Women Organizing against Free Trade in Latin America

Women Organizing against Free Trade in Latin America Edmé Domínguez Reyes

There is a good deal of literature on new transnational social movements, especially those opposing globalization, particularly free trade. There is also broad literature regarding the consequences by gender of neoliberal restructuring, but literature on transnational organizing of women to resist free trade integration schemes is scarce. This article addresses the issue from the perspective of the Women’s Committee within the Hemispheric Social Alliance and the Mesoamerican Women in Resistance. It highlights the hindrances these movements encounter within their own mixed coalitions and within the broader women’s and feminist movements. Se ha publicado bastante sobre los movimientos sociales transnacionales, especialmente sobre aquellos opuestos a la globalización y al libre comercio. También hay bastantes publicaciones sobre las consecuencias de la restructuración neoliberal a nivel de género, pero son aún escasas las publicaciones sobre los esfuerzos transnacionales de las mujeres para resistir los esquemas de integración a través del libre comercio. Este artículo se acerca a estos temas desde la perspectiva del Comité de Mujeres de la Alianza Social Continental y de las Mujeres Mesoamericanas en Resistencia. Key words: free trade, gender, women, NAFTA, CAFTA

Introduction One of our main arguments is that, even if the feminist and women’s movements have engaged in the issue of violence, they have not linked it to the issue of the economy, free trade, globalization, which is also a sort of violence against women, so what we try to do is to put the issues related to trade, economic integration, on the agenda of all women so they can become as interested and willing to participate as men in these debates (María Atilano, RMALC and Women’s Committee at the Hemispheric Social Alliance, December 2004).1

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he point of departure of this article is that global restructuring, free trade, and integration processes have not been sufficiently linked to women’s and feminist struggles, and yet women are an important part of the mass mobilizations that civil society has organized to protest against big capital globalization, from Seattle 19992 to all social forums today. Although there are some studies that focus on the perspective of different women actors (see Cabezas Gonzales, 2007a, Latin American Policy—Volume 5, Number 2—Pages 193–206 © 2014 Policy Studies Organization. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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2007b; Eschle & Maiguashca, 2009; Gabriel & Macdonald, 1994; Macdonald, 1999, 2002; Wichterich & Menon-Sen, 2009), there is still much to be done in this field. This article’s aim is to analyze from a recent historical perspective how a gender perspective is being built and integrated into the anti-free trade discourses and movements in two specific cases in Latin America: the gender chapter within the HSA against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Mesoamerican Women in Resistance (Mujeres Mesoamericanas en Resistencia; MMR) against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Another aim is also to study if this perspective is capable of mobilizing and having an effect at three levels: the fellow anti-free trade movements (the “mixed movements”), the women’s movement in Latin America, and grassroots women’s organizations. We will address three questions: (1) what conditions activate the resistance of feminist groups to global restructuring and free trade? (2) how is a gender perspective being integrated into free trade discussions and in relation to other members of the anti-free trade movement? and (3) what kind of strategies and coordination efforts are these feminist and women’s groups developing?

Global Restructuring and Women Agency For some time now, scholars have addressed the negative aspects of global restructuring policies. By global restructuring, we mean “a set of multidimensional, multi-speed, and disjunct processes . . . in which the market, state, and civil society are embedded and (through which) they are reconstructed” (Marchand & Runyan, 2000, p. 7). The economic policies encouraged by international financial institutions during the 1980s that recommended austerity and restructuring of the economy of developing countries in which the state would leave all initiative to the private sector triggered these processes, thus retrenching from both economic and regulatory activities and functions. Part of this restructuring was the recommendation to open the economy and engage in trade liberalization whose costs soon started burdening women and other marginalized sectors. Academic work has underscored how global economic restructuring policies such as structural adjustment programs and trade liberalization are not gender-neutral policies and how they have had relevant negative effects on women (Benería & Feldman, 1992; Brodie, 1994; Chan & Ross, 2003; Domínguez, Icaza, Quintero, López, & Stenman, 2010; Hoskins, 2006; Marchand & Runyan, 2011; Runyan, 1997). In the long term, the implementation of major neoliberal designs through free trade has provoked a new phenomenon that its designers did not contemplate— the reaction of some sectors affected by these processes who are trying to organize so as to redirect them. Central to these responses are women’s organizations, which have joined together beyond borders. Overcoming ideological, political, and other kinds of differences, these women have found common areas of concern and are elaborating common strategies and tactics at the local level to resist the effects of global restructuring. In some cases, through transnational networking activities, women’s and feminist groups have been able to stimulate public debate on the dominant neoliberal paradigm for development and to promote public deliberation and

