WomanWorld: A Space Few Men Have Gone Before
- Kay Urlich
Part 2 Marilyn Waring PTC 2020 Award
Catch up with Part 1 Trump the Destroyer and Why the Right to Choose Matters
We need only step back to New Zealand in the early ’70s to witness one of the founding heroines of the shift in consciousness happening now
Image nowtolove.co.nz
If you have lost your job because of the CORONA virus and are now struggling with anxiety and depression you might not have the will to consider the problems created by gender and racial discrimination.
But, ask yourself, why are countries led by women doing so well when those led by men like Trump, Belisario and Boris Johnson have some of the worst Corona Virus measures on the planet along with high gender inequity and racial tension.
At the same time, we see nurses, doctors, supermarket attendants and many more low-paid front-line workers bravely risking their lives caring for ill patients and tactless shoppers. And then, as the pandemic runs free, underneath it all millions of people are quietly rebuilding their lives and communities from millennia of gender, racial and financial damage.
So, what’s different? How are they doing it? And are gender and racial issues connected?
Start by looking at women like Taiwan President, Tsai Ing-wen, New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, or Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel, or Iceland's Prime Minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir who are making strides by doing things their way apart from the global norm.
Ask yourself has the global Peace Movement moved on since the hippie revolution of the 1960s; has Humanity taken the next evolutionary step?
As a Member of Parliament for the NZ National (Republican, Tory) party who were in power at the time, Marilyn Waring was expected to vote Yes to allow USA nuclear ships into NZ waters. But, MP Marilyn decided that nuclear ships in NZ waters was not a good idea and created an uproar by crossing the floor to vote with the opposition to prevent the motion from succeeding.
This brave act sticks in my mind today how a young woman made a stand against the US Military Complex and in so doing brought down the NZ government.
This act of courage made New Zealand nuclear-free. It is a legacy that lives on today.
This momentous act demonstrates how one person has the power to disable the global Military Industrial Complex. Marilyn Waring shows how one person matters and how, right now, what You do matters too.
But Marilyn did not stop there. Understandably her job as an MP for the National Party was over so Marilyn was faced with no job and no future. So, what’s a girl from the backwaters of New Zealand to do?
Marilyn had for years despaired about the global monetary policy. How New Zealand was suffocating under the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That, for 65-years, wealth was measured solely through the value of the financial transactions taking place.
The only thing that mattered to the Gross Domestic Product was to count the money that changed hands for a product or service. This was a far cry from the things Marilyn valued and treasured from her childhood in a small New Zealand town: a place where people sat on their front porch at the end of the day and enjoyed the view of sparkling river waters and lush bush mountains. A place where children ran free on the land; trekking up mountains and swimming in fresh-water bays. It was where Maori (the Indigenous People of NZ) and Pakeha (those of European ancestry) were valued for their culture and friendship where two peoples merged as one with their environment.
This was the life Marilyn was accustomed to where she could not reconcile nature being dismissed from the idea of global health, happiness and success.
With this thought in mind, in 1982 Marilyn decided to check up on the ground rules for the GDP, and to do this she must go to the United Nations in New York. Studying the United Nations (UN) global financial declaration was a mammoth task for anyone, let alone for a young woman to pour over 30 volumes of dry text.
What she found not only changed her life but affected the evolution of the New Zealand bipartisan system. For instance, why was it that a woman’s breast milk had no value to the economy? Why was a woman's breast milk that fed and nourished her child of lesser value than cows milk?
Marilyn Waring’s courageous act exposed the biggest cover-up of our time, the elephant in the room that still, few people talk about: an issue that even conspiracy theorists won’t touch - the hidden value of WomanWorld
Marilyn discovered that a woman's breast milk was of no value because it was not sold, therefore it did not have a market value. Because money did not change hands the very essence of human life, that of nourishing a child alongside nursing and cleaning and caring for children; alongside all other lower-value activities such as road cleaning or rubbish removal which are generally done by women and indigenous people, are the tasks that reside in WomanWorld and deemed to be of low worth to the GDP.
The things that were nourishing and helpful to people were not counted by the patriarchy and had no place in the power structure of not only illnesses like COVID but 40 years of Neoliberalism and, says Spencer Wells author of Pandora’s Seed, from 10,000 years of misogyny. Add to that, how strange is it that many conspiracy theorists like Donald Trump and Billy TK, who claim to be fighting against 'a corrupt system,' are using those same divisionary tactics in their political equations?
