By Rosa Alegria
Specially for the International Women Day in honor of my eternal inspirations: Hazel Henderson, Eleonora Masini and Rose Marie Muraro.
Brazil, March 8, 2017
In 2008 I went to study at Schumacher College, Totnes, South England, wanting to deepen my knowledge of sustainability – a topic I thought I dominated by lecturing, writing articles, offering consulting services.
The name of the course excited me mostly. Development: What Next?
Attending in the first classes of the program I came across with radical thinkers like Vandana Shiva and Gustavo Esteva. Always having in mind that Greek paraphrase of “I know that I know nothing”.
During the course, the impact was continuously growing. There were fascinating discoveries in the first week. With my mind turned upside down, I decided not to sleep to completely change a presentation that I would expose in Belgium at a Conference called Millenia promoted by the Millennium Project and organized my Marie Anne DeLahaut and the central theme was “Women as Actors of Development”.
I left England for two days and flied to Liége to attend the invitation. I started my presentation by asking a question that changed the direction of the debates: “what kind of development do we women want?”
I then returned to England and finished the course. With my mind still inside out, I began to reflect on this development created by male power and by the economically powerful world.
This reflection not only raised my level of awareness about what was in front of my eyes (which I still did not see well), but also anticipated the future that was already emerging from my discomfort with the reality that has especially affected women.
From then on, I have been thinking of the constructive proximity between the feminine universe and the new models of development, guided by the collaboration among human species, communities, cities and nations.
What development is this?
Instead of fostering inclusion, integration, care and acceptance, those values that translate the feminine universe, this developed world has been built on the segregation, exclusion and fragmentation of human and natural systems, making living species closer to the end.
The capitalist development has generated enormous wealth for some, but devastated the planet. Biodiversity is on the verge of extinction at a rate 1,000 times faster than the natural rate observed in the last 65 million years. It was not able to generate human well-being on a large scale (according to a recent study by the Center for Health and Environment at Harvard Medical School).
There is much to be repaired and rebuilt from the feminine point of view. The burden of ecological devastation and irresponsible growth weighs even more heavily on women in their multiple social functions and in their biological condition and bearers of life.
There is no better time than this crisis to rethink the model of development we want to live and how to embed feminine principles that translate the quintessence of a post-developed world.
The development of unlimited growth cannot continue to justify environmental destruction and undermine the quality of life of mankind in the name of GDP growth.
In order to understand development as it has been conceived in the last fifty years, we have to go through the historical duality between the “haves” and the “have nots”, between North and South, between the developed and the underdeveloped.
This is a model created by the winners of the Second War, in particular, the USA, who have orchestrated the world economy on the basis of domination and exclusion.
The happiness that was once filled by sufficiency was replaced by the insatiable need that drives markets and the economy’s wheel, perpetuating dependence on consumption and lighting the flame of greed. Whole populations full of creative potential were colonized by the idea that there is something beyond their possibilities, generating a sense of eternal frustration around those who were not included in the economic system.
The International Women’s Day is not only to honor women we admire but also to remember that after fifty years of feminist revolution, women bear mostly the burden of inequality.
Speaking of Brazilians: every 12 minutes a woman dies of domestic violence; occupy only 8% of the country’s political posts. They represent globally 70% of the illiterate and although they are responsible for cultivating most of the food we eat, they do not have access to land ownership.
Of the 200 largest Brazilian companies, only three have a woman in charge and certainly many of them under male leadership models hostile to their female reality. By the way, for some time now, some of the most successful women recognized in their professions, who have held important positions in big companies, have given up their careers to take care of the family in search of an emotional relief.
Unleashing development
This is not really the development that will make mankind flourish and make life on Earth possible. In response to this unsustainable model, many movements and innovations are (de) enveloping this development that in the genesis of the word translates the undoing of what could already be done, of de-engaging what could involve the collectivity in a constructive economy.
Great changes are emerging as fronts not only of resistance but also (and mainly) of evolution. As a post-war generation, we are still living in unsustainable growth, increasingly displaced in the work environment. We want to jump the wall to enter the backyard of the entrepreneurs that make Brazil distinguishable in the world on the “do-it-yourself” segment (GEM Global Entrepreneuship Monitor 2016).
Archaic educational systems have already exhausted our patience, and especially the patience of those who still have to go to school everyday ontime. But many innovations are beginning to turn schools into centers of genuine knowledge.
At the end of the cycle appear the symptoms such as, for example, the conservative eruptions of the Trump era and the current conservative waves popping up around the world. But the future is closer than we normally think. Great transformations are on the way. A new civilization is already germinating. The patriarchal culture we have incorporated for eight thousand years is decaying, whether in the classroom, at work, or at home.
The whole view of reality is uninstalling the old idea of ??separation between Science and Spirituality, North and South, Reason and Emotion, Feminine and Masculine, Left and Right, Work and Leisure, Humanity and Nature.
Competition is already an indigestible word on the round tables. Collaboration enters as value in business plans. The financial system began to collapse in 2008 (the year I studied at Schumacher) and is still collapsing. New indicators enter public agendas weakening the logic of GDP as has been foreseen some decades ago by the economic iconoclast Hazel Henderson. Countries with more natural resources already represent a counterpart in the bankruptcy of financial resources.
The Paris agreement consolidates that the planet is boiling, including Trump’s rampant fever. Renowned business schools already include happiness as a new and viable indicator. Women’s values ??already integrate the profile of HR booklets of large companies.
The post-developed world requires a more feminine look simply because ““a woman is the a circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.” (Diane Mariechild).
This article was originally published in Diario do Comercio in March 8, 2017
www.dcomercio.com.br/categoria/opiniao/visoes_femininas<http://www.dcomercio.com.br/categoria/opiniao/visoes_femininas>