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scrutiny to encourage participation and inclusion in decision-making processes. Women’s and feminist groups’ opposition to free trade agreements and global restructuring in Latin America has unfolded amid intensifying conditions of globalization that activate different potentialities for action (Domínguez, 2002). Free trade agreements have constituted policy options to redesign regional integration schemes through trade and investment liberalization (e.g., CAFTA), or through subordinating sectors and activities of national economies to the requirements of global and regional markets (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]). Contemporary policies of economic deregulation have tended to privilege certain groups in society, mainly large private entrepreneurial groups, to the detriment of vast economic sectors such as peasantry and small- and medium-sized companies. Private interest groups, market actors, and some sectors within civil society have found a way to have an effect on—and in numerous cases to directly participate in—economic and political forms of governance (e.g., nonprofit associations in the regulation of the telecommunications sector). In some cases, the transnational activism of women’s and feminist groups is not only about resistance to free trade but also about how to share its benefits and costs. Some women’s and feminist groups in Latin America have acquired visibility and, through their influence, the capability to shape state policy. Numerous pro-women and pro-gender nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as a powerful, influential “elite” within political processes, displacing popular organizations that have increasingly lost public presence in negotiation and decision-making processes (Alvarez, 1998). Women’s and feminist transnational resistance to free trade has contributed to identifying that the power they are fighting or attempting to influence is no longer solely concentrated in the state but also at supranational levels. For example, there has been increasing concern in civil society organizations in Mexico dealing with issues of gender, trade, and democracy regarding the effect that market actors and supranational institutions have on the making and remaking of official discourses.3 A similar situation arose in El Salvador during the years that CAFTA was discussed and crafted, leading to the organization of MMR (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, San Salvador, July 2009). It has been necessary to adapt the discourses of women’s movements to a globalized reality, although the process is neither uniform nor unproblematic. There is much literature on the experiences and possibilities of transborder resistance, covering different issues, regional forums, and world conferences (see Alvarez, 1999; Eschle & Maiguashca, 2009; Friedman, Hochstetler, & Clark, 2001; Marchand & Runyan, 2011; Smith, Chatfield, & Pagnucco, 1997). The ideas of Marchand and Runyan inspire our concept of resistance; we consider that resistances can be seen as actions against a certain order that can be perceived as permanent or transitional and harmful to the interests of a certain group. These actions can be defensive or “propositive” and account for large-scale mobilizations and day-to-day practices and strategies (Marchand & Runyan, 2011). In the cases we will examine, resistance has taken the form of critical, propositive networks that monitor the known or possible consequences of free trade on most of the population and on women of the popular sectors in particular.

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Pancontinental Resistance to Free Trade in the Americas as Resistance to Globalization The Regional Response at the Hemispheric Level: FTAA and HSA The first negotiations for a free-trade area encompassing the entire continent were held in 1998 and brought together several civil organizations that had already been working together against NAFTA since the beginning of the 1990s. These organizations and their networks representing all countries on the continent formed a broad coalition called the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA). This coalition became responsible for broad mobilizations parallel to the different summits within the negotiating framework of the FTAA and for discussion and research on all topics linked to free trade and economic restructuring. One of these topics was women and gender issues, but it was not given the same space and status as other issues. As the HSA unfolded, so did gender issues. For example, at the People’s Summit of the Americas, held in Santiago, Chile in April 1998 parallel to the FTAA summit (RMALC, 1998), the forum discussing gender issues put forward a resolution, “Toward a Social Continental Agenda within a Context of Gender Equity” (Arteaga, 1998). More than 200 women representing organizations from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and the Mexico–U.S. and U.S.–Canada–Quebec border regions participated in the forum. This document brought up again the issues already discussed in many other forums concerning the negative effects of a development model based on economic liberalization. Taking into account the lesson from NAFTA, this document identified certain trends such as an increasing sex-segregated labor market, the massive migration of men to the United States, and patterns of feminine migration provoked by economic restructuring as common realities in Latin American and Caribbean communities. It proposed alternative economic policies that would take into account the effects of such policies according to gender, ethnical, and class factors. It also argued for a democratic participation of all sectors of society in the different commissions dealing with processes of economic integration, the application of an international “code of conduct” for all transnational companies, and a compensatory mechanism that would take note of the socioeconomic disparities between countries (Arteaga, 1998). Most of the activists behind these efforts and resolutions came from labor organizations or NGOs working on these issues, whereas the broad feminist and women’s movement was still absent, even at the time of the organization of the “Women’s March toward the Year 2000.”4 Despite the lack of an official space recognized by the HSA organizers, female rights activists of the different networks in the region continued to discuss gender issues at the various meetings that the HSA organized. They once again coordinated a women’s forum at the HSA’s second people’s summit in Quebec in 2001, where the first drafts of the first joint document produced by the organization Alternatives for the Americas were discussed. Although these drafts did not initially address gender issues specifically, under pressure from women’s groups and networks of the entire continent, a “gender chapter” was incorporated and several gender issues were integrated into other chapters.5