Image Getty
While Saudi Arabia is said to have the largest military presence supported by arms from the West, what counts and is most profitable to the global Gross Domestic Product is the Arms Industry as Trump seeks to increase military spending for nuclear weapons and other hardware.
At the top of the monetary system, is the survival plan to profit from damaged people in cycles of persecutor and victimhood through ongoing conflict. This includes human trafficking, armaments and products to rebuild after illness, earthquakes, war and terror because the cause of war and rebuilding the damage are both high earners for the GDP.
As far as the GDP is concerned, love does not make the world go ‘round, it is human misery that is valuable to the patriarchal system
Human misery and people suffering from mental health problems are a boom to the medical business which are big earners for the global GDP: natural and indigenous healing doesn’t make as much, why? Natural and indigenous healing does not create illness; they create wellness.
Like fish in water, the construct we live in that few think about as we go about our daily life is structured to support the unbalanced, and inequitable Gross Domestic Product, the brainchild of the power system. And, while countries fight each other – a product of manipulation by the Global Military Complex, people think this is normal.
Little do people realise is that competition and war with our neighbour flow insidiously through everything we do as Patriarchy dominates the movement of conflict and wealth throughout the planet.
The GDP does not tell us of the emotional and mental and spiritual toll associated with crime, corruption and war.
Nor does it mention human suffering, the loss of fresh air, clean drinking water and the devastation of natural habitats such as Standing Rock caused by the brutal industrialization of land and communities nor does it seek to end violence, particularly domestic violence.
Ask yourself, why and how does the violence against women and children endure?
The economic cost of violence against women
Violence against women is a money earner and it also supports and maintains the status quo
When men have no power in their work-life, they can still have control over women and children in the home. It is part of the incentive that maintains patriarchy through the male entitlement of 40 years of Neoliberalism and10,000 years of misogyny.
The hierarchy makes way for inequality by devaluing women's’ work as the COVID nurses and first responders show how valuable they are. Or prevents a woman's right to hold power over her body regarding who she has sex with and whether she will bear a child: the work that is done all day by women as they carry wood, cook meals and care for husbands and children in or out of the home; how they give their time to do voluntary work in schools and care for their communities through the time that is not counted as valuable to the GDP.
The illustration shows who suffers when people and organizations who are over-developed in the lower-left energy field traits promote closed, competitive, and independent business interests; those that advance their agendas. Furthermore, as they strengthen their self-invested profit structures, they are separated from the more compassionate energy fields and therefore are unrestrained by humane considerations. People whose strengths lay solely in the lower-left field enforce a strictly dominant and materialistic view of success; profit is their purpose. It is of no consequence that the material benefits they receive come at the cost of millions of people’s wellbeing. They are unhampered by the opposition and at liberty to instil demanding dogma on whole communities. It is this singular, self-invested philosophy that dictates the financial and social markets we see today. Source The Metamorphosis of Humanity: The Female Effect
The world is full of conspiracy theories that do not take into account how society has undermined the role of women, indigenous peoples the land, the animals the sea and its resources for their value to human and global wellness. Misogyny and racism devalue all WomanWorld values and it is this treachery that remains the biggest corruption on the planet.
Society has watched and recorded the suffering over the last 150 years how protest after protest, revolution after revolution has gone through many ideological changes trying to create better systems and yet, no matter the choice, whether it be:
Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Capitalism, Trumpism or Slavery
They are all part of the upside-down human energy structure: a hierarchy that is top-heavy with the male-dominated elite; a system that has seldom varied from its course. Just ask Forbes who dominates the top 5 billionaire spots right now.
- EFF BEZOS $113 Billion United States Amazon Technology
- BILL GATES B$98 B United States Microsoft Technology
- BERNARD ARNAULT & FAMILY $76 B France LVMH Fashion & Retail
- WARREN BUFFETT $67.5 B United States Finance & Investments
- LARRY ELLISON $59 B United States software Technology
So while the world is getting a handle on COVID it has yet to handle thousands of years of patriarchy which is promoting the 1% hierarchy of political and social misinformation that divides the common masses to feed the Industrial Military Complex.
But we have an antidote to end the pitiless power structures. Because we know that holding these power structures together is the nurturing, interdependent and intuitive work that women and indigenous do, and it is indispensable to humanity.
