Resources and links on globalization

Trade Observatory "is dedicated to gathering information about international trade and making it free to the public..." Trade Observatory is a project of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based nongovernmental organization. Since 1999, Trade Observatory (formerly WTO Watch) has been documenting the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and other international trade agreements and institutions. Additionally, Trade Observatory posts the work of IATP and other organizations working toward fairer trade systems and alternative approaches to globalization.

Women and Globalization

Women and the Economy: an introduction to women and globalization
This is a project of the UN Platform for Action Committee (UNPAC), established in Manitoba, Canada in 1995 after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995 to advocate for the implementation of the Platform for Action born out of Beijing as well as other United Nations agreements which advance women's equality.

"For women around the world... globalization is not an abstract process unfolding on an elevated stage. It is concrete and actual. Female textile workers from... Eastern Germany are losing their jobs to women in Bangladesh; Filipinas clean vegetables and kitchens in Kuwait; Brazilian prostitutes offer their services around Frankfurt's main railway station; and Polish women look after old people at rock-bottom prices in... Germany..."

Women Challenging Globalization: A 39 page paper (pdf download):
gender perspective on the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development, March 18-22, 2002, Monterrey, Mexico

This report has a number of valuable sections, including: "The NEPAD, Gender and the Poverty Trap" (April 2002), by Zo Randriamaro (Madagascar/ Ghana), program director at Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa in Accra

"...One of NEPAD's largest failings is to ignore the traumatic fallout on women of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and other policies imposed by the international financial institutions, as well as their contribution in the impoverishment of African countries..."

The International Gender and Trade Network:

"is a network of feminist gender specialists who provide technical information on gender and trade issues to women's groups, NGOs, social movements and governments. IGTN acts as a political catalyst to enlarge the space for a critical feminist perspective and global action on trade and globalization issues. It is a Southern-led network that builds South/North cooperation in the work of developing more just and democratic policy from a critical feminist perspective. IGTN is organized in eight regions: Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Central Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Gulf, North America and the Pacific."

Focus on the Global South: 

"Focus on the Global South (Focus) is a non-governmental organisation with twenty staff working in Thailand, the Philippines and India. Focus was established in Bangkok in 1995 and is affiliated with the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute.

Focus combines policy research, advocacy, activism and grassroots capacity building in order to generate critical analysis and encourage debates on national and international policies related to corporate-led globalisation, neo-liberalism and militarisation."

Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development

"APWLD is an independent, non-government, non-profit organization. It is committed to enabling women to use law as an instrument of social change for equality, justice and development. It has a consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

Objectives: To enable women in the region to use law as an instrument of change for the empowerment of women in their struggle for justice, peace, equality and development. To promote basic concepts of human rights in the region as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW) and other relevant international human rights instruments."

International Forum on Globalization

"The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is an alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.

The goal of the IFG ... is twofold: (1) Expose the multiple effects of economic globalization in order to stimulate debate, and (2) Seek to reverse the globalization process by encouraging ideas and activities which revitalize local economies and communities, and ensure long term ecological stability."

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

"Global Trade Watch (GTW) promotes democracy by challenging corporate globalization, arguing that the current globalization model is neither a random inevitability nor 'free trade.'"

Fact sheets on Women and Globalization, especially concerning the World Bank and international Monetary Fund: http://www.50years.org/issues/women.html

Oxfam International has an excellent site full of information, papers and other resources. On trade issues, see for instance their report on cotton:

Cultivating Poverty: The impact of US cotton subsidies on Africa Oxfam International Paper No. 30, Sept. 2002

" American cotton subsidies are destroying livelihoods in Africa and other developing regions. By encouraging over-production and export dumping, these subsidies are driving down world prices – now at their lowest levels since the Great Depression. While America’s cotton barons get rich on government transfers, African farmers suffer the consequences." Click on link above for summary and to download full paper