Building Blocks to a Global Future
by Riane Eisler
 We
have a choice. We can futilely try to protect ourselves and our families behind
high walls, electric gates, and "Star Wars" missile shield
technologies, and turn a blind eye toward chronic human rights violations and an
economic globalization that is not accountable to anyone. Or we can join with
people and organizations from all the world's nations to lay the foundations for
a world of peace, to ensure workers are protected by international standards,
and to find ways of giving value to caring and caregiving.
Rather than putting corporate profits ahead of human welfare -- and even, as
is happening, exporting our radioactive waste to developing nations -- let us
work to ensure that there are environmental safeguards worldwide and that
everyone's basic material needs are met. Rather than turning the other way, let
us join to protect children, women, and men from human rights abuses. Let us
remember that unless every child is safely cared for in our global village, no
child is safe.
It is time to realize that we need a global partnership: we're all together
on one planet, one single support system. We have to work in partnership to
ensure the security and health of everyone, and the safety and opportunities for
the generations to follow.
This requires governments, corporations, and the rest of us to do what we can
to create a sustainable world, to work with respect with all our resources,
including every child and adult on earth.
These and many other actions you can take in the course of your daily life
are building blocks for the road to a partnership future. Every one of these
building blocks advances the partnership political agenda.
Grassroots groups all over the world are peacefully changing customs,
institutions, and practices in a partnership direction. They are working to
preserve our environment, promote nonviolent conflict resolution, and protect
the human rights of children, women, and men. These groups aren't being
organized by specially trained or specially endowed people. They're being
organized by "ordinary" people -- young and old, black and white,
female and male -- people just like you and me.
Andrea Guellar, a twelve-year old Bolivian girl who works as a domestic
servant to survive, leads a group of children in her poor Santa Cruz
neighborhood who meet to help each other as well as other children. Called Defensores
del Pequeno Mundo (Defenders of the Little World), this "children's
brigade" conducts its own anti-violence campaign, going to the homes of
children who are abused to talk to their parents, explaining why it's important
not to beat children, pleading with them not to use violence against their
children.
When they were fifteen and sixteen, Ocean Robbins and Sol Solomon formed YES
(Youth for Environmental Sanity),
which has enlisted thousands of high school and college students into
environmental activism. Patricia Cane, a former nun, founded CAPACITAR
to help poor women and children in the United States and Central America. Ella
Bhatt formed SEWA, the
Self-Employed Women's Association, which pioneered small loans to women
entrepreneurs. SEWA now has its own bank and lobbies for women's rights across
Indian society. Wagari Maathai founded the Green
Belt Movement in Kenya to conserve the environment and improve
women's lives. Millions of trees have been planted through this movement, which
has spread to other African nations
You may not want to start an organization. And you may not have a lot of free
time to volunteer. But you can join or send donations to organizations working
for human rights, peace, democracy, economic equity, and freedom.
UNICEF is the United Nations
agency devoted to helping children. The
Children's Defense Fund, Defense
for Children International, and the Inter-American
Children's Institute work for the rights of children. These and other
groups are trying to end the abuse of children worldwide, including the killing
of children simply because they are homeless. (A powerful documentary showing
how these abuses are often carried out with the complicity of those in authority
is Innocents Lost by filmmakers Kate Blewett and Brian Woods, whose earlier
work The Dying Rooms, an exposé of the mistreatment of abandoned girls in
Chinese orphanages, also won critical acclaim.)
The U.N. International Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
and the U.N. International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement
of Women (INSTRAW) are
United Nations agencies formed to help women. Organizations such as the Women's
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO),
the Feminist Majority, the
American Association of University Women (AAUW),
and the Women's International Network (WIN)
News are also dedicated to the empowerment of women as one of the foundations
for a better society. The Global
Fund for Women gives grants to grassroots women's groups worldwide. The
Hunger Project is dedicated to eradicating hunger by empowering
women.
Planned Parenthood International,
Population Action
International, and Pathfinder
International work to stem the tide of unwanted children and at the
same time empower women. Organizations such as the Union
of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental
Defense FundIPN)
links people committed to the shift to a partnership world, and the Center for
Partnership Studies (CPS)
develops and promotes partnership education. are working to protect our natural environment. The
International Partnership Network (
Another important action is to introduce partnership education into schools.
