by Michelle Tolson
-Cambodia-

“The way [Cambodian] women demonstrate is not physical. They use their voices. It is a collection of voices to spread awareness. For men, there is more violence. When someone commits violence against them, they feel like they must fight back, but it is high risk because they can be accused of violence. With a woman’s strategy, we can endure it better. [Our] strategy reduces violence,” said Tep Vanny from her home in northern Phnom Penh.

Vanny hopes to change Cambodian peoples’ thinking about criticizing the government because she is one of the many people threatened with eviction at what was previously known as Boeung Kak Lake. Ten villages used to surround the now sand-filled lake, but three have left, leaving seven, says Vanny. Her address is village number 22.

by Diane Latiker
-USA-

After eight children, 13 grandchildren, and two husbands, I was blessed with a passion that fills my soul. My mom raised me to be independent, married or not. She taught me to always stand for something or fall for everything. I took the message literally. The problem was that I was a people pleaser – you know, the one who cannot be happy without others being happy. I stood for everyone’s well being, never giving a thought to my dreams, hopes, or goals in life.

by Meghan Lewis
-UK-

In the same week that Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor for the National Review, said that “The pay gap is exaggerated, discrimination doesn’t drive it and it’s not clear that government can eliminate it – or should even try,” a friend of mine found out that she was being paid less than her male colleague who did exactly the same job.

by Jemma Williams
-Australia-

The gondola glides smoothly up into the Andean hills on the outskirts of Medellín, Colombia, as I peer through its clean glass windows in fascination at the world below. Slums sprawl over rugged green hills, with informal settlements stretching further and further up into the steep slopes of the mountains. Makeshift houses atop hillsides mesh into one another and the streets are full of activity. Women sit in groups outside brightly coloured houses and barefoot children run over unsteady bridges above dirty streams. The faint beat of salsa music drifts into the skies until it is just barely audible. The contrast between the clean, quiet, and comfortable carriage in the sky and the lively disarray below is dizzying. These cable cars, known as the Metrocable, were built to serve as mass public transport for the communities in the region. Yet they appear not only to have revolutionised public transport for the poor, but are also a powerful symbol of social inclusion in the city.

by Urmila Chanam
-India-

While the rest of India is fighting for respect and dignity of women, ‘Ima Keithel’ the all women market in Manipur symbolizes women’s empowerment. In this northeastern extreme of India, women enjoy a unique status in their homes, in the workplace and in the community, a trend found very rarely in the rest of the India. Every time I come to Ima Keithel, I find a new way of looking at these women.

by Priyanka Bhardwaj
-India-

Every afternoon 8-year-old Raj Kumar and his younger sibling trudge along the ten kilometer expanse of Golf Course Road to take free classes at a school ensconced in a posh pocket of Gurgaon in the Indian state of Haryana. The zeal of their car-washer parents to conquer their poor living conditions has led them to push their children to get an education despite the hardship forsaking the extra income two sets of helping hands would have earned.

by Katie Palmer
-Canada-

Recently I partnered with a colleague from OneChild, a children’s rights organization, to travel throughout Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand for several weeks to investigate prevalent social issues affecting children and youth in the region. Such issues include child sex tourism, absolute poverty, largely inaccessible primary and elementary education, and health problems arising from large populations inhabiting informal housing districts. In order to gain the most from our exposure trip, we partnered alongside a number of hosting organizations.

One similarity among the varied hosting organizations was the implementation of “advocacy tours.” Geared towards both foreign tourists and wealthier local citizens, advocacy tours (sometimes referred to as “poverty tours” or “poverty tourism”) provide opportunities for participants to understand a variety of social and economic issues common in the Global South.

by Rachel Muthoni
-Kenya-

With the current inflation in Kenya, the number of Commercial Sex Workers (CSW) in Nakuru, the capital of the most populated Rift Valley province, is rising steadily – a trend that began after the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

The dangers CSWs are exposing themselves to range from HIV infection to mistreatment by clients and other workers. Karen Gakii, 22, will never forget the ordeal she underwent at the hands of her fellow CSWs.

by Michelle Tolson
-Cambodia-

Entertainment venues are very popular in Cambodia. They are well supplied with beer and young women to serve it. Karaoke clubs and beer gardens are frequented by Khmer men who expect women to sit and drink with them. This can result in beer sellers drinking an average of five drinks a night according to independent researcher Ian Lubek. All this occurs despite assurances from beer companies that beer sellers are not expected to drink on the job.

by Michelle Tolson
-Cambodia-

On January 12th, 2012 I traveled 45 km outside of Phnom Penh with a group of human rights workers and journalists to a relocation site for the evictees of the Borei Keila slum, which had been demolished the prior week. Deeply tanned faces lined with anguish peered out of makeshift shelters. Grief was the dominant theme as they shared stories of the eviction proceedings. Up on a hill, the beautiful temples of Udong contrasted with the temporary homes below fashioned from tarps and blankets, propped up by sticks.

by Rachel Muthoni
-Kenya-

When they hear cries of their fellow countrymen hit by acute food shortage, Kenyan peasant farmers in more productive areas have no money to donate. While they may feel the need and the wish to feed other hungry Kenyans, these farmers cannot reach out with financial help.

More than 3.6 million Kenyans are in urgent need of food assistance. Within Rift Valley, which has a population of about 10 million people, millions languish in hunger, depending only on relief food. Yet other Kenyans in the Valley are struggling to find ways to dispose of produce following a bumper harvest.

by Leanne A. Grossman
-USA-

The noxious smell of rotten eggs regularly blows over the rural village of Berezovka, Kazakhstan. The fumes come directly from the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field only five kilometers away, which emits toxic hydrogen sulfide during oil and gas extraction and refining.

by Joyce J. Wangui
-Kenya-

As the quest for working abroad heightens for many skilled and semi-skilled Kenyans, only a handful understand the implications of working in countries where labor laws are ignored. Media reports of brutality toward foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia have done little to deter determined Kenyans from seeking greener pastures. But has the search for a better life become modern-day slavery?

by Zubeida Mustafa
-Pakistan-

A version of the following article was originally published August 12, 2009. In light of recent reports of illegal kidney transplants in Pakistan, the author has updated the article. – Ed.

Several years ago Pakistan’s newspapers and magazines were awash with pictures of shirtless men displaying scars on their torsos indicating they were organ donors. There were villages where practically every male adult claimed to have sold a kidney to earn extra money to repay his debts.

by Nusrat Ara
-Indian-administered Kashmir-

As a little kid my elder brother and I spent most of our time at our maternal grandparent’s house. A room in the house held the fascination of all the children. It belonged to my uncle and the cause of our fascination hung obliquely across a wall.

by Moyara deMoraes Ruehsen
-USA-

UPDATE: Yesterday, the IMF’s board blocked Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer from the race for the top IMF job. -Ed.

With her distinctive silver coiffure and impressive couture wardrobe, it is hard not to take notice of Christine Lagarde, France’s highly-respected Finance Minister. But let us not forget that beneath that elegant exterior is an impressive mind, a wise and experienced manager with proven leadership skills, an astute negotiator with keen diplomatic instincts, an eloquent and insightful orator, and most important of all: a person of integrity.

by Katie Palmer
-Canada-

At first glance, it seems as if the Government of Singapore has developed a brilliant plan to create jobs for local Singaporeans, to boost tourism, and to generate large amounts of revenue. By opening two world-class Integrated Resorts (IRs), a Singaporean euphemism for casino-based vacation resorts, tourism officials hope to achieve 17 million visitors a year and generate an estimated US$21 billion by 2015.

by Chumile Jamela
-Zimbabwe-

Lisa Kunene’s* path to higher learning has been a painful one. A 20-year-old first-year engineering student at one of the top universities in Zimbabwe, she was born to a poor communal farmer in rural Matebeleland South, one of the country's driest provinces. She has had to endure the worst economic hardships. So it came as a big surprise and relief when she learned that she had been admitted into university. This was supposed to open the way to a very bright future, as well as provide a stepping-stone to the empowerment she had been waiting for all her life.

by Nola Solomon
-USA-

“Jambo! Karibu! Karibu!*” shout the villagers of Chyulu Hills as they shake our hands each day. Their enthusiasm is infectious, like the diseases that ravage them. Women wrapped in traditional sarong dresses cook the meal we will all share at the end of the day - sweet potatoes, spit-roasted antelope, corn, and papaya. They chatter animatedly as they shear the corn and set the spit, alternating between their tribal dialect and Swahili.

by Sarah Irving
-Australia-

Across the West Bank the sound of construction work seems incessant. The grind of diggers and the steady thud of pile drivers reverberate around cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nablus. The construction boom has been hailed by mainstream commentators like Bloomberg and Reuters, by the Palestinian Authority, and by the Israeli government as the sign of a resurgent West Bank economy.

by Sandra Miniutti
- USA -

During the holiday season many of us are deciding which charity to support with our gifts. To help determine which charity is best for you, The WIP Editors are republishing the following article about an independent charity evaluator and how to make the most out of your donations. Please consider a donation to The WIP to support women's voices and global perspectives on relevant issues from around the world. - Ed.

After a short career as a scientist, after many years volunteering and contributing to various causes and after earning a MBA, I decided to leave corporate America for the non-profit sector. My first position was working at a local art, science and history museum. Quickly, I was initiated into the world of non-profit marketing and fundraising. Not many surprises there. We struggled to make payroll while producing quality exhibits and educational programming. The work was exhausting, but fulfilling.

by Meghan Lewis
-Cambodia-

Two newspaper headlines caught my eye recently. The first, published in a British newspaper, brought stark news to fashion followers. Due to an increase in VAT (value added tax) and cotton prices, “cheap fashion could soon be a thing of the past.” The second article, published the same day in Cambodia, documented the enduring struggle of Cambodian women who manufacture clothes for foreign retailers. Much of the clothing available at High Street shops such as Gap, Levi Strauss, and Marks & Spencer is made in Cambodia.

