EconoMan's "Development" is Ecocide

The Amazon rainforest has been called the “lungs” of the world. Its conversion into feedlots for cattle to feed the “first world” for profit isn’t good for any humans, or for all life on earth.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism just published an important piece by Juan Manuel Crespo, an Ecuadorian sociologist who coins an important new word, and asks an essential question: Who is responsible for the Amazon's ecocide?

Follow the money! We need to look closer at this misnamed thing called "development," which bags money for a few, but destroys whole species and ecosystems we all depend upon. Our present economic system is not really about numbers—it is ideology and lying language. But here’s good advice from Juan’s piece, too, linked above:

If you want to preserve the balance of life, look to indigenous people. Far from being “savages,” indigenous people have knowledge and wisdom to share, the reason even our protected wildlife sanctuaries are poorer in species than the lands where they still live.

 “The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends revisiting the native peoples for learning how to preserve critical territories. According to a study conducted by the IPCC, the areas managed or co-managed by native peoples have much higher rates of presence of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles than any other areas (including protected areas), which indicates that this greater biodiversity is being achieved by the practices and land uses of native cultures.

Native peoples may not exceed 5% of the world’s population, but they have preserved up to nearly 80% of the highest biodiversity areas on the planet. Ironically, they are the ones who “slow down development”. It is through the native peoples of the Amazon, and borrowing knowledge from them, that we will find the key to stopping ecocide and development.”

It’s more ideology and misused language again. We have thought ourselves superior, when we were only better armed and more violent. Unless your people came from Mars, it is far past time we “civilized” humans remember how to become indigenous natives of planet Earth. An economy waged as war, and that imagines “winning,” discounts losers, namely all inferiors like bugs, microbes, birds, fungus, diversity—and oh yes, all females, including Gaia.  

Read more about the Amazon’s importance here; and while you are at it, read Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry’s new book, Nurturing Our Humanity. You’ll find fascinating information about indigenous people and a wider knowledge of peaceable, life-sustaining ways if only we’d look there, instead of studying war.

Women's Day Is Not Just a Magazine

Family Values

Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day, a good time to take stock of how far we women have come. But wait—what do you mean we’re headed backwards? Laura Liswood with the World Economic Forum points out in an article that worldwide, women’s funding for reproductive health has been reduced, and family planning is harder to come by.

There is also a glaring “under-representation of women and minorities in US cabinet-level positions.”  Pale male EconoMan rules Washington’s swamp these days.  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/womens-rights-sexual-equality-in-revers

In Russia, Liswood reports, the Duma just voted 380 to 3 for decriminalizing domestic violence, so long as it doesn’t cause “substantial bodily harm,” and occurs less than once a year. Seriously?!

According to The New York Times, most in the US agree this is a better time to be a man than a woman in our society—except for Republican men. They say it’s a better to be a woman than a man, despite evidence to the contrary. No doubt, they also believe they do their fair share of housework. 

Most disturbing though was Liswood’s report on women’s voting patterns. In France, women are backing Marie LePen and her far-right nationalism, on a par with Trump here in the US. Let’s not forget that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. Is it fear and greater job insecurity? Is it threats of nuclear holocaust cause women to hope for a strong man?

But 53 percent is still a minority of our sex, especially when you add in our savvy African American sisters. And here’s a salute to Tanya Plibersek, who is running as “minister for women” in Australia. She promised if elected her Labor party would re-establish the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ time use survey, which hasn’t been done there since 2006. Time use is an important measure of the value of unpaid work and gender inequity in household work. In 1997, Australia’s unpaid work was valued at $261 billions or almost half of Australia’s GDP that year.

Seeing what is typically invisible helps informs policy affecting parental leave, childcare, transport, education and workforce participation. Women’s groups in Australia have long argued for the survey’s re-establishment, and Plibersek put it simply: “[T]he Australian economy [and] Australian society rests upon women’s unpaid work.” US women could do a great deal more with time studies here. 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/06/labor-to-restore-survey-measuring-mens-and-womens-unpaid-housework

Lean In, Gentlemen

Here's a new report from LeanIn.org, the nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, who in the past has advised us women wanting to be appreciated at the workplace to speak up for ourselves, and yes, to make a case for a raise. But "Women in the Workplace 2017,"  based on surveys from 70,000 employees at 222 corporations, shows a more complex picture of gendered and cultural perceptions.
 
Women of color have a tougher time making headway, and it’s not for lack of trying or for asking for raises. And the numbers of female leaders in relationship to our numbers in the population show a consistent underrepresentation, regardless of the occupational field. Men tend to believe women are doing better advancing on the job front than they in fact are.  Men also believe they are helping their female partners more than their female partners report they actually do. So guys, lean in and take initiative in cooking and childcare, and look around you to notice whether women are well represented in your department's leadership—and whether work policies include support for having an actual everyday life. Without a wife.  
 
We admire this report but still have to point out that the numbers given for consumer banking in this do NOT represent investment banking on Wall Street, where EconoMan still rules and the numbers of women leaders remain strikingly low and lower paid than peers. And its focus is strictly on big-corporate America, not where most women tend to work, and where the same obstacles and misperceptions about race and gender persist.
 
This image is from Chris Skinner’s blog, from an article titled “Banks’ Leadership Teams Are Fatally Flawed.” https://thefinanser.com/2017/05/banks-leadership-teams-fatally-flawed.html/. We’ll just add to his good article that the bigger the bank, the more their boards look this way.

Here’s a story on Lean In's report from Fortune. It’s worth a read.
 http://fortune.com/2017/10/10/women-in-the-workplace-2017/
 
 The 37-page Women in the Workplace 2017 report itself is here, with an apt headline, "Getting to gender equality begins with realizing how far we have to go": 
womenintheworkplace.com/

So What Exactly Is Screwnomics* ???

Screwnomics* is the unspoken but widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free. 

And who thought he didn't have to talk openly about this, or stop taking us and our Mother Earth for granted?

EconoMan is my Screwnomics' name for the money guys in charge of how we live. Let's change his attitude, shall we?