Not one of those government people would drink the water. We knew we had to do something right away. Throughout the world, 'average' women like Lisa Crawford are mobilizing local pressure groups on issues of concern to themselves and their families. Estimates by the US-based Community Clearinghouse on Hazardous Wastes and by environmental advocate Robert Bullard, for example, suggest that women make up roughly 80 per cent of people active in grassroots environmental advocacy in the United States. Their efforts to create safe home and community environments mirror those of women in India, Kenya, Peru, and countless other countries where environmental degradation and contamination is a major and growing concern to family health and welfare.
Environmental justice is but one aspect of a vibrant global women's movement that takes many forms.
In fact, over the past several years, an increasingly effective and sophisticated women's movement has begun to fundamentally alter the political calculus on issues of social and economic development, population policy, human rights, and health at the local, national, and international level. Women's groups, for example, took centre stage at a series of recent United Nations conferences. At the Earth Summit in Rio, women challenged the notion that conventional strategies of economic development are compatible with equity and environmental sustainability. And at the International Conference on Population and Development, advocates placed women's health and rights concerns at the centre of population policies. Moreover, women in virtually every country are engaged in the arduous work of effecting and monitoring real changes in government policies and programmes.