Integrating a gender perspective into the current debate on consumerism will help ensure sustainable alternatives and solutions, given women's critical roles as producers and consumers. Economic globalization has serious repercussions for women, adding as it does to the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women. This concern, and the inequality in women's access to and participation in the definition of economic structures and policies and the production process itself, were two of the 12 specific concerns identified by the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women.

In the South especially, externally imposed structural readjustment programs force often already overburdened women to take up the slack when governments cut budgets for health, education and social programs. To attract foreign investors, economic development zones are organized where women are employed in underpaid, unsafe working conditions. Such women are often recruited specifically because employers view women as docile and hence less likely to organize against illegal labor practices. In some countries, sex tourism, forced prostitution and the traffic in women are major industries, in which authorities collude and profit from the sexual slavery of women and girls.

Economic globalization further marginalizes women in already disadvantaged positions, in particular indigenous women. While the violation of traditional land rights affects the entire indigenous community, women are doubly affected, in their positions as care takers both of the family and as transmitters of cultures under threat. Given the lack of adequate recognition and support for women's contributions to managing natural resources and safeguarding the environment, well intentioned development often exacerbates, rather than alleviates, this process.

Shelley Anderson coordinates the Women's Desk for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and edits the organization's bimonthly newsletter Reconciliation International.