We need to ensure that our education is gender-balanced and multicultural, and
the resources available from the Center
for Partnership Studies can be helpful in these efforts. We also need
to close the huge education gap between boys and girls in much of the developing
world, so that girls and women have equal access to literacy and basic knowledge
and skills -- an essential step toward a truly developed world.
There are many other things you can do. You can lobby your senators to ratify
the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) and
the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child. Although both these agreements have been
ratified by many nations, neither has at this writing been ratified by the U.S.
Senate.
You can change your purchasing habits. For your long distance telephone
service and Visa credit card you can choose a company called Working Assets,
which donates a percentage of profits to organizations working for social
justice and protection of the environment. You can buy clothes from companies
such as Levi Strauss (the makers of Levi's), who pay workers (both in the U.S.
and overseas) a living wage and don't use child labor. You can buy
environmentally safe products from companies such as Real Goods and Seventh
Generation, both of which sell items through their catalogs and websites (www.realgoods.com
and www.seventhgen.com). You can buy cosmetics from the Body Shop stores, which
employ indigenous peoples and sell natural products that haven't been cruelly
tested on animals.
You can ask relatives or friends to make a donation to an organization
working for peace, human rights, or partnership education at Christmas or other
occasions instead of giving you a gift. If you're a writer, artist, or
filmmaker, you can write articles, use art to raise consciousness, make
documentaries, feature films, videos, or create new television programs. If
you're a teacher, you can bring in speakers from groups working for social
equity and environmental sustainability. You can make arrangements with these
groups for student internships for your school's service learning programs.
You can buy videos from the Media Education Foundation, or the Center for
Partnership Studies, including my video Tomorrow's Children: Partnership
Education in Action, or you can ask your community's schools and universities to
purchase them. You can ask your municipal government to form city-to-city
partnerships, like Sister Cities,
a worldwide citizen diplomacy program.
I have already suggested many ways you can put partnership relations into
practice. You have also seen that there is movement toward partnership relations
all around you. In families, more empathic parenting styles are beginning to
take hold. Women are entering professions that were once restricted to men, and
many men are no longer ashamed to take care of babies or exhibit other so-called
feminine behaviors. Many companies are discovering that a partnership leadership
style that empowers others is more effective than the old-fashioned autocratic
leadership style. The idea of nonviolent conflict resolution is beginning to
change the old idea that you have to out-shout or beat up or kill your opponent.
The idea that we should try to live in harmony with our Mother Earth is
beginning to change the "conquest of nature" mentality.
You may ask, can whole countries move toward the partnership model? The
answer is emphatically yes -- many countries have already made huge advances
toward the partnership model. Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Norway, and
Finland have created much more equitable societies with a good living standard
for all.
The Scandinavian nations pioneered experiments in economic democracy that did
not result in another dominator system, as happened in the former Soviet Union.
They were the first nations to move toward more industrial democracy, pioneering
teamwork by self-directed groups to replace assembly lines where workers are
mere cogs in the industrial machine. In these societies there is much greater
partnership between women and men, as well as a much greater acceptance of women
in leadership positions: women have held the highest political offices and a
larger proportion of legislators are female than anywhere else in the world.
These societies also show a greater acceptance of "feminine
values." Consequently, caring and caregiving have become a key part of
their social policy, and the Scandinavian health care, childcare, and eldercare
systems have become models for other industrialized nations.
The Scandinavian nations also pioneered nonviolent conflict resolution. They
established the first peace academies when the rest of the world only had war
academies, and in Scandinavia there is a strong movement by men against male
violence toward women. Rather than increasing the violence against nature
presently ruining so much of our world, Scandinavian nations have pioneered more
environmentally sound manufacturing approaches, such as the "Natural
Step," where materials are recycled even after they reach the
consumer to avoid pollution and waste.
