. PICIS is open to exchange and solidarity with all groups and activists who would like to take on the task of implementing the below.

Detailed mechanisms of globalisation that oppress and undermine women's rights in various forms should be looked into, and diverse strategies and alternatives which are favourable to women should be drawn up. The agendas such as the dismantlement of IMF, World Bank, WTO and other instruments that entrench global inequity and exploitation, call for total cancellation of Third World debt, control of financial exchange etc, should be assessed from women's point of view, on how those strategies and alternatives can benefit women. There should also be close collaboration to collect and share the diverse, yet not quite visible, materials and experiences of different women in the South.

A broad and radical solidarity and network of women's groups and activists should be formed, especially among women in the South, so as to make women's voice heard more clearly inside the movement against neo-liberal globalisation. The organising of an autonomous women's solidarity must be directed at struggling against the system of global capitalism itself, while refusing any sidelining of women's specific concerns and issues.