Nilufer Cagatay, assistant professor of economics at the University of Utah, discussed the feminist movement at the February meeting of the Humanists of Utah. Professor Cagatay has participated in several international women's and population conferences, including last year's conference in Beijing.

She summarized the development of the global feminist movement since the 1985 meeting in Copenhagen to the 1990 meeting in Nairobi and now, last year, to the conference in Beijing. A decade ago, conference participants divided into two camps: feminists from northern, industrialized countries and feminists from southern, third-world, developing countries. The former tended to build "lists" of what needed to be done to improve the lot of women world wide. The latter objected, noting that their more affluent sisters did not really know what life is like in the third world.

Examining the feminist movement from a purely economic point of view tends to bring the two sides closer together. For example, domestic labor, unless contracted out, is not considered "work" in figuring a country's GNP or other economic indicators. This makes it harder for women to get credit because they have no collateral, even though it has been shown that they are generally more likely to repay loans than men.

Since the 1980's a new philosophy has come to dominate economics. Market forces are allowed to determine what is best for all of us. This concept, championed by President Reagan, has further disenfranchised women world wide. The markets have no concept of what people need, only what they will consume. When one product has reached saturation, a new need is invented so that a product can be developed and marketed to fill the new, artificial need. Professor Cagatay was not willing to tell us what needed to be done politically, only that we all need to work together and strive to improve the lot of not only women, but of all humanity.

--Wayne Wilson