Joining a vast coalition of labor, environment and women’s rights organizations, The Feminist Majority will participate in a nationwide action to oppose current fast track legislation that gives the President almost unilateral authority to negotiate international trade agreements. With Fast Track, Congress can only vote trade agreements that the President makes up or down; Congress would lose the ability to amend agreements. If passed, Fast Track would make it nearly impossible for women’s rights organization to work with members of Congress to ensure protections in trade agreements for human rights and the rights of women workers.
Your urgent action is needed now to stop Fast Track and help preserve women’s rights and workers’ rights. Mark your calendars and call your Senators and Representative on this Monday, July 30th–the Women Stopping Fast Track e-Activist National Call-In Day. Call Congress toll-free at 1-800-393-1082.
Tell Congress Why Fast Track Hurts Women:
– Current international trade agreements, like NAFTA, violate the rights of women workers. Women workers in many factories, located in Export Processing Zones (EPZs), have reported physical abuse, sexual harassment and violence, and mandatory pregnancy testing as a condition for employment. Women workers in EPZs are forced to work long hours for extraordinary low wages in poor working conditions. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over 200 women have been murdered, many of them on their way to and from their work in the EPZs.
– Privatization of services reduces women’s access to affordable education and health care. Trade agreements that further reduce the government’s ability to subsidize health care, education, energy and water for its citizens will hurt women disproportionately. The privatization of basic services allows corporate profit to take precedence over women’s lives.
– Commercialization of agriculture creates financial hardship for women. Since NAFTA, women farmers have suffered from the increased role of agribusiness that has destabilized small and family farms.