In September, Cambodian garment workers took to the streets in protest, demanding a living wage of $93 per month. The current meager wage of $61 per month is scarcely enough to cover health and living expenses for themselves and their dependents. Cambodian garment workers are among the lowest paid in the world, second only to Bangladesh.

by Reem Abbas
-Sudan-

I wait for her on Wednesdays. She comes in the afternoon and spends about two hours ironing my shirts, my grandmother’s dresses, and the bed sheets. I hand her a bucket of ice along with her money. They do not have a fridge and in the scorching heat of Sudan, cold water should not be a luxury. Her name is Fatima. She is a displaced woman from Darfur.

After the war broke out in 2003, many families in Darfur were forced to flee their towns and move to the national capital Khartoum and the surrounding cities. Hundreds of thousands moved north and became part of a sizable internally displaced persons (IDPs) population.

In early 2003 rebels from Darfur, in west Sudan, took up arms against the Sudanese government to protest decades of marginalization. Darfur, a region the size of France, was considered underdeveloped - even by Sudanese standards. The government’s reaction was brutal, and to combat the attacks by the two rebel groups - the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) - they armed equally poor nomads from other tribes in the region. Plagued by drought and famine, igniting a civil war was simple.

By Linda Tarr-Whelan and Jacki Zehner
-USA-

In 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women's Equality Day” to commemorate the passage of the 19th Amendment and to call attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality. The following opinion, co-authored by WIP Contributor Linda Tarr-Whelan and Jacki Zehner, was originally published August 25 by Bloomberg. – Ed.

Today marks Women’s Equality Day, the commemoration of women’s suffrage achieved in 1920. What better time to take stock of what’s left to do?

We need a national conversation led by the White House to explore how women decision-makers can help achieve better economic performance and a more prosperous future for all.

The administration of Barack Obama has already taken the first step by appointing talented women -- including Mary Schapiro, who holds the top job at the Securities and Exchange Commission; Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel; and Sheila Bair, who heads the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. -- to help dig us out of the financial mess.

Having a few females at the top is wonderful, but until we have at least 30 percent of senior women in leadership, we will be ignoring a strong dynamic that is working well elsewhere.

by Lesley D. Biswas
-India-

Anjali Das, an elderly woman, sits in her bright yellow Bou cart at a strategic road crossing in Salt Lake City, Kolkata. She is selling hand packed edibles, spices, jute handicrafts, dry fruit, and colorful dry flowers. She earns a little over $3 a day; yet despite her meager income, she is still smiling.

“Now my husband respects me and I have a say in the family’s decision making process,” says Das, her newfound confidence shining through her weary eyes. Previously Das was dependent on her husband to provide for her and was regularly scorned for being unemployed.

by Deepa Krishnan
-India-

Journalist Deepa Krishnan traveled to Uganda as part of The Africa Reporting Project, an Initiative of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. –Ed.

There is hardly a day when Chance Christine wakes up at leisure. Sometimes it is her crying babies. Sometimes it is her backyard chickens, clucking for their morning feed.

Most times, it is both. Holding her fourteen-month-old she unlatches the door of her chicken coop to survey the birds. Amid the fluttering, she spreads the feed into a thin wooden trough. The birds noisily rush to the feed, forgetting about their eggs. Christine picks the brown eggs, holds each one to her ear, and shakes it. She quickly counts her eggs and fills her blue bowl.

It is a typical day for Chance Christine. It has been for some time, and this could well be a charmed life. Just a few years ago she was barely making ends meet by selling porridge on a roadside in Buhoma, a rural town in Uganda. Now, thanks to the chickens, she has a reasonably comfortable life - a nice house with a backyard where her children can play, and land to plant banana trees.

by Alice Alech
-France-

The British have discovered an uplifting, social, healthy way to promote sustainability - care for the environment by growing their own fruits and vegetables while at the same time interacting with fellow gardeners. Allotments, or small parcels of land rented for the purpose of growing food crops have grown in popularity as concerns about carbon footprints, saving money, and good nutrition have increased.

• Allotments at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Photograph courtesy of Flickr user muggers! •

by Nusrat Ara
-Indian-Administered Kashmir-

It is Sunday noon. I am standing outside the only functional cinema in all of Indian administered Kashmir.

Located in the city of Srinagar, the shabby Neelam Cinema sits quiet. It looks more like a war torn military post, with coils of razor wire and bunkers, than a cinema. A paramilitary guard looks out from a bunker above as we approach the tin door. “No film today,” he says. “Go back.”

• The Neelam Cinema, Srinagar, Kashmir. Photograph by Nusrat Ara. •

“I would ditch school to watch a movie. It was difficult at times to get a ticket from the counter. Mostly we had to rely on the black market,” said businessman Shameem Ahmad, 38, about the pre-insurgency days.

The guard lets us in only after we convince him we have to meet the manager.

Inside we learn that they have been waiting for a movie to arrive for three days. “We are getting it by this afternoon,” Muhammad Ayub, the projector operator tells us. The big poster for a film assures us that we are in the right place.

by Caitlin Sislin
- USA -

The Navajo Nation, the United States’ largest Native Nation, spans 26,000 square miles in the Southwestern United States. This expansive, sun-baked desert terrain offers a dependable, constantly renewable supply of solar and wind energy which has largely remained untapped – until now.

by Sarah McGowan
- USA -

If you’re one of the millions of Americans affected by the credit crunch – unemployed, uninsured and unsure of your future, or working yourself to death just to live - Shannon Hayes’ book Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture couldn’t come at a more opportune time. Equal parts condemnation of consumer culture and celebration of human ingenuity, Radical Homemakers offers a surprising solution to a cycle of consumption that has endangered our health, happiness, economy and planet. Hayes has compiled a litany of data on the waning levels of satisfaction Americans have derived in pursuit of the “American Dream” and the quality of life that we could all enjoy if we abandon our focus on consumerism.

Perhaps what’s most intriguing is that “radical homemaking” seems to be a direct response to the seemingly insurmountable issues of social and ecological justice that result from globalization. After interviewing Radical Homemakers around the country, Hayes found that all were living according to four principal tenets: family, community, social justice and ecological sustainability. Her book compellingly articulates the connection between “Think Globally, Act Locally” and provides a feasible action plan for reclaiming family and home life. By localizing food production and focusing on more community-based sustainability, the Radical Homemaker model offers social change on a local level that could very well have a global effect.

by Nusrat Ara
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

After the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted to a major mistake in its 2007 report, which asserted the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, skeptics and opponents alike went on the offensive, using the admission as proof that climate change is a fabrication. Though the 2035 deadline may no longer be valid, global warming is surely having an effect on the ground and activists are now faced with an even tougher challenge.

Climate change has affected nearly every country in the world, irrespective of the role it has played in polluting the environment. Lying in the lap of the great Himalayas, Kashmir is one such place, and we are already feeling its impact.

by Emel Baştürk Akca
- Turkey -

Once one of Turkey’s biggest public producers of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, TEKEL has outlets and factories all over the country. But ever since the Turkish giant opted for privatization and terminated about 10,000 employment contracts, its former employees have been fighting for labor rights protection and equitable compensation. Left with nothing but a termination notice, the workers have converged in the Turkish capital of Ankara and launched what has become the greatest protest the country has seen for 30 years. Camped out in tents in front of the Confederation of Turkish Trade Union’s (TURK-IS) headquarters for more than two months now, the number of strikers continues to grow. Despite freezing cold temperatures and snow, the strike continues to gain momentum and support as more protesters join them daily.

by Kimberly N. Chase
- USA -

In an unmarked meadow by the side of the road at The Geysers, the 30-square-mile steam field about 70 miles north of San Francisco, California, the air smells like sulfur. Clouds of steam drift up from fumaroles, or open holes of rapidly boiling brown water, and waft across the landscape carrying the smell of rotten eggs.

by Rachel Meyer
- USA -

As I sit and write this, a young man sits in County Jail awaiting his sentence. Three years ago he was involved in a fight while in juvenile hall for drug related charges. This fight made him eligible for Division of Juvenile Justice, formerly known as California Youth Authority (I prefer to call it Gladiator School). However, it‘s not the fight that will likely send him to DJJ - it’s the two drug tests he failed in a row.

My client is a drug addict; he has not committed another violent offense. Since his time with me, he has enrolled in adult school, has set his sights on college, and has survived circumstances that would make most of us lie down in the fetal position and give up. And yet this young man can still be sent to prison or spend extended time in County Jail for smoking marijuana. Since the beginning of my employment in the California Juvenile Justice System as a Social Worker, I’ve come to accept that most of the adolescents I work with are entrenched in a system that trains them to become better prisoners rather than productive citizens. I often find myself asking, “Is this justice?”

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

A typical suburban supermarket aisle today will feature free-range turkeys and grass-fed steak glistening in shrink wrap—a sign, perhaps, that Americans are growing more conscious of the connection between tonight's dinner and the environment. But while organics and natural products are trendier than ever, old habits loom large over the American appetite: despite evidence that carnivorous diets drive ecological destruction, milk, eggs and meat remain staples of the Western diet.

Still, while most Americans are not about to swear off cheeseburgers, concerns about climate change and environmental sustainability are raising public consciousness about the treatment of farm animals and the ethics of food production.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
– Germany -

They were East Germany’s dream couple in the eighties. But shortly after the fall of the Wall, which divided East and West Germany from 1961 until 1989, a scandal would taint the image of actors Jenny Gröllman and Ulrich Mühe.

