Brussels

statement

International Women's Day (T)

Women's Day 2017. Statement by Dr Vandana SHIVA, author, activist, pioneer, scientific advisor, mother

SOUNDBITE (English), Vandana SHIVA, Well I made a very conscious decision to be at the European Parliament for International Women&rsquo;s Day. I had many invitations, but this became a priority for me first because it&rsquo;s in the Parliament and I believe democracy is under threat we need to defend it, I believe International Women&rsquo;s Day celebrated in a democratic framework adds strength to women and to democracy, and Europe I believe has the possibilities of shifting the direction of total decay and disintegration the world is being pushed into in so many parts of the world, and I don&rsquo;t have to tell you what&rsquo;s happening.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vandana SHIVA, Well my message to the women of Europe was that women have strength everywhere and I have learned so much from women at the grassroots, women peasants, women tribes, women fishermen in India that we should not be condescending in our discourse and thought in women&rsquo;s empowerment. Women of Europe should not think that there are these pathetic ladies down there that they need to help, but realise that together as women we can show another way out of violence to non-violence, out of greed and privatisation to sharing and caring which is an expertise women have developed in the North and in the South and that is the expertise the world is calling out for. Economies need to become economies of giving, sharing and protecting rather than economies of grabbing and taking.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vandana SHIVA, Well a lot of times we just talk about empowering women, someone had to do them a favour, and I believe personally in my own life&rsquo;s evolution, evolving in my own society that women have power and when they want to exercise it they exercise it. The problem for women is not to empower them the problem is to remove the disempowerment that crashes them. The first disempowerment is to be treated legally at a leaser level, to be treated as leaser for worker when you are doing most of the work, to have your work not even counted, women don&rsquo;t work is the basis of the patriarchal economy because it says, &lsquo;if you produce what you consume you don&rsquo;t produce&rsquo;. So all the work women do in the household in the care economy is not counted

All the work that the women peasants do to produce the food, most of the food that we eat 75% comes from small farms largely women&rsquo;s work and it&rsquo;s just not counted, that is disempowerment. Not counting their knowledge and then patenting it by stealing it, look I have had to deal with it again and again often at the European Parliament. These are all processes of disempowerment. And these are structural biases in the economy, in knowledge systems, in political systems but they are also built into law so we have to change it at every level.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vandana SHIVA, For me feminism is about changing the world view. What we have, what was called science is a patriarchal science defining nature as dead, defining the world as a machine that&rsquo;s a stupid way to look at the world, the world is living it&rsquo;s interconnected, that is true science. Defining the economy as only profiteering and the market and finance, how can that be the economy when 8 men control half the wealth of the world and in the meantime children need to be fed, sick have to be looked after, babies have to be delivered, all of that is amazing work. And finally politics, the idea that power is for domination of others rather than empowerment, that to me is acting together.