Azra Talat Sayeed, International Women’s Alliance (IWA)
March 2024
Introduction
The paper in hand will examine the forceful thrust of neoliberal policies by the imperialist system of monopoly capital, that govern international trade and investment, its impact on women workers as well as small and landless farmers, and their collective organizing and mobilizing against these grotesque policies and their implementing bodies.
The 1990s was a particular time when there was a peak in the US imperialism’s bullying strategies to impose neoliberal policies on the world. The formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was one clear marker of the stringent imposition of neo-colonial trade and investment rules in the global economy. Another set of imperialist policies included what are often termed as the Washington Consensus, backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the US Treasury. Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were enforced by the IMF on debt-ridden countries coming from all of the colonial continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have played a key role in providing mechanisms for control of mega-corporations over production and marketing within national boundaries.
Trade and Investment Policies
The foundation of current neoliberalism framework has been based on three policies, namely deregulation, privatization, and trade liberalization, and their combination has been embedded in the SAPs, along with more than 60 agreements of the WTO. They serve as the bulwark of neoliberal framework that have been consistently forced on countries of the global South.
In context to agricultural production, the most critical agreements within the WTO include the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), as well as the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Mechanisms and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) that have played an aggressive role in ensuring that agriculture production in the southern countries is brought under control of mega-agriculture corporations.
Apart from the multilateral trade system, there has been a plethora of bilateral, and regional free trade agreements, that have ensured implementation of stringent corporate governance, eroding public spending on social services and welfare, as well as creating a new regimen of labour policies that have eroded permanent work, replacing it with temporary, contract, daily and piece work. The precursor of regional free trade agreements was North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with the most recent being the Indo Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
The draconian trade agreements of the WTO have forced national legislation to be changed to comply with their stipulations. For instance, in Pakistan a whole range of new legislation has been passed that includes the Pakistan Pure Food Laws 2007 (revised from 1963), Pakistan Seed (Amendment) Act, 2015, Plant Breeders’ Rights Act, 2016, the Punjab Forest (Amendment) Act, 2015 and the Punjab Agriculture Marketing Regulatory Authority Act (PAMRA), 2018. PAMRA is tailored for enabling digital marketing, uniformity and harmonization in agricultural product standards. The seed laws are complying with TRIPs agreement, the Pure Food Laws have been developed based on stipulations in the SPS and TBT agreements.
These stipulations impact agriculture production, distribution and marketing providing the comprador class to benefit, while further pushing the small and landless farmers to be trapped in a cycle of high cost of production, debt, with limited access to the market and no control over market prices.
Countries that did not abide to the imperialist impositions had to face wars of aggression, re-occupation, and colonization. Apart from the imperialist wars and their impacts, collective impacts of these policies can be seen on both urban and rural communities across in the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America through many manifestations including rising hunger, crippling sovereign debt, and disasters in the wake of climate crisis, which in it-self is a manifestation of capitalist-based industrial development.
Imperialist Trade Policies and Impacts on Women Masses
The WTO has a set of agreements which impact the rural economy including the peasantry in semi- feudal, semi-colonial countries, grievously, and have been contested by small farmers across the world. In order to understand the combined impact of the AoA, TRIPs, SPS, and TBT (that have unleashed a number of trade liberalization measures) on women in the rural economy, let us examine the dairy sector in the imperialist blocs such as the USA, and European Union, and in a semi-feudal, semi- colonial country such as Pakistan.