When East Germany’s state security service’s surveillance files were declassified in 1991, Mühe discovered that his ex-wife had been spying on him and reporting to a secret police officer about his activities during the regime in communist East Germany. Gröllman vehemently denied this accusation until her death from cancer in 2006. That same year, in an ironic twist of fate, Mühe played a secret service agent who monitors a dissident playwright in the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others. One year later, in the summer of 2007, he also died of the same disease.

by Priyanka Bhardwaj
- India -

At the insistence of the United States, India has been granted global “nuclear exception” status despite being a non-signatory on nuclear non-proliferation treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Indo-US civilian nuclear deal (signed in October of last year), consensus at the Nuclear Supplier’s Group and clearance by the global nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), means that India can now access dual-use nuclear technology to generate electricity.

by Stine Eckert
- USA -

When the Malaysian government expelled Bangladeshi migrant workers from the country in 1998 because it needed jobs for its own people, 32-year old Sheikh Rumana was one of them – after having worked under deplorable conditions in a garment factory for seven years. While female migrant workers are most vulnerable to exploitation, for Bangladeshi men, working abroad is a path to riches and a way out of the low wages offered at home.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Highland Park, Michigan would seem an unlikely candidate for water access problems – the city is located on the Great Lakes, the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. The Great Lakes are so vast that when standing on their shores you cannot see the other side. With freshwater so ubiquitous, why did Highland Park’s mostly low-income and elderly residents have to fight to keep the water flowing from their taps? The new 53-minute documentary film, The Water Front, skillfully documents Highland Park’s long and heated fight over water access and cost.

by Shreyasi Singh
- India -

The weakening global economy is helping reverse India’s much-lamented “brain drain” as hundreds of techies, scientists and corporate managers, primarily from the US, are homeward bound. India’s booming economy has aided this influx. Its average 8% annual growth over the last decade has opened floodgates of opportunities, ambitions and ideas.

by Aralena Malone-Leroy
News Editor, The WIP
- France -

In 2006, my husband and I decided to move from San Jose, California to Paris, France. The choice between Silicon Valley and the City of Light may seem like a no-brainer to some, but our decision was based on professional and family considerations rather than romantic notions.

When French people ask incredulously how I could leave the sunny beaches of California for grey Parisian city life, I inevitably answer: socialized healthcare. From the time I graduated from college in 2001 and moved to France, I was an employed, but uninsured, American. At the time approximately 16% of Americans were in the same boat – uninsured not necessarily due to unemployment, but to the national decline, particularly in the West, in employer-sponsored coverage.

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

A few years ago, Pakistan’s newspapers and magazines were awash with pictures of shirtless men displaying scars on their torsos indicating they were organ donors. There were villages where practically every male adult claimed to have sold a kidney to earn extra money to repay his debts.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

“I just thought our life would be different.”

My mother Deborah Cruze is reflecting on the devastation this recession has wrought on her generation. In her view, the rules of the game changed when the baby boomers were half-way up the ladder – too invested in the old system and too inflexible to adjust, but still years away from retirement. Whereas her parents’ generation (born in the 1930s) was able to ride the wave of the American dream; and her children’s generation (born in the 1980s) still has time to adapt to haphazard careers of contract work and declining benefits; her generation is perilously trapped.

by Brittany Shoot
- Denmark -

In Demark, despite strict immigration laws, it isn’t uncommon to see large groups of young Filipina women congregating on train station platforms or giggling together in public. In Copenhagen, state-sanctioned domestic workers are often employed as au pairs – a community that is largely comprised of young Filipina women.

Domestic workers perform all sorts of household duties, ranging from childcare and caring for the elderly to cleaning, laundry, cooking, and yard work. Many are immigrants – some documented, some not – and even among the most well paid, highly valued legal workers, domestic employment and au pair agreements can be complicated situations.

by Melissa Costa
- USA / Brazil -

Regina sings to loud Brazilian country music while her skillful hands turn old Santa Claus hats into dresses and pieces of beverage cans into ornaments. Immersed in nostalgia, Regina relives her difficult past, drawing inspiration from her life to create art.

“When I was fifteen days old my parents left me in an orphanage in Botafogo (Rio de Janeiro),” she recounts. At 12, she was adopted by a woman who mistreated her, and soon after, she ran away to escape the abuse.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA -

“They start arriving an hour before we open, and by the time we unlock the doors at 9 am there is a crowd of people waiting to get in. Within seconds, all of the computers are taken – and they are full for the next twelve hours until we close.” That’s how my husband Michael Hahn, Technology Coordinator, describes the need for free computers and Internet in this Phoenix suburb of around 250,000. It doesn’t surprise him that upon my arrival just before opening, I nearly trip over a middle-aged man and his son who are sitting on the sidewalk, hovering intently over a laptop.

by Sarah-Eva Carlson
- USA -

The concept of investing in what matters is not new to me. In fact, it’s where my life as an investor began. I was in the 8th grade and had won a cash award. Since I wouldn’t need the money until college, my father suggested that we invest. “It’s a good time to invest in the U.S. market,” he advised, “you’ll end up with $3,000, maybe more.” These returns were good news in my family of four children, but I was looking to get even more out of my investment. I wanted it to piss off my older brother.

by Nancy St. Clair
- USA -

“Going green is not going to transform our planet unless everyone can embrace the movement on their own terms and scale… If we don’t embrace reducing and reusing, the green movement cannot make a real impact. Recycling alone isn’t enough to save us.” - Jessica Mosby

Long ago, when I was young, I regarded the sight of discarded roofing, lumber and cars rotting in fields as junk. Now I see these materials in an entirely different light and ask myself: Can we afford to throw things away?

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

It has been a year since I last wrote for The WIP and it’s really good to be able to share what has been happening in our country.

Every weekend for the past eight months, my husband and I have been forced to make the 20-kilometer trip by road from our home in the high-density suburbs of Harare to the affluent suburb of Belvedere to fetch clean water. In the early morning hours while our little angels are still fast asleep, we load up into the car empty 20-liter plastic containers for refill.

We have tap water where we live, but it can hardly be said to be safe for human consumption. When you pour the water into a clear cup or container and let it sit for a few minutes, a green, sewage-like substance settles to the bottom.

Although this journey is cumbersome and costly for us, it is has become a necessary expense for us to stay alive.

by Jozefina Cutura and Hope Lozano-Bielat
- USA -

Kristina was at Google before the Internet giant became a household name. She worked as a training specialist for six years, taking pride in her job and enjoying Google’s famously easy-going environment. But with the economy tanking, her division froze hiring, even though the workload kept increasing.

by Megan Tady
- USA -

Connie Toops would be content photographing birds all day long. In fact, she’s made a business of it, working as a professional freelance nature photographer. Her office could be her backyard – she moved to the mountains of western North Carolina just to be closer to her subjects.

Connie’s work has appeared in magazines like Orion, and she’s even published her own book of photography. Yet these days, business is slow, and it’s not because the birds aren’t chirping – it’s because her Internet connection is crawling.

by Afsaana Rashid
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

With soaring unemployment and a private sector still in troubled infancy, for the last few decades, government has provided the bulk of Kashmir’s jobs. Yet today this may be changing; on the heels of much-needed infrastructure development and technological innovation, a good number of entrepreneurs are taking the plunge into the generational traditions of horticulture and floriculture.

by Maria H. Lewytzkyj
- USA -

Every day in Sonoma County, Michelle Sanchez gets around in her wheelchair at Grosman Apartments in Santa Rosa, California. As a teenager, she hid her increasing equilibrium problems from her peers. Once she was even pulled over as she drove home after a shopper observed Michelle staggering inside a grocery store. Through tears of embarrassment, she explained to the officer that she had a neurological disorder and was not intoxicated.

by Jenna Mulhall-Brereton
- USA -

Elsa Gómez Mamani sits on the ruins of a stone wall on a cold but sunny morning in a field high on the Andean altiplano. We are in southern Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Elsa wears the traditional full skirts and bowler hat of the Aymara culture, and tells me in halting Spanish about her experience with poverty and entrepreneurship.

by Linda Tarr-Whelan
- USA -

Here’s a news flash: in one week, two major economic articles in national newspapers raise the same point – we need more women in top leadership. Why? Because we need more balanced risk-taking, more looking at the long-term and less testosterone-driven hyper-competitiveness. We need fresh blood and new ideas – much of which lies with the talented and experienced people who have largely been cooling their heels outside of the fancy corner offices. That’s women.

by Melissa Hahn
- USA –

On January 20th, John Marshall* joined the ranks of US homeowners who have foreclosed on their homes. The thirty-year old African-American is struggling to make sense of his surreal situation.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

The irony of Pierrette’s troubles could be seen, from one viewpoint, as tragic: She’s a pediatrician but got lost within the maze of the medical system once her son became ill; she once treated patients from low-income families on Medicaid, yet she eventually became dependent on such services herself; for 13 years, she was a homeowner, but then sold her house to relocate to a county that had better health and educational services for her son; she took a subprime loan, lost the second house and ended up sleeping at her friend’s place; and ultimately, she resorted to seeking pantry services for food.

Yet Pierrette hardly complains as she recalls the turn of events that changed her life so drastically. “It has made me a better person,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to turn poison into medicine.”

by Nora W. Coffey
- USA -

As we tighten our belts at home and abroad, we are all accountable for the burden of national debt we pass along to future generations. Local and international relief efforts for the poor are also feeling the pinch, which makes the search for ways to heal our broken economy a humanitarian effort.

Although medical profits continue to soar, there have been rumblings lately that the next "industry" to show up in Washington hat-in-hand will be medicine. Meanwhile, evidence abounds that an increasing portion of our tax dollars that fund Medicare and Medicaid are the most lucrative revenue stream for the medical industry, and a large portion of those expenditures are going toward unnecessary, even harmful surgeries - not unquestionably-needed emergency care.

by Mridu Khullar
- India / USA -

For five years, Jitender Kumar was unable to find employment. He gave interviews every week, was rejected constantly, and sank into depression as sources of income dwindled and he became increasingly dependent on his parents for financial support.

