WOMEN ON THE MOVE:
Towards an ’Initiative to set up a Feminist Network Against Debt and Austerity Measures’ in Europe
While we have to face the worst social backlashes since World War II, feminists have no space nor place to address the new historical challenges our movement is confronted with. Indeed the Feminist movement seems to be paralysed and hardly aware that we have moved to a new historical era in which we need to build a new European Feminist Movement. Debt mechanisms are not understood either, which makes it possible for the power of finance to impose regressive policies, affecting the daily like of women everywhere in Europe.
A radical criticism from a feminist point of view bearing on the dominant discourse on the debt issue opens a new field of research in Europe, including for feminist economists, women scientists and activists in social movements. The analysis of the “debt crisis” is still too often perceived as some male prerogative while the debt crisis is seen as a natural disaster, some inevitable natural phenomenon… The consequences of the austerity plans themselves are observed as isolate policies and considered only on a national scale.
These facts have led us to identify a vacuum, a political gap that we need to address!
1) Proposal for a text presenting the goal of our work
For more than 30 years, millions of women in Africa, Asia and South America have suffered the economic, social and political consequences of the debt. Structural Adjustment Plans that combine cuts in public expenditure with privatisation of public services (such as healthcare, education, public transport, water and electricity supply, etc.) were imposed upon them as a way to refund the external public debt. These women have opposed these violent policies that had disastrous consequences on them and their societies. Social and political women activists have developed detailed analyses of the consequences of debt and have created tools for collective struggles against these policies.
Already in the 1980s and 1990s millions of women in Eastern Europe were confronted with IMF supervision. Endemic rise of poverty, destruction of the economy, nationalisms and wars were the direct consequences of the incursion of this institution into the national policies of these States... Today, the international finance is attacking the Western countries weakened by the global crisis. Countries such as Greece, Hungary, Romania, Ireland and Portugal are under Structural Adjustment Plans that have a dramatic social cost. The European Feminist Movements must respond to these new challenges and develop a comprehensive analysis of the consequences of such policies imposed all over Europe claiming that this is necessary to refund the debt.
We have to learn from the work done by our comrades from other continents and develop a clear view of what kind of new economy we want, an economy that would respect our needs and allow us to live in harmony with Nature, today and in the future.
For this purpose, we need to answer the following questions:
– What is the origin of the debt in our countries? Who decides about the indebtedness of States, social structures and individuals?
– Who benefits from public and private debts? Which person, structure, institution is not paying taxes and so is not contributing to general welfare, legally and illegally?
– Who owns and benefits from our countries’ wealth? How is this wealth being produced and redistributed? Who is selling and collecting the income?
– How does the State answer our needs? How much is really spent to meet the women’s needs? What amount is dedicated to healthcare, education, to services that are useful for women and indeed for the emancipation of all?
– How are we affected in our daily life by wage losses, unemployment and job insecurity, privatisations, cut in public expenses in the social sector? Who will meet the vital needs that are not addressed because of these policies, and how will it be done?
– How is the informal sector becoming the last chance for women to survive and thus being accepted as a social norm? (Moonlighting, unpaid labour, forced labour, subsistence farming, unauthorized street vending, prostitution, begging, etc.)
– What kind of economic, agricultural, industrial, financial, domestic and collective model do women want for Europe?
– What are the feminist inputs on debt alternatives? (eg. taking part to audit processes with a feminist point of view, broadcasting information on the consequences on women of austerity plans imposed in the name of debt within the European feminist and potentially women networks, mobilising these networks to fight against debt, etc.)
To answer these questions, we need to have a clear view of the real situation of women in Europe and to prepare an effective collective counterattack, in solidarity with our comrades who are fighting against debt all over the world.
2) Building a European feminist working group:
We consequently need to launch a process and create a space where to exchange and structurally analyse the situation, starting with the above mentioned questions (this is only a blueprint for a working plan; therefore it should evolve with the inputs made by us all). The first task we need to undertake is the constitution of a European feminist working group. We should first look for new people that would be likely to join us, while taking initiatives to innovate, enrich and widen this process, and open the movement to new areas.
Here are a few proposals, beyond the creation of a mailing list for the working group (unfortunately exclusively French-speaking for the time being):
A. A working group in each country
We also have to gather on a national scale, where we already are (Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary) to create, with key people, feminist working groups, in order to analyse the consequences on women of the austerity measures in each country.
B. Broader feminist working group in each country
These people, in turn, may create broader feminist working groups with the aim of informing the society of their respective countries on debt and auditing issues: organize lectures, write articles, call for demonstrations, etc.
C. Material
These analyses will be used to write articles, brochures, organize meetings, workshops, conferences, training sessions, etc. In Greece, it is also necessary to equip the feminist movement for it to take part in and actively support the Auditing Committee on Greek Debt.
D. Developing collaborations to broaden our European working group
We will contact researchers, economists, social movement activists, trade union members and feminists all over Europe, including in the Balkans, in Western Europe, in Germany, England… to offer them to collaborate to this project.
We will, as a European feminist initiative “against debt and austerity measures”, take part in the conferences against debt and austerity plans in Athens (April 6 and 7), Brussels (May 31) and London (October 1), as well as in the Summer Universities of several social movements (e.g. CADTM-Europe-Belgium Summer University, June 30 to July 3; ATTAC European Network, August 9 to 14, 2011, Germany).
Our main goal is to build a new open process that can later become a European Network. This Network could eventually join forces and give birth to a European feminist campaign, either autonomously or in collaboration with the social movements.
If we can achieve these few ideas, we will have taken a big step forward…