DESTRUCTION OF SELF-ESTEEM

The spiralling social and economic crisis in the global coffee industry is disproportionately affecting women. Oxfam's Colombia office has been gathering their stories, of which Luz Marina Zuluaga's is typical.

Hidden deep within the global coffee crisis and trivialized by many politicians, business leaders and economists who can put no monetary value on it, millions of poor mainly women workers are suffering the "destruction of self-esteem".

The description is made by one who knows. Luz Marina Zuluaga, who's family has for generations grown coffee on a few acres of land in Fresno, Colombia, says that the crops no longer meet the basic needs of local women and their children.

"Our self-esteem is being destroyed," she says. "Historically, women trade cacota (low-quality beans) to buy clothing, food and to send their children to school. The men's income goes to pay debt and maintain the farms."

As the global coffee crisis has worsened, those at the bottom of the industry - the pickers, the sorters, the traders of the lower-quality bean who are all mainly women - suffer most.
"Women say they can no longer buy sanitary towels or contraceptive pills. We have stopped celebrating birthdays because we can no longer afford them. We ask relatives in Bogota to send us second-hand clothes."

Domestic violence is increasing, "it's the way the men let off steam," she says. Women are less able to meet and talk and collaborate between themselves, having to work more at home and to find other jobs to make bits of money. A UNDP report issued last month said that Colombian women earn less, work longer, have higher rates of unemployment, participate less
in administrative positions and drop out of school more than men - because of the economic crisis. This is accentuated in rural areas, where some 300,000 farmers account for the coffee crop that captures almost half of Colombia's foreign exchange.
In 2001 a Colombian family could buy, on average, only half the amount of meat, fuel and fertilizer that it could have with the same weight of coffee sold in 1989. The daily minimum wage has effectively halved during this time. Coffee prices are not picking up.

"Though we have tried to do our best, we have very little support. There is nothing from our own government or from those responsible for the coffee business in my own country," Luz Marina says. "How am I going to respond to my children?"

Illegal crops

Going Bust

Economic collapse