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Post#4 (May 22, 2020): Mexico Women Fighting Femicide.

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Post#4 (May 22, 2020): Mexico Women Fighting Femicide.

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This article expresses how women marched on International Women's Day to fight for their rights and to stop the increase of sex trafficking, violence among women, and kidnapping. Women are violated in Mexico and rates of almost 10 women being killed each day in the year 2019. Women wanted to take political action and express concerns in income due to COVID-19. They talked about reports of gendered violence for women in Mexico.

This article illustrates the topic of gender and globalization we discussed. This article represents gender inequality, and relates to the article we read about violence among women in Mexico. We learned that women are being murdered at a high rate, and gender violence is shown as a mechanism of dominance, power and control. Mexico has high rates of poverty, economic and political crisis. Women in low-income are targets of these actions and become victims of these actions.

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On March 8, International Women's Day, an estimated 100,000 women of all walks of life poured into Mexico City's center. With a small group of male allies taking up the rear, they marched the mile and a half from the Monument to the Mexican Revolution to the Zócalo, Mexico City's central plaza. The march coincided with other large demonstrations in cities across the country, from Tapachula to Tijuana. The outsized rallies were just the beginning of a landmark 48-hour effort by Mexican women to demonstrate the urgency of the national emergency of femicide and other violence against women in the country.

In 2019, on average, 10 women were killed per day in Mexico, and the figure remained unchanged going into 2020. Moreover, Mexico's near-total impunity for crime (hovering around a 90 percent rate of impunity) is even worse when it comes to femicides-more like 99 percent, according to the National Citizen's Observatory on Femicide. Women are also over-represented in the already high numbers of kidnappings and forced disappearances in Mexico. The last major survey on family violence in Mexico, conducted in 2016, found that for approximately every 100 women aged 15 years and over who have had a partner or husband, 42 of the married women and 59 of the separated, divorced, or widowed women have experienced situations of emotional or economic abuse, or physical or sexual violence during their current or last relationship-a clear indication of women's overall vulnerability to security risks of all kinds.

Following large demonstrations in August and November 2019, which left parts of the center of Mexico City covered in graffiti and broken glass from the smashed windows of government buildings, feminist organizers went into 2020 saying that women would continue to take political action until real policy changes were made. On March 9, following the International Women's Day rallies, tens of thousands of Mexican women went on strike-staying indoors, not going to work, and not buying products-in a coordinated national effort to demonstrate to the country what it would be like if women simply ceased to contribute to society, if they continued to die and disappear. Up to 57 percent of women in the Mexican workforce intended to participate in the daylong strike when surveyed, resulting, by some estimates, in a potential economic loss to the country of $1.5 billion.

In a somewhat surreal twist of events, within two weeks women were once again being called on to stay away from their workplaces-this time for public health reasons, as part of Mexico's measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, and this time with an amplified risk of violence against women as family incomes are threatened and the majority of the population is required to stay in their homes, potentially trapped with abusive family members. Advocates for women are determined that the momentum of March 8-9 not be lost as the country faces the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Layda Negrete, a lawyer and researcher with the World Justice Project and expert on impunity in Mexico, said the events of March 8 and 9 mark a key moment for a political solution to violence against women in Mexico, noting that the numbers in the streets and on strike was "a very clear display of political muscle ... that has really caught the attention of the federal administration." Against this background, the renewed "political muscle" observed by Negrete is already facing its first test as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread.

The Brujas del Mar (Sea Witches), a collective that played a key role in calling for the strike, has swung into action to mitigate the increased risks to women that come with a country facing a period of lockdown. The group has established a hotline for women to access psychological help if they are experiencing domestic violence. They are often approached by women in their home state of Veracruz, and from elsewhere in the country, for assistance to find refuge or to report abusers, and they are putting together a network to provide accessible legal advice. The collective is also coordinating a system of food donations for women who work in the informal sector and are likely to be hit the hardest by the economic fallout of quarantines and lockdowns.

In the first month of coronavirus quarantine starting in March, the national network of women's shelters reported an 80 percent increase in calls seeking help for gender-based violence. Forty-four percent of the calls were from the capital region, where stay-at-home and social distancing measures are scheduled to be in place until May 30. As per some media and activist estimates, 209 women have been killed as stay-at-home measures were announced, with at least 163 of these registered as femicides, or crimes in which the woman was killed because of her gender.

In early May, the president said he did not believe there had been an increase in domestic violence under the stay-at-home measures. In response, a group of feminists shared an open letter on social media that noted the high number of family violence-related calls to 911 per hour during that period-a figure that comes from his own government's data, which shows calls to report abuse or violence in the home increased overall by 22.7 percent between February and March. Then, the president claimed 90 percent of these calls were false reports.

