US Gender and Trade Network
The US Gender and Trade Network (USGTN) is part of the North American region of the larger International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN). USGTN addresses the negative impacts of trade liberalization on women, families and communities in the US and challenges the US government for its aggressive role in promoting trade liberalization in the WTO, Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and bilateral negotiations. In the US, corporations reap large-scale benefits while unemployment rises; the environment is compromised; there is a growing democracy deficit and decreasing public accountability. Women in poverty, rural women and working women live in a constant struggle to provide for themselves and their families as the privatization of healthcare, housing and social welfare deepens. Despite this growing evidence of the failure of trade liberalization and privatization to serve all its citizens, the US government continues to promote this model across the globe.

In response: USGTN's work is threefold: advocacy, research and the development of trade literacy/popular education materials. USGTN publishes educational materials with a gender analysis on trade liberalization and privatization and works in coalitions to challenge US trade policy.

• USGTN is monitoring the WTO negotiations and will be present at the WTO Ministerial in Cancun in September, 2003.
• USGTN is monitoring the FTAA negotiations, particularly in services, government procurement, agricultural and investment.
• USGTN supports the work of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) by participating in its Women's Committee, calling for the release of FTAA texts, actively protesting the lack of democracy in the negotiations at the Peoples' Summits and Ministerials, and working for alternatives.
• USGTN is active in the Peoples Consultation in the US that has organized to say ""No to the FTAA!""
• USGTN advocates and lobbies for gender impact assessments of US trade policies.
• USGTN has developed popular education materials to further women's voice on gender and trade in the US (see www.igtn.org/EconoLit/Literacy.html).

What is the IGTN?
The International Gender and Trade Network is a network of feminist gender specialists who provide technical information on gender and trade issues to women's groups, Non-Governmental Organizations, social movements and governments. IGTN also acts as a political catalyst to enlarge the space for a critical feminist perspective and global action on trade and globalization issues. It is a Southern-led network that builds South/North cooperation in the work of developing more just and democratic policy from a critical feminist perspective. IGTN is organized in seven regions: Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin American, North America and the Pacific.

IGTN's Political Agenda is Fourfold:

1. To support global and regional economic integration rules and processes that support sustainable social reproductive (care economy) work of all people, particularly women; and to oppose all rules and processes that compromise that work.
2. To monitor negotiations in order to expose and oppose undemocratic trade rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional trade fora. IGTN's goal is to reduce the scope of the WTO and all trade agreements to specific trade issues.
3. To build alternatives from a feminist perspective.
4. To work to achieve just and democratic economic policy domestically and globally.

For more info on USGTN as well as the IGTN, go to www.igtn.org.
To sign-up for the IGTN monthly bulletins, contact the IGTN secretariat at secretariat@igtn.org.