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Women, The G8/20 and Maternal Health
When the leaders of the 20 most powerful nations meet in Toronto this weekend—behind the snipers and barricades taxpayers graciously provided—they will draft policies that impact our lives, jobs, families and communities for years to come. One particularly hot topic leading up to the G20 summit has been the health of women and children around the world. With 70 per cent of the world’s poor made up of women, this is an issue that is demanding global attention and action. A handful of powerful—most male—leaders will shape policies that affect those women who are the primary caregivers and food providers for their families and communities.
In the developing world, 500,000 women die each year during childbirth. Unsafe access to abortions dramatically increases this number. On a global scale, unsafe access to abortions results in 21 per cent of maternal deaths. The Pan-American Health Organization revealed that abortion is the primary cause of maternal death in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. The World Conference of Women has repeatedly called for an international commitment to women’s health, which includes access to safe abortions and birth control.
Despite the urgency and severity of these problems, Canada has said it will not support policies that pay for therapeutic abortions in Africa, where backroom procedures have been linked to the deaths of 25,000 women annually, while injuring as many as 1.7 million others.
Conservative Prime Minister Harper agreed to make maternal and child health a key theme for the G8/20 meetings. But the tone for the debate was set when the Prime Minister defended years of Conservative attacks on women’s rights in Canada and policies that have increased gender and income inequalities.
Understanding Canada’s Position
In 2004, the World Economic Forum gender gap index ranked Canada seventh. By 2009, Canada fell to 25th. The result of this dramatic decline is that policies of the Harper government have wound up being anti-women and rolled back many of the gains made by the women’s movement decades ago.
This decline includes systematically shutting down or defunding those groups that are engaged in critical research and education around women’s health, rights and equality, both domestically and internationally. The Harper government has shut down Status of Women offices across the country and denied funding to, amongst others, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Womenspace, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, and the Alberta Network of Immigrant Women.
“Cuts to service providers leave the most vulnerable women in Canada with nowhere safe to go and cuts to policy and advocacy organizations leave women in crisis with no democratic voice with which to cry for help”, says Kate McInturff, from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action. Another step toward greater gender equity in Canada would be the establishment of a universal childcare program, which was also scrapped by the current government.
The Harper Government’s version of women’s rights and maternal health also involves pumping $4.3 Billion into a war of aggression in Afghanistan to support a warlord-led government that has done little to advance the rights of Afghan women. The moral argument that we are helping Afghan girls and women is increasingly obscured by the rising civilian death toll and torture of prisoners. Many G20 members are also NATO allies who have led the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for almost a decade. If their model of development, education, and health for women looks anything like the debacle in Central Asia, then we will continue down a path that leads to greater inequality and violence What right then does the Harper government have to host a discussion on maternal health and women’s rights when it has undermined these rights at home?
The G20 and Women
In the developing and developed world, women are working longer hours for stagnant wages in order to provide for their families—this often involves working two or more jobs. As the economic crisis deepens, it is often women who are the first fired and last hired. As long as women bear the bulk of responsibility for raising children into adulthood and providing the labour for sustaining families, women’s right to safe abortions is a precondition for women’s equality. But the fight for abortion rights is just one aspect of larger issues facing women here at home and around the world.
While poor women feel the squeeze of unemployment and welfare cuts, G20 leaders have paid out massive bailouts in the wake of the recent economic crisis. The International Monetary Fund, an international financial institution that plays a key role in co-ordinating the policies of members of the G20, is recommending 20 years of financial austerity. This gouging involves vicious cuts to housing, welfare, education and healthcare. These are social needs that have historically contributed to shrinking gender inequalities.
Addressing maternal health and child welfare involves investing in the programs and services that offer a way out of cycles of poverty and violence. Historically, economic recessions have placed a disproportionate burden on women. Women are more likely than men to be in vulnerable jobs, to be under-employed or without a job, to lack social protection, and to have limited access to and control over economic and financial resources. In the Asia-Pacific region, which has one of the highest ratios of working age women, about 65 per cent are in vulnerable employment without any benefits or job security. Removing those social safeguards that have protected women from the ravages of the free market will only deepen the feminization of poverty.
In Ontario - which is hosting the summit - we are seeing the dramatic impact of this form of so-called economic ‘common sense’. The ongoing strike at the Massey Centre For Women, an integrated childcare and housing complex for young mothers, reveals the contradictions between rhetoric and reality. Workers at the centre provide an essential service to young mothers, but their wages have remained stagnant for 10 years. How can we talk of investing in maternal health when front line workers in Ontario aren’t paid and young mothers have nowhere to go? Instead of making those corporations and banks that destabilized our global economy pay, the G20 members will draft more policies that seek to restore the ascendancy of financial institutions at the expense of workers, the poor and women.
Rachel Mayanja, U.N. special adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, says “the global financial crisis has already seriously impacted progress towards achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.” How will G20 members achieve gender equality and economic stability without investing in policies that benefit women?
For a Global, Democratic Health policy
The G20 is a fundamentally undemocratic institution. While all the world’s countries have representation at the United Nations, the G20 plays host to those nations who want to ensure their political and economic dominance. Their discussions are more about power relations and balancing a global chequebook than ensuring that women around the world have access to safe and sustainable health services. This is a decision that involves all of us, not just the rich. This is why we have the United Nations.
The UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are an integrated set of eight goals and targets for extending the benefits of globalization to the world’s poorest citizens. This includes tackling issues of gender inequality in developing nations. If we want a global health policy that meets the needs of women worldwide, it must be integrated—as the UN recommends—with a global effort aimed at dramatically reducing poverty. Ensuring maternal health means ensuring women; their children and families have jobs, resources and education. Globalization, as a development model, has failed to provide these services for the vast majority of the world.
At the heart of the G20 is a commitment to making globalization work for those who are already benefiting from it. An example of this is the rejection of the so-called Rob Hood Tax that takes a pittance from a banking system underwritten by taxpayers and reinvests it into needed social programs. At the behest of financial institutions, G20 members will instead continue the corporate tax cuts and austerity models that are driving millions further into poverty. Behind the $1 billion in security that we paid for, they will make decisions that shape our lives for years to come. We have a voice and the solutions to build a better world, and this week we will be heard.
This article originally appeared on SEIU-Canada’s G20 coverage page.
Chris Webb is a journalist and activist living in Toronto. He is currently the Publishing Assistant at Canadian Dimension magazine and a Communications Officer with SEIU-Local 1 Canada. Read more by Chris Webb.
Thousands of women, all across the globe, die each year while giving birth. Addressing maternal health and child welfare involves investing in the programs and services that offer a way out of cycles of poverty and violence.
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#1. Posted by garima on June 30th 2010 at 12:08am