The last decade has seen export led growth emerge as the virtually unchallenged model of development. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has joined the IMF and World Bank as the bane of poor countries.

For some countries in the south times have changed. For example, investment is pouring into many Latin American countries and these are experiencing rapid growth. The same is hardly true for Africa-the world's poorest continent. Instead, liberalisation has, in many countries, led to de-industrialisation and heavy job losses while efforts to cut budget deficits have resulted in cuts to social spending. The biblical saying comes to mind: "to those who have, will more be given. To those who have not, even the little they have will be taken away."

Development - along with equality and peace - is one of the three legs of the tripod on which the world conferences on women have been held. How different times are to the first world conference on women in 1975 when there was a clear delineation between rich and poor, north and south. We now have a first, a second, a third, and a fourth world. The majority of African countries fall in the latter category of least developed countries.

All this has profound gender implications. In countries of the south that are experiencing rapid "growth", globalisation has meant a rapid increase in the female labour force, though often into precarious jobs in Export Processing Zones. In such countries the emerging issues are work related: balancing the dual responsibilities of home and work; men threatened by women with a new found independence and so on.

In Africa, the majority of women are unemployed; work in the informal sector, or are subsistence farmers. When trade ministers meet in Seattle next week for the WTO ministerial meeting, the major concern of African countries will be attempts by this increasingly bold global police officer to liberalise food production with devastating effects for subsistence farmers- the majority of whom are women.

African ministers will be asking for a restraining order on the WTO- to first study the effects of liberalisation, before rushing into another phase of the law of the jungle in which only the fittest will be survivors.

Free trade is all very well where there is a level playing field. The global playing field is far from level. At the top are men in the first world. At the bottom are women in the fourth world: us.

Addis Ababa provides us an opportunity to make our waning voices heard. We can send a message out to Seattle, and to the Beijing Plus Five meeting in New York that globalisation might be sending an ambiguous message to some countries but not to us- because we have hardly experienced it. Stop the world a minute: we demand to get on.

Colleen Lowe Morna was a participant in a UN expert group meeting on post Beijing challenges held in Beirut from 8-10 November. This is the third article in a four part series drawn from discussions at the Beirut meeting. The last article will focus on equality.