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The “gender chapter” offered similar analysis as those developed earlier regarding the effects of economic liberalization on women as family members and workers (Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, 1997). Topics such as the democratic participation of women in trade negotiations were also raised, but there was more emphasis than before on the diversity and plurality of women’s groups. The final demands were addressed to both trade agreements and governments, making clear the shared responsibility of policy at the national and the supranational level. The chapter also stressed the need for all trade treaties to respect international agreements, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Platform for Action from Beijing, and the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights. The responsibility for transnational capital was again underlined in the form of an international code of behavior for all multinational companies and foreign investors to protect female workers’ rights against different types of discrimination and sexual harassment. Women’s access to the positive aspects of globalization—information and communication technologies—was also encouraged (HSA, 2002). In Chile in 1998, we saw very general condemnations and criticisms of a “negative sort of development” without many concrete alternatives. The issue remains at the level of a “narrow materialist understanding of global restructuring”6 and does not engage in the ideological, social, relational, and physical social constructions of female and male bodies.7 The group behind this chapter became formally known as the HSA Women’s Committee, formed by several women’s organizations associated with labor, environment, free-trade, and economic issues. In its first bulletin published in 2004, this group described itself as “an informal group of women who have formed a committee within the HSA” (HSA, 2004b). It acknowledged that its space within the HSA had not yet been formalized, nor was it part of the coalition’s agenda; its meetings were still on the margin of the big HSA meetings, proving the low priority gender issues had in the general anti-free-trade agreement movement. It also started to confront certain internal conflicts. According to one of the Mexican representatives (M. Atilano, personal communication, December 2004), these differences were similar to those in other women’s coalitions or networks. There were those who favored a feminist activism, working mainly with women, and those who favored an equality approach, a gender approach involving both men and women. Maria Atilano was coordinator of the Mexico Women’s Committee.8 After the Quebec summit, there was a strategic meeting of the women’s committee in the Dominican Republic in the same year (2002). A strategic plan and the main principles of the committee were elaborated at this meeting: [A] critical analysis and a rejection of the FTAA, the empowerment of women to fight neo-liberal processes, to empower the women of the HSA, the creation of alternatives from a gender perspective, the implementation of strategies for advocacy and mobilization, a proposal to the HSA to create strategies around regional bilateral accords and the recognition of the contribution of feminist thought as key analysis and commitment to challenge gender inequalities (HSA, 2004b, p. 4).

These principles seem to point to a double struggle, one against the integration schemes and the model of development these women rejected, and one within