These nations are not "pure" partnership societies. As I said,
there is no such thing as a "pure" domination model or partnership
model in practice. Most families, organizations, and societies lie somewhere
between these two poles. But the Scandinavian nations show how more
partnership-oriented structures, beliefs, and relations support less violent,
more caring, more environmentally sustainable ways of living.
Every culture has partnership elements that can be strengthened and built
upon. If we really want a more peaceful world -- a world where we and our
children can feel safe -- we will help in this process. We can't wait for
governments to take the lead. If enough of us start, government leaders will
eventually follow.
You can start by working for the human rights of women and children
worldwide. You can urge your governmental representatives to stipulate in
foreign aid grants that one-third be used for children's nutrition, healthcare,
and education, with special emphasis on the girl child. You can urge them to
channel this aid directly to grassroots organizations such as The
Hunger Project or the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers)
that work with local groups of mothers to prevent this funding from being
diverted into the pockets of those in power. You can write letters to heads of
governments that still condone the brutal subordination of women in the Middle
East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and urge international human rights
organizations to take a stronger stand on human rights violations in these
regions. You can urge religious leaders to actively work to end violence against
women and children worldwide.
Just pick one or two of the actions described in this chapter or in the
action checklist that follows, and get some of your friends or colleagues to
join you. This is how change starts.
ACTION CHECKLIST FIRST STEPS
- When you hear about millions of children starving in some corner of the
world, think of each as a hungry, bewildered child, not just a faceless
statistic.
- When you hear what is being done to women under the guise of religious
tradition, imagine what life would be like if you could not let a square
inch of your skin be seen in public, could not attend school or have a job,
and could not drive a car or even get into one without a male member of your
family. When you read of girls and women publicly flogged, hanged, and
stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan or other regimes led by
religious fundamentalists, imagine yourself and your mothers, daughters, and
sisters living under a religious fundamentalist regime.
- Reexamine Christian, Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalist teachings in terms
of the core dominator configuration of rigid male dominance, top-down rule,
and the religiously condoned use of violence in families, communities, and
the world. Consider how these teachings violate the core of their religious
teachings: caring, nonviolence, and empathy.
- Think about how the current rules for economic globalization are widening
the disparity between the developed and developing world -- and how most of
the world's poor are women and children.
- Consider the effect on poor families worldwide of congressional cuts in
domestic and international family planning funds, and vote for people who
understand the need for policies that support family planning.
- Visualize yourself living in a society where the work of caring and
caregiving is highly rewarded, and imagine how this would affect your life
and that of your children.
NEXT STEPS
- Buy products and services from socially and environmentally responsible
companies, and do not buy from those that are not.
- Invest in stocks of socially and environmentally responsible companies and
mutual funds.
- Share the materials in this chapter with others, both one-to-one and by
forming a discussion group.
- Contact international human rights organizations and government agencies,
urging them to actively work for human rights in both the private and public
spheres, focusing particularly on the long-ignored human rights of women and
children.
- Speak up against prejudice and hate in radio talk shows and letters to the
editor.
GOING FURTHER
- Raise the awareness of your family, friends, and business associates to
global partnership as a necessity in our age of instant technologies of
destruction.
- Help move political discussions past old categories such as right versus
left, East versus West, capitalism versus communism, liberal versus
conservative, and religious versus secular to the underlying issue of
attitudes and policies that support domination or partnership.
- Ask organizations to which you belong or to which you donate to sponsor a
campaign to end violence against children and women worldwide.
- Introduce and support partnership education in schools and universities.
- Work for political candidates who support a national and international
politics of partnership, or run for office yourself.
This
article is excerpted from:
 The
Power of Partnership
by Riane Eisler.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library, Novato,
California, USA. ©2002. http://www.newworldlibrary.com
or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
Info/Order
this book.
About the Author
Riane
Eisler is an internationally renowned scholar, futurist, and activist. She is
the author of several
groundbreaking books, including The Chalice and
the Blade, Tomorrow's Children, and Sacred Pleasure. She is a charismatic
speaker who keynotes conferences worldwide, a consultant to business and
government, and president of the Center for Partnership Studies in Tucson,
Arizona. Visit her website at http://www.partnershipway.org
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