In Counting on Marilyn, Iulie Aslaksen, Torunn Bragstad & Berit As, speak of Feminist Economics as Vision for a Sustainable Future, ‘ (Because misogyny is still such a global issue, found in the most surprising places, it could be called The Planetary Healing Manual)
Feminist Philosophy and eco-feminism have drawn attention to the devastating social and ecological consequences of the devaluation of feminine values and values of nature in society and the economy (merchant; Mies and Shiva; Plumwood; Shiva Staying Alive). Marilyn Waring’s book If Women Counted has been a source of inspiration for feminist economics and politics, by pointing out the economic invisibility of women’s unpaid household work as well as natures gifts in recreating life’.
Neoliberalism has produced multiple crises in different parts of the world and many have pointed out the parallel invisibility of nature and women's work and argued for the importance of considering those values within the Earth Female context (as explained in the following illustration. Added to that, I have marked the indigenous values along with the hidden value of the natural healing industry.
Activating WomanWorld values means we are changing the paradigm. It is not a theory or financial agenda but it is activating the fundamental forces that create life: the energy that supports and allows for the expansion of consciousness that makes the world come alive. Where people are moved to action through the ‘living energy’ that guides the life-force of the planet.
It means we value and support the wellbeing of all living things instead of the gross domestic product that supports an economic agenda.
In supporting the wellbeing of all people and human freedom...
Feminist and Ecological Economics – A Shared Vision
We reject both the current mainstream explanations of the global crisis and the proposals for resolving it. We reject the economic strategies that continue to skew income and wealth distribution in favour of finance and large capital while depriving people of necessary care and the means for sustaining life. We reject an economic system that exploits women’s unpaid care work to keep the economic system going, relying on them to absorb the dramatic costs of the crisis Barcelona June 28th 2012
In 2017, the New Zealand Treasury announced they were updating their Living Standards Framework (LSF) so they could measure intergenerational wellbeing. The Treasury intended that the NZ model would follow the European-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This work gained more significance following Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s intention that her Government would introduce ‘ a tool and framework that will measure our economic success. This government wanted New Zealand to be the first place in the world where our budget is not presented under the umbrella of pure economic measures, and often inadequate ones at that, but one that demonstrates the overall wellbeing of our country and its people.’ Source, Still Counting by Marilyn Waring
The shared vision is about the indigenous platform which impacts on our system, instead of misogyny, where such practices as restorative justice can operate.
The research team led by Dr Shirly Julich and Dr John Buttle from AUT University found that while negative psychological and social consequences of sexual violence were well understood and well documented, an understanding of the economic costs and consequences was more recent… a costing analysis of crime undertaken by the New Zealand Treasury indicated that one incident of sexual violence cost $72,130.
Project Restore is one of the programmes using for restorative justice for those who suffer from increased crime and also programmes about natural foods for easily preventable illnesses to help people living with cancer, diabetes and many more illnesses where children learn about the power of nature and natural indigenous healing: to teach saving and finance and gardening to grow their food.
Marilyn Waring discovered the source of a crooked system and named its corruption and failure.
That is, that humanity is not here to serve a false paradigm where the Gross Domestic Product ignores and suppresses the power of WomanWorld and the gift of life-force it brings to the planet.
Marilyn showed us how to change the global monetary system by including the more gentle values of WomanWorld, of women and indigenous peoples connection in one field. That does not measure a financial output that destroys the life-giving Amazon rainforest but by measuring the Time input of tasks done by women and indigenous peoples who work with respect for the environment and its source of natural resources.
What Marilyn did was recognize and restore the balance in our lives and our communities so we can activate the living energy.
Many are waking up to the power of stillness; of sitting quietly to remember our softer, gentler side, how to be kind and compassionate to the world we are a part of - the earth, the animals the trees and life in the seas where thanks to the lockdown we slowed down and the animals come out of hiding and the earth and seas began to regenerate themselves
This was done without pesticides and technology because consciousness expands and the source of life keeps on giving. It is there we discover the softness we were born into that through time we forgot.
What is apparent during this time is that Marilyn Waring’s work stunned many into action by explaining financial gender and racial bias in which many suffered from the old system. With lock-down occurring around the world, we have watched how the world can come to life when humans take a back seat and allow the planet to heal. When we, that is you and me, stay home and stop competing and pumping pollutants into the air and the water, when we leave nature alone and cooperate dolphins can swim in rivers that were once polluted and vegetation is sprouting where once there was none, where the energy fields come together like a good marriage to work for the wellbeing of the whole human family.
For this reason, Peace Through Compassion honours Marilyn Waring as our 2020 person of the year: for activating a space few men had gone before. For being one of the greatest leaders of our time.
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Peace Through Compassion Award 2020 nominates Marilyn Waring as its person of the year! Congratulations Marilyn!
- 2020 Marilyn Waring
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