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the HSA to strengthen its position and proposals, because the women were conscious that their space within the HSA was contested. These principles were to be implemented by working with individual women, with organizations and networks, through campaigns and grassroots groups, and by highlighting through a bulletin that was first published in 2004 its work on issues such as FTAA, CAFTA, and other bilateral agreements. The bulletin also covered other important issues of concern, such as access to essential services, militarization, and violence, linking them to the free trade model in the Americas (HSA, 2004b). It also hoped to strengthen the HSA operating committee as a larger alliance. At the meeting in the Dominican Republic, the group also decided to launch certain research activities on concrete issues, which showed their need to link these issues to the general struggles of women and feminist movements in the region. Groups in Brazil and Bolivia were to elaborate case studies regarding women’s participation in the struggles against water privatization (HSA, 2004b). These studies were presented at the First Americas Social Forum in Quito, in July 2004 (HSA, 2004a), as examples of the concrete consequences of globalization and free trade (in the sense of the privatization of social services such as the provision of water) on the environment and on the lives of women and indigenous groups. They were also shown as evidence that well-articulated mobilizations at the local level with transnational support can achieve a disruption of such privatization processes and articulate a feasible resistance movement, and their strategy became linked to the rest of the movement through concrete examples of successful resistance. The Women’s Committee continued its networking and gatherings at the various regional HSA meetings in 2003 and 2004, and also at other events, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Cancun in 2003. In Brasilia, the committee discussed the upcoming WTO meeting in Cancun, and one of its members, the Latin American chapter of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) published a declaration on how the issues to be discussed in Cancun affected women (Mujeres ante la OMC). Issues such as the erosion of agriculture subsidies, trade in services (the Singapore themes), and intellectual property rights were presented as dangerous traps. The declaration urged women to press their governments not to make any concessions on such issues (IGTN, 2003).9 In Brasilia, the Mexican members of the committee announced that they were organizing an international seminar on the gender perspective of the WTO to take place during the WTO Cancun meeting. This seminar resulted in the elaboration of a strategic plan (personal communication, December 2004). Throughout all of these meetings, the women’s committee faced difficulties finding new strategies and confronted conflicts of coordination that may have reflected North–South contradictions and subregional tensions. Since the meeting in the Dominican Republic, the hemisphere has been divided into three regions coordinated by a country in each region, the south by Brazil, the Andean countries by Peru, and the north and central by Canada. In Cuba, there was a discussion to convince the somewhat reluctant Mexican representatives to take over coordination of the northern and central part from Canada (personal communication, December 2004).10


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There was also a pressing need to revise and update the gender chapter approved in 2002. A process of re-elaboration of this chapter was begun, placing more emphasis on the gender equality aspect. The Mexican coordination group proposed to carry out a survey among women at the grassroots level, partly to give more legitimacy to the process but also with the view of getting new ideas and alternatives. Mexico was the only country to carry out the survey at the appointed time. The rest of the represented countries found it difficult to carry out their commitments as agreed.11 This problem may also represent the difficulties these representatives confronted when trying to link these issues to their daily struggles. Although the Mexican coalition seemed to perform better than the others, it was worried about the lack of interest of most feminist and women’s movements in these issues. It observed that there was a certain level of interest and activism in Mexico City but not in the rest of the country where mobilizations took place only around traditional issues such as the struggle against violence.12 One of the main challenges for anti-free trade feminist activists was to establish the link between violence and economic restructuring through free trade, which can be considered another kind of violence affecting women, “to put the issues related to trade and economic integration on the agenda of all women so that they can become as interested and willing to participate in these debates as the men” (M. Atilano, personal communication, December 2004).13 This challenge may have diminished after 2006 in Mexico because of the war on organized narcotics crime when violence (from mafia groups and the police or military) became part of daily realities. Another concrete example of this link between violence and economic restructuring was the increasing widespread of maquiladora production all over the country. In December 2006, at the Cochabamba Summit for the Integration of the People, the Women’s Committee of the HSA organized a panel in which five dimensions and themes were discussed: (1) feminism in a regional framework (discussed by Articulación Feminista Marcosur); (2) criticism to the model of development from a feminist perspective (discussed by Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres); (3) the trade union movement and the proposals of regional integration with gender equity; (4) the trade and economic integration proposals (bilateral and alternative agreements such as Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos [TCP], the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America [ALBA] [discussed by IGTN], and Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Transformando la Economía [REMTE]); and (5) the Women’s Committee of the HSA in the continental processes of resistance. The final document of the panel was called “Integration and Development of the Gender Perspective: The Challenges for the Women’s Movements in the Context of Regional Integration.” This document deals more with the women’s movement itself and its challenges within a globalized world than with the concrete issues of economic integration. Although there is an interesting reflection on the need for a “cosmopolitan imagination” that looks at the increasing connections between the local and the global, the document has only a very small section where the counter-projects and resistance to the FTAA are covered and the criticism of neoliberalism and the market and consumption economy are restated. There is also a very small mention of the history of the Women’s Committee and of the fact that within the United States, feminist criticism of the

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model of trade and investment is still particularly weak (Cumbre por la Integración de los Pueblos, 2006). There seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that this activism is carried out either in Canada (Macdonald, 1999, 2002), or mostly in Latin America, and that the contradictions or tensions between groups may have persisted. After this overview of the activism in the Americas in general, we will now present the Central American experience.

