Vol. 25 No. 1, March 2006

In God's Image is an Asian Christian women's effort to provide a forum for expressing our reality, our struggles, our faith reflections and aspirations for change.

Editorial

Economy as a matter of faith

Economic globalisation is, at core, a moral and ethical issue. The 1998 Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Harare posed a basic question to churches and the ecumenical community in general: “how do we live our faith in the context of globalisation?” Since then, ecumenical churches have been engaged in a process of critical reflection on economic globalisation grounded in the affirmation of the sacredness of all life and in God’s preferential option for the marginalised and exploited. 

Studies and consultations conducted by academics, churches and other civil society organisations have consistently pointed out that economic policies associated with globalisation have resulted in new forms of poverty, an alarming, ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor across countries and within countries, and heightened degradation of our planet’s fragile life-support system. This untenable situation stands in stark contrast to the ecumenical vision of building “just, participatory and sustainable communities,” which implies the nurturing of equitable relations among people – regardless of class, race and gender – and between people and the environment. 

Motivated by faith, churches have not merely stood aside in the face of injustice and ecological destruction. Among other efforts, they have spearheaded and supported programmes and activities for just and responsible trade and finance (e.g. “Trade for People, Not People for Trade” and Jubilee 2000 campaigns for the cancellation of illegitimate foreign debt). They have also launched encounters with international financial institutions and established networks and partnerships with people’s organisations and movements at the World Social Forum and other platforms. In order to consolidate churches’ growing critique, analyses of and proposed alternatives to globalisation, the WCC initiated the Alternative Globalisation Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE) process, culminating in the February 2006 Assembly of the WCC in Porto Alegre, Brazil. 

Women building alternatives to economic globalisation

Cutting edge research and testimonies have also demonstrated that women have a more negative experience of economic globalisation as compared to men. The differential impacts of globalisation on women and men stem from ascribed socio-economic roles that are under girded by continuing disparities running along class, race and, especially, gender “fault lines.” 

On the other hand, it is important to underline that women around the world have overcome the traditional notion of women as “victims.” They have organised themselves and their communities both locally and globally to resist the onslaught of globalisation in its current rapacious form as well as to advocate for urgent reforms, if not a fundamental transformation of economic and political structures and systems. Standing at the nexus of market production and social and ecological reproduction, paid labour and unpaid labour, the market economy and the care economy, women are able to offer different interpretations of the economy, its structures and policies. In short, women are building alternatives to economic globalisation.

The WCC and the ecumenical community believe that it is crucial for the AGAPE process, or any ecumenical reflection on globalisation, to account for and respond to the realities and needs of women. For while it is women, particularly women in the South, who are the most directly and disproportionately affected by policies aimed at trade and financial liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation, they continue to have very little say in economic policy and decision-making. Economics is an arena that has been dominated by men whether at the global and macro level (e.g. the World Trade Organisation or the WTO, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, national governments) or at the micro level (e.g. households). Yet, clearly, the perspectives of women, who comprise roughly half of humanity, must now be put to bear on ongoing debates on the global economy.

Women’s voices on AGAPE

In response to these issues, the WCC convened a pioneering meeting entitled “Towards a Caring Economy: Women Transforming Economic Globalisation” in February 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting helped to frame an alternative vision of a “caring economy” and outlined a plan of action based on the feminist ethic of care and political engagement for change. In appreciation of the contextuality of the struggles of Southern women who bear an inordinate “triple burden,” the meeting laid the groundwork for a Southern women’s gathering, giving birth to the “Women’s Voices on AGAPE” consultation that took place in Antipolo, the Philippines from 26 to 30 August 2004.

Bringing together 40 churchwomen, women economists, and women activists from the global South, the “Women’s Voices on AGAPE” consultation analysed the neoliberal trade and financial systems through feminist lenses. It produced “A Call to Transformative Reflection and Action” that challenged churches to interrogate the reductionist neoliberal thinking underlying the project of economic globalisation and proposed ways of reshaping and building trade and financial systems that are just, participatory, sustainable and caring. As a concrete action, the consultation participants committed to vigilantly monitor trade policies and to challenge the WTO, the international institution that writes the rules governing global trade, at its next ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. 

Ecumenical Women’s Forum on Life-Promoting Trade

Trade policies are neither value-neutral nor gender-neutral. The WCC in cooperation with the Christian Conference of Asia, ten other ecumenical organisations and the International Gender and Trade Network, convened the Ecumenical Women’s Forum on Life-Promoting Trade in December 2005 in Hong Kong as a critical response to the 6th ministerial meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong.

While the WTO has been promoting aggressive trade liberalisation, an increasing number of studies have shown that the wholesale opening of domestic markets to imports and the indiscriminate promotion of certain exports have hampered social welfare as well as benefited only certain countries and groups in societies. To a large extent, poor women in the South have experienced food insecurity, displacement and losses in livelihood especially in the rural sector; continuing wage inequality, informalisation and hazardous working conditions in manufacturing industries; shrinking access to basic services such as water, health and education; and increasing care-giving workloads. The Ecumenical Women’s Forum focused on bringing a feminist and theological perspective to two important WTO agreements: the Agreement on Agriculture and the General Agreement on Trade in Services. It called for the promotion of life-giving agriculture, the protection of life-supporting services and the recognition of migrant workers’ rights to life and dignity. 

Prioritising life over profit

Against this background, this March issue of In God’s Image proudly compiles a number of papers prepared for the “Women’s Voices on AGAPE” and “Ecumenical Women’s Forum on Life-Promoting Trade” conferences. In essence, these papers echo women’s voices and visions not only for just, participatory and sustainable communities, but also for caring economic structures and systems that prioritise the provisioning for life over and beyond narrow neoliberal economic objectives of profit, efficiency and growth.

Guest editor

Athena K. Peralta works with the Justice, Peace and Creation Team of the World Council of Churches as Consultant on Women and Economy. Based in Manila, Philippines, she coordinates the Women and Globalisation and Ecological Debt Programmes.

Acknowledgment

This edition of In God’s Image features selected papers from two conferences on women and economic justice that were held in Asia as well as a few materials outside the conferences but are still related to the theme of women and economic justice. 

I had the special opportunity of attending both conferences that were held in Antipolo, Philippines and in Hong Kong. In fact, several other AWRC members were in one or both of the same conferences. What struck me about these two conferences was the commonality of the experiences of women from the South or the developing world as a result of unjust trade and economic systems that are controlling our countries and the world today. Since then, I have been hoping that In God’s Image can carry some of these stories and reflections for a wider sharing among women. For this reason, I asked Athena K. Peralta, the WCC consultant for Women and Globalisation and Ecological Debt Programmes, if it would be possible to select some of the papers from the two gatherings and she gladly agreed. 

On behalf of the AWRC, I would like to thank Athena and the women-contributors whose papers have been selected for inclusion in this issue. We hope that this will empower more Asian women to critically analyze the impact of unjust trade systems and relations on their lives and their communities and to do something about it to help bring about peace with justice.

Publications Secretary

If articles listed in the table of contents interests you, and you would like to have a copy of this journal, please write to igi@awrc4ct.org.