The country saw a change of power in 1947, but the land distribution of the country remains highly skewed, with 64% of land being held by just 5% of feudal families, while less than 2% women have land ownership in the country. Nearly 70% of Pakistan’s population resides in rural areas, with 75% of women and girls working in the agriculture sector, primarily in the diary and livestock sector. It is stated that women’s ‘unpaid work is valued (using comparative median wages) at PKR 683 billion, is 57% of all work done by women, and is 2.6% of GDP.’ However, the peasants, particularly women peasants can only be categorized as subsistence farmers, existing through engaging in a wide range of productive work ranging from manual labor in land preparation, seeding, and finally harvesting; all this work in return for hunger wages, whether they are paid in cash or kind. For sugar cane sowing, four women peasants will work on one acre of land for which they are paid PKR 1,200, that is PKR 300 (which is less than $1) for a day’s labor. However, if there would be more women on one acre than their wage/woman would decrease. Similarly, for harvesting, the exploitation is no less. During sugarcane harvesting, cane is cut only by men, and they are paid PKR 15-20/40kg of cane cut, and daily wage amounting to PKR 350 ($1.25). Women’s work is to shred the leaves off the cane. If a couple went for sugarcane harvesting together, their combined earning would be about PKR 600 ($2.14) daily.
Pakistan is the 4th largest dairy producer in the world, with 97% of the dairy market based on supply of fresh milk, and no doubt, this achievement is due to the back-breaking labour of the peasantry, especially women peasants. Of the entire milk produced in the country, 95% is produced by small and landless farmers, from the rural and peri-urban areas. More than 8 million rural families are engaged in livestock production and deriving more than 35-40 percent of their income from this source.” It is well understood that the main caretakers of livestock are women, responsible for their daily shepherding, playing a role in cattle breeding, and milking of animals. Livestock has a central role in rural women’s livelihood, and provision of household food security, and is much coveted as livestock headcount increases, and is a precious household asset. In addition, livestock is also a source of dairy products including milk, butter and clarified butter, lassi that are critical sources of nutrition and livelihood for rural families. Further, animal manure is an important agriculture input for land fertility, as well as used as household fuel. Therefore, livestock adds to income and is a source of saving for the peasant household.
For the rich industrialized countries in Europe and the USA, Pakistan’s productivity in the milk sector is an eyesore; WTO agreements, the SPS and TBT are being used to control and eliminate the small milk producers who are an impediment to the multinational corporations in the dairy sector in taking over the Pakistani market. The SPS is based on provision of measures to protect human, animal and plant life or health based on ‘scientific principles,’ while the TBT Agreement instructs signatory states to develop their regulatory capacity and law enforcement systems in order to implement standardized policies (Article 2.6).” In Pakistan, based on the SPS measures, and TBT regulations, Pure Food Laws have been developed that have explicit regulations for implementation of the Minimum Pasteurisation Law and prohibiting sale of fresh milk in the market. If farmers are not allowed to sell unpasteurized milk, the entire dairy sector will gradually go into corporate hands, as the entire milk supply chain from the farmers’ household who produce milk, to the local small mill sales men, and local bakeries, milk shops, and a plethora of small businesses will be pushed out of the market, forced to buy the pasteurized milk under control of mega-dairy corporations such as Nestle, and Friesland Campenia.
Apart from the control on fresh milk sales, corporate sectors associated with the dairy sector such as corporations in bovine genetics, such as the US corporation, WorldWideSires is operational in Pakistan, promising farmers the best ‘genetics’ possible; in addition, import of live cattle is also underway. Apart from capturing the seed sector, ensuring that indigenous and local seeds are fully controlled by seed and biotechnology firms, the next step is eliminating indigenous livestock in the countries of the south so that the high-quality breeds of indigenous animals are wiped out to be replaced by corporate-owned specialty animals.
On one hand, imperialist countries ignoring the WTO provision continue to provide subsidies to their farmers (mostly rich farmers,) while in the semi-colonial countries, the comprador class assist the imperialist countries in implementing legal mechanisms that ensure transnational corporations market control and access. In the case of the dairy sector, it was clear that the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have assisted multinational dairy sector, first through providing monetary assistance to transnational corporations in buying major shares in local firms, while under bailout programs enforce heavy taxation on the farmers and local production system which takes away their ability to remain functional and are forced out of the dairy market. In short, landless families will contract land, to grow food crops and fodder. However, as we see world over with escalating prices for agriculture land, peasant women and families are finding it difficult to contract land, and without access to fodder they are unable to maintain livestock, thereby intensifying the cycle of loss of land, livestock and livelihood further exacerbating poverty and hunger in Pakistan. Such examples of exploitation of the agriculture sector are well documented across the Global South.
