Recession hits women in developing countries

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/598496


The most shattering moment of Bushara's life arrived without warning: "One year ago when I went out to buy breakfast, I saw something written on the wall of our house," she said. "The graffiti told Shiites in the neighbourhood to get out."

Bushara, an Iraqi mother who lived near Abu Ghraib prison, knew there was no time to waste. The death squads were on the march. In bare feet, she fled with her husband and young daughters as the winter winds propelled them from their home. Her story, told to Oxfam International, is typical for Iraqi women, who have suffered loss and destitution since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Nor has the reported lessening of violence since 2007 improved their lives.

According to an Oxfam survey released last week, "despite fragile security gains and a decline in indiscriminate and sectarian violence over the past months, the day-to-day lives of many women in Iraq remain dire." Questioning 1,700 women in five provinces, Oxfam found:

• More than 40 per cent said their security situation was worse than last year; 22 per cent said it was about the same.

• 55 per cent said they had become victims of violence since the invasion.

• More than 30 per cent had family members who died violently.

• About 69 per cent said access to water was worse; 25 per cent had no daily access to drinking water.

• Two-thirds had electricity less than six hours a day, and one-third less than three hours a day.

• 40 per cent said that their children were not attending school.

– Olivia Ward

Raising their placards for equality
In tough economic times, fear about layoffs, bankruptcies and companies shutting their doors threaten to push other issues off the public agenda.Mar 08, 2009 04:30 AM
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Olivia Ward
FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER

In Nepal, destitute parents sell their daughters to traffickers. In Pakistan, marrying off underage daughters relieves a family's financial burden. In parts of Asia and Africa, mothers are forced to choose which of their children they will feed, and which will starve.

Today, International Women's Day, women celebrate the gains made in achieving equal rights and highlight the widespread wrongs that damage the lives of the 3.3 billion females around the world.

But the issue foremost in women's minds is the global recession, which has hit the most vulnerable half of humanity with exceptional force.

Seventy per cent of the poorest people on the planet are women and girls, and even in a wealthy country like Canada they are the majority of the poor.

Although the global downturn began in the financial sector, dominated by men, it is now bearing down on women, most often found in low-wage and part-time jobs.

The recession has plunged from wealthy to developing countries, where women lack safety nets to help them survive.

"As the economy slows, the disaster in the financial institutions is affecting the real economy," says Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a coalition of groups in 100 countries.

"What happens is the informal sector suffers first – the cleaning women, gardeners and people who do the household jobs. They are mostly women."

As worldwide consumer confidence fades, says the International Labour Organization, traditionally female service jobs in cafes and retail stores are also disappearing. It predicts that 22 million of an estimated 51 million to lose their jobs this year will be women.

Adding to the problem is a global food crisis that has caused a spike in the price of dietary staples like rice, narrowing the line between malnutrition and starvation.

"The increase in hunger and economic stress is accelerating fast, and that affects women in a number of different ways," says Borren.

Because women earn less than men even in good times – a 16 per cent global pay gap, according to the International Trade Union Confederation – they have less to fall back on when times turn bad.

But those at the bottom are also caught in a vicious circle of poverty and abuse. Women who held normal jobs are forced into the "shadow" economy of prostitution, drug smuggling and other criminal activity. Or they are drawn into the nets of vicious international traffickers.

They're also more at risk of domestic violence, when unemployed husbands and fathers take out their frustration at home.

At the same time, cuts in humanitarian aid budgets mean less money to spend on education, the key factor in lifting women out of poverty. Health care suffers, with devastating effects on pregnant women, HIV/AIDs victims, and those in conflict zones where women are targeted for sexual attack.

Some of the worst affected women are migrants, whose numbers grow as life gets harder in their original countries.

"Women and girls are disproportionately affected by the risks of migration because of their vulnerability to exploitation and violence," says Ndioro Ndiaye of the International Organization for Migration. And, he adds, lack of access to health care can have long-term effects for women and their children.

But as the economic storm clouds gather, the horizon is not entirely dark for women, says Borren.

"If you go to local solutions, you see room for hope," she says.

"To help in the food crisis, there's organizing and investing in microcredit so women can have plots of land. Unions are trying to solve the problem of lack of qualified teachers with fast-track training. Small water and electricity projects can work at the household level."

Along with increased risk there is great opportunity for women in the current crisis, Borren says. "We're concentrating on top-down solutions, which have proved unsustainable, and often stupid. Now it's time to put women at the centre, and work from the bottom up."



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