The Regional Response at the Central American Level: The Mesoamerican Women’s Networks At the same time that the HSA was created, several networks in this subregion started to organize the Mesoamerican People’s Forums in 2001. These forums were a response to the Project Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), a project for economic integration—mainly investment—that tried to incorporate the Central American region, including the south of Mexico, into the FTAA. Even though neither FTAA nor PPP were implemented as intended, in the case of Central America, CAFTA (signed by the United States in 2005) was the integration project against which the Mesoamerican People’s forums started to act. Its range of organizations and protests continued throughout all of Mesoamerica, including the south of Mexico as part of its platform. From these forums, the regional network MMR was created. According to activists of MMR, We were born as “Mujeres Mesoamericanas,” after the third Mesoamerican Peoples Forum . . . with the mission to follow the construction of this resistance from the women themselves, with the mission to write a plan for a political project from the feminist women in resistance. This is how the organization was born, as a regional project . . . Each country agreed to organize a network that could represent them within Mujeres Mesoamericanas . . . (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).14

The first meeting of this new organization took place in El Salvador in 2004. During that meeting, the “strategic lines” of the organization were defined: the struggle for basic services such as access to water, food sovereignty, and the encouragement of female leaderships at the local community level. [T]o strengthen the construction of this movement of Mesoamerican women in each of the countries. That was the commitment each delegation carried home and according to which we have been working since then (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication July, 2009).

From that meeting and the one in Guatemala in 2006, the idea of a “School of Feminist Economics” at a regional level took form. A pilot school was created in El Salvador in 2007. Those who attended the courses given at the school were committed to reproducing this knowledge in their communities. Mesoamerican women also participated in the writing of a report on the effects of CAFTA two years after its implementation (Hernández, 2008). The last chapter of this report was an analysis of this type of economic integration from a gender perspective. The chapter focused on the maquiladora model as the main culprit of the absence of labor rights, inhuman working conditions, job discrimination,


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sexual harassment, increases in prices for basic consumption goods, little labor flexibility, extremely low salaries, the closing down of local small- or mediumsized industries, the privatization of social services, particularly health services, and a lack of access to natural resources such as water (Hernández, 2008). This chapter provided information and was presented in a pedagogic way so that most of the grassroots women would understand it, in a effort to spread some knowledge on issues of global economics. Although MMR was born from the Mesoamerican People’s Forums, the relationship with other organizations in these forums has often been disappointing, as in the case of the Women’s Committee of the HSA with the rest of the organizations there. . . . afterwards we attended the 6th forum in San Jose, Costa Rica. That’s where we felt we were being treated in a very disrespectful way by the “mixed” organizations because we were arguing that from the beginning we have to struggle not only against neoliberalism, against imperialism and capitalism but also against the cultural, the philosophical, the economic system and its symbols represented by patriarchies . . . We encountered a lot of resistance and this is not casual because these macho leaders, and sometimes we’ve even been able to prove it, they become violent and sometimes even rapists. They argue that feminism is an ideology to the right, a “light feminism,” and much more foolishness, but in reality what they’re trying to do is to protect the privileges they get from the patriarchal system’s dominance. And many times, the more the opposition and hatred against women, the higher the possibility that these leaders have violated human rights (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).

The MMR has identified the trade unions as one of the most hostile groups to feminism. The trade unions were among the worst! You will see that when you go and visit the maquilas. You see such leaders within the trade unions, within the peasant movements. These leaders are well recognized they have obtained a certain status thanks to their public relations. You look at them and they seem very nice, good people, you even think, what a social commitment! But when you try to question them, to tell them that women suffer more oppression, more poverty, that statistics show a feminization of poverty . . . but also [when you discuss] the fact that women have the right to decide, that this has to be recognized, that we are still thought to be in the need of “protection” as minors, that the state and all men feel they have the right to decide regarding women’s bodies . . . We can try to join forces to change the system but we cannot question either patriarchies or machismo or their privileges, no, because then you’re considered to belong to the right, to the middle classes, you are placed in other categories . . . (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).