Women's shelters remain operational as an essential service while coronavirus measures are in place in Mexico, new government funding has been provisioned, and the federal government says a woman experiencing violence can call the emergency number for a response from police or a variety of hotlines to find a place in a shelter. But Mexico is already grappling with several preexisting conditions that will make an effective response more difficult: funding cuts to shelters that occurred in 2019, a decrease in funding for the Mexican federal government's department for women's issues, a systemic underspending of funds allocated to state governments for programs to support women, and near-blanket impunity for criminal violence against women. As the pandemic progresses, it's clear that Mexican society will still rely on the leadership of citizens, as demonstrated during the protests, to prevent and punish violence against women.

There's little doubt that structural sexism and impunity are the greatest barriers to justice for victims of femicide, and to bringing the numbers down. Additionally, indigenous women, transgender women, and women with disabilities face compounded discrimination and risk. Women who work in Mexico's large informal economy are particularly vulnerable to poverty and violence.

Despite the current stay-at-home measures, many of these women must continue to seek a salary, placing them between the precarity of a slowed street economy and the economic pressures of raising a family. These factors are correlated with gendered violence: In a 2018 study, researchers found a link between disruption of employment in the informal economy and violence against women in Mexico City-women already vulnerable to high levels of violence at home find it increases when there are disruptions to their earning income.

Mexico does have a powerful law in place, the General Law on Women's Access to a Life Free of Violence, which was passed in 2007. The law provided sweeping measures to "prevent, treat, punish, and eradicate violence against women," defined as including psychological, physical, economic, patrimonial (involving violation of women's property rights), and sexual violence; it also defined femicide as a hate crime targeting women. But as too many cases have demonstrated, the mandate is not enough.

Despite relatively high levels of reporting of family violence to police, women have come to expect little to no response from authorities. "When a woman is experiencing such violence, she has very little recourse," Negrete said. "If she calls the police, they might not come, and even if they do, they have no training in how to respond to family violence. To pursue charges and protection from the violence they must go to the prosecutor's office, who typically fail to do anything about the complaint."

Under the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, "there are no clear proposals different from previous governments at the federal level or the local level," said María de la Luz Estrada, a sociologist and the coordinator of the National Citizen's Observatory on Femicide. In response to the rallies and the strike, the administration said it will not be altering current policy or making new policy to fight femicide and other violence against women. "We see a lot of money being put into things like a national policy against drug cartels, but not to prevent violence against women," Negrete said.

A recent government service measure known as Women's Justice Centers was starting to work until budget cuts hit. "The woman would arrive, and they would have a social worker, a psychologist, and child care provided; they would also have a legal branch to it, so they could prosecute cases that were suitable for prosecution," Negrete said. Similar service responses are successful elsewhere in the world, but most of the centers have struggled to maintain the full suite of services since López Obrador cut the public security budget, resulting in a loss of nearly 80 percent of funding. Most of the centers are still operational at reduced hours and must do a lot more with a lot less as needs for their services rise under coronavirus conditions.

The mass demonstrations of early March were largely initiated through online media, and campaigning for gender justice in Mexico continues via those networks while the country remains in lockdown. Young women at the country's largest public university who have been protesting against sexual assault and rape on campus over the last several months hacked the intranet of the Department of Political and Social Science, which had scheduled virtual classes. The Organized Women of the Department of Political and Social Sciences collective then published a communique accusing department administration of punishing women professors for supporting students who speak out against gender violence, and they disabled the intranet's functions so that grades could not be assigned and classes could not be scheduled.

Other examples of online campaigning include a virtual vigil for Ana Paola, a 13-year-old victim of femicide in her home after stay-at-home measures began, and a virtual protest, coordinated with other countries in Latin America, held on May 9, the day before Mother's Day, with the purpose of posting material en masse to social media networks, depicting the dangers being faced by women in the home under coronavirus measures.

The massive support for a social transformation of gender relations in Mexico, evidenced by the protests of early 2020, continues despite the quarantine, and there are clear budget and policy decisions that Mexican authorities can take in order to respond right now. For women at risk in their homes, there need to be clearer, better-funded avenues to support women and children fleeing violence, enabled by community support. Mexican women do reach out for help-if they are asked to stay in their homes to stop the spread of a dangerously contagious virus, authorities must ensure they are not exposing them to greater vulnerability.

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Despite the Coronavirus, Mexican Women Are Fighting Femicide

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On March 8, International Women's Day, an estimated 100,000 women of all walks of life poured into Mexico City's center. With a small group of male allies taking up the rear, they marched the mile and a half from the Monument to the Mexican Revolution to the Zócalo, Mexico City's central plaza.

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Post#3 (May 22, 2020): I.M.F Predicts Worst Downturn Since the Great Depression. 

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Post#3 (May 22, 2020): I.M.F Predicts Worst Downturn Since the Great Depression. 

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This article discusses the economic collapse the coronavirus has created, and what the International Monetary Fund has to say about it. They explain that this is the worst the economy has been since the great depression. The coronavirus has caused suffering in  developed and advancing economies. The IMF explained that they believe the virus can threaten globalization and turn it around.

This article addresses the topics we discussed in class, on economics in globalization and ABC'S of the global economy. Specifically, the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund loans out money to countries as a last resort, they provide development loans to poor countries. The coronavirus has created a huge downfall in our economy currently, and has effected other countries globally, we are all brought together in this through global interconnection.

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The global economy is expected to contract by 3 percent this year as quarantines and lockdowns cripple output.

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Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the I.M.F. The fund is projecting that the global economy will contract by 3 percent this year. Credit... Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund issued a stark warning on Tuesday about the coronavirus's economic toll, saying that the world is facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression as shuttered factories, quarantines and national lockdowns cause economic output to collapse.

The grim forecast underscored the magnitude of the shock that the pandemic has inflicted on both advanced and developing economies and the daunting task that policymakers face in containing the fallout. With countries already hoarding medical supplies and international travel curtailed, the I.M.F warned that the crisis threatened to reverse decades of gains from globalization.

In its World Economic Outlook, the I.M.F. projected that the global economy would contract by 3 percent in 2020, an extraordinary reversal from early this year, when the fund forecast that the world economy would outpace 2019 and grow by 3.3 percent. This year's fall in output would be far more severe than the last recession, when the world economy contracted by less than 1 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The figures were released as the Group of 7 finance ministers and central bankers, who were supposed to meet in Philadelphia this week, held a virtual discussion on Tuesday to assess the global economic crisis.

In a joint statement after the meeting, they pledged to coordinate their efforts to restore growth, protect jobs and reinforce the global financial system. They noted that the I.M.F. was prepared to deploy its $1 trillion lending capacity to help vulnerable economies cope with recessions and they endorsed a proposal to let poor countries suspend debt service payments. The broader Group of 20, which is also expected to convene virtually this week, must still sign off on the debt relief plan.

"The scale of this health crisis is generating unprecedented challenges for the global economy," the G7 officials said.

The United States is expected to take a severe hit, with the I.M.F. projecting that the American economy will contract by about 6 percent in 2020.

The luxury clothing brand Armani has converted a factory in Trento, Italy, to make single-use medical overalls. Credit... Armani, via Associated Press

Ms. Gopinath said that the loss of global output would be "far worse" than the 2008 financial crisis and that policymakers were facing an unusual predicament in that traditional stimulus measures are little match for a pandemic that is being fought with shutdowns and quarantines.

"It is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression," she said.

According to the I.M.F., the global economic contraction from 1929 to 1932 was approximately 10 percent. Advanced economies shrank by 16 percent during that period.

Barry Eichengreen, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who is a scholar of the Great Depression, said there were several parallels between now and then. He pointed to the jobless rate in the United States, which he expects could top the 25 percent that was reached in 1933, and the global nature of the downturn, which could prolong the crisis as poor countries struggle to combat the virus.

"This is a different sort of Great Depression," he said. "This is a different kind of shock and it's playing out in different ways at a very different speed."

Governments around the world are grappling with how and when to reopen parts of their economies in hopes of reviving business activity. President Trump is expected to make an announcement this week that could provide guidance for scaling back stay-at-home orders.

But the economic recovery is expected to be slow until people are confident it's safe.

"Even if spending starts to bottom in April, we see little chance of a meaningful pickup in activity in the immediate future," economists at J.P. Morgan wrote in an April 9 research note, noting that reopening could lead to relapse. "We don't think that the bottom of the current downturn will occur until May at the earliest."

Bank of America economists said in a research note that "the coronavirus will cause the deepest postwar recession in U.S. history," predicting a 6 percent hit to growth for the full year.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said a quick rebound was unlikely, particularly if people continued to worry about getting sick.

"We know after the Great Depression people carried the scars of that experience with them for many, many years," Mr. Kashkari said in an interview on the "Today" show on NBC. "I think the longer that this goes on, the more people who are affected by it, the longer that recovery is going to be."

"You really don't want to go to the quarantine policy unless you have to," James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said during a public event broadcast on Zoom. "The quarantine was maybe the right response initially, but we're not initially anymore - so it's not going to be the right response to come back with a global quarantine in the future," and society shouldn't "think in terms of rolling quarantines."

He compared making widespread tests available to providing common goods, like eggs or cups of coffee.

"People say it can't be done or we don't have enough resources," he said. "You really want to ramp that up at all costs and even if somebody gets rich off it or something, you still want to do it."

Considerable uncertainty remains as the health of the economy will be dictated by the trajectory of the virus. If the pandemic persists into the second half of the year, the global contraction could be twice as severe and the anticipated rebound in 2021 could fail to materialize if additional waves of the virus spread later in the year, according to the I.M.F. Over the next two years, the pandemic could shave $9 trillion from global gross domestic product, or G.D.P.

In 2020, the I.M.F. projects the euro-area economy will shrink by 7.5 percent, led by steep declines in Italy and Spain.

A shopping district in Beijing. China's economy is expected to expand at a sluggish 1.2 percent clip this year, down from 6.1 percent last year. Credit... Thomas Peter/Reuters

Tentatively, the fund projects global growth to rebound to 5.8 percent next year. Barring the fast discovery of a vaccine or treatment, most countries are not expected to return to their pre-virus growth trends in 2021.

The fund calls for governments to invest in supporting their health care systems and ensuring that workers maintain ties to their jobs during lockdowns so that economic activity can resume when the virus recedes. In a press briefing that was broadcast online, Ms. Gopinath urged countries not to turn to protectionism and retreat behind their borders, warning that following such instincts could slow the recovery.

"It is very important that this does not become a feature where we reverse all the gains we have got from globalization," she said.

Ana Swanson contributed reporting.

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I.M.F. Predicts Worst Downturn Since the Great Depression (Published 2020)

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The global economy is expected to contract by 3 percent this year as quarantines and lockdowns cripple output. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Post #2 (May 22, 2020): Immigration to US is suspended due to the Pandemic.

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Post #2 (May 22, 2020): Immigration to US is suspended due to the Pandemic.

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This article explains the suspension of immigration to US demanded by our president. They address how the stop of immigration has affected areas of the economy. They mention using power to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants to the US southern border. Executives were overthrowing certain immigration laws in order to fasten the process of deportation.

This article presents a clear illustration of the topic of immigration we learned about in chapter 3, and discussed over zoom. We discussed how almost 3% of our population are immigrants, and how they are important to our economy and our labor system. The stop of migration could have an affect on our economy, they create economic growth and growth in global disparities. Immigrants bring diversity to the US and take on hard-working jobs, they are a source of growth in many areas of globalization.

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US President Donald Trump has announced he will sign an executive order to temporarily suspend all immigration to the US to fight the coronavirus.

On Twitter, He cited "the attack from the Invisible Enemy", as he calls coronavirus, "as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens".

There are no other details so far.

It comes as the White House also argues the worst of the pandemic is over and the country can begin reopening.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version. You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on Twitter to get the latest alerts.

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Immigration to US to be halted due to virus - Trump

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US President Donald Trump has announced he will sign an executive order to temporarily suspend all immigration to the US to fight the coronavirus. On Twitter, He cited "the attack from the Invisible Enemy", as he calls coronavirus, "as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens".

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Post#1 (May 22, 2020): Will Coronavirus Reverse Globalisation?

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Post#1 (May 22, 2020): Will Coronavirus Reverse Globalisation?

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This article addresses how the coronavirus pandemic could turn globalization around. It explains how production and manufacturing have stopped across the globe, and how they will change trade in the future. They speak about the chances of economic depression, weak international organizations and a rise in nationalism. They express concerns about the future, and what new regulations we will all have to take.

This article presents the topic of the characteristics of globalization we discussed in class and the introduction to globalization. The article address production, changing structures of work, and global culture. The structure of many jobs are changing, and corporate restructure. We are all connected through this pandemic and will have to work together globally. Our Global culture is created through media, corporations, and trade. We depend on production and trade from other countries, and will have to learn how to adapt to new ways globally.

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By Jonty Bloom
Business reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
Coronavirus has halted many global deliveries

Globalisation has been one of the buzzwords of the past 25 years.

It may seem a rather strange concept, since any economic historian will tell you that people have been trading across vast distances for centuries, if not millennia.

You only have to look at the medieval spice trade, or the East India Company, to know that. But globalisation is really about the scale and speed of international business, which has exploded in the past few decades to unprecedented levels.

Easier travel, the world wide web, the end of the Cold War, trade deals, and new, rapidly developing economies, have all combined to create a system that is much more dependent now on what is happening on the other side of the world than it ever was.

