Seveso est partout (Seveso is Everywhere), by the Seveso Working Group of the Mouvement de la liberation des femmes, Geneva, Switzerland, October 1976, in French, 80 pp.
On 10 July 1976 an explosion occurred in a reactor inside the ICMESA factory in Seveso, a small town near Milan, Italy. Following the explosion a toxic cloud stretched out over Seveso and the neighbouring towns of Cesano Maderno and Desio. Even though the nature of the cloud was not unknown to the managers of the Swiss-based corporation, it took ten days before the population was warned that they were under the very serious threat of dioxin, an extremely dangerous chemical product that has also been used in Viet Nam for defoliating purposes.
Information about the health hazards of this product started to appear in the newspaper, but no official explanation was given by the corporation's officials or by the NATO military experts who came to the region to control the polluting effects of the dioxin. The population of Seveso served for more than two weeks as guinea-pigs for purposes that remain unclear. On 30 July, more than 200 people from the most contaminated area (Zone A) were evacuated. By that time, 250 cases of contamination had already been detected, while 46 persons had been hospitalized. A nation-wide debate arose on the issue of abortion for Seveso women. While military experts continued to be present everywhere in the area, the Italian government •authorities and the corporation's officials were slow to act. not knowing how to handle a situation that had gotten out of hand. It was only on 21 August that the map of the contaminated area was finally drawn. While La Roche-Givaudan, the Swiss parent-company of ICMESA, pledged financial aid to the victims of the pollution, the tragic effects of the contamination began to be strongly felt on the health of the population, especially of the women and the children. As of now 730 people from Zone A are living as displaced persons in hotels put at their disposal by the Italian authorities. From Zone B all pregnant women and children have been evacuated. Several tens of thousands people live within a security belt under tight hygiene control. Among other measures, pregnancy is strongly advised against as dioxin contamination may have serious effects on the fetus and it is believed that this action may be felt for more than five years. A curtain of mystery still surrounds the dynamics of the incident and its real effects on people.
Seveso Women
A Geneva-based women's liberation group, "Seveso Working Group", has conducted an investigation among the women of Seveso. The results of their inquiry are included in an excellent booklet which they published in October 1976: Seveso est partout, Seveso is everywhere. After a chronology of the events in the small Italian town until 16 October, the group analyzes the effect of dioxin on the women's bodies as it was felt by the Seveso women themselves.
The document analyzes also the psychological stress on pregnant women as the dangers of dioxin were progressively publicized in the mass media. In addition to this psychological stress are the many legal and religious obstacles to abortion which, even in the minds of those who proposed a special law on abortion for Seveso, imply an humiliation of the woman as she has to prove her psychological inability to go through her pregnancy. It is under these circumstances that one Seveso woman died in the attempt to abort through primitive means and without medical help. The document analyzes also the important changes that the ICMESA incident introduced in the daily life of the women, from child care to household activities and the condition of refugees.
The book gives basic information about dioxin and other polluting chemical products, some of them used in the drug industry. It also analyzes the responsibility of Swiss firms in this and other incidents of the same kind, especially that of La Roche Givaudan, the corporation that was responsible for Seveso's ICMESA.
One Solution Only: Woman's Control
The history of Seveso is true, though horrible. It poses the problem of our (weakening) power, of the usefulness and efficiency of our struggles and discussion, of our very existence as a women's movement. In fact, we grasp only a small part of the evil that is being done to us, which the State and the capitalist structures are doing to us. What should we do so that true victories may be won?
Victories achieved so far are still ambiguous and short lived... For example, we wanted a Women's Centre and we occupied a building for three months and a half. But in the fourth month, the police came in and destroyed our Center. Insurance companies do not want to reimburse gynecological check-ups; so we organized to refuse to pay our fees to insurance companies. But shall we succeed?
We should not under-estimate what we have been doing and what we are doing, nor should we renounce acting. For through all these initiatives we gain some inches and we live our life and our struggles as women. But how shall we become more numerous, more active, stronger?
The alternatives which we have already been proposing for several years seem even more important in the light of the Seveso story and of what we may discover from this tragedy, especially in the fields of drugs and food. Our past booklets on abortion and contraceptives, the one on self-help and the future one on child care might be of real help to escape, at least partly, industrialists, pharmacists and medical practitioners who are all passionately interested in our health. But other chapters are still waiting to be written: "beauty care" (according to our definition of beauty and of care), hygiene and cancer, pregnancy and childbirth, etc.
What is more important is that we organize so that we will not be destroyed, and that we force enterprises which are polluting either their women workers and employees or the environment to close down, so that we destroy what is destroying us, if need be. This is the reason why a women's center is an indispensable instrument for us to become more numerous and stronger. We must think of controlling our bodies in a more global (and consequently more complex) way. It is not only men or doctors who do violence to them, but also multinational corporations. Is there a worse aggression against the body of women than what happened at Seveso? Is there a worse aggression against the women's children than what Hoffman-La Roche has been doing at Seveso?