These experiences led MMR activists to look for other spaces, continental feminist spaces where they could find new proposals regarding the economy. They strengthened their relations with REMTE, and they established links with the World March of Women and with the Women’s Committee of the HSA. They also tried to organize in a horizontal way, thus avoiding the hierarchies that they noticed still existed in many “mixed” organizations. Their biggest effort goes into the sense of articulation and diffusion of knowledge at the local level. Within the Mesoamerican women, each group has its own autonomy and its own nature and objectives, but when we gather, we create an articulation space . . . we

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put together institutions, organizations, coalitions, a diversity of groups. There are around 16 institutions like IMU [Instituto de la Mujer], Melidas, the Dignas, and many more. We all feel this commitment to reproduce all these themes that we have received at this “Regional Feminist Economics School.” Thus, we see the importance of these two modules. In April there was a lot of theory, but now in August we’ll focus on the collective construction of alliances, on the consolidation of our network that is a network of networks. And we also strive to consolidate a political project that can identify us and with which we want to contribute to the construction of a new world we think is possible and for which we are determined to make cultural changes. That is why the school is so important; it’s like creating new hopes that there are possibilities to make real transformations in women’s lives, in their communities, within their families (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).

The methodologies of the school are based on the day-to-day experiences of these women in their households and communities. They adapt to the different contexts, urban or rural. Isabel Ascencio and Xenia Noyola continue, In those first two days we agreed we had to use dynamics linked to personal experiences; you cannot just theorize, you have to respect all that comes forward and in any case place these experiences in the different themes we’re studying so our comrades can see the link of one theme with the other. We have to link the results of these themes to the main theme: how do we live the economy? How do we live the free trade agreements? How do we live the migrations? How do we experience domestic work? In my municipality, for example, more than 60% of all women work in the maquila, it’s a dormitory suburb (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).

The final goal of this school is to find alternative models that link the demands for economic justice to gender justice. What we are clearly defining is our goal to construct a new political project that transforms our reality, that allows us to cut our dependence on the capitalist model that limits us so much it prevents us from progressing, from studying, from having an income, so many things . . . We also want to continue our mobilizations, our protests, to denounce, to give evidence on the consequences of these policies in the lives of women. We have to continue with this, otherwise it’s the end of our resistance (I. Ascencio & X. Noyola, personal communication, July 2009).

The experience of the MMR is not very different from that of the Women’s Committee of the HSA. Their challenges are the same as those faced by all the groups resisting neoliberal policies; they share the same forums and spaces of protest but, in the case of these women’s groups, these demands are also feminist and thus contentious for many of their comrades in arms. We do not know about the conflicts within the networks and about their plans and resolutions, but we can see that the MMR seems to have more concrete strategies and to be more successful than the Women’s Committee of the HSA in articulating actions. Most important, they seem to succeed in articulating with community-based organizations with similar interests. These observations are mostly based in El Salvador, but if these experiences are similar in the rest of the countries in the region, MMR may have advanced much more than their counterparts in Mexico and in other regions in Latin America in the struggle against neoliberal economic integration.


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Final Reflections There is a mobilization from women’s and feminist movements that attempts to integrate a gender perspective into the anti-free trade movement. These mobilization and resistance against free trade have taken the form of resolutions, reports, and chapters in the more general documents against free trade agreements, and also in the form of economic literacy campaigns to empower grassroots women to act. Could we call these strategies and instruments gendered? Yes, in the sense that they are based on women’s experiences and that they aim to transform women’s consciousness as to the gendered process of globalization and economic restructuring. No, in the sense that they are pointing toward inequalities in general, beyond those based on gender, inequalities created or preserved and deepened by free trade processes. These actions have encountered several obstacles. First, the other anti-free trade organizations have not completely accepted this movement or taken it seriously. “Gender space” in movements has been questioned or criticized, which shows that strong anti-feminist feelings seem to survive, especially among the old traditional labor groups. These feelings seem to pervade other leftist groups, and even left-leaning governments, as several examples show. Although much has changed in the last 30 years, there is a lot to be done to correct misconceptions and change mentalities. Second, it has not been easy to engage the rest of the women’s and feminist movements or grassroots women into these struggles. The Women’s Committee of the HSA has had to find concrete examples, such as water anti-privatization campaigns, but in the case of Central America, women’s NGOs and many grassroots movements seem to be involved. This is perhaps due to the fact that CAFTA’s consequences are easier to grasp, such as in the case of maquiladora production, or because of the presence of so many transnational corporations in the agro-export industry. We can see that the MMR in Central America has been the most successful network. Targeting a concrete project such as the school of feminist economics and the spread of knowledge among the different grassroots women’s groups seem to be truly empowering mechanisms, as they show effects that can be used to question the entire development model. Transborder organizing to carve and develop a gender perspective on free trade and the neoliberal development model faces several challenges. These challenges are not only external; some exist in internal divisions regarding goals, tactics, strategies, and perspectives of the situation. Facing these challenges is not easy but, given the precedents regarding the impressive achievements the global women’s movement has obtained up to the UN women world conference in Beijing in 1995, one has to be optimistic. Nevertheless, since Beijing, we also see backlashes, and that is why this optimism has to be somewhat qualified.

