getting the fundamentals right - women, water and wealth
HOME
» INITIATIVE
PEOPLE
MEETINGS
BULLETIN BOARD
LITERATURE
CONTACT
The Initiative
"We want women to walk out of poverty." With this task Devaki Jain invited a group of women thinkers to Casablanca in January 2007. The meeting was intended to see if there could be a consensus on both aspects, first: Is there a crisis? Is there a cause for concern? and second: Should we react? Can we react? Can we bring up any new ideas, new frameworks to deal with this situation? How to build the momentum to implement them? Our meeting was only to crack the egg shell - not to cook the omelette. And to that extent the two and a half days in Casablanca did achieve its purpose. The underlying consensus in the group was that theory, institutions, practices, policy need a revision, reconstruction, remodelling in the context of or in response to the terrible condition of those who are hungry - who lack the fundamentals. To further specify the first round of a follow up or an outline for discussion the group broke up into two:
  • Macro-economic ideas and how to transform them to be more human and enabling of justice
  • How to get institutions and laws to support that

    • » Casablana Meeting

    General
    » A Note Emerging from Reflection in Casablanca
    Findings, Analysis and Suggestions by Devaki Jain, 16/02/07

    » Shifting Our Platform: In Response to Current Ground Level Phenomena
    Devaki Jain and Shubha Chacko
    (4th World Congress of Rural Women, Durban, South Africa, 23 -26 April 2007)

    » Casablanca Dialogues
    A Brief Report Flagging Some of the Issues around which the Conversations Revolved at
    Shubha Chacko with assistance from Asako Matsukawa (July 2007)

    Women and Macroeconomics
    Shifting the emphasis from a trade lead economy to a hunger free economy. Shifting from GDP and HDI and the "dollar per day poverty" measures to measures such as water and food poverty.

    » Integrating Unpaid Work into Macroeconomics
    A Short History and the Philippine Experience
    Solita Collas-Monsod at an International Seminar at Goa, India, May 2007

    plus two articles by Devaki Jain on this subject

    »Water - ... and Women
    A Commented Link List

    Women and Institutional Spaces
    A need for more unburocractic "women support" spaces, for better protection by the International Law, for negotiating in favor of women migrant workers etc.

    top

    Zanele Mbeki, South Africa, and Jemma, a carpet weaver from the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco (Casablanca 2007)
     
     VOICES
    What is it about ...

    "... the birth of a new idea which would provide a more appropriate theory or a conceptual framework for enabling women in poverty to walk out of it or, at least, not to be trapped in it."
    Devaki Jain, India

    "... the idea of becoming an intellectual aide or instrument on gender questions for NAM and/or UN offices ..."
    Marta Nunez, Cuba

    "... the naissance of a new unified methodology in the implementation of the collective experience of women's thinking, knowledge and lived realities in the international women's movement for a better world through gender equity."
    Yassine Fall, Senegal

    "No work has been done since 2001 on measuring women's contribution to the economy and the integration of unpaid labor into the national accounts. In fact, had it not been for Devaki Jain and the Casablanca Dream, I would never have found out what had happened."
    Solita C. Monsod, The Philippines