The Seveso story clearly shows that it is either they or we who direct our own lives and if we are not directing it, life becomes a hell. The alternatives are: to have power over our own lives or to be dominated. Each of us individually and all together can do something to change the power relations to our advantage. Seveso is everywhere, but women are everywhere too. Write us, come and discuss with us: let us organize all together.
Seveso Working Group
C.P. 11
1227 Carouge
Switzerland
Women of Viet Nam
Revised Edition. August 1975 Peoples Press, 2680 21st Street San Francisco, Ca. 94110 US $ 2.95
This book is dedicated to the growing solidarity between women of Viet Nam and Women of the United States.
The revised edition of Women of Viet Nam is quite different from the first 1974 edition. As the author, Arlene Eisen Bergman, writes in the introductory note, it was written after South Viet Nam won its complete independence and includes as much information as possible about postwar developments in Viet Nam. This 255-page book begins to tell the story of women's liberation in Viet Nam. It starts with the history • of patriarchal oppression dating from pre-colonial times. It retells the legends of women generals who fought a thousand years before Europeans invaded the Americas. It presents women's culture and folksongs that challenge the view of women found in the texts of Confucian scholars. The first part of the book ends with an exposure of the specific ways the politics of U.S. domination affected Vietnamese women. The second part of the book is a portrait of women's resistance in modern times - how they learned to fight back, their organization and their spirit. Testimony and biography dramatize the statistics which show the changing role of women in the family, economy, politics and military defense. The final chapters evaluate the gains women have made in the course of the revolution.
We Women, edited by Kate Moore and Sue Truck-well, published by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, P.O. Box 1562, Canberra City, A.C.T. 2601, Australia, 1976.
We Women is a more recent collection of materials on the experiences and struggles of women around the world. In the form of a packet, these articles are attractively illustrated with photographs and graphics, and cover several areas not included in the Women in the Struggle for Liberation collection. Produced in Australia, this packet of materials gives more emphasis to the situation of women in the Pacific region and in Australia, particularly aboriginal women, but also migrant workers. The articles on/by women in Papua New Guinea and aboriginal women show how these women are struggling not only against their oppression as women but against racism and colonialism as well. These and several other articles, notably one on women in Ghana demonstrate how the traditional oppressions of women are being worsened by increasing westernization - in many places women are losing political power and economic independence through the spread of neo-colonialism. And an Algerian woman observes: "...one has only to observe the current demands of the feminist movements in Europe and the United States to be persuaded that, in reaching the present stage of economic and ideological development of the western world, the women of the third world will not have achieved a genuine liberation but are likely to exchange one form of oppression for another".
One of the strong points of this collection is its emphasis on the positive actions women are taking to overcome their oppression. The strength of women comes through in almost all the articles, even those showing some very appalling situations of oppression. In addition, this packet includes resource material for action by women, directed mainly to women living in Australia. Nevertheless some of it, at least, is useful to women elsewhere as a model for action or for stimulating ideas. The section entitled "Womenpower" is especially interesting: it contains ideas on action in areas such as international development and aid, food and multinational corporations and sexism in textbooks. Altogether a fascinating and valuable collection of materials about women all over the world. We women is available from: Education Unit, Australian Council for Overseas Aid, P.O. Box 1562, Canberra City, A.C.T. 2601 (Price: $ 2.25 plus postage).
Women in the Struggle for Liberation, edited by the World Student Christian Federation, 1973, Book Series, Vol. Ill, No. 2/3, in English, 150 pp.
From the preface to this volume:
WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION is a collection of articles offered here as a sample of what women involved in the struggle for liberation around the world are thinking and doing. The following themes emerge from the articles:
- What everyday life is about for women;
- the development of women's consciousness, political movement and ideology about their struggle;
- their role in revolutionary movements and national liberation struggles;
- the real issues involved in population control;
- the relationship of women's role in the family and "housework" to the structures of production.
The material is both descriptive and analytical in nature. The lives of ordinary women are the raw material out of which the articles included here come, and these are the women for whom the analysis is intended as a tool in their struggle.
This collection includes articles about women from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Wherever possible the articles are written by women who make their homes in the country they write about. But as the editors say, since "international networks for this sort of material are not yet established, it was difficult to collect and is by no means exhaustive". This collection is valuable and exciting, however, precisely because it is so difficult to find this kind of material elsewhere.
Women are only now beginning to build the networks for the exchange of their experiences. In the meantime, collections such as this one, whatever their Imitations, are an important contribution to women's struggle. Some of the articles included here describe more well-documented situations such as those of women in Cuba, China and Viet Nam, but there are also articles the situations of women which are less well known, at least in the North Atlantic area of the world, such as those in Kenya, Iran, Dahomey and the Philippines. The editors have purposely offered no conclusions or judgements on these articles but let them speak for themselves. The collection, available in English only, may be ordered from: P.O. Box 187, Dayton View Station, Dayton, Ohio 45406, USA (Price: US$ 1.50).