Marilyn Waring - Ottawa April 27
I am really excited that this woman is coming to town! I try to watch the NFB film about her work Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics just before every census. It is because of her that unpaid work gets tracked and women all over the world stopped calling themselves homemakers and started calling themselves nurses, nutritionists, childcare providers, nursing home care attendants, handywomen etc. on the Census.
She was also instrumental at tracking the unpaid work of women in subsistence economies. She revealed how their work, instrumental at the survival of the household, never made it into national accounting systems! She developed time maps to assess how a woman’s day was structured versus a mans. That technique has made its way into many development practices to truly assess the work of women in overseas development projects but also to assess the affects of the decisions made by male leaders on women’s behalf, and that affected women’s lives in a real way. Also, she was instrumental at making New Zealand a nuclear free zone!
Her book If women Counted is what got me to really think about the politics of the census, the politics behind the ‘objective’ and seemingly benign questions that were being asked and how those influence how we envision our societies and what deserved to be tracked across time. That book also got me excited when the long form of the Census would show up at my door or the short form for that matter!
Octopus Books and Oxfam are thrilled to welcome Marilyn Waring and launch her new book 1 Way 2 C the World: Writings 1984-2006 on Monday, April 27th at 7:00 p.m. at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library (120 Metcalfe).
Marilyn Waring is a truly absorbing figure known as a distinguished public intellectual, a leading feminist thinker, environmentalist, social justice activist, and for her early political career after election to New Zealand’s parliament at age twenty-three. Assembling some of her most thought-provoking writings, 1 Way 2 C the World is a compelling collection of essays and reflections on many important issues of our time. Written in lively, crisp, and often humourous prose, Waring provides illuminating commentary on topics such as gay marriage, human rights, globalization, the environment, and international relations and development.
Including accounts of being in India at the time of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and in Ethiopia’s during the 1984 famine, Waring’s vivid writing remains contemporarily relevant, while this collection includes recent writings on the post-9/11 world. Brimming with pieces that are essential reading for anyone concerned with the state of the world, 1 Way 2 C the World is bound to fascinate and inspire.