The poor socio-economic condition of women is not only part of the Global South, but is also reflected in the discrimination faced by women in the Global North, especially by Black African women, and women of colour, which is well accepted even by the United States government itself. Black women, women of Asian origin and Native Indian women all earned just a little more than half of the white man. The ongoing colonial heritage of slavery, widely felt through racial discrimination finds expression in segregated housing, and inadequate attention and provision of resources by US government in enforcing anti-discrimination laws.” Black women and women of colour face street violence, while the police force is well known for discrimination against people of colour. According to Al Jazeera, “the number of women in US jails has grown at a faster rate than any other correctional population, increasing by more than 700 percent between 1980 and 2019. Black and Hispanic women are imprisoned at a far higher rate than white women.”
The International Women’s Alliance (IWA) has conducted various levels of political education programs for grass root women in the countries of the North and South, to highlight the structural imbalances in the capitalist system that are the basis of the discrimination and violence that women face as part of the working class and peasantry. A particular area highlighted has been the push by monopoly capital for training workers, especially women workers in the technology industry. This has been particularly seen in the Global South. Imperialist institution such as the UN, the IFIs, and trade and investment initiatives such as Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) that focus on inclusion of skill training of women in for use of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) technologies.
Corporate agriculture is also pushing digitalization in the sector that come hand in hand with national level legislation for protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) of the owners, invariably mega- corporations. For instance, in Africa, drones, computers, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile phones are used often in agriculture production. However, the use of such technologies, based on capital intensive technologies including higher level of education means landless peasants, especially women are more and more marginalized. In the USA, tools such as harvesting robots are used for vegetable and fruits using sensors and other mechanisms to check for the readiness of the crop to be picked. This technology is being seen as a viable for introduction in countries such as India, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan for picking cotton. A local initiative in India, Green Robot Machinery has already manufactured a robot, which can have up to 8 ‘arms’ picking 50kg cotton/arm. This technology is also being considered for use across various cotton-growing African countries. There are millions of women peasants who are the major labour force in cotton production, especially in South Asia, and the advent of such technologies is going to further eliminate agriculture women workers’ livelihood.
The constant onslaught of imperialism on women’s lives has been a consistent pattern of imperialism. Free trade agreements between Mexico, the US, and Canada were initiated with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1989; it was a precursor to the WTO, embedding imperialist policies within. For example, in 1995, the corn imports to Mexico were $391 million, while in 2015, they rose to $2.4 billion. The US Farm Bill (a set of legislative directives passed every five years), provide millions of dollars-worth of subsidy to its agriculture sector dominated by mega-agriculture corporations and is the basic pillar of imperialist agriculture policies.
While the Farm Bill allows heavy subsidies to US corn producers, there are no such buffers provided to peasants in Mexico. The influx of US corn into Mexico has eroded rural communities, a major reason for the enforced migration from there to the US. Different sources quoting US Department of agriculture state that 900,000 farming jobs were lost in the first ten years of NAFTA. From 1997 to 2013, the number of Mexican agricultural workers coming into the US has increased from approximately 16,000 to 69,000.20 It is well understood that corn holds major cultural and economic significance for the country, and such a huge influx of US corn has resulted in massive loss of livelihood, erosion of precious varieties of indigenous corn, and a resounding socio-economic impact on families and women. As a majority of menfolk have migrated to other regions and countries, agriculture production has to be carried out by women; under trade liberalization policies that do not support small farmers, women are barely able to sustain food security for their households. Studies have shown that NAFTA has not had a beneficial impact on the economy, especially agriculture workers, and in a just matter of 2-3 years, the proportion of agricultural workers had decreased by 10%, with rural wages were 30% lower than in other sectors.