Mr. Kumar is 33, married, and has two daughters. He is also an amputee with no left leg.

by Olivia Loyd
- USA -

My industry is hemorrhaging, the pink slips keep coming, the center is not holding. Almost 30,000 people in the media industry have been laid off in the past year. Mastheads are shrinking. Newspapers are shuttering. Entire magazines are fading into oblivion while we print journalists, in particular, flounder around looking for an e-brake.

by Alice Alech
- France -

Since the French revolution, town councils have been responsible for water management throughout France. Yet, most municipalities have been delegating the job to private water companies.

As a result, 72% of French people use water distributed by three leaders in water supply: Veolia, Suez and Saur. Each year, these companies increase the price of France’s water an average of 10%.

Today, in a bid to reduce costs and control privatization, the French government is finally returning the country’s water to the public sector.

by Lesley D. Biswas
- India -

Commuting along the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass that runs parallel to the Indian city of Kolkata, the huge expanse of the East Kolkata Wetlands is a daily sight for city dwellers, and yet most of us are unaware of the important role this natural habitat plays in our lives. Despite acknowledging the escalation in Kolkata’s urban development, hardly anyone seems to notice how the congestion of the city’s skyline is leading to a loss of habitat for many living in its shadow.

by Jennifer I. Fenton
- USA -

"Steal my horse, run off with my wife, but damn you, don't touch my water." - Unknown

Unlike many modern cities and towns across the United States, the town of Bishop, California bursts in failed attempts to sprawl across the landscape that surrounds it. Pressed into the floor of the Owens Valley, and hedged in by looming mountain ranges to the East and West, Bishop’s city limits have remained virtually unchanged for decades. But while Bishop's population remains stagnant, to the South, the city of Los Angeles continues to grow at breakneck speeds - growth that would be impossible without the clear gold that flows from the Sierra, through the Owens Valley, and into the gaping mouth of the City of Angels.

by Janelle Weiner
- USA -

As school districts across the United States brace for midyear budget cuts, nervous teachers are whispering about the layoffs that could follow. In this bleak economic climate, where one state’s proposal calls for eliminating $10.6 billion in education spending, teachers are hesitant to ask administrators for classroom extras or even necessities.

Teachers often reach into their own wallets to bridge the gap.

by Wenonah Hauter
- USA -

Think of the last time you turned on a tap while washing dishes, brushing your teeth or grabbing a glass of water. If you’re like most people, it probably doesn’t stand out as a momentous experience. That’s because most of us don’t give much thought to this resource that we tend to take for granted. But our water service is becoming less reliable as the infrastructure that delivers it to us falls apart and private companies threaten to take it over for their own financial gain.

by Jasmin So-Armada
- Canada -

Walk into a convenience store, coffee shop or supermarket in Calgary and chances are you’ll be waited on by a temporary foreign worker (TFW). Though they come from many countries, they share one story: relocation for the chance to earn decent wages, and in some cases, the hope to reside permanently in Canada. “There is a wide variety of TFWs that come to Alberta - from skilled laborers like welders and carpenters, to pipe fitters to semi skilled trades like cleaners. These are men and women from all parts of the globe,” says Avnish Mehta, Program Coordinator of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society’s (CCIS) Temporary Foreign Worker Integration Advisory Office.

by Blaire Dessent
- France -

For the 2008 Dak’Art Biennial, an international art exhibition held in Dakar, Senegal, a group of artists and thinkers associated with the Action Lab project of the Brooklyn-based freeDimensional (fD), collaborated on the production and distribution of Gorée Gazette. A one-time, free newspaper, the Gazette includes personal narratives, drawings and statistics related to the crisis of economic migration - specifically ocean crossings from Africa to Europe and the United States.

by Priti Sehgal
- India -

The United States was once a dreamland for many of us Indians. The US label – whether American-brand apparel, a pleasure trip to the US, a higher education degree from anywhere in America, a short training program, a job or the ultimate dream of a family member settling down there – used to be enough to elevate one's social status in India. Given the current financial crunch in the US, the American dream is dying for many Indians.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

“Arab and Gulf Banks will be completely safe from the global financial crisis.” That is what many Arab officials are announcing these days, but ordinary people are not reassured and fail to understand how the Arab World, with its average economies, can possibly be insulated from such catastrophe. They expect that the global financial crisis will eventually add new worries to their daily hardships.

Thirty-five year old Bahraini Ali Hassan doesn’t know much about economics but he understands that the world’s financial markets are not stable and is concerned that the instability will affect him and his family. “I don’t have a large savings but the idea of the banks losing their financial credibility or going bankrupt makes me insecure.”

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

Twenty-seven year-old Lima Wochi from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, looks dejected. She ventured into prostitution at the tender age of 12. She says she is tired of sex work and is looking for a way out of it.

Prostitution is deemed unacceptable in Malawi but the sex trade continues to thrive. Large numbers of women, especially young ones, are seen loitering around street corners, near hotels, bars and other entertainment places.

by Genie Z. Laborde
- USA -

Most people do not see themselves as financial experts. However the strong emotional response we’ve seen lately shows that many people feel the government’s bailout bill reflects the machinations of a Congress that is more focused on propping up big business than securing the financial well-being of U.S. citizens and world markets.

Having experienced a downturn in my business after 9-11, I felt some concern about how the bailout and the predictions of further economic chaos would affect my debt and my income. I was more than a little curious about how others in business around me were dealing with this situation so I began asking questions. First, I asked people who know money and investments, then I asked my friends, and then, their friends.

I asked: “What do you think about the financial fiasco?” Sometimes, I re-phrased it as: “How do you feel about the financial fiasco?” Or “Does the financial crisis affect you?”

by Julie Chowdhury
- Sweden -

Every morning when you wake up and perform what you may perceive as insignificant chores, you might not realize that for 2.6 billion people around the world, your morning shower or just one flush of the toilet is the essence of luxury. The United Nations has declared that every human being is entitled to 20 liters of safe water every day. In Europe, we have the privilege of using 200 liters per day, while in the US, the average person uses up to 400. The average person in the developing world tries to manage on less than 10 liters of contaminated water to do all their daily chores.

by Mridu Khullar
- India -

According to the National Coalition of Health Care in America, in 2007, total national health expenditures were expected to rise 6.9 percent—twice the rate of inflation. Healthcare spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense. And although 47 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on healthcare than other industrialized nations.

It is no wonder then that scores of American citizens are heading off to foreign shores for their healthcare needs.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

Hillary Clinton’s speech has been highlighted, delivered and duly dissected. Bill’s, too. But, as focus shifts to Obama, the elephant in the hall that will linger past the DNC convention for the nearly 9 million engaged Hillary voters that aren’t yet throwing their vote to Obama is the question: why didn’t he choose her as his running mate? The Democratic Party would be naïve to suggest these people just ‘get over it,’ Hillary’s verbal push and roll call acclamation not withstanding.

Hate her or love her. It’s still a valid question given the 18 million votes and major swing states she captured, particularly for the women who did and do identify with her, and for the men who advocate equality. And it’s a question that Obama needs to at least acknowledge, if not address.

by Dr. Rita Thapa
- Nepal -

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, wedged between China and India. With a total surface area of 147 square kilometers, the country is home to some 27 million Nepalis from more than a hundred diverse caste and ethnic identities. 86% of the Nepali people live in rural areas, with poor transport and communication facilities, and few health services. Public-private partnerships, which have steadily gained ground in Nepal, have highlighted one of the most important but neglected public health needs: safe pregnancy and childbirth.

The country has come a long way since 1951, when it launched its first modernization drive. It has since transformed from a socially orthodox Hindu kingdom to a secular federal democratic republic, with women comprising 33% of its national assembly. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which waged a decade-long insurgency in 1996, recently won elections, and a mandate to govern the country.

Having been a girl in pre-1951 Nepal, and having not been allowed to obtain formal schooling till I was 10 years old, I find these changes a bit dizzying, but recognize the huge gains for a country held back by centuries of feudalism, poverty, illiteracy, and discrimination, as well as a decade-long guerrilla war.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

In the not so distant past, the idea of reducing, reusing, and recycling seemed idealistic, even if it just meant putting a glass bottle in a recycling container instead of the trash. But a wave of environmentalism has swept the United States, and now recycling a soda can is practically a given. To truly be “green” you must buy the latest environmentally friendly technology, watch green television channels, drive a hybrid, and live in a multimillion dollar home constructed exclusively with green products. If this lifestyle is going to save us, it’s sadly out of reach for most people.

by Kulsoom Nizamuddin
- Indian-administered Kashmir -

- In a continuing cycle of conflict, fresh violence broke out this week in Kashmir, heightening tensions and confining everyone to their homes as a blanket curfew was put into effect in Srinagar. - Ed.

• A shikarawalla waits for customers on Dal Lake. Photograph by Ajay Tallman. •

Rafeeq is not the only one whose business has been hit badly due to tourism decline. Once a hot destination for tourists, Kashmir’s tourism industry has suffered a major set back since the outset of violence and armed struggle against Indian occupation in 1989.

by Zubeida Mustafa
- Pakistan -

Pakistan has been hit by severe food price inflation – the worst in its 61-year history. The prices of many basic food items have more than doubled in the last year and poor families are now spending two thirds to three quarters of their monthly income on their meals alone.

• As food prices rise in Pakistan, some are turning to home gardens to put food on the table. Photograph courtesy of OPP-RTI. •

Although Pakistan’s economy has been in crisis for some time now, the real crunch has come with the rise in food and oil prices. Traditionally, the food intake of most people has been inadequate in the country and as a result malnutrition is rampant. According to Human Development in South Asia 2007, a report by the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center, 23 per cent of Pakistan’s people were undernourished in 2003 while 19 per cent of the country’s children were stunted, underweight or in severe health crisis in 2005. Doctors believe that in the last couple of years malnutrition has increased.

by Imelda V. Abaño
- The Philippines -

For decades, the Philippines, one of the poorest countries in Asia, has provided skilled medical professionals primarily to wealthy places such as the United States, Europe and the Middle East. But as more and more health workers leave the country for greener pastures abroad, public health experts say the country's health care system is on the brink of collapse.

