[stop-imf] Reason 2 to Join IMF/Bank Protests - Gender Impacts

[Robert Weissman]

	GENDER AT THE IMF I: WOMEN? WHAT WOMEN?

	REASON NO. 2 TO JOIN THE FALL PROTESTS 
	AGAINST THE IMF AND WORLD BANK

	SEE WWW.GLOBALIZETHIS.ORG FOR PROTEST DETAILS

IMF policies impact virtually every aspect of women's daily lives, from
their wages to their access to and quality of health, education and
other services, to what they produce and consume, to how they use their
own labor and to the economic struggles they face and the options they
have for overcoming them. 

These impacts are overwhelmingly negative. IMF-imposed austerity and
economic reform programs have stripped many women of what meager health
and education benefits were once available to them. 

Women's formal sector unemployment has increased due to IMF-induced
recessions, privatizations, and government cutbacks. 

In Central Asia, for example, women have been the targets of dramatic
job losses as state-owned companies are sold to the private sector. 

Sweatshops, whose workers are predominantly women, have proliferated,
specifically supported by IMF policies encouraging exports and free
trade zones. 

Food production and other activities that provide income and sustenance
to households have been undermined, as in Africa where incentives that
switch land and labor to export crop production have forced women to
reduce time tending farm plots that are the basis of food security and
spend more time as unpaid laborers. The proportion of female-maintained
households continues to grow as men become unemployed or are pushed out
of their traditional income- generating roles. 

Since the onset of structural adjustment policies, women have had to
work harder and harder just to survive, absorbing enormous physical and
psychological burdens. 


Excerpted from a paper by Lisa A. McGowan, "Bailouts for Bankers,
Burdens for Women," http://www.50years.org/factsheets/bailouts.html. 

For much more detail, see Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of
Survival and Resistance, Beverly Bell, Cornell University Pres 

	-- SEE WWW.GLOBALIZETHIS.ORG FOR PROTEST DETAILS --