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  Quiet Revolution: Can Globalization Help Women out of Traditional Roles?

Quiet Revolution Can Globalization Help Women out of Traditional Roles?

By Barbara Supp

Part 3: A Growing Interest in Women

McKinsey, Cartier, Lancôme, Nespresso, Coca-Cola, Renault-Nissan, Barclays, Britain's Diamond Trading Company, Helena Rubinstein, PriceWaterhouseCoopers -- these are all sponsors of the women's forum, and they know men are not the only ones with money. The gap between rich and poor is growing, and women are also among the winners.

This explains the growing interest of companies in women, and representatives of the NGO community, like Irene Khan, say women must take advantage of this. They must work with the institutions and employ economic incentives to help ensure that globalization can truly be understood as an opportunity in developing countries. In some cases it seems to be working.

When financial backers like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have prescribed reforms for developing countries, this has traditionally translated into cutbacks in the social arena, affecting women and children first. Now the IMF is in the process of adjusting its guidelines, especially since the financial crisis started. Its focus has moved away from austere savings programs and toward a stronger emphasis on day-to-day hardship. Now the World Bank wants to invest more heavily in women "to boost economic development." For 2007 to 2010, the bank has established a "Gender Action Plan," and it selected a quote from the Economist as its motto: "Forget China, India and the Internet: economic growth is driven by women."

Recently McKinsey, the World Bank and women's groups have argued in favor of an economic feminism far removed from what the women's movement considered to be feminism in the 1970s. In those days, feminists would have seen it as a betrayal, not progress, for a woman to head a nuclear power company or, as secretary of state, to lead her country to war.

Does this mean that the name of the game for women today is to join the world of economists and politicians, and simply do things better? Is it really a male crisis that is causing such turmoil in the economy, a crisis of "smart boys in gray suits," as the French regional newspaper Ouest-France wrote? Is this an opportunity for women?

To be sure, men dominate the world of bankers. But the derivate security that triggered the current crisis, was invented by a woman, Blythe Masters at JP Morgan. On the whole, however, women are more risk-averse when managing money, and they tend to be more conservative investors. Though ridiculed in the past, this approach is now considered the wiser choice, the choice of investors with vision and a concern for security. In a world that has learned to fear toying with risk, security is a valued attribute.

Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, the founder of the Women's Forum, is ambitious for both women's career and a moral orientation. She believes the current period of crisis "is the beginning of a new world, one that will be worse and more difficult for everyone, including women." And yet, she said, it is also a world in which "women must finally take responsibility."

Another speaker is Ingrid Betancourt, the former hostage who was rescued in Colombia, and who regards this world with a degree of astonishment, a world that has become so much greedier in the six years she spent in the jungle. Betancourt was a slightly preoccupied observer, a woman who promotes spirituality and warns against the rat race.

And then there are those who have chosen the rat race as their way of life, young women who say: I want to make it to the top. I know the rules now. And I don't want them to suddenly change because of a financial crisis.

In elegant, gold-toned restaurant at the Hotel Royal, Diane von Fürstenberg is sitting on a sideboard, dangling her legs, smiling and looking relaxed. She knows the rules. She was successful decades ago, and now she is successful again. She has worked out her version of the role of women: "Dress nice and make this world a better place."

Von Fürstenberg, wearing tall boots and a surprisingly short skirt, is giving a luncheon. She is a businesswoman, born in Belgium and married for a short time to Egon von Fürstenberg, a German prince. She learned how to design material in Italy. In the United States she learned how to run a fashion house while at the same living the life of a New York socialite. Diane von Fürstenberg invented a special type of wrap dress, and there are certainly women attending her luncheon who were married or divorced in one of them.

For someone like von Fürstenberg, who was part of the inner circle at Studio 54 in the 1970s, which included Mick and Bianca Jagger, Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli and Truman Capote, it is not difficult to benefit from globalization. She hardly knew what boundaries were.

Now von Fürstenberg says it's time to save the world. Some would say her words are too simple and naïve. But that would be too hasty a conclusion, especially when one considers this fashion icon's appearance on the previous evening, when she stood on a stage and told her audience about a Belgian girl named Lilly who was sent to a concentration camp for distributing anti-Nazi flyers and was liberated from the Ravensbrück camp in May 1945. This was mother. Nursed back to health -- from a weight of just 29 kilograms (64 pounds) -- she managed to track down her fiancé, but a doctor said she would never be able to have children. "And nine months later," says von Fürstenberg, "I was born."

Tears & Ambitions

A play was performed that evening, a documentary piece depicting the life stories of seven women from seven countries who had experienced horrible things and, each in her own way, had attempted to do something about the horror, in Russia, Guatemala, Ireland, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Cambodia. The woman from Pakistan is the best-known of the bunch. Her name is Mukhtaran Mai, and she was raped by a village clan. She had the courage to take her tormentors to court, unexpectedly won her case and used the monetary award to build a school for boys and girls. The first female student in that school was Mukhtaran herself, who was illiterate.

Diane von Fürstenberg promoted this human rights piece. Called "Seven," and produced by an organization known as "Vital Voices," its core message is that the most decisive form of globalization is that of values, of human rights, and that without the right to life, freedom and integrity, nothing else counts. The seven real-life women whose stories inspired the play were flown to the conference, where globalization at the top encountered globalization at the lower end of society, and when the seven women walked onto the stage, there were few dry eyes in the audience.

This is the hope -- that these tears will lead to something.

Pollsters from the French IFOP Institute spent three days walking the hallways of the convention center. Of the 1,100 Deauville women, 250 agreed to answer questions about the economy and the current crisis, voiced their criticisms and pondered changes. Ninety percent of the women polled believe that the causes of the crisis are structural. Three-quarters say that we must "create a more ethical economic model."

On the morning of the last day, the time had come to reinvent capitalism in a special workshop. One woman proposed that in the future, companies should no longer be assessed on the basis of profitability but, rather, on the extent to which they distribute their profits in a socially responsible way.

Another woman proposed that in the future executives be required to provide one year of social work, so they can learn about what happens in real life.

Finally, someone proposed that in the future, international investors should be required to invest a fixed percentage of their investments in social programs abroad, including education and literacy programs.

Sixty spots were available for the workshop, and all 60 were reserved. But only 18 people showed up.

Perhaps the women had something better to do. Perhaps they felt the project was a little too ambitious after all. Or perhaps their absence was the result of the previous evening's Cartier reception, where Indian hors d'oeuvres and champagne were served until the wee hours of the morning.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan