How Does The New (Sustainable) Economy Advance Women's Opportunities?

International Federation of Business and Professional Women

How do you mind the balance of implementation and bringing forward a whole new approach?

Dan Seymor- The reason we're talking about he new economic idea is because we're losing. We're losing in environmental and in social. We always use the language of combat, "the fight." It's hard work but there are some positive things going on. The idea of needing to set up an economy differently, is not new to women and girls. The simple question is "what do you want?" Economists cannot tell us that. They are focused on growth, and there is a political agenda to further certain things that aren't actually furthering economy and sustainability. 

Now we're dealing with coping strategies and austerity measures, which has not been great for women in developing countries. The positive examples are grassroots women mobilizing and creating their own policy in local areas. Women understand the need for change, and the only coping strategy is to challenge power and to stick together. 

We are loosing, but looking at the women's movements heralds hope. 

Speaker 2- U.S. Economy Solidarity Network

Economy was not always about growth. It used to be that the people believed that the economy would erraticate poverty in time, and now we don't even believe that. 

Now we are under Neoliberalism, which is focused on growth, but crisis will create change. We are in that crisis and now we have the opportunity to create something that is more sustainable. 

There is not one monolithic social economy solution, but solidarity economy is an alternative model that is grounded in values. Focused on participatory democracy, equity in all dimensions, sustainability, pluralism (not a one size fits all model). This focuses on all sectors- Production, distribution and exchange, consumption, government. Productions- New Co-op models which are beneficial to women. A care economy- all lot of work that is beneficial to an economy is unwaged, that needs to be cared for in policy. Care economy and trade economy. Community supported agriculture. Community land trusts, collective ownership. Credit unions instead of private banks, crowd sourcing. Participatory budgeting. Community grounded planning.

How do we pull this together to articulate a system? We all have to pull together to make these things happen. 

Terry- 

Example worker co-operative economy Mondragon in Northern Spain. The people who work in it have their own stake in it. Owned by workers and run by workers. Certain benefits for the layman. These areas have the lowest unemployment rates, and pay their workers better. The workers vote on how much their time is worth. Their job satisfaction statistics are through the roof, especially in terms of women. Women and men have equal pay, and there are actually more women working in these spaces. Decisions are made one person, one vote to elect a board of directors. These directors can be voted in and out according to how happy people are with their policy. Average income of these spaces is %140 of the rest of Spain. 

The corporations who study this make excuses not to implement things like this because of "cultural issues". But this is a model that works and solves a huge amount of economic issues we're facing. We should be focusing on making solutions like this work for us.

Are co-ops only able to work in homogenous cultural zones?

Is it because people don't trust something new?

What are the examples of things like this growing and successful?

Terry- 

The birthrate of coops is far below that of capitalist models. Entrepreneurs are less attracted to this type of model. The process of replication of coops is slow, and is generally birthed by one community seeking the success in a community next to them. The solution is having managers who are hard-core businessmen, but are just mediated in a democratic way.

Speaker 2- 

The evergreen cooperative in Cleveland- working with Mondragon as a platform, but putting together anchor institutions and community groups. They instal grids and hydroponic greenhouses on the roofs of the institutions and employ hard to employ workers, such as former incarcerated people. 

The major thing is the network scale. What's important about Mondragon, is that the network is so large. They're not just tiny north american style coops. Corporate coops work at a whole different level. 

Does it matter if these things come into policy? Or is it important that we have a whole bunch of different ways to support these types of economies? Are you seeing more interest in this area?

Speaker 4- We can do more to be supportive. We need more than consumer support, we need a policy environment. We need government support. In France there's a social economy law. Morocco it's a national initiative. This is a growing reality, but is not yet on a large sale discussion in most parliaments. The intergovernmental committee on means of sustainable development. -we need to bring some of these smaller examples up to the big scale. We do have a lot of models that are successful. It's gaining interest, and we need to make sure that the language around this isn't used to further the standard corporations, but to make a real difference. 

How do we get over the obstacles of making this policy?

Dan Seymor- Collectives is something that is being done in developing worlds, and especially with women. But there are barriers to entry- access to capital and access to education. The cooperative model is something that sometimes allows women to get around this. To get over this we come here and share ideas, and it's a necessary, but insufficient step. We know that the private sector is important in eliciting change. We do need to engage that part to really influence. You can't just engage the layman, it has to be all across the board.