MEDIA RELEASE

Thursday 5 March 2010

International Women’s Day at Trade Aid

The global financial crisis has effectively wiped out economic gains made by women on a global level. This is the finding of the first global bottom-up report ‘Social Watch Report 2009’ on the social impact of the financial crisis. With International Women’s Day being celebrated on March 8, Trade Aid is urging New Zealanders to consider their role in the inequality and poverty of global women.

Around the world, women are the poorest of the poor, making up 70% of those in absolute poverty. Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half the world’s food, and yet earn only 10% of the world’s income. In addition, they own less than 1% of the world’s property.

New Zealand’s food and craft products are increasingly originating from developing countries where per capita income is at its lowest. The broadening of the world’s supply chains ensures we now know less about the impact the production of these products have on those who make them. Evaluating 173 countries, the Social Watch Report 2009 found that in none of these countries do women have the same opportunities as men to participate in economic and social decision-making processes and that of these the relative situation has worsened in 80 countries with severe regression in 29 other countries. Trade Aid points to the need to address this situation within trading chains to ensure that the plight of the women producers is not further degraded.

The hand craft industry is dominated by women for reasons such as lack of land ownership, the cheap availability of natural resources and due to the ease of managing craft production at home around domestic work. One of a small group of Bangladeshi women who produce woven grass products for sale in Trade Aid shops is Asha Joydhor. Asha is a craft maker but she is not facing a cycle of poverty like many of her fellow women. Michelia Ward, Trade Aid’s Education Manager met and talked with Asha in 2009 and found out she was the breadwinner in her family, a unique situation for a woman living in the male dominated society of Bangladesh. Asha provides for her parents and funds the education of her three children, aiming for them all to get a higher education. She considers herself safe in the knowledge that she will be able to support her family in the years to come but realises she is amongst the luckier ones. Trade Aid shops around New Zealand specialise in crafts made by women and believe that now, more than ever, the world needs sustainable economic development approaches to increase equality, to increase incomes and to invest in communities and the environment.

“For many countries with which we trade everyday is a recession” says Ms Ward. The evidence from the Social Watch Report, which brings research from over 600 community organisations together reflects this view and warns that the full effects have not yet been felt. UN agencies and other institutions have reported estimates of the millions of jobs that will be lost worldwide, the millions more people who will be thrown into poverty and the additional number of children likely to die as a result of the inability of the markets to solve the problems they created.

Ms. Ward urges New Zealanders to use International Women’s Day as the opportunity to make a change in the role they play in the future of women in poverty. “Engage in trade that aims to be fair, that recognises the role of women in building sustainable communities. Buy from organisations which invest in the people who make and grow the products. Make International Women’s Day the day you aim for a new and better story for the people whose lives depend on the fairness of the products we buy.”

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