There is a new interest among women's groups in the UN Com- mission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and the UN Committee on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) as potential vehicles for enhancing economic rights and challenging the Washington Consensus. Under Mary Robinson, former PM of Ireland, the UNCHR established working groups to assess the human rights implications of globalization and structural adjustment as well as WTO policies. In 2003 the Committee on ESCR affirmed the right to water, in direct challenge to the rampant privatization of water systems around the globe pushed by the IMF and World Bank. As mass-based struggles against the privatization of basic resources grow in places like Bolivia, Ghana and South Africa, often under the leadership of women, some of these movements are increasingly interested using the UN system to challenge the WTO and Bretton Woods institutions, as well as private companies. The International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a new grouping, had its founding meeting in Thailand in June 2003, and an active women's caucus was part of that event.³³

Women are mobilizing in all regions to challenge the backlash of the religious right, in UN regional ten-year reviews of the Cairo conference on Population and Development (1994) and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995). In doing so, they are linking repro- ductive health issues with economic justice concerns and a political assessment of the current moment. Even those groups which have reduced their role in the UN see these regional events as a critical battleground for global feminism.

The deepening impact of neo-liberalism on women's lives called forth multiple responses-some within a development approach, and some with demands for redistributive economic justice. Responses included:

-- survival strategies, which were then touted as anti-poverty strategies;

-- survival strategies combined with political organizing;

-- grassroots women's organized strategies to defend their liveli- hoods;

-- NGO solidarity, education and advocacy to document these impacts and demand accountability from the state and private sector; and

-- academic responses in the form of feminist economic theory.

The imposition of World Bank/IMF Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) on poor nations of the Global South beginning in the 1980s was one important catalyst for both local and international women's organizing in this arena. SAPs turned national economies into debt-servicing machines, laying the groundwork for their re-colonization. It became clear to women activists that the burden of SAPs was being borne disproportionately by women, as they substituted their own reproductive labor for diminished social services; lost service sector jobs; became the breadwinners in the informal economy; or moved into the new export processing zones as cheap labor. This process was repeated in the wholesale privatization of Eastern and Central Europe.

As the neo-liberal ideology increased its stranglehold on national economies, grassroots women activists began to organize as maquiladora or sweatshop workers, informal sector workers and community activists, to struggle for rights and, increasingly, to challenge the neoliberal economic model. Many began to apply a feminist critique to economic processes. Some workers organized explicitly as women workers outside of union structures-both because of the danger to unions in maquiladora factories, and because of machismo in the trade unions.

Feminist economists began theorizing about gender and macro-economic policy. A feminist economic analysis explores the multiple roles women play in an economy, in the paid labor force, as the primary caregiver responsible for "social reproduction," and in the community. Much of this work is unpaid and uncounted in the formal economy, yet necessary for it to function. Women documented the ways that structural adjustment policies utilized women's paid and unpaid labor to pay debts and restructure economies.³⁴

Maria Riley observes that changes in the global economy and the pressures on women's lives in the 1980s made it clear to some feminists that "programs such as income generation not only did not move women out of poverty, but they often resulted in more work with little reward because the negative impact of macro-economic developments wiped out any advances women were making."³⁵ She notes that the WTO came into existence the same year as the Beijing Women's conference (1995), gradually making economic integration the priority of global capital. Structural Adjustment programs laid the groundwork in Southern economies for the liberalization of trade and investment under WTO rules. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 pointed out the dangers of speculative capital and had devastating effects worldwide.

