Sustainable Trade: Women’s work?

The paper discusses the relationship between sustainability of communities and the contribution of women’s work to it.

Ellie Perkins, January 1998

To download : PDF (80 KiB)

Summary :

Today, world is trade dependent, but trade has insidious effects on human communities. Trade’s propensity to grow, and feed itself and keep growing is dangerous because it can destroy both communities and ecosystems.

Sustainability depends on human communities living within ecosystems. Trade must be small-scale and self-limiting to be sustainable. Besides women’s work and ways of working, in a global sense as well as a local sense, is very important. Mechanisms to limit trade within the economy rely on « women’s principles » and « women’s work ». If trade is to become sustainable, communities will have to become strong and self-reliant, and women’s skills, their role in skills transmission, will become central to this process.