Long hours, backbreaking schedules, poor conditions and little pay pushed 37-year-old Mary Ann Visaya to leave her job at a public hospital in an impoverished town in Cagayan Valley for higher salary abroad. For the past four years, Visaya has been working as a staff nurse, administering to roughly 30 or 40 patients a day. She has seen poor people lined up at the hospital and heard patients complain of the long wait to get treatment. But like many of her colleagues, she jumps at the opportunity to leave the country and work abroad.

"Most of the time your heart breaks seeing poor people lined up to seek treatment. But I have learned to persevere [through] more hours of work especially during critical staff shortage," Visaya explains. "But I also have to think of the welfare of my parents because with my present salary of $170, it is not enough to sustain our expenses.”

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
- Uganda -

Ms Akullo Flavia, a retail shop owner in a Kampala suburb, stands puzzled in the local market not knowing what to buy for supper. Her initial plan to buy fresh fish is ruined - there is no fish for sale at the stalls. A local hajati, or fish dealer, is disappointed too. She explains that the moon’s recent brightness is helping the big fish to see the net and escape. The little fish that get trapped in the nets are all sold on the beaches at much higher prices to the waiting refrigerator trucks of fish processing companies who export to countries like China and several parts of Europe. Officials from the fisheries department say that even these companies are facing a deficit and only exporting a third of their capacity due to declining fish populations in the lakes and rivers.

by Remi Adeoye
- Nigeria -

There is stiff opposition to the proposed Niger Delta Summit slated to be held in Abuja, Nigeria. The Delta’s most prominent militant group, known as The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), called it a “circus,” and "a face saving measure” by the slow-moving Yar'Adua administration to show that it has a plan to solve the area’s problems. The line of battle has been drawn between the federal government and the militants, with tensions increasing after the deployment of more soldiers and two naval warships to the oil-rich Delta, which militants described as a “callous, wicked attempt to wipe the Ijaw nation from the face of the earth.”

• The environmental devastation from installations like this one in Ikot Ada Udo has left nearly everyone living off the land without a livelihood. Photograph by Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR. •

To the indigenous Egi women of Ijaw, it is crucial that more come out of the Abuja summit than political posturing. As the women say, “We are farmers, fisherwomen and hunters. With all the flaming and pumping oil into our swamp areas, the oil companies have denied us every living thing. Today, we have no hope, while they are making billions of naira with our gifts from God. They don’t care or hear our cry; they only throw tear gas on us, beat us, and drive us out of our land.”

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Paying upwards of $10 USD to see a movie about economics, particularly in these increasingly desperate financial times, hardly seems like a prudent decision – much less a pleasurable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. But if you’re willing to shell out the cash to see the new documentary I.O.U.S.A., which opens in theatres this August, you may be surprised at just how enjoyable and educational a film about America’s economy can be.

The federal debt seems too incredible a sum to even fully grasp; an easier way to understand such an enormous figure is that if the debt was equally divided among the country’s population, each American would owe over $30,000.

If you have no idea or don’t even care that this debt exists, I.O.U.S.A. makes you want to learn. The film’s complex premise and daunting numbers are made more accessible by the use of colorful graphs and illustrations. Creadon effectively contrasts what average people think (or think they know) against experts’ analysis, which keeps the film from being too weighed down by statistics and theories. The film’s tone can be summed up by student activist Mike Tully who yells at passersby in one scene: “Would you like to go on a date with me? No! Would you like to learn about the debt? Yes!”

by Jennie S. Bev
- USA / Indonesia -

I live in Northern California, considered one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, where the global intellectual hub of Silicon Valley neighbors the panoramic San Francisco Bay area and where luminaries like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the “Google Guys”), writer Amy Tan, and comedian Robin Williams call home. Here, millionaires oftentimes still go to work and live in cramped houses due to skyrocketing housing prices. A decent dim sum meal costs at least $20 USD per person and a modest one-bedroom apartment rental costs about $1,500 USD per month. A dollar can probably buy you one can of soda in a deli, but not in a movie theater, where it might be four times as much.

• A man adds extra cuts to the lumps of meat ready for distribution to the less fortunate in the nearby community. 250g of red meat is a luxury for the poor in Jakarta. Photograph by Danumurthi Mahendra •

What a contrast. What a divided world we live in.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

On 8-8-08 when the Beijing Summer Olympics begins, the world will see that the Maoist doctrine of the Cultural Revolution has been replaced by capitalism and McDonald’s – all in the name of progress. This modern China bears a striking resemblance to the West it once condemned. But what will not be proudly displayed in shiny new shopping malls is the reality that modernization comes at the displacement of millions of people who must abandon the only way of life they know and join a new China.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

In Haiti people eat cakes baked with mud for lack of flour. In Bangladesh, Indonesia and across Africa, riots are spreading among the hungry. And in the world’s richest country, the United States, the breadlines are growing.

• Photograph by Bruce Gilbert, courtesy of The Earth Institute. •

by Imelda V. Abaño
- Philippines -

Hunger is the most crucial manifestation of poverty. In many parts of the world, the soaring prices of food, fuel and other basic goods have triggered social unrest and a growing sense of urgency.

• In Haiti, an estimated 46% of all children under five are severely or moderately stunted in growth due to malnutrition. Photograph by Imelda V. Abaño. •

Witnessing the realities of the devastating consequences of poverty and rising food prices up close reminded me of my first visit to Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries.

In June, I went to Haiti with five other journalists for an experience unlike any of my previous trips abroad. The abject poverty and despair I witnessed there is far more extreme than in my own country. Never before have I seen such deprivation than that which I saw in Haiti; the human suffering is all too real and heart-rending.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, is plagued by violence, hunger, unrelenting extreme poverty, disease, high unemployment rates, low life expectancy and crumbling health and educational systems.

by Katharine Daniels & Sarah McGowan
- USA -

Sunday’s news that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the Zimbabwean runoff race spurred international media coverage and outrage on a crisis that has been raging for years. According to the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change, "some 86 of its supporters have been killed and 200,000 forced from their homes by militias loyal to the ruling Zanu-PF party."

• An image from last year's violent police crackdown on Zimbabwean activists. Photograph courtesy of The Zimbabwean. •

WIP Contributors Constance Manika and Lelety Mabasa, along with Sharon Njobo, Grace Kwinjeh and Sandra Nyaira, have published article after article over the past year, outlining the methodical behavior of a political despot who is both cunning and ruthless, and who will stop at nothing to preserve his power.

In our second week of publication, Sharon Njobo (living in exile in Canada) wrote about women in her country taking the lead to protest against Mugabe's economic policies. In this early article we first learned of Zimbabwe's skyrocketing inflation rates (currently at 355,000 percent), and the rising price of basic foodstuffs - putting cooking oil, cornmeal, bread, and milk beyond the reach of many families in a country that was once considered the 'food basket' of Africa. The deteriorating Zimbabwean economy has now earned the country the dubious distinction of having the lowest life expectancy in the world for women. At just 34 years, a woman's life span (37 years for a man) is now half of what it was only 18 years ago.

by Kimberly N. Chase
- USA -

After hearing the family history of her adventurous great-grandmother, a free African American woman who lived in New Orleans during the Civil War, community activist Pam Dashiell knew she wanted to live in the legendary southern city.

• Community activist Pam Dashiell doesn't flinch in the face of New Orleans' challenges. Photograph courtesy of Kimberly Chase. •

Three generations later, Dashiell brought her family history full circle. Since moving from Massachusetts, she has come to call New Orleans home, and is now a well-known organizer; Dashiell's work in the Holy Cross neighborhood in the city's Lower Ninth Ward took on added urgency after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Trying to bring the area back to life, she now helps evacuated families decide whether they can make the move back to their city and rebuild their homes.

by S. Jean
- Gaza City -

Boom! I can feel a rumble under my feet and hear the windows clatter lightly in our two-bedroom apartment. My husband and I live on the third floor of an apartment building in Rimal, regarded as a safe neighborhood in Gaza City. The Gaza Strip is tiny, only 140 square miles, and we can easily hear explosions, even those a couple towns away.

• This building is part of a government complex that the Israeli Air Force bombed using an F-16. Ten children from nearby homes were wounded in this attack, launched in the middle of the night in the Tel Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. •

You name it… it's all a normal part of our lives here in Gaza. And little stops us, and everyone else, from going about our day-to-day activities. After all, it's only 7:30 in the morning and we are getting ready to go to work. We don't even check the TV for news about the blast.

by Ellen Bravo
- USA -

The best researchers in the United States gathered recently to solve a long-standing puzzle: why women in the richest country in the world earn so little money. Using sophisticated multiple regression analyses and other scientific tools, the researchers finally came up with the answer.

• As the wage gap fails to improve, women continue to work in the low paying jobs that men don't want. Photograph by Belinda Hankins Miller. •

The Big Boys, those who control power and wealth, will tell you that women’s pay in the U.S. is doing just fine. The gap is narrowing, they proclaim! It’s practically disappeared for young women starting out! Women are faring better than men during this economic downturn! And to the extent that a wage gap exists at all, it’s because of choices women make (trading income for flexibility, opting out of high-paying, high-pressure jobs) or deficiencies they possess (lack of negotiating skills).

Neat little trick, putting it back on women. Problem is, none of it works.