Apart from a vast male workforce having been pushed out of the country searching for livelihood, women also were forced to enter the industrial workforce, earning minimal wages. Today, colonization is not necessarily through direct occupation of our lands, but the collusion of the elite of southern countries with imperialist powers forcing millions of people, women to be migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; in these discriminatory situations women face the maximum brunt of violence including physical, and sexual abuse, and discrimination at the workplace, and in society at large.
Early on in 1996, Migrante International, a global alliance of grassroots migrant organizations of overseas Filipinos and their families was formed, after a women domestic worker Flor Ramos Contemplacion was hanged in Singapore.
In 2019, there were 245 million migrants worldwide, of which women were 47.75% were women. In 2023, Philippines was the fourth largest county in terms of value of remittance being sent back home. Under bureaucratic capitalism, this factor is seen as a positive contribution to the country’s economy, without taking into account the high rates of unemployment, low wages and miserable working conditions that workers face not only at home but while abroad, forced to face the harsh exploitative, oppressive formal and informal migration policies in place.
Recently, in 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery in his end of mission report has stated, “Agricultural and low-wage streams of the temporary foreign workers program constitute a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” The current policies of ‘Employer specific permits’ binds migrant workers to their employers, and exposes them to suffering abuse but unwilling to report this as they fear losing their work permits. While a Filipino woman, Mary Jane Veloso, a victim of human trafficking is in the death row, there are 83 other Filipinos also facing the same fate in foreign jails.
With the beginning of the 21st Century, imperialist wars of aggression have been escalating, and to name only a few would of course include the war on Afghanistan followed by more than 20 years of occupation. The most recent of course is the ongoing genocide in the Occupied Palestine territories.
It is important to point out, that though the Occupied Palestine territories have faced colonial brutality for more than a century, the current renewed vicious attack is based on the US ensuring is suicidal hold on Gaza and the West Bank for its latest trade and investment plan, the India, Middle-east, Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Palestine is richly endowed with oil and gas, is a critical geo- political significance for connecting Europe to Asia and Africa for economic and military dominance against China, Russia and Iran.
In the current environment, IWA maps out three US global fronts of US-led war: in Eastern Europe the target is Russia and the militarized forces against it are harnessed through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whereas in West Asia, the major adversary is Iran, and the US has created a military front through Israel, fully aided by Saudi Arabia and a number of other Arab countries of the region. In the Asia Pacific, US locks horns with China and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In the last few years, a number of security arrangements have created AUKUS, that include Australia, UK, and US, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) which includes Japan, Australia, US and India.
The impact of these wars has multidimensional impacts. According to the Lancet, in 2017, at least 630 million women and children were either displaced due to wars ad conflict, or were in close proximity to armed conflict; further more than 10 million deaths in children under the age of 5 years, globally could be based on conflicts between 1995 and 2015. Other health impacts include malnutrition, physical injuries, acute and infectious diseases, poor mental, and sexual and reproductive health.
In the ongoing genocide in Gaza, from October 7, 2023 to March 1, 2024, more than 9,000 women have been killed. On March 8, the International Working Women’s Day, it was reported that over 23,000 women were injured, 2,100 missing, and 500,000 displaced.28 The creation of the Zionist state of Israel was made possible through British colonization, and now has been bolstered under US which treats Israel as an outpost in the Middle-east North Africa region.
Resistance and Fight Back
Women, especially grassroots women have not been silent on the brutal impacts of capitalist exploitation and oppression. There is a plethora of responses, with the formation of IWA in 2010, as one example of grassroot women collectives organizing to form a militant global collective against imperialism. There are also regional organizations and institutions, that have stood up to fight against capitalist tyranny. Across the world, women have organized for women’s rights across a realm of exploitative and oppressive mechanisms used by the joint forces of capitalism, feudalism and patriarchy.