Which is why the spread of coronavirus, or Covid-19 to be specific, has had such an immediate economic effect.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
Car factories around the world have stopped production

Professor Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, says that the pace of change in the global economy over just the past 17 years has been profound.

"When we look back at 2003, at the Sars epidemic, China accounted for 4% of global output," she says. "Now China accounts for four times as much, 16%. So that means that whatever is happening in China affects the world to a much larger extent."

Globalisation helps to explain while nearly every major car plant in the UK has shut down - they are dependent on sales and components from around the world. When both collapsed, they just stopped making cars.

China's wealth and health therefore matter to us all far more than they used to, but this is not just a matter of scale - there is also a deeper problem with globalisation.

Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University, and author of "The Butterfly Defect, How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, And What To Do About It", says that "risks have been allowed to fester, they are the underbelly of globalisation".

That, he says, can be seen not only in this crisis, but also in the credit crunch and banking crisis of 2008, and the vulnerability of the internet to cyber-attacks. The new global economic system brings huge benefits, but also huge risks.

Media caption,
Will 3D printing make it possible to manufacture things closer to where they will be used?

While it has helped raise incomes, rapidly develop economies and lift millions out of poverty; that has come at the increased risk of contagion, be it financial or medical.

So what does this latest crisis mean for globalisation?

For Prof Richard Portes, professor of economics at London Business School, it seems obvious that things will have to change, because firms and people have now realised what risks they had been taking.

"Look at trade," he explains. "Once supply chains were disrupted [by coronavirus], people started looking for alternative suppliers at home, even if they were more expensive.

"If people find domestic suppliers, they will stick with them… because of those perceived risks."

Global Trade

Professor Javorcik agrees, and believes a combination of factors will mean Western manufacturing industry will start bringing work back home, or re-shoring it as it is called.

"I think that the trade war [mainly between the US and China], combined with the Coronavirus epidemic, will lead companies to actually take re-shoring seriously," she says.

"They will re-shore activities that can be automated, because re-shoring brings certainty. You do not have to worry about your national trade policy, and it also gives you an opportunity to diversify your supplier base."

However, this is not all good news for Western economies, which may now believe they have become too dependent on globalisation. Instead this cuts both ways.

A great deal of globalisation is not about moving manufactured goods around the world, but moving people, ideas and information; something that we in the UK and other Western economies are very good at.

As David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy, points out: "The service sector must have fallen off a cliff, and just look [in particular] at tourism and universities.

"There must be real concern about the number of new entries to Western universities this autumn. This is a huge export industry… many universities are dependent on Chinese students, for example."

Image source, Getty Images

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Many universities in the West would miss overseas students, who often have to pay more for their courses, and are a key income stream

The idea that globalisation is just about moving manufacturing or supply chains to cheaper Asian countries is too simple. It has also led to massive increases in foreign students willing to pay to study at our colleges and universities, and a huge influx of wealthy tourists who want to spend money here, to name just two service sector businesses.

Slowing or even reversing globalisation would hit those industries very hard indeed. But even so, Prof Goldin thinks that this pandemic marks a sea change and that "2019 was the year of peak supply chain fragmentation".

Although, some factors such as 3D printing, automation, the demand for customisation, and quick delivery, as well as protectionism were already being felt; it seems that Covid-19 can only accelerate that process.

The real concern is, however, not whether these changes happen, but how far they go, and how they will be managed?

Prof Goldin has a simple and clear way of explaining the options - will the result be more like what happened after World War One, or after World War Two?

We could, like after 1918, get weak or weaker international organisations, the rise of nationalism, protectionism and economic depression. Or, as followed 1945, more cooperation and internationalism, like Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, the UN and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
There was much optimism that the world would become a better place after World War Two, with the Bretton Woods conference, pictured, aiming to ensure a fairer economic order

Prof Goldin remains cheerful, but worries about who is going to take the lead. "We can be optimistic, but we are not seeing leadership out of the White House certainly," he says. "China can't step up to the plate, and Great Britain cannot lead in Europe."

This is a worry shared by Prof Portes, who points out that: "The London G20 Summit of 2009 agreed a $1tn (£800bn) package of international cooperation, even Germany joined in. But now there is no leadership in the G20, and the USA is absent from the international scene."

Will globalisation be reversed? Probably not, it is too important an economic development for that to happen, but it could well be slowed down.

The bigger question is, however, have we learnt the lessons of this crisis? Will we learn to spot, control and regulate the risks that seem to be an integral part of globalisation? Because the cooperation and leadership necessary to make that happen seem to be in short supply.

Jonty Bloom has also explored whether coronavirus will affect globalisation for a special programme on BBC Radio 4's In Business show.

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Could Covid-19 permanently change how the global economy works?