Can we really expect adequate funding for programs to clean up our environment and care for people's basic needs as long as the socially essential work of caretaking and cleaning is relegated to women for little or no pay?

For Islamic fundamentalists male "honor" is equated with control over the women in a man's family - to the extent that killing a woman who makes her own sexual choices (like marrying without her father's consent) is considered honorable, rather than criminal.

Schools in which students and teachers relate as partners-where Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication is part of every interaction are communities of learning, rather than top-down, impersonal factories. Young people begin to see school as a safe and exciting place of exploration where they can share feelings and ideas, and where each child is recognized, valued and nurtured.

For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities.

Care work produces public goods, and should be supported in families by policies such as paid parental leave and caregiver tax credits, and by investments in good training and wages for caregiving, including early childhood education, in the market.

We can learn a great deal from whales. It is the same lesson we can learn from our close genetic relatives, the bonobo apes of the Congo. Here mothers have a great deal of authority, there is very little violence (with no signs of sexual violence against females), and their society is held together by sharing and caring rather than by fear and force.

Marshall Rosenberg has a genius for developing and teaching practical skills urgently needed for a less violent, more caring world.