Among many collectives, it is important to point out the role of the Philippines feminist movement, that has long been at the fore front of fighting against colonialism, feudalism and US imperialism for more than a100 years. As has been pointed by the revolutionary Juliet de Lima, as part of the national democratic front, the women’s movement in the Philippines is based on a proletarian core, drawing from the most advanced elements of working classes, and women of the working class.29
A Filipinos grassroots women organization, the Gabriela National Alliance of Women was formed in 1984, and is active on a wide range of issues affecting women including human rights violations, militarization, sex trafficking among others; its membership is highly represented by women workers, peasants and other marginalized oppressed sectors. With the onslaught of neoliberalism, it was one of the key organizations that mobilized not only women at home, but played a key role in working with regional women’s networks such as the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) in organizing women activists against neoliberalism, that was spearheaded by the WTO.30 Gabriela chapters in the Japan, Taiwan, UK, USA and other countries has been key in protecting and promoting the rights of migrant women, especially domestic workers.
Another important women’s network has been APWLD, formed in 1986, has in the past decades organized numerous campaigns, researches and workshops to organize, mobilize grass root women against neoliberalism, militarism and various forms of patriarchal subjugation.
A key lesson that the women’s movement has taken to heart is:
“Subjection of women is an outgrowth of foreign and feudal domination, the struggle for women’s rights is interconnected with the struggle for national freedom and democracy. Women liberate themselves from oppression and rise to a level of equality with men, by participating actively in the struggle to overthrow foreign and feudal domination.
This political position has meant that two-pronged approach has been taken by the peoples’ movement, which ensures that women’s liberation is a task which has to be fought by them, as well as ensuring that autonomous women’s organizations also take a leadership role in their self- determination, struggles, and resistance for achieving liberation from joint structural forces of patriarchy, colonialism, feudalism and capitalism.
Many peoples’ organizations and networks, such as the Asia Pacific Pesticide Action Network (PANAP), Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN) were instrumental in the formation of various task forces and mechanisms that focused on building viable platforms for confronting imperialist domination – these of course include the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS), and the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC), and International Migrants Alliance (IMA).
The women’s movement in the Asia Pacific region has taken the task of building their own platforms for organizing women in the struggles against corporate capture of people’s resources, such as the Asian Rural Women’s Coalition (ARWC). These regional platforms have especially strengthened grassroot initiatives at the country level, resulting in the activism of various noteworthy initiatives such as Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED) representing Dalit women, while connecting many other groups across the vast Asian continent, such as Arab Group for the Protection of Nature. The women’s movement has gained strength and solidarity by joining hands with many anti-imperialist organizations that have been collecting under the umbrella of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS). It needs to mention, that IWA was also able to quickly gather many grassroots women’s organizations based on the strong anti-imperialist women’s movement that had been geared in response to neoliberalism in the 1990s.
Women’s organizations have fought against corporate capture of agricultural land, against the various WTO agreements as they impacted their livelihood such as women collectives in PKMT, Pakistan against the dairy and livestock sector, AMIHAN, National Federation of Peasant Women, Philippines protecting the rights of peasant women, particularly in the context of state brutality against rural women who face imprisonment, killings and red tagging. Roots for Equity, a member of IWA has been supporting campaigns by women farmers’ advocating recognition of women’s right to land, protesting against Monsanto and other giant agrochemical corporations, while championing food sovereignty. Across Asia and the Pacific many women peasant organizations have boycotted corporate-controlled agrochemical mode of agricultural production, adopting agroecology and various forms models of self-reliant agricultural systems.
Women, and women organizations have not only been fighting against trade liberalization but the imperialist occupation of land and territories. It is clear that armed struggle has been adopted by women’s organizations fighting against the current imperialist fascists. From the Philippines, to India, to Palestine, there are many organized militant women’s groups that have stood up against the imperialist forces, especially in the context of land struggles.
Women revolutionaries have played a key role in the Philippine Revolution. MAKIBAKA, a women’s militant organization, one of the core organizations of the New Democratic Front in the Philippines (NDFP), has joined the underground and trained soldiers in the New People’s Army. Several women part of the revolutionary struggle have been shot by the fascist regimes of the Philippines.
