Development Dossier
National Union of Working Women
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National Union of Working WomenOn this great day of March 8, I bring greetings from the women of India to one and all. While I'm placing on record millions of sacrifices that women have gone through to fight gender, class discrimination in their respective societies, I will take only 7 minutes to place before this August body the struggle of field activists. I speak here both on behalf of my own organization, i.e. the National Union of Working Women in the Southern parts of India, with a membership of 300,000 poor women in the urban slums and rural areas. I also speak for my network partner, GROOT'S International, a network of social movements of grassroots women in 19 countries. The women in the National Union of Working Women (NUWW) earn their own livelihood by hard work through access to credit, welfare services, training for empowerment, also have provided for the basic needs for their families as well. Despite being poor these women have established a banking system of their own contributed to a credit recovery rate of 95%. Through their reproductive health services contributed to 71% per cent of couple production rate (C.P.R.) in population reduction effort. They have struggled to fight for their land rights, housing rights, labour rights, and pursued social action process both for their own visibility and for the larger issues affecting women in family and communities. Women everywhere have to struggle their way as most often they are victims of unequal divisions of social responsibilities within the household, often denied equal distribution of family's resources ‑ a practice continued for generations, thus made women poorer than others. I come from the land of Mahatma Gandhi who made it possible for women to participate in the freedom struggle of the country on an equal basis with men. His desire for equality of the sexes is enshrined in the Indian constitution. However, habits die hard among various cultures in traditional societies that often negate what little progress one achieves. This is very evident in the treatment of girl children not alone in India but in our entire region and few other developing countries as well. This is also seen in the human right violation such as female foeticides and in the occurrences of infant mortalities, dowry deaths, and many other forms of victimization that women face at the grassroots.
sometimes run by the income of the children and women. I also speak on behalf of our network of social movements, GROOT'S International. The National Union of Working Women, along with other grassroot women's' initiative in 19 other countries have contributed to this networking process. The major contribution of GROOT'S International is through the collective vision of their regional focal points have fed micro‑information's that led to micro‑policy options, mainly to place women in the global agenda. India, as elsewhere in the developing world, is passing to unprecedented challenges due to liberalization measures and an open‑door policy to market economy. While this liberalization process is not reversible, still it is the harsh reality to note that vulnerable sections of people below the poverty line in the country have to face denial of access to education, medical facilities, access to capital, training and technology. Apart from the social safety net programmes, wider social security measures of education, health, and other protective insurances are necessary. This will enable millions of poor children to have access to education and will enable millions of poor women to have access to health services and maternity benefits to withstand the pressures during this reform process. Economic conditions of women workers are no doubt worsening in the informal sector, as 89% of India's "working poor" are women in the informal sector. These women workers are facing new patterns of competition from unemployed men who are retrenched on account of the liberalization process. Therefore any measure to help informal sector workers in India and in the developing world will be a real major step forward for poverty reduction, and job creation among the working poor. The World Summit on Social Development meets at a time when the entire planet is in the grip of economic, social, political, and environmental problems. The Summit had already had the prepcoms where the various caucuses of the people's initiatives have made it possible for the draft document to include a framework for people‑centered development, decentralization process, a progress in gender concerns, a step forward paving the way for a transitional path between market forces and social demands of the people. However, the disagreement of the north‑south are major issues such as timeframe for poverty eradication, concepts of more equal distribution of income, greater access to equity and equality for all on a global basis causes great concern. Agreements on right to food, health education, shelter, information sharing and fundamental rights are strategies for the fight against poverty are equally important. The agreement on resource transfers and timeframe work to achieve all the objectives of the Summit are even more important. It is a critical need for the World Summit to look for alternatives and it could be found in the growing network of social movement's private, non‑governmental efforts, civil society initiatives, both at national and international efforts. These are initiatives alone can stimulate the livelihoods of people both in poor and rich nations. NGOs can democratize systems and make countries self‑reliant through encouragement to local production for local use. They can help generate income and help asset less poor acquire assets. NGOs can further experiment such forms of ownership serving different economic social purposes. They can build institutions and establish relations to support the survival of peaceful communities. They can achieve this locally, nationally, and globally within a given time and phases. The development model that exists today emphasizes economic growth and therefore perpetuates only oppression on the poor and discrimination on women. Is it possible for the World Summit to come up with a model that will also meet the social demands of the people and create a space for the poor and the women to move forward? The World Summit should be a meeting place of minds rather than meeting place of governments and people. It should further strive to agree to eliminate biased cultural, economic relations. Pave the way to reduce the gap between the developed and the developing nations. We look forward to the Summit as a new direction towards the national budgets of governments to include pro‑poor measures to withstand reform process. The Summit must echo reciprocity of practices between the various actors in the process of resource transfers with relative autonomy and interdependence. 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