Why Shop? Week
Sunday, November 18 through Saturday November 24, 2001
Why Shop? Week has been organized by Women's Studies students at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Their mission is to inform consumers about how purchases affect women globally.
Instead of shopping indiscriminately from November 18th through the 24th,
consumers are
urged to make ethical purchasing decisions by boycotting companies that
exploit women and children; demanding corporate accountability for global
working conditions; and consuming less this holiday season--as well as
in the future. Consumers can also choose to participate in Buy Nothing
Day on the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional beginning of holiday
shopping. When shoppers practice ethical
consumption, they can begin to establish new patterns of social justice
that value economic and political equality, as well as environmental sustainability.
Don't buy what you don't need. Together we hold the world's purse strings!
Why Shop? Week initiates an international call to action regarding
women's rights from a worldwide perspective. Why Shop? Week raises consumer
awareness of women as global producers of goods and services and as reproducers
who fill social and familial needs. Although most women work a double day
both inside and outside the home, they lack access to the majority of the
world's resources: the Wall Street Journal estimates that women perform
60% of the world's labor, but earn only 10% of the world's income, while
the United Nations assesses women's unpaid labor at 16 trillion dollars
annually.