Under the Palestinian movement for liberation, women have played an equal part with the men. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP) has a women’s squad in mounting an armed struggle against the Zionist Israel. PFLP has been represented by iconic figures like Leila Khaled,33 and Khalida Jarrar.34 Both women have played a critical role in Palestinian struggle against colonization and have clearly linked class and colonization as basic structures responsible for the oppression of women. Leila Khaled has been part of militant Palestinian struggle against its occupation under US imperialism. Khaled in this context has stated openly:
“When you defend humanity, you use all the means at your disposal. Some use words, some use arms and some use politics. … I chose arms and I believe that taking up arms is one of the main tools to solve this (Palestinian-Israeli) conflict in the interest of the oppressed and not the oppressors. A word can be also arms in the struggle. So I believe that women defend life because they are the ones who bring life.”
Jarrar, who has been in and out of Israeli detention many times, and believes that for colonizers, imprisonment is a form of subordination and subjugation to their tyranny. She has emphasised organizing Palestinian women prisoners, as well as linking liberation to education of women as an important element of struggling against occupation. Further, since education in Israeli prison system is not allowed, for her education of Palestinian prisoners inside jails is an act of resistance in itself. Further, patriarchal strains within the movement itself want to keep women out of escalatory movements, fearing for their safety. According to Jarrar, women prisoners consider themselves to be part of the larger liberation movement and want to be actively involved; therefore, the struggle for women often has these two-fold connotations wherein they do not want to be defined by others, but through their own decisions and actions.
In India, the CPI(M) has developed a strong women’s movement across many states of the country, which has fully participated in the class struggle for many decades.36 They women’s revolutionary movement has organized its cadres against deep-seated patriarchal practices of a feudal society, that control their food, dress code, and sexual and reproductive systems were all subjected to open discussions among women and with their male counterparts. Apart from addressing patriarchal norms, women also united in their right to armed struggle, which is especially true for indigenous (Adivasi) women. Being part of the armed struggle allowed them to take militant positions against officers of the ruling class.
Currently, the world is witnessing the intensified competition for world’s resources, territories among the biggest imperialist powers. US imperialism is the key military power, and is using it aggressively to overthrow other imperialist nations, namely Russia and China.
Though, US imperialism remains the most powerful among other imperialist nations, namely Russia and China, there is now an intensifying clash over resources, trade routes and territories among them. Apart from the economic trade and investment agreements discussed above, the US is using its military might to maintain its world domination. There are red hot tensions escalating among the imperialist countries, while each one is using its power among the neo-colonies, involved in tug-of- war to shake loose the other’s hold over territories, and barter loyalties of the corrupt elite regimes. Creating ethnic and/or ethnic disputes, counter insurgencies, and direct military attacks are fascist features of this era of imperialism.
Conclusion
As has been described above, the result of the imperialist trade and investment policies as well as the wars of aggression have escalated the misery of the masses. The fascist imperialist regimes, especially the US has unleashed a vicious attack on people’s rights, women’s rights. US imperialism, with the turn of the century has entered many wars of aggression, especially in Asia; a much-flaunted reason for this loot and plunder has been the facade of women’s liberation from the tyranny of dictatorships in the countries of the global south, protecting their human rights of, and of course replacing fundamentalist regimes with civil liberties and democracy.
However, the US-led war on Occupied Palestine has blown away this charade, laying to rest the much-touted moral supremacy of western democracy. With open militarised aggression of western nations out in the open, the people across the globe, especially in the neo-colonies now face decades of counter insurgencies, direct military attacks and ethnic and religious wars, as the struggle for chalking out territories and colonies intensifies amongst various imperialist attacks.
But these times of political and economic upheaval provide much ground for furthering the women’s movement, especially the proletarian women’s movement to escalate their efforts of the past decades. A whole range of institutions, social and political movements have laid a strong foundation for further organizing and mobilizing grassroots women across the globe. For the final victory of militant liberation struggles, it is now critical to forge a strong unity among the many sectors of oppressed classes to be able to finally breaking the bondage of class oppression and exploitation to win a bright future based on a classless society.