Vandana Shiva on Int’l Women’s Day: "Capitalist Patriarchy Has Aggravated Violence Against Women"

[polly7]

I've posted this here, because it's more than a women's or feminist issue. Vandana Shiva has always maintained there is a strong connection between the growth of violent, undemocratically imposed, unjust and unfair economic policies and the growth of crimes against women, which is something I also find is impossible to deny.

Vandana Shiva on Int’l Women’s Day: "Capitalist Patriarchy Has Aggravated Violence Against Women"
By Vandana Shiva

Source: Democracy Now

Saturday, March 09, 2013

VANDANA SHIVA: I’m here in Los Angeles to address a conference on International Women’s Day on global ecologies, on how globalization, shaped by a very patriarchal mindset, a capitalist, patriarchal mindset, has actually aggravated the violence against women, that we are living in a very violent economic order to which war has become essential—war against the earth, war against women’s bodies, war against local economies and war against democracy. And I think we need to see the connections between all these forms of violence, which impact women most. Whether it’s climate change or biodiversity erosion or seed monopolies, all of it is connected. It’s one piece.

VANDANA SHIVA: I think this case is not just about Bowman, the Indiana farmer. It’s about every farmer, every person and every seed in the world. First, the idea that Monsanto can patent a seed by putting a toxic gene for Roundup resistance into a plant, that that is a creation of seed, that has evolved over millennia, been bred over thousands of years in East Asia, not by Monsanto—how can we be governed by an illusion that introducing a toxic gene is creation of life? It’s an error. And it is this error that compelled me 26 years ago to start Navdanya, the movement for seed saving in India, because I do not think seed is invented, and therefore, a patent on seed is wrong from the first step.

In India, this kind of false claim to creation, false claim to invention, the collection of royalties from seed, has led to Monsanto controlling 95 percent of the cottonseed supply, 95 percent through a monopoly, not through the choice of the farmers, as it’s often made out to be. Farmers are getting indebted because the price of seed jumped 8,000 percent, and there’s no option, except the little options we are creating through Navdanya by saving open-pollinated seed.

Two hundred and seventy thousand Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the Indian seed market. That’s more than a quarter-million. It’s a genocide. And every farmer who commits suicide leaves behind a widow. For me, this is a prime example of violence against women through violent economic means.

Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/vandana-shiva-on-int-l-women-s-day-capitalist-patriarchy-has-aggravated-violence-against-women-by-vandana-shiva

"Born in India in 1952, Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992), and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989).

Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne , 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India .

Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics."

[smirkymonkey]

1. K&R

Great read! Thank you!