As Zo Randriamaro notes, gender equality cannot be resolved at the national level alone. It "requires transforming policies and institutions in global economic governance." She adds that "debate among women's organizations and activists has been obscured by the overwhelming focus on the impact of neo-liberal policies on women and gender relations, at the expense of a systematic analysis of the structural and inter-related causes of this impact."³⁶

Building on these critiques, women's economic justice activism has evolved from a focus on the impact of structural adjustment and debt to a challenge to the broader neo-liberal agenda and, as noted above, is now beginning to explore how this meshes with political and ideological forces that undermine women. Those focused on economic justice are challenging the mainstream development paradigm, and efforts at "gender mainstreaming" that would merely integrate women into the neo-liberal model. In the process, groups such as the International Gender & Trade Network have emerged as significant players in advocacy around global trade deals. Likewise, women have been active in the UN Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, Mexico 2002) and its follow-up, which addresses debt, trade, aid and global finance. Women endorsed such proposals as debt cancellation, new forms of global economic governance, and a global Currency Transaction Tax (CTT) on speculative capital, destined for sustainable development. Women have begun efforts to engender ATTAC (Association For The Taxation Of Financial Transactions For The Benefit Of The People), an "international movement for democratic control of financial markets and their institutions" which promotes the CTT. This grassroots movement, built from community to community in Western Europe, now plays an important role in World Social Forum organizing.

Observes MADRE:

Women's organizations have had to fill the role of government in implementing the [Beijing] Platform for Action. These efforts, ranging from health clinics to battered women's shelters to AIDS education and literacy programs, to income-generating initiatives, nutrition classes and girls' leadership training, represent the best in the human potential for tenacity, creativity and sheer hard work. These efforts are to be applauded, but they must also be understood as the result of a serious failure of governments to meet their commitments...This failure must be rectified, for NGOs, no matter how competent, are no substitute for responsible government.³⁸

 Perhaps the bulk of "women's organizing" has focused on survival strategies at the grassroots level. Women's valiant efforts to generate income, particularly in the informal sector, were seized upon by the likes of RESULTS, American Express, Monsanto, government and private donors as a solution to women's poverty. In the 1990s, dollars poured into efforts to support micro-credit and micro-enterprise schemes-symbolized by the Grameen Bank model in Bangladesh, and endorsed by then First Lady Hillary Clinton as an example for US women who faced the dismantling of welfare under the Clinton Administration.

There are now numerous critiques of these efforts, which were intensely promoted by US corporate interests, the World Bank, and the US government.³⁹ The lending schemes served to (a) integrate poor women entrepreneurs into the formal economy and the joys of debt; (b) pump resources to the most local level to ameliorate the impact of structural adjustment policies and lessen the threat of social rebellion, and (c) turn women's meager survival strategies into an ideological panacea for entrepreneurship and capitalist economic development.

This relied on the super-exploitation of women's labor, while taking the focus and the burden off government responsibility or the need for decent jobs with decent wages and benefits. It has intensified as some of these "home workers" now sub-contract to local manufacturers, who produce goods for global corporations.⁴⁰ While the limitations of this endeavor are evident to many, self-employment programs continue to be a major focus of "development" funding and of many women's NGOs. Women's need for survival locally was enmeshed in a larger political and ideological agenda of both "boot-strapism" and social control. In addition, as economic crisis deepened in many regions the enticement of external resources meshed with the goals of some women's organizations for women's "empowerment" and women's economic autonomy (not to mention resources for the NGOs themselves).

The diversity of women's organizing strategies-in local communities, women's NGOs, unions, political parties, universities- with different experiences and political agendas, all under the rubric of "women's rights" makes for complex dynamics. In an atmosphere of "friendly allies" there has been little desire to articulate political differences. This has led to a lack of political and analytical clarity. This is intensified by the power realities among women's NGOs, in terms of the defining "voices" of the movements, as well as the funders of the movements. In a politically conservative period, some women's NGOs dependent on donor dollars may feel constrained in what they can do or say. While some self-censor a radical analysis, others don't share such an analysis, and are more focused on the pragmatic goal of reforming and ameliorating the impacts of unjust policies. In an effort to find common ground among women's groups, already fighting an uphill battle against governments, religious institutions, and their own male colleagues on the left, political differences have most often been muted.