About the Author Edmé Domínguez Reyes (born in Mexico, resident of Sweden) is an associate professor (docent) in Peace and Development Studies. She did her undergraduate studies in International Relations at El Colegio de México and her doctorate studies at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP), Paris. She works as a lecturer in Latin American Studies at the School of Global Studies, University of

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Gothenburg. She has worked and published on issues of soviet foreign policy toward Latin America. Since the beginning of the 1990s, her work has focused on regionalism in the case of NAFTA and Mexico, and on gender issues related to citizenship, labor organizing, and transnational activism in Mexico and El Salvador.

Notes 1

Maria Atilano was the main coordinator of the Mexican women’s groups within the gender chapter group at the Hemispheric Social Alliance. 2 The social forum in Seattle in 1999 was a protest against the WTO negotiations taking place there. It is considered the first big transnational anti-globalization forum in the world. 3 Gender in the Global Economy and Local Resistances deals with these issues. This document was produced for the First Social Forum on Latin America and the Caribbean, Enlazando Alternativas, held parallel to the Third European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico in May 2004 (Enlazando Alternativas, 2004). 4 This march was a global campaign organized in 1998 to protest the effects of neoliberal policies on women’s lives. The same networks active at the continental level in anti-free trade movements got involved in the organization of this march that was to culminate as a giant women’s demonstration, with groups from all over the world, in front of the headquarters of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the UN. The coordinator of this campaign in Mexico was Matilde Arteaga, leader of the women within the Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT, a confederation of independent trade unions) and a member of the Mexican delegation to Santiago in 1998. The interview with Arteaga was held in1998. 5 For a discussion on this gender chapter and the HSA, see Macdonald, 1999, pp. 63–64. Those responsible for the gender chapter were the U.S.-based Women’s EDGE (The National Council of Women’s Organization: Women’s Edge Coalition) and the Alliance for Responsible Trade, Alianza Chilena por un Comercio Justo y Responsable/Red de Mujeres Transformando la Economía, and Ser Mulher/Rede Brasileira Pela Integração dos Povos. 6 These quotes come from Arteaga, 1998. 7 According to Marchand and Runyan (2000, p. 8), “gender operates in at least three distinct, yet interconnected, ways: (1) ideologically, especially in terms of gender and valorization of social processes and practices; (2) at the level of social relations; and (3) physically, through the social construction of male and female bodies.” None of these ways was explored in a deeper sense during the elaboration of the mentioned resolutions. 8 The Mexican coordinating group held the latter view. 9 The IGTN has also tried to integrate a clause on female and male workers’ rights in all FTAA agreements. See Azar, Espino and Celiberti (2005, p. 15). 10 According to María Atilano, representatives from different groups in Mexico would assume this coordination. 11 Several women’s groups from the region have been present at the meetings of the World Social Forum since it started in Porto Alegre in 2001. Some of these women’s groups gather in Articulación Feminista Marcosur. The latter forms part of the women’s committee of the HSA. See Celiberti (2002). 12 The resistance is mostly through NGOs and networks such as the network of gender and economy, or gender and the environment, but few trade unions, with the exception of the FAT. 13 According to Atilano, this link between violence and free trade or economic issues has been made in the case of the murdered women in Ciudad Juarez, many of whom were maquiladora workers, but these linking efforts are still insufficient. 14 Isabel Ascencio and Xenia Noyola belong to different women’s organizations in El Salvador. They are both researchers in women NGOs and activists in MMR. My interviews with them took place in July 2009.

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