Gender Equality in the New Millenium: Goal or Gimmick?
I want to introduce my discussion by making three points:
(i) I do not believe in the MDGs.1 I think of them as Major Distraction Gimmicks—a distraction from the much more important Beijing Platform for Action (BPA) with its 12 Priority Areas of Concern,2 which represent a much closer approximation of the complexity of the relationships between women’s equality and empowerment (MDG Goal #3), and other MDGs and targets, particularly:
* MDG #1: Eradicating extreme poverty and
hunger,
* Universal primary education (MDG #2),
* Reducing child mortality (MDG #4),
* Improving maternal health (MDG #5),
* Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases (MDG #6), and
* Ensuring environmental sustainability (MDG #7 (including Target #10, Access to safe water).
(ii) However, since I have accepted UNIFEM’s invitation to present this analysis I will try to take them seriously and address the question of how they can be made to work to promote women’s equality and empowerment in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region. So in this session, I will not limit myself to Goal #3, but try to highlight the gender dimensions of some of the MDGs that I consider particularly closely related to women’s equality and empowerment—as a means and as an outcome.
(iii) Finally, my analysis and suggestions in relation to strategies “to ensure that gender inequalities are identified and addressed in the MDG monitoring process and in national policy responses from governments” will focus on Caribbean realities, including my own experience of working in this field for over 30 years—first, within the bureaucracy as Director of the Jamaican Women’s Bureau; then as the head of what used to be UWI’s major outreach programme for women (the Women and Development Unit, WAND) where, in 1981, we tested a pilot project aimed at promoting women’s empowerment; also, as a feminist activist involved in the global women’s movement as part of the DAWN network; and finally, drawing on the findings and insights derived from my doctoral study on the linkages between global trends, development strategies (including the macroeconomic policy framework of structural adjustment) and their impact on poor women, and the ways in which we might now approach interventions toward the goal of women’s equality and empowerment and all that goes with that— meaning the goals and objectives of the Beijing Platform of Action, which includes the MDGs.
1.1. General Critique of MDGs
First, what can be said in favour of the MDGs? As UNIFEM and many others point out,
* Viewed within the context of “the new aid agenda,” the MDGs provide a common framework agreed to by all governments, complete with measurable targets and indicators of progress, around which governments, UN agencies, international finance institutions and civil society alike could rally.
* They provide a “strategic talking point for assessing what the barriers to the achievement of goals are, and provide a tool with which to hold both donor agencies and governments accountable. (White, 2001, 2002, cited by Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:3)
* Regarding the goal on “gender equality and empowerment of women,” some would say it “can be celebrated as symbolic of the significant impact of feminist advocacy over years in making the case for gender-aware development (Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:1), despite the fact that we know the emptiness of rhetorical statements on ‘gender.’
On the other hand, there is evidently widespread awareness of the limitations of the MDGs:
* their inadequate targets and indicators;
* their restriction to indicators that are quantifiable when much of what is most important, such as women’s equality and empowerment, is not easily quantifiable;
* their omission of important goals and targets, