26/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
shop once 'its' project was 'complete', leaving the locals to deal with
the nagging question of the unpaid World Bank loan.
Another effect of the patriarchal system is that poverty goes hand-
in-hand with violence. Before birth, female foetuses are aborted;
during childhood, there is sexual abuse; domestic violence after
marriage. An estimated 4 million women are victims of domestic
violence in Germany. In Canada, New Zealand and the United
Kingdom, studies show that one women in six is raped during her
lifetime. In 19 9 7 in Spain, more than 60 women were killed by their
partners. Suicide among women is higher than among men. Violence
against women erupts in times of broader conflict; of this, events in
the former Yugoslavia and in Algeria provide ample evidence.
Violence is an integral part of women's lives.
'While women account for half of the electorate, only 13 per cent
of seats in parliament are occupied by women; and only seven per
cent of government posts' (UNDP, 1997).
This handful of statistics, though far from exhaustive, demon
strates more than ever the need for a specific struggle by women for
their emancipation. Let no one reduce this to a matter of 'biology'.
Rather, it is a matter of wide-ranging choices a society must make to
ensure development, the only way to create genuine personal choice
in a series of key areas. Women in the North have better lives than
their sisters in the South thanks to the underlying fabric of social
gains from previous decades. Women must take on the ideological,
political and economic system that erodes these gains or prevents
them from being adopted.
THE GLOBALISATION OF CAPITAL: THE GROWTH OF
MULTINATIONALS
As part of the long wave of slow growth that began in the 1970s, a
number of significant changes have occurred in the way the world
economy is structured. Many economists have called this 'globalisa
tion' (see glossary).
Multinational corporations have played a central role in this
process. They have increased their presence both in production and
trade (Adda, 1996; UNCTAD, 1994, 1997; Andreff, 1992 and
1996).
Today these corporations control 70 per cent of international trade
and 75 per cent of foreign direct investment. An estimated one third