Women's Crossroads

Yesterday was the Fifth Annual International Women's Day conference at Simon's Rock College, and it was the best one ever. I've said that every year, and every year it's been the truth! There is something so powerful about women coming together to share expertise, to inspire and enlighten one another--women who in many cases would never otherwise come into contact.

This year's theme was "Women in the Global and Local Economy: The Power of Connection," and the day started with a keynote address by Frances Moore Lappe, who gave a rousing talk to an audience of about 175 people about the importance of "living democracy," by which she means creating a social system in which each member is empowered to act for the good of the individual and the group. She called herself a "possibilist," saying "it's impossible to know what is possible," and therefore we must do "what stirs our passion and builds our power"--what we feel in our gut is the right thing to do.

Frankie said that human beings are innately imitative, and so one of the most powerful things we can do to effect social change is simply to behave the way we would like to see others behave. "Every time you act with intention," she said, "someone is watching, and will imitate you." As a mother I've certainly seen this operating with my children--if I act with kindness and good humor, they will mirror it right back to me; if I'm grumpy and snappish, so are they. But I hadn't thought about applying this mirroring phenomenon to the fight for social justice, and it makes perfect sense.

This is why it's so important not just to talk the talk, but also to walk the walk of of social justice. And here's where Americans usually get into trouble, since our whole lifestyle and political system is built on injustice. As Frankie said, none of us would deliberately choose to send millions of children to bed hungry every day. And yet this is the world we live in, a world dominated by the U.S. of A. None of us would choose to poison our rivers and create huge "dead zones" in our oceans--and yet these are the effects of the agricultural industry we support with our hard-earned dollars in the supermarket. The list could go on.

What we need to do as American consumers is to try to put our money where our hearts are. If we support the idea of fair trade, then we should be buying fair trade coffee and cocoa. If we want to support women's crafts collectives, we should buy their products, for ourselves and as gifts. If we can avoid supporting an exploitative corporation, we should make other choices. It's really pretty simple.

Much of the conference focused on ways to tap the great productive power of women worldwide in order to strengthen connective networks that will reduce conflict and improve social conditions for all. Dr. Caren Grown of Bard College's Levy Institute for Economics, who proudly called herself a "feminist economist," described being asked, during the course of her service on a United Nations task force charged with coming up with a framework for promoting "Gender Equality and Empowerment" worldwide, "how much would it cost to achieve gender quality?"

"What a ludicrous question!" she said heatedly. "How much would it cost NOT to achieve gender equality!"

This point was also emphasized by Marceline White, a gender and development specialist for the U.S. Agency of International Development, who pointed to studies showing that "gender equality is good for economic growth, and economic growth is good for gender equality. When women have more cash," she said, "there are greater expenditures on food, health care and education for families." She cited a study from the Ivory Coast showing that "a $10 increase in a woman's monthly income had the same effect in improving children's nutrition as a $110 increase in men's income." So investing in women is investing in the entire community, and this is a lesson that the World Bank, IMF and other development institutions are finally learning, with the help of gender-focused agencies like UNIFEM at the United Nations.

In the afternoon panels, specific strategies for creating change on the ground were explored. Amber Chand discussed her "feminine" business model, an alternative to the "high-growth, testosterone-driven patriarchal model that has proved to be unsustainable. My challenge," she said, "is to create an enterprise that is sustainable, that relies on truth-telling and intimacy between customers and producers, and makes a profit not at the expense of others, but with others."

Anne Williams, a business consultant who has been conducting capacity-building training workshops for women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan and Jordan, talked about women entrepreneurs she had met in these countries, who were overcoming tremendous cultural and material barriers to create successful businesses that were able to lift whole communities out of poverty.

Anne dramatically showed the gender barriers that exist in Afghanistan by asking the four men in the audience of some 70 people to rise. "These four men would be responsible for providing for all the rest of you," she told the audience. She asked one man to sit down. "That man would be the only one who had not been already seriously injured by a landmine." If the 66 women in the audience were prevented from working, Anne pointed out, entire families would starve, as happened in Afghanistan during the heyday of the Taliban when women were not allowed to leave their homes.

Although still under threat of the re-emergence of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan are beginning to make progress. Anne described two women-owned businesses she witnessed on her last trip to the country, showing slides of women creating magnificent Oriental rugs and harvesting glowing tomatoes, laying them out to dry on racks they had welded and painted themselves. The sense of pride these women had in their achievement was palpable.

Financial support for women in business was also on the table during yesterday's event. Michaela Walsh, founding president of Women's World Banking, and Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society in South Egremont, both talked about innovative ways to make sure that women have the credit they need to build businesses. The best way seems to be, again, making use of the power of connective networks--women working with and for women, both locally and internationally.

At the closing plenary, the speakers all applauded the three Simon's Rock students who had participated in the program--Chanel Ward, Elyse Chaput, and Jing Cao--for carrying on the essential work of highlighting the importance of women to the local and global economy. "You are our hope for the future," Michaela Walsh affirmed. And as Frances Moore Lappe says, "hope is what we become in action....And our hope can spur us on--to take our own stand, to choose."

Coming together to observe International Women's Day is a hopeful action. As one of the audience members said, we gain strength from coming together in circles of intention, and at yesterday's gathering it was clear that our collective intention was oriented around seeking knowledge, as well as seeking pathways to make creative use of what we are discovering, and what we know.

The last event of the day was a reception sponsored by the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts, organized by Women's Fund Board members Amber Chand and Maria Sirois and attended by some 70 members of the audience. Each was given a pad imprinted with the Women's Fund motto "Women Make a Difference," and asked to write down a dream she had for the women of the world. Then, gathered in a circle around a glowing Jerusalem Candle of Hope, these visions were read out loud.

When I got home last night from the conference, I was exhausted, but couldn't resist dipping into the pile of dreams that had been collected, and I was so moved by what I read that I immediately began typing them up into a collective poem, which I will post separately. These passionate good wishes for the women of the world brought the day full circle: we had moved from Frances Moore Lappe's inspirational talk of "living democracy," through the more technical presentations on women and economics, to discussions of how feminist economic theory is being put into practice on the ground, and ended up again in the inspirational realm, combining passion with knowledge of what is needed-both here in the U.S. and abroad-- to make the world's women fully integrated players in their economies and their communities.

We do know what needs to be done. As Caren Grown said at the end of her presentation: It's time to act.