In July, Isis coordinator, Marilee Karl, was one of the keynote speakers at the Nordic Women's Forum in Oslo. We reproduce parts of her address below.

By Marilee Karl

So women are organizing all over the world.The women's movement is a global one. And there are so many things that can inspire us from the way women are organizing, so much that we can learn from each other. It is a necessity in today's world.

It is our experience at Isis International that more women's groups and organizations in the South the Third World than in the North are convinced of the importance of networking. Some women's groups in the North still do not seem to have made the connections between the so-called women's issues and global issues of economics and development. Or between what is happening in their part of the world and the rest of it.

Our world today is interconnected. What happens in one country or part of the globe affects people in other countries and regions. We face many global forces: the threat of nuclear destruction,environmental contamination, the depletion of natural resources, the power of transnational corporations, a dominant international economic order and development model, global communications systems. The powers that control the world and ultimately our lives operate globally.

We need to link up with each other m the global women's movement, but how? One of the great strengths of the women's movement is its diversity and decentralization, millions of grassroots women's groups in movement. It is a movement, not an organization. So how can we connect? How can we network?

We are here participating in a great networking event. But it is not necessary to go to meetings, or to travel or to meet other women face to face in order to network although these are very good ways. It is possible for women who never leave their own place to network with others.

There are thousands of women's networks and networking activities in the world. Most of them began when women working on some issue in their own village, town or country realized that they were not alone. That women m other villages, towns and countries were struggling for similar things. And that together they were stronger. Or they discovered that their problems were so interconnected that they could not solve them unless they joined with others.

Many networks were sparked off by women coming together in a meeting such as this one. I shall be very surprised if the Nordic Forum does not give birth to new networks. Or by a visit from a woman from another place. Or by reading about how women were organizing elsewhere and writing to them.

Most networks have been organized around very specific issues such as health and reproductive rights, the media, global corporations, sex-tourism, work. Some are global networking networks, some are regional, some are national. Many of these networks have fairly loose informal structures, often operating around a coordinating point without much staff or infrastructure. The coordination point serves to channel information and communication among the groups; to stimulate and coordinate actions. Let me just describe very briefly a few of these networks and networking activities.

Multinational Corporations

Multinational corporations operate all over the globe. What they do in one part of the world affects women in another part. Electronics, textile and garment industries operating in free trade zones from Malaysia to Mexico, from the Philippines to Jamaica hire, fire and exploit women workers as cheap labor. Not surprisingly women are doing a lot of networking around the issues of multinationals. The Committee for Asian Women is one such network. It is based in Hong Kong and links women workers, labor organizers and others supporting the struggles of women across Asia particularly workers in newly industrialized zones. Their activities take the form of workshops, worker exchange, information exchange and solidarity linkage.

Women as Consumers

But multinational corporations affect women not only as workers but as consumers. Very often what happens is that European, Japanese and North American corporations push inappropriate or even harmful products on women in the Third World. When a product is restricted or banned in one country, it is simply marketed in another. Here is clearly a cause for coordinated efforts. And m fact there are many networks and networking activities on consumers issues.

One of the earliest international campaigns and networks had to do with the aggressive promotion and sale of infant formula and baby foods in the Third World. Advertizing and sales techniques tried to convince mothers that powdered milk substitutes were better for their babies than breast milk and this in many places where mothers could ill afford to spend money on costly infant formula or where there was no safe water supply.

The campaign aimed to put pressure on the baby foods companies and on governments to restrain the advertising and sales campaigns. In this they were successful. However, in the beginning at least these networking activities were very much male-dominated and this was evident in the one-sided stress on the babies' rights to breast milk without paying much attention to women's needs. Only after the women's movement grew strong and women got involved did these campaigns look at what women need to make it possible for them to breast feed like good nutrition, creches in the factory, time, maternity  leave.

The dumping of harmful medicines and drugs, particularly contraceptives, in the Third World is another widespread practice that experience has shown can only be combated by coordinated action. It is not enough to work to ban a dangerous contraceptive in one country, because as we have seen, the manufacturer can easily take the leftover supplies and dump them on women in another country. Or new contraceptives, with harmful side-effects, like the injectibles, are foisted on Third World women as part of population control programs.

So networks have sprung up to spread information and coordinate campaigns on drugs and medicines, like Health Action International. Others, like the Global Network on Reproductive Rights take up the issue in a larger context of women's rights to decide if, when and how to have children regardless of our nationality, class, race, age, religion, disability, sexuality or marital status.

Health

There are a lot of women's networks on health. In most countries around the world, women are the health care providers in the community. And because the health care systems in most countries are not responsive to the needs of women, health action is a major organizing activity of women.

A few years ago a group of women from different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean met in Colombia.

They had in common that they were working for better health care for women, some in self-help groups, some in neighborhood clinics, some as women's health advocates in governmental institutions, some as researchers. They came together to share their experiences and at the end of the meeting they felt that this sharing had been so rich, they wanted it to continue. So they decided to create a network and that is how the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network was born.

They asked Isis International if we could coordinate the network from our resource centre in Santiago, Chile, and we jumped at the idea. In no time at all the network grew from the original 20 groups to more than 500. Through the network, groups all over the region have been able to strengthen their work by coordinating campaigns, exchanging ideas and models of organizing and sharing resources. The groups share information about their work and resources in a bi-monthly health bulletin.

Before long, women's health groups from other regions of the world starting hearing about the dynamism of this network and wanted to share in the exchange. So now the Network is putting out an English version of the bulletin to help build ties with women in other regions.

One outcome of the Health Meeting was a networking among networks. The Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network teamed up with the Global Network on Reproductive Rights to coordinate an International Day of Action for Women's Health: the theme of the Day was the Prevention of Maternal Mortality.

I could go on: there are so many networks. The Women Under Muslim Laws Network, bringing together women suffering legal injustices in countries from North Africa and across Asia. The Pacific and Asia Women's Forum that is doing so many exciting things in media in South Asia. Finnrage, the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering.

Sex Tourism

Let me end up with just one more international networking issue. And that is sex-tourism and mail order brides. It started in Asia when women from Thailand, Korea, and the Philippines discovered that women were facing a common problem in their countries: the growth of tours designed for European and Japanese men, primarily, for sexual adventures with so-called hospitality girls in the countries of Southeast Asia.

So women in Asia joined hands in fighting this oppression, first with their Japanese sisters and then with women in Europe. Together they are taking action: publicizing the oppressive nature of the sex-tourism industry and the mail-order bride business and the distorted nature of a development that fosters this industry. They are setting up information and other services for women coming from the rural areas and getting pulled into prostitution or in it and wanting to get out; they are providing advice for women going abroad to marry.

Together with women from Japan and Europe, they are protesting the running of these tours, and the agencies who run them. But these efforts are not without their dangers. Women right here in Norway are experiencing this. They joined in a campaign to protest the promotion of sex tours by a Norwegian travel club and found themselves faced with a lawsuit from the club for hurting its reputation and business.

Nevertheless international networking and solidarity goes on: the main witness in the trial is a Thai women from the Women's Information Centre in Bangkok. And women around the world are sending their support and solidarity to the women of Norway. Together we are strong.

I think that the more we organize in the global women's movement, the more we are going to realize the need to work together, be challenged by each other and build our links of support and solidarity.

Think globally, act locally was a slogan that was raised at Nairobi. I would like to add two words to it. Think globally, act locally, and network.