Viva Mama!

By Ann Pettifor & Maz Kessler

First published in the Huffington Post, September 22nd, 2009

President Clinton was on Larry King the other night, reminding us with typical directness that people die simply because they can’t get medicine. This is particularly true for poor women and their newborn babies.

Women – mothers – are still dying in pregnancy and childbirth, all over the world, for want of cheap,

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Women talking macro-economics

My conversation with Elena Sisti – of Italy’s Altreconomia on macro-economics, reform of the finance sector, money, and yes, how we women have left the all-important matter of finance to the boys. Big mistake. It’s time to get in there, and exercise influence. Too much is at stake.

Women will have to work to feminise macrofinance – by taking economics courses; by challenging economic orthodoxy; by taking positions in banking and finance. Above all, by understanding the nature of credit and bank money.

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More and more European cities sign up to gender equality

October 2009 Barcelona and Reykjavik; January 2010 Strasbourg – these are just the latest major cities to sign up to the European Charter for Equality of women and men in local life.

Nearly 1000 towns, cities and regions have committed themselves to gender equality across the range of their powers, since the Charter was first launched at our congress in Innsbruck in 2006, and signed by Hilde Zach, the feisty and tireless Mayor of that beautiful Austrian city.

Drafting the Charter was not easy – it is quite a dense document (even I must confess!), which at one and the same time asserts legal rights, and also offers practical ideas and guidance.  The aim is that every town and city that signs up should have and implement a real gender action plan.  The Charter covers all of the different roles of the local authority – political and democratic representation, major employer, service deliverer, contractor… there’s a section on all of these.

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