Take the narrowing of the wage gap. Today women overall in the U.S. earn 77 cents for every dollar men make; African-American women earn 72 cents, Latinas 60 cents. That is better than the 59 cents ratio of the late sixties. But half the narrowing of the gap comes from loss of pay for men, particularly men of color. This is hardly what women had in mind by equality. What’s more, the gap is greatest for women with the most education working the longest hours. And the mommy wage gap – the difference between what mothers earn and the pay of everyone else – continues to increase.

by Jozefina Cutura
- USA -

With Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign for the presidency in the United States at its end and women leaders taking charge in countries from Chile to Liberia, women’s advances in politics are making headlines. But in countries around the world, especially those recovering from conflict like Bosnia and Herzegovina, women are making strides in the business arena too.

• Women entrepreneurs in Bosnia are helping rebuild the country's economy. Photograph courtesy of MI BOSPO. •

“In Skelani I saw a kiosk that was in a fairly good shape, so I decided to invest in opening it,” she says in an interview. Skelani is in a remote region of Bosnia that is poorly accessible by roads and has seen a large number of people emigrate elsewhere since the war. Despite the town’s remoteness and its shrinking population, Ružica remained undeterred. Initially, as people continued to move away, her profits were low. But she persevered and today Ružica’s convenience store has an excellent reputation in the community, steadily attracting customers from across the region. She employs four female workers and has created a stable source of income for her family.

by Genie Z. Laborde
- USA -

It's hot because most people don’t know about it yet and it's cool because it makes money. Crowdsourcing is a way for companies to enlist the help of their own Internet clients to produce their products. Utilizing the "wisdom of the crowd" to its advantage, crowdsourcing attracts customers, content and "clicks" or traffic to a website or online company. The amateur producers in the “crowd” wish to see their creations and this turns them into customers or producers of "clicks," both of which are valuable roles on the Internet.

by Lelety Mabasa
- Zimbabwe -

Always faithful in shocking the world, Zimbabwe has scored yet another first, and as usual, for all the wrong reasons.

• Basket case: A fruit seller in Harare hunts for change. •

"The latest innovation seeks to bring convenience to our farmers who, starting this year's marketing season, are receiving competitive prices for their produce," said acting RBZ Governor Charity Dhliwayo last week.

The RBZ also launched a new Z$500 million bank note for the general public.

What baffled most people, however, was that bearers can use Agro Cheques to purchase goods in supermarkets, just like we do with ordinary notes.

"Either the people at the central bank are now confused or they were too embarrassed to say we are launching such high denominated notes for the public," speculates Noleen Moyo, an employee with a Zimbabwean bank. "To them, that would mean admitting failure in running the economy."

by Carrie R. Sparrevohn
- USA -

In 2005 I traveled to Uganda, East Africa, for the first time. I met Margaret Nangobi on that trip, in Mwanyangiri, a tiny village about an hour’s drive from the capitol. What transpired between us broke my privileged self in pieces and I became the receiver one hundred fold of what I was to give.

• Margaret and her granddaughter Loi with their kitchen and home in the background. •

For every mother that dies in the US of pregnancy, Uganda loses 50. Around the world, each minute, we lose one mother as a direct result of her pregnancy. Improving women’s access to experienced care providers, antibiotics and medication to prevent or stop hemorrhaging would prevent over half of these deaths.

As I prepared to spend November 2005 in Uganda, a wonderful friend and mentor, Jan McNabb, began to tell her friends what I was planning to do. People began handing her money for the needy in Uganda. As a result, the Sally Clinic Project of With Woman was born.

by Marianne Taflinger
- USA -

In Sweden, a doctor delivers Sari, and her family celebrates what will be the beginning of a long life, probably 83 years or more. She’ll attend at least 17 years of school and if she chooses to have children, they’ll be born when she wants them to be born, thanks to convenient and cheap contraceptives. If she has a baby, she’ll take off 15 weeks of work and still earn 80% of her salary. Sari is virtually guaranteed to make it to age 5 without any health complications and enroll in secondary school. Swedish society provides great health care and education that eases both mothers’ and girls’ lives.

By contrast, Adame will live a far more perilous life. Having been born in Niger, she has a high probability of dying before age 5. Like two thirds of all children born in Niger, no “skilled birth attendant” was present at her delivery. It’s likely that Adame will attend only 3 grades in school, and that she will die by age 45, living a life half as long than if she had been born in Sweden. Adame’s mother is practically guaranteed to lose at least one child and has a nine out of ten probability that she will lose 2 children in her lifetime. Due to the lack of contraception, Adame will likely have more siblings than her family can afford. And there’s a strong chance that Adame will suffer from malnutrition and lack a sufficient supply of water.

by Sarah Wyatt
- USA -

Years of hardship and backbreaking labor in the riot-stricken slums of Kibera in south Kenya have worn 18 year old Eshe Koome to the bone. A single mother of two, she walked out on her abusive husband and survived for two years as a daily wage laborer, loading vegetables and other goods for sale.

• Eshe is now able to earn a living wage at Kazuri. Photograph by Sarah Wyatt. •

Eshe's story captures in a nutshell how a group of formerly indigent, urban women operates a business for themselves. The Kazuri Bead Factory, located in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, is unique in that it is Kenya’s first visitors’ attraction of its kind, created for and by women. Founded by Lady Susan Wood in 1975, the company is known for its beautiful, hand-painted beads made from the authentic clay from the Mt. Kenya area. Kazuri (Swahili for “small and beautiful”), also produces a number of other goods popular with tourists including pottery, hand-beaded sandals and purses. The beads are often featured on three-dimensional art cards and can also be found in shadowboxes.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe’s largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings.

Unfortunately, this does not make the pain at the pump pulsing through the nation any more bearable. Apparently, Exxon could have made more profit, had it not chosen to hold back further gas price hikes. Instead, earnings in its refining business (which converts crude oil to gallons of useable gas) weren’t as strong as it had wanted. Yes, that’s right – Exxon would have made even more money had they passed more pain onto the public. They were just being “nice.” Right.

by Megan Tady
- USA –

For Maureen Mullaney, helping her kids with their homework takes more than just proofreading their papers. Fed up with a painfully slow dial-up Internet connection at home, Mullaney often drives her children into town, where they sit outside the library to pick up a wireless Internet signal on their laptops in order to do research.

“How silly is it that in this day and age, you have to get in your car in the middle of winter, drive to the center of town, sit in your car with it running, while your child can research the traditional clothing of Chile?” asks Mullaney, who lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Mullaney says her children’s ability to do research for school reports is “ridiculously hampered” by their dial-up connection, particularly when they need to include images with their assignments. “You can’t see [the images] quickly,” Mullaney says. “You click on one and then you wait. And oh, that’s the wrong one.”

The process can be so frustrating, that sometimes Mullaney and her kids give up. “I just say, ‘Forget it, I’ll look it up for you when I get to work,’” she says. “So then I end up doing their research? What’s that all about?”

by Katie Thompson
- USA -

Elections invite a whirlwind of campaign promises: some that are feasible, some that are not, and some that will be forgotten on Inauguration Day. One of the most prominent issues for the Democratic candidates has been healthcare reform, a campaign promise the American people definitely won’t let the new president forget. In the United States, the National Coalition on Health Care says 47 million people are without health care coverage. In addition, according to Consumer Reports, 43% of Americans who have health insurance coverage say their coverage is inadequate to deal with an expensive medical emergency. Clearly, healthcare is an issue that requires a solution. The real question is whether a national healthcare plan is a feasible solution. I would argue that it is not.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

Former CIA director Jim Woolsey eagerly leans across the table in the swanky restaurant of the Carlton-Ritz Hotel in Washington, D.C. The seriousness of the matter he’s discussing is reflected in his sharp, almost transparent blue eyes.

”The United States’ dependence on oil makes us very vulnerable from a security and environmental perspective. Why buy oil from Islamic theocracies, which sponsor terrorism against us? We are fighting a war against terror, but are paying for both sides. How smart is that?” asks the sprightly 66-year-old Woolsey.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

The Starbucks, sidewalk and subway comments continue to flow abundant as New Yorkers processed the country’s latest made-for-TV sex scandal. The reality that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Time Magazine’s former Crusader of the Year, the man now dubbed “George Fox” and “Client #9,” had repeatedly gotten too hot and heavy with various high-class call-girls broke in salacious bits. This is the stuff that causes political dreams in America to dissolve even faster than the seismic destruction unleashed by the subprime mortgage crisis and the economic recession that has followed it.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

- March 8th - Today we celebrate International Women's Day with our sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers, cousins and daughters, and most of all, with our writers, who have become family. On this important day, we find it appropriate that Jessica's review is of a film about a group of remarkable women in Argentina who found their voices and by doing so transformed themselves from victims into successful entrepreneurs. The women of Brukman are yet further proof that women who empower themselves cannot be stopped. - Ed.


Christmas should be a happy time for families to congregate over lengthy meals while watching little kids open presents, but in 2001 Argentina’s economy collapsed a week before the holiday. Almost immediately factories shut down, business owners fled the country, and low-paid workers were out of their jobs just when everyone needed a little extra money. Yuletide joy was harder to find than a job. However the amazing women featured in the documentary film The Women of Brukman didn’t let the crumbling economy destroy their livelihoods, their spirit, or their Christmas.

• Delicia works the presses, perfectly ironing every piece of clothing that leaves the Brukman factory. Photograph by Gunes-Helene Isitan. •

One day in late 2001, the workers of the Brukman garment factory arrived for their shifts, only to find that the factory’s owners had fled the country – neglecting to pay anyone! The predominately female workforce decided to go about their jobs just like it was any other day; no one had any extra money and, with the recent economic collapse, few employment opportunities elsewhere. Everyone assumed that the Brukman family would eventually return to Buenos Aires and want the factory back.

by Natasha Dokovska
- Macedonia -

“I have seven children, I don't work, neither does my wife. For many years I thought about selling my kidney so I could give my children a better life, but just recently I found someone to buy it,” says 40 year old Ekrem. He explains that it was not a difficult choice because the 1,000 Euro ($1,465 USD) he got as compensation for the lost kidney will enable him to mend some holes in his home, pay electricity bills, and get enough firewood to last for the rest of the winter.

