Disaster Area

International Women's Day - Hurrah!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with the work trip to the UK a couple of weeks ago and then last week being occupied mostly by a not so fun medical procedure (nothing serious, and maybe more later - oh wait, no, sorry, I promised a friend I wouldn't - never mind).

The important event this past weekend was International Women’s Day on Saturday March 8. I’m not a big fan of special days or weeks or months for things (The International Day for Three-Legged Blind Dachshunds being a case in point), but this one is important.

In my opinion, the two most important Millennium Development Goals are Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Improve Maternal Health. The evidence from around the world shows that educating women has the largest positive effect on societal development. The effect is particularly evident in reproductive health, where sex education, and in particular birth control, always results in women having fewer babies, thereby stabilizing entire communities. Getting off the constant pregnancy/birth treadmill does wonders for not just the health of the women but the communities they live in, too. It's no big secret that the most godforsaken places on earth feature the highest birth rates and highest infant and maternal mortality rates.

Marking International Women’s Day, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour had this (among other things) to say:

“Many States appear to have simply ignored the commitments they have made. It is shameful that, in the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fundamental rights are still not enjoyed by many women around the world.”

The leveling of the playing field needs to continue everywhere. Even in the enlightened West there is still a long way to go before women get a decent hold on what might be called equality. It’s a crying shame that one of the last bastions of male privilege remains "the church". Replace “States” with “Churches” in the previous quoted paragraph and you still wouldn’t be far wrong.

Kathy Escobar, a contributor to the Emerging Women blog, has a really great post about women finding their voice in the Emergent “conversation”. It’s apparently still a bit like trying to order two pints of lager and a packet of crisps in a crowded British pub where the barman doesn’t know you, but still, you have to start somewhere. In particular, she highlights these thoughts, and expands on them very well:

• The only way this (restoration and reconciliation in the church) can begin to happen is if power (aka: leadership, voice, value) begins to shift.
• Those without power need to begin to step into it.
• Power is not finite. If someone gives up power, it doesn’t mean that there’s now less power in the room. It actually means that there’s more power in the room.
• Don’t underestimate how much tending and nurturing this shift is going to take.

Number three strikes me as particularly important, because to too many people in power, power sharing is seen as a zero sum game, when in fact it isn’t. Acknowledging other smart people doesn’t make you less smart. It may make you feel less superior, but shouldn’t that be a good thing?

Well, it may be a day or two late, here’s to women the world round. You deserve more than a lousy single day anyway.

And About Engineering Talent...

Seth Godin has an interesting post about how companies view employees. I've never liked the term "Human Resources" because, as Seth notes, it basically says that Human Resources (HR) views people as a natural resource, like lumber. One log is much like any other log.

He wonders what would happen if the department changed its name to "Talent" and its focus as well. Interesting, because for a short while my company's HR department changed its name to "People". Didn't last long, though, for reasons I'll leave to your imagination.

What Exactly is Fair Trade Anyway?

Hat tip to bobbie for this one. Reason magazine has a very nice article exposing the fraud that is Fair Trade.

Any reasonable study of the interactions of people ought to tell you that anything - ANY THING - is only worth what someone else will pay for. If the world were a truly "fair" place, then people who grow, say, coffee, would get the fair market price for it - i.e. the highest price anyone is willing to pay for it.

The reason this method rarely works is not because of evil buyers who are trying to screw the last penny out of the growers, it's because of the interventions of governments and organizations that attempt to manipulate the system. Think of the European Union subsidies to big euro agriculture (wine lakes, butter mountains) - paying farmers NOT to produce anything.

Same in the US. The Environmental Working Group notes that US farm subsidies totaled $104 billion over the last ten years. That represents an enormous tilt in a real global economic fair trade system. It's actually a pretty small amount in terms of the magnitude of the industry here, but it's huge leverage against foreign growers.

I guess my basic point here is that any deliberate political intervention in a system, whether by governments or by "well-meaning" activist groups inevitably screws up the concept of "fairness".