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	For the Welfare of All by Share the World"s Resources & agencies   Oct 2012   For the Welfare of All, by Frances Fox Piven.   In the “The Welfare State of America,” Peter Frase and Bhaskar Sunkara propose that social justice campaigners inaugurate an anti-austerity campaign that focuses on the expansion of government social welfare programs. I agree.   Social democrats should fight for programs that provide health services, educate children, bolster the income of the less-well-off and subsidize housing. The reasons are obvious. The first is a simple moral imperative: A good society strives to meet the basic needs of all its people. The second is that government programs that protect people from the exigencies of labor markets, or of old age, or orphanhood, or disability, make people more secure. A sense of security, the reduction of fear, is a good thing in itself. But it also empowers people, and for that reason is essential to a more democratic society. Workers are far more likely to stand up to their bosses when they know they can fall back on decent unemployment benefits, just as women are more likely to stand up to abusive husbands when they know that they and their children can rely on government income supports.   Frase and Sunkara rightly insist that welfare programs should be centralized. They emphasize the legal constraints that force states and municipalities to balance their budgets, no matter the state of the economy, and that justify the right-wing push for austerity. But there are even more powerful political constraints on welfare-state spending at the sub-national level.   Because corporations can pick and choose among locales for investment, they have enormous power over state and local governments. They can demand a “good business climate” of low taxes and low welfare spending, and also extort unseemly subsidies, in exchange for promises of investment.   Americans have a romance with decentralization that the Right encourages. But a government geographically closer to the people is not necessarily more responsive. As Frase and Sunkara demonstrate, a federal system that assigns welfare-state spending to the state and local level is fundamentally biased against the program and its constituents.   The historical development of American welfare-state programs provides other lessons on how to do better. Eligibility for benefits should be broadly inclusive, so that particular groups like welfare moms cannot be so easily isolated and pilloried by opponents. Nor should eligibility for services or benefits be conditioned on nebulous criteria and staff discretion.   Finally, we must once and for all disavow the century-old strategy of trying to expand the welfare state by stealth. This was the strategy of the New Deal proponents of Social Security who exerted themselves to depict the program as “insurance,” and it is the strategy of subsequent reformers who tried to use the tax code as the vehicle for welfare state spending.   Today we suffer the costs of this strategy of social democracy by stealth. Many Americans don’t know they have a welfare state, nor that they them- selves have benefited from it via public university or housing subsidies (the mortgage interest tax deduction), nor that their parents rely on government welfare such as Medicare and Social Security for basic survival. Instead, a good many people are deluded into thinking they simply “built it.” And that is the delusion that Mitt Romney and other GOP candidates around the country are banking on.   * Frances Fox Piven lectures at the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently, of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.   http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13998/the_welfare_state_of_america/   On the weekend at the Firenze 10+10 conference in Florence, Italy, thousands of campaigners and progressive economists from across Europe were debating mass mobilisation against austerity and the need for a region-wide movement for economic and social justice.   http://www.firenze1010.eu/index.php   The following article is based on the report, Financing the Global Sharing Economy, by Rajesh Makwana and Adam Parsons from the non-profit advocacy group Share the World"s Resources (STWR). To read the full report, see link below.   There is much talk about the need for greater sharing in our societies today, in everything from household goods and peer-to-peer services to cooperative enterprises and the ‘commons’. But we often fail to acknowledge one of the most important examples of sharing in the modern world: systems of universal welfare provision.   Systems of welfare are essentially complex ‘sharing economies’ that exist in a variety of forms in different countries. The principle of sharing underpins how they work by ensuring that members of society take collective responsibility for securing the basic human needs and rights of all citizens. Through the process of progressive taxation and redistribution, we share a portion of the nation’s financial resources (personal income and assets, as well as company profits) for the benefit of society as a whole.   Social welfare systems in both rich and poor countries are often far from perfect and not always efficiently administered, but they remain a vital expression of social justice, solidarity and equitable wealth distribution that can reduce inequalities and strengthen social cohesion. They are also staunchly supported by many millions of people who have long recognised the role that an effective sharing economy can play in creating a fairer, more just and healthy society.   However, the process of establishing and strengthening the sharing economy is still in its infancy in some parts of the world. Many low-income countries do not have the resources they need to build effective systems for redistributing wealth and income through taxation and the provision of public services. Furthermore, a lack of generosity and the self-interest of donor countries has severely compromised existing systems of overseas aid – currently one of the only mechanisms used by rich industrialised nations to finance the ‘global sharing economy’. These realities point to the urgent need for scaling up sharing between countries as well as within them.   Rather than strengthening and scaling up the sharing economy on a national and global basis, for decades governments have pursued polices that undermine systems of social welfare and exacerbate poverty and inequality. Since the 1980s, governments have increasingly rolled back those policies that share the proceeds of growth more fairly across society, in favour of promoting unregulated wealth creation by the few. Today, the very basis of the sharing economy is being eroded in countries where austerity measures are dramatically reducing public spending on social welfare and essential services.   In a world that is already highly unequal, neglecting polices that redistribute income and wealth has resulted in what can only be described as a global emergency. For example, poverty rates across OECD countries have been rising for a decade and took a sharp turn for the worse after the global financial crisis of 2008.In poorer countries, just under a billion people are officially classified as hungry while almost half of the developing world population is trying to survive on less than $2 a day. At the same time, 300 million people are currently affected by global warming and 300,000 people lose their lives every year as a result. Altogether, around 15 million people die every year largely due to a lack of access to nutritious food, basic healthcare services, or clean water for drinking and sanitation - equivalent to more than 40,000 preventable deaths every single day.   The underlying causes of the many urgent problems facing humanity are complex and addressing them will necessitate extensive reforms to the institutions and policies that underpin the global economy. In this process of world rehabilitation, almost every aspect of society will need to be restructured – from the way we extract, produce, distribute and consume resources, to the influence that multinational corporations wield over society and policymaking. But we cannot wait for these transformative changes to take place while millions of people are facing a condition of life-threatening poverty. We urgently need to take a bold step towards saving lives and ending extreme deprivation today – and despite what politicians keep on telling us, doing so is eminently affordable.   According to our research, governments could harness more than enough money to reverse policies of economic austerity, prevent life-threatening deprivation and mitigate the human impacts of climate change. By utilising new policy options we could mobilise over $2.8 trillion every year to bolster the sharing economy both within and between nations. These figures are only broad estimates, but they demonstrate the potential for governments to collect and redistribute huge quantities of additional public finance for critical human needs – often money that they have led the public to believe does not exist or cannot be found.   The responsibility for change rests with us – ordinary, engaged citizens – to forge a worldwide popular movement that upholds and strengthens the sharing economy in all its forms.   * Access the report via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Arab Spring may to take some years to improve women"s rights, say activists by IPS, Reuters & agencies   Dec 2012 (Reuters)   The Arab Spring has failed to deliver greater political power to women in the region or to offer them better protection from sexual harassment, but may yet yield female-friendly reform, a conference on women"s rights heard.   Human rights campaigners had hoped that women"s involvement in protests that toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen and overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in Libya would lead to more power for women in Arab states.   The uprisings unseated a string of autocrats and triggered some change, including relatively free elections. But two years after the first uprising erupted, activists said women had seen precious few gains and that the rise of Islamist governments in the region was fuelling concern about growing conservatism.   Dina Wahba, an activist and coordinator of the Women"s Committee in the newly established Egyptian Democratic Social Party, described recent changes in Egypt as "alarming", saying a proposed constitution drafted by only men would endanger women"s rights and social justice.   The draft constitution will be put to a vote on December 15.   "It feels like two years have gone by and with all these sacrifices for nothing," she told the conference, organized by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Herald Tribune.   In Egypt, a quota for female representation in parliament has been abolished, while in Tunisia, quotas mean that 30 percent of assembly members are female. However, local rights groups complain that women ended up with only a handful of posts in a transitional cabinet of over 40 ministers.   Recent episodes of sexual harassment in Tunisia and Egypt, and the handling of these incidents were also of deep concern, women"s rights activists said.   In Tunis, hundreds protested in September after a woman was accused of "indecency" after allegedly being raped by police in a car park, while female protesters demanding an end to sexual harassment were attacked in Cairo"s Tahrir Square in June.   Despite the dearth of progress, activists said they still expected change to come as the Arab revolutions had mobilized women in the region for the first time, with technology and social media dramatically increasing their access to information.   Atiaf Alwazir, an activist and blogger from Yemen, said this was the first time so many women from so many different backgrounds had joined demonstrations.   "The majority of women out on the streets were average women, women from the villages, and outside the political elite. That is what makes this revolution so special," said Alwazir whose country has just one woman in its 301-member parliament.   Campaigners accepted that meaningful change could take years however.   Alaa Murabit, founder of The Voice of Libyan Women organization, said she had initially written the Arab Spring off as a disaster but that her view had changed since women had made up 51 percent of voters in Libya"s election in July.   "Women are now getting involved and taking the initiative," she said.   Jordan"s Queen Noor, widow of King Hussein and an international humanitarian campaigner, said the lack of progress for women so far should not be deemed a failure.   "All revolutions, as sudden as they sound, rarely produce results immediately. Momentum builds over time. It can take years or generations," Queen Noor told the conference.   The rise of Islamist governments was not the primary concern because Islam was not the source of misogyny and female oppression, she said.   "The primary danger to women"s advancement is not religious but economic and social", she said, referring to traditional customs and societal views.   Oct. 2012   Egypt Revolution delivers uncertain future for Women say activists. (Inter Press Service).   During the uprising that toppled Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak women stood shoulder to shoulder with men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, pressing the revolution’s demands for freedom, justice and dignity. But those who hoped the revolution would make them equal partners in Egypt’s future claim they may be worse off now than under Mubarak’s authoritarian rule.   “After the revolution, most of Egyptian society – and especially the Islamists – began attacking women’s rights,” says Azza Kamel, a prominent women’s rights activist. “They started to claw back rights that women had fought for and gained before the revolution, and are trying to change divorce and custody laws, push FGM (female genital mutilation), and reduce the age of marriage from 18 to nine years old.”   Kamel says women have been almost entirely excluded from leadership and decision-making positions since Mubarak’s ouster. The Committee of Wise Men, an advisory panel formed during the uprising, included just one woman among its 30 members. There have been no women appointed as governors, no women allowed in the authoritative State Council, and weak female representation in all post-Mubarak governments.   “We expected more,” Kamel laments. “There can be no democracy without equality, yet women are being excluded at every step.”   Women were granted the right to vote in 1956, but have historically been underrepresented in Egyptian political life. The country’s first free and fair parliamentary elections resulted in further setbacks. Women won just eight of the 508 seats in the now dissolved lower house of parliament, down from over 60 in the 2010 parliamentary elections when a quota was in place.   Political parties established since Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 welcomed women as members, but appeared unwilling to gamble on them as candidates when it came time for elections. Electoral laws required all parties to field at least one female parliamentary candidate, but even liberal parties placed the women far down their candidate lists, weakening their chance of success.   Kamel accuses political movements, particularly the conservative Muslim Brotherhood, of disingenuously supporting calls for enhancing women’s rights and political standing in order to secure female participation in public demonstrations and at the ballot box.   “All of the political parties are using women for political leverage,” Kamel told IPS. “This has always been the case in Egypt.”   Many women saw the writing on the wall when President Mohamed Morsi reneged on his grandstand promise to appoint a female vice-president. The former Muslim Brotherhood leader has so far surrounded himself with an almost exclusively male corps of advisors, while the only two women in his 35-member cabinet are holdovers from the previous government.   But more worrying, says Kamel, is that the Muslim male-dominated constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution for Egypt is in a position to enshrine discriminatory limitations on women in the national charter. Not only are women almost entirely excluded from the constitution writing process, the assembly is stacked with Islamist figures who activists claim are attempting to impose their conservative religious values on all Egyptian society.   Many of the constituent assembly’s liberal and secular members resigned in objection to what one described as “a set will to produce a constitution that would be the cornerstone of a religious state, which will preserve the principles of the fallen regime and ignore the pillars of the Egyptian uprising of freedom, dignity and social justice.”   One particular point of contention is the wording of Article 68 in the draft constitution, which states that women are equal to men in political, economic, and social life provided that equality does not contradict the provisions of Sharia (Islamic law). Rights groups have opposed the article’s ambiguous religious framing.   Nehad Abu Komsan, director of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR), explains that Sharia has in many instances been used to reinforce negative social attitudes towards women and impose restrictions on their freedom. Linking women’s rights to undefined provisions of Islamic law “opens the door to radical interpretations that can be used against women.”   “Sharia can be interpreted in many different ways,” says Abu Komsan. “Saudi Arabia considers Sharia as a reference (in its constitution) and prohibits women from driving a car, while Pakistan considers it a reference and had a woman leading the country.”   Although Egypt’s Islamist-led government has not completely ignored women, its policy changes have focused on paving the way towards a more conservative, patriarchal society. A recent ministerial decree allowed female flight attendants of state-owned EgyptAir to wear hijab (Islamic veil) for the first time, while new rules have extended the option to female television presenters.   “This is good, as wearing the veil is a personal right,” says domestic worker Umm Gamal, who is veiled herself. “But what we really need is to see more effort toward protecting the right of women to full participation in society. We should be 50 percent (in all leadership positions), not just a quota or novelty.”   http://www.ipsnews.net/news/gender/   14 Aug 2012   Tunisia: Thousands rally for women"s rights. (Wires)   Thousands of Tunisians have demonstrated in the capital for women"s rights in the biggest show of force by the opposition since April as the Islamist-led government faces growing dissent.   Two demonstrations on Monday, one authorised and the other not, were held to support the withdrawal of a planned article in the constitution backed by the Islamists that refers to "complementarity" and not equality of the sexes.   Thousands of people assembled opposite the parliament building in Tunis after the breaking of the Ramadan fast, while several hundred defied a ban to gather on the main city centre Habib Bourguiba Avenue.   Another demonstration was attended by about 1000 people in Sfax, 260 kilometres south of the capital.   The gatherings in Tunis were the biggest by the opposition movement since a banned march was violently broken up on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in April.   The demonstrators, mobilised by feminist groups, human rights and opposition organisations, were celebrating on Monday the anniversary of the promulgation of the Personal Status Code (CSP) in 1956 under Tunisia"s first president, Habib Bourguiba.   Tunisian women are rising up against the proposed article in the new constitution seen by many as an Islamist ploy to reverse the principle of gender equality that made Tunisia a beacon of modernity in the Arab world when it was introduced nearly six decades ago.   The National Constituent Assembly, elected after the downfall last year of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is currently drafting a new national charter.   The NCA parliamentary committee adopted last week a proposed article that activists say would compromise rights enshrined in the CSP. The article must still be ratified at a plenary session of the interim parliament.   The 1956 code was the first of its kind in the Arab world.   It abolished polygamy, under which Muslim men are allowed to have as many as four wives, and the practice of repudiation, under which husbands could divorce simply by saying so three times.   At the same time, it instituted not only judicial divorce but also civil marriage.   It is a system now deeply rooted in Tunisian society, where women are active in all sectors of society.   While none of these principles would be lost under the proposed article, activists fear that its language represents a step toward rolling back their rights.   At issue is that women"s place in society would be defined in terms of their relation to men.   The offending article stipulates that the state guarantees "the protection of women"s rights ... under the principle of complementarity to man within the family and as an associate of man in the development of the country".   A petition addressed to the NCA, and so far signed by more than 8000 people on the internet, says "the state is about to vote on an article in the constitution that limits the citizenship rights of women, under the principle of their complementarity to men and not their equality".   The petition stresses that women, who "are citizens just like men, should not be defined in terms of men".   Online art initiative aims to unite Muslim women, by Samina Ali.   A ground-breaking idea from an online museum dedicated to celebrating, inspiring, and advancing the lives of women promises to point Muslim women world-wide towards a unified and confident future. San Francisco International Museum of Women’s forthcoming Muslim Women Arts and Voices Exhibition 2013 will take on the issues of stereotyping of the Muslim community in the media, Muslim women’s rights, personal freedoms, and self-perceptions.   Dubbed both an exhibition and a campaign by Muslim Women’s Art and Voices Curator, Samina Ali, the multimedia program will feature art works, poetry, creative writing, and new media created by Muslim women from four countries around the world. Highlighting the experiences of emerging and established female Muslim artists, the project aims to encourage positive perceptions and enlighten the broader global community of the diversity of Muslim women’s lives.   The project has been founded in partnership with The Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization in the United Arab Emirates, The Women’s Museum in Denmark, and The Ayala Museum in the Philippines. The Sharjah Museum hosted the first International Partner Summit of the initiative earlier this week.   The first phase of the project calls for Muslim women between the ages of 18 and 40 who are proficient in written and spoken English and living locally in respect to the four areas designated as the project headquarters. The women selected will have the opportunity to collaborate with international and local female Muslim artists and leaders on original art and creative writing pieces and as co-curators of the global initiative.   In March 2013, the project will then be open to contributions from women anywhere in the world.   From its launch next year, the project will utilise social media for continuing and enhancing discussion, both from blogs established specifically for Muslim Women’s Arts and Voices and through comments from the public. Through the online exhibition forum, the group will point to public postings which offer a unique perspective or contribute a fresh or compelling angle.   The project is being administered by the American Alliance of Museums. Visit the related web page
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