“Fortunately this was not a cold winter so we managed to keep warm with what we've got, otherwise we would have frozen to death,” says Ekrem.

Ekrem is one of the many Macedonian citizens who see selling their organs as a chance to save themselves from poverty. He does not consider the consequences. According to a Macedonian organization that works with people with kidney diseases, for Ekrem and about a hundred other Roma citizens in the country, it is the only way to offer a modest life for their children.

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

Feb. 5th - Today marks Fat Tuesday in New Orleans and the most celebrated day of Mardi Gras festivities. As thousands of visitors flock to the city to celebrate, thousands more have yet to return home. - Ed.

• Despite demonstrations and resistance, the demolition of New Orleans' public housing continues. Photograph by
Mavis Yorks. •

Her home survived Hurricane Katrina, but it will crumble under the city’s plan to demolish low-income housing in the name of “redevelopment.”

To the 33 year-old single mother of three, the officials pushing to raze St. Bernard are carrying out disaster by design. “How could they just get away with it?” she asks.

The pending demolition of the St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, and Lafitte projects has confirmed the fears of the city’s poorest, blackest, and hardest hit communities: that New Orleans’ “recovery” in the wake of the storm is built on the city’s old demons of racial and class strife.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

Earlier this week, speaking for Washingtonia and unburdened by high expectations, President Bush said “all of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people’s business.”

• President Bush delivers the State of the Union address flanked by Vice President Cheney (left) and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Photo by Eric Draper, courtesy of The White House. •

Because if it’s the majority of the population, and it’s life not war, we’re not even close to having it carried out.

He acknowledged, “at kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.”

The question remains – our? Who do you mean by ‘our’, Mr. Bush?

Because for three-quarters of the population’s kitchen table concerns are over gas costs, health insurance, debt payments, tuition, and home values. For nearly 24% of the population, depending on what race you are, the issue of paying for one’s next meal and balancing child-care with multiple jobs is center stage.

by Neeta Lal
- India -

With a booming economy, an exponentially growing Information Technology (IT) sector and surging economic prosperity amongst its 300 million-plus middle class, India seems poised for superpower status.

• Women in India are increasingly marginalized despite the country's economic growth. Photograph by Sarah McGowan. •

Of 128 countries evaluated by the WEF, India ranks way down at 114th, followed, among others, by Yemen, Chad, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Botswana are all positioned better than India. In terms of economic participation and opportunity, India, with its surging economy, has done even worse than last year – it is now ranked at the 122nd position. Meanwhile, its overall rank has slipped from 102nd to 114th this year. In other words, Indian women are even more marginalized than they were a year ago!

It’s interesting to analyze the WEF report: while India scores an overall 59.4 percent on gender equality, it only manages an abysmal 39.8 percent on economic participation and opportunity. In terms of wage equality, India ranks 59th, with 67 percent gender equality; shockingly, given India’s high tech boom, for professional and technical workers, it comes in at 97th (down in the 27th percentile). While India has a 36 percent female participation in the overall labor force, for professional and technical workers the figure is an abysmal 21 percent!

by Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

On Tuesday Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop in Salinas, California. Otherwise known as ‘the lettuce capital of the world’ or John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Salinas just happens to be the farm town I call home.

Nearly 3,000 of Senator Clinton’s supporters showed up at the Hartnell College gymnasium to hear her speak. She was greeted in true Salinas Valley fashion, with mariachis and shouts for Viva la Causa (“Long Live Our Cause"). Clinton’s campaign stop was pulled together in just twenty-four hours following an official endorsement by the United Farm Workers of America, the union co-founded by Dolores Huerta and César Chávez that today represents more than 27,000 farm workers.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

As the middle and poorer classes get crushed under a mounting pile of debt, and living costs grow faster than wages, we’re becoming a country of two classes: the top 1% and everyone else. Similarly, we are two economies. The national one is comprised of items like GDP (Gross Domestic Product), corporate profits, stock market performance and CNBC. Then, there’s the other one in which most people live: stretching to afford health care, a mortgage, commuting costs, education, kids, parents, and the credit cards that act as temporary pain killers.

The rhetoric surrounding George W. Bush’s economic stimulus package, as boastfully “bi-partisan” as it is (we are, after all, in an election year), indicates a complete lack of comprehension of the difference between this ‘national’ economy and the ‘people’s’ economy, and the extent of the gap between the two.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

How does a society best deal with its immigrant minorities? This is a question which has become increasingly urgent as more people than ever leave their home countries due to conflict, climate change and globalization. But as they aspire for a brighter future in new lands, these “new” citizens risk being discriminated against, marginalized and even isolated.

The French riots in 2005 and late last year served as a brutal wake-up call and reminder about what can happen if a society lets its immigrant communities drift in the periphery without integration. But while some countries have tried to deal with racism and ethnic discrimination such as Britain, which suffered race riots in the 1980s, some of the initiatives did not always have the intended effect – as in the case of multiculturalism.

Speaking at his offices in the majestic Littauer building at Harvard University, Amartya Sen, Indian economist, philosopher and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics tackles the topic in a rare interview.

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

Angela Greene has a tough job: she and her workcrew scale the rooftops of Richmond, California to run wires, lay racks, and bend metal piping. Yet in the end, when she unfurls a gleaming solar panel over her community, it feels easy to save the planet.

After being laid off from her former job at a printing business, Greene went through a vocational training program and then joined Solar Richmond, an organization that is bringing sustainable energy along with new jobs to the heavily black and Latino port city.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

On October 23rd, I sent my young sister Farai off to the Republic of South Africa (RSA) to seek employment. In 2005 she graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a BSc Honors in Information Technology, and yet she never managed to find any paid employment in this field (save for a one-year unpaid industrial internship she completed as part of her four-year training).

• As capable professionals leave Zimbabwe in search of a livable wage, industry and the economy continue to crumble. Photograph by Gary Bembridge. •

But of course the policies of our despotic leader, Robert Mugabe, meant there would be a different future in store for her. With unemployment levels at a staggering 80 percent (although the government continues to insist preposterously that unemployment is at 9 percent) my sister's future was doomed even before she got her degree.

by Michelle Chen
USA

"Rich men dam the water
Flooding the hill rice field, causing problems for Mother
Rich men dam the river
Flooding the roof and making Mother homeless"

• The lives of the Karen are threatened by Burma's dam projects. Photograph by Pithawat Vachiramon. •

For thousands of years, the Salween has flowed freely through China, Burma and Thailand, nourishing lush ecosystems and indigenous communities throughout its 2,800-kilometer course. But the military junta, which has ruled Burma since it seized power in August of 1988, has caught up to the possibilities of international “development” by deciding to harness the latent energy of the Salween. The dictatorship known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is now driving four massive multibillion-dollar dam projects that would exploit the river for the first time with the intent of producing hydroelectric power. Human-rights groups say that the multiple emerging Salween dam projects will ignite the latest spark in the Burmese people’s long-smoldering struggle against this government.

by Cecelia Fuentes
USA

One day in July, after picking up the New York Times, an article, “A Voice of Developing Nations Asks the West for Compromise on Trade” attracted my attention. My eye was caught less by the title of the article, a subject in which I am very much interested, but more by the photo accompanying the piece. Looking out from the page was the face of Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce and Industry for India, a man the reporter was calling “the unofficial voice of the deadlocked World Trade Organization (WTO) talks,” adding that he had also been called “stubborn and irresponsible.”

• A demonstrator at the 6th WTO Ministerial Conference held in Hong Kong.
Photograph by Fuzheado. •

The article said that Mr. Nath and Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, had walked out of the latest round of WTO trade talks in a show of unity. A deadlock had occurred when the United States refused to consider a meaningful reduction of US agricultural subsidies.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

Most of us here in Zimbabwe thought he was joking when we first heard President Robert Mugabe tell the public that his government was going to "pounce on greedy businesspeople" because they were increasing the prices of goods by the day to deliberately fuel inflation.

• Mugabe's inflation control scheme has left Zimbabwe's shelves empty as retailers can't afford to restock
their plundered goods.
Photograph by Anthony Easton. •

On that day in June, Mugabe was speaking on national television at a state function. We all knew his anger and fury had been caused by the then US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell.

In an interview with Britain's Guardian Newspaper, Dell had predicted that Zimbabwe's inflation would reach 1.5 million percent by the end of 2007 and that Mugabe's government was "likely to inflict regime change against itself through mismanaging the economy."

Dell also predicted that hunger would lead the people of Zimbabwe to forcibly remove Mugabe from power. He was quoted as saying:

"Things have reached a critical point. I believe the excitement will come in a matter of months, if not weeks. The Mugabe government is reaching end game, it is running out of options. By carrying out disastrous economic policies, the Mugabe government is committing regime change upon itself."

by Lelety Mabasa
Zimbabwe

Vongai stumbles into the house and fumbles as she pulls her room key from her bra. After she struggles with the lock for several minutes, the door finally creaks open. She slips into the room, trying to get accustomed to the darkness. She doesn’t bother with the switch - no need to.

• Photograph by Paul Thomas •

Vongai wakes up with a start, a flicker of light enters her room through the window. She can hear her landlord exchanging morning greetings with the neighbors. It must be around 7am but she doesn’t know for sure because her landlord's radio, which serves as her clock, is off. She smiles wryly when she realizes that she’s been asleep for the past 12 hours. ZESA did not wake her up because for the fourth day in a row, ZESA has neglected her community. Nobody knows when the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority will finally turn the electricity back on!

by Halimah Abdallah Kisule
Uganda

• In Uganda, the widespread burning of counterfeit CDs has robbed musicians of their due. Photograph by Indi Samarajiva. •

As a result, individuals and organizations regularly infringed on the rights of artists, oftentimes pirating, duplicating and playing their music with impunity for economic gain. And the impunity continues to this day, one year after the Copy Right and Neighboring Rights Act 2006 was introduced into law.

Artists and other writers have long campaigned for a law that protects their work. Thanks to parliament and the cabinet, who presented the bill, they now have their wish.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
Malawi

• A tea estate in Malawi.
Photograph by Steve Evans. •

But both the tobacco and tea industries in Malawi thrive on the cheap labor of children ages five to seventeen.

by Natasha Dokovska
Macedonia

• Fashion boutique in Thessaloniki, Greece. Photograph by Etienne Cazin •

by Esther Nakkazi
Uganda

Coffee exporters in developing countries are bracing themselves for higher unit export prices.

• Coffee picker in Vietnam. Photograph by Everjean. •

by Sarah Wyatt
USA

The Dallas Convention Center was rocking last July. Some 42,000 Mary Kay consultants, many clad in red blazers, milled about, in attendance for the three-week national annual gathering known as Seminar.

• Mary Kay's Seminar Stage. Photograph by Elizabeth Hesse. •

"Feel the power of pink," the amplified music mandated as pyrotechnics illuminated the arena. The estrogen-infused crowd erupted as Newbury, their coiffed rock star and symbol of the Mary Kay dream, took the stage. Nearing her retirement, her 85,000 consultants had collected more than $11 million in commissions during her career. The company reported Newbury's retirement package guarantees her $8.5 million over the next 15 years.

by Juliette Terzieff
USA

• Waitress in Southern California.
Photograph by Derek E. Baird •

by Glory Mushinge
Zambia

International Labor Day was celebrated on May 1st throughout the world again this year, but in Zambia it was simply another painful experience for workers. In a nation of over 11 million people, only 400,000 have formal full-time employment; most work in unsafe conditions, earning only meager salaries. Others, in part-time or temporary employment, work in far worse conditions. Their employers, most of them new foreign investors highly touted by the government, abuse these workers in multiple ways, and consistently subject them to dangerous working environments.

What the workers get in return is pay that is a pittance instead of real wages. But many of these workers have poor or few skills leaving them with no alternatives to these jobs. Other citizens, the victims of the country's high unemployment rate (50%), were nothing but spectators at the Labor Day celebrations. Zambia’s unemployment has pushed many families (86%) far below the poverty line. According to the World Bank, the average annual salary in Zambia was $500 (usd) in 2006. In 2003, 63.1% of the population was living on less than $1 per day.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
Malawi

Over 65 percent of Malawi's 12 million people live below the poverty line

By Lelety Mabasa
Zimbabwe

Mariah turns on her back. She winces from pain as she stretches her arms. She sleeps on the ground, and her thin blankets hardly protect her from the rough surface. From her room, she calls out to her neighbour in the other room, telling her to bathe the kids as she will not be bathing early today. She is normally the first to use the bathroom, but she will be the last today - she is not going to work because nurses are on strike.

As she continues with her “sleep,” Mariah reflects back on her college days, when she and her friends could not wait to graduate. They dreamt of “making names for themselves out there. ” They fantasized about owning houses in the country's posh surburbs, being the first to have the latest model cars, having happy marriages and a modest family with three children who would all go to the best schools the country has to offer. These naively hopeful students also planned on buying nice houses for their parents.

That was four years ago.

by D-L Nelson
France

People talk of capitalism, socialism or communism as if these were the only three economic systems for the world to choose from. Little is said about co-operativism, one of the least-publicized economic systems,

View larger image
El Salvadorian women were able to finance a fish farm because of their savings co-operative. Photograph courtesy of the World Council of Credit Unions

Part of the reason co-ops are so infrequently discussed is that they aren’t traded on the stock market. They seldom make the business news, yet they are responsible for generating billions of dollars.

by Marianne Taflinger
USA

When Iqbal Quadir’s computer crashed one day, he flashed back to his time in Bangladesh when he went out walking to find a pharmacist, only to find the pharmacist out walking to find medicine. In that flash, he realized that “connectivity is productivity,”—if you cannot connect, you cannot be productive, no matter where you are, or what your circumstances might be.

Quadir and his partners built this business in Bangladesh where the per capita GDP is $415, or the equivalent of $1,197 dollars a year in purchasing power. 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and electricity is virtually nonexistent outside of the capital city. In 2005, the Bangladesh government was tied for last place with Chad in central Africa on international corruption. You could say it’s “top of the list” on perception of corruption when viewed by the foreign business community.

by Suad Hamada
Bahrain

Working women in Bahrain are facing many challenges and female activists predict they will encounter even more hardships after the full implementation of the newly ratified Free Trade Agreement between Bahrain and the United States.

A recent study reveals that only 9.9% of the top managerial posts in Bahrain’s private sector are held by women. Besides accepting the second best when it comes to promotion and work privileges, females have to find ways to cope with the tough competition the FTA will bring with its open market policies.

Put into effect last year, the FTA is expected to contribute to the economic growth of Bahrain and increase revenues of businesses. But according to the Supreme Council for Women (SCW) that is dedicated to safeguarding the interests of Bahrain’s female citizens by empowering them in all walks in life, the FTA’s effects on women are still uncertain.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

* The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, the new book from Dr. Riane Eisler, has allowed us at The WIP to take our mission to a new depth that I personally was not at before. I know that it will make the same impact on many other readers.

So to celebrate the release of Dr. Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations, The WIP is proud to repost an editorial I wrote after I had the honor of interviewing her. This editorial first appeared on The WIP on March 31, 2007.

I read a book about Economics—something I don’t do very often. Actually, I think this was the first book I’ve ever read in my life about economics. It’s by Dr. Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations. It was accessible and legible, and interesting, and even inspiring. It was historical, thought provoking, and if what she proposes is true, life changing.

It was around the third chapter that I had eased into my couch and her statistics started to resonate with me—stats like the fair wage for a typical stay-at-home parent would be $134, 471 per year, or a 1995 United Nations report that calculated the annual unpaid work by women at 11 trillion dollars.

by D-L Nelson
France

What turns a happy employee and grandmother into a striker willing to walk an icy picket line in Hamilton, ON, Canada for almost six months? Nancy Bachorski says unfair treatment is to blame.

For twenty-six years, Bachorski worked as a mortgage administrator at F1rstOntario Credit Union and she loved her job. She would recommend her credit union to people in passing and while chatting with them as she walked her dog.

Canada’s 400+ credit unions are member-owned financial institutions that hold CND$94 billion in assets. Unlike banks, credit union profits are returned to the membership or the community. In 2006 they donated over CND$36 million to community projects.

In April 2006 management started negotiating a new contract with Bachorski’s union, COPE Local 343. In May, F1rstOntario’s relatively new CEO, John Lahey, announced its most profitable year ever.

by Susan Mwape
Zambia

Where there is water there is life. Forty-three years after independence, Zambia still has persistent water issues. If anything, the introduction of a multi-party system has only accelerated the water problems that have been going unnoticed. One would expect that a country as old as Zambia would be more stable in terms of its water systems.

As we say, “life begins at forty.” Maybe life for us as a country has only begun.

New Kanyama Township is about an 8-minute drive from town, a 15 -minute walk from Lusaka’s city center. By now, this would ideally have been a habitable area, especially since this compound was founded long before the independence of Zambia and is one of the largest residential compounds in the city.

A sad development occurred here about 2 weeks ago when the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC) closed down all communal water taps to facilitate the opening of new taps that were placed in different locations. The new taps were designed to regulate the water systems as they came equipped with meters.

by Natasha Dokovska
Macedonia

“Sometimes we’re locked up in the tailor’s shop. Sometimes we’re not given free time to go to toilet…The owner, who is Greek, wants everyone to work overtime, even though we’re already at the sewing machine for more than 10 hours. Nobody can leave, because if you do, you’ll lose the work,” says Biljana Smilevska, one of the seamstresses at the private textile department, Somi Velteks, in Veles.

This is only one example of how women in the private textile industry in Macedonia are exploited. According to trade unions in Macedonia, 80% of the workers employed in the textile industry are female.

Salaries in the textile industry are among the lowest in the country. Most of the women in the industry work more than 12 hours per day for only 60 euro per month. It’s not enough to even survive in a country where the average salary is 200 euros.

by Viktorija Plavcak
- Slovenia -

It has been almost two years since Slovenia became a full member of the European Union. On May 5th, 2005 we entered the European Union after years of pain-staking preparations and compliance with the requisite laws and regulations. The euphoria felt within the nation is indescribable.

The union with the former Yugoslavia brought nothing but debt and turned Slovenia into the milk cow for the entire Balkans region. The attack on Slovenia's freedom turned the country into a fierce animal which fought tooth and nail until finally in 1991, its freedom and independence were secured.

Still, being so small, and without real resources, industry or developed agriculture, it was impossible to survive independently, cut off from the rest of the world. It therefore had to join another union, the European Union, where milk and honey are in abundance.

by Glory Mushinge
Zambia

In a developing country like Zambia, one million and five hundred Zambian Kwachas, or roughly three hundred and fifty dollars, is enough to feed a family for 350 days.

So, when Liness Mwale, a 69 year old widow taking care of about four orphans, decided to save almost double that amount of money in order to buy a plot in Lusaka’s Kalale area and build a two-room house, where she could take her family and cut down on the cost of rentals, it was like further reducing the family’s food intake. But Mwale made the choice to live on less than half a dollar for over three years just so she could have a place she could call home.

by Glory Mushinge
Zambia

While most Zambian people, especially local business owners, have continuously condemned Chinese investors for exploiting the country’s market by selling sub-standard goods and services, as well as monopolizing Zambian business with goods that are supposed to be sold by the indigenous people, The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) thinks the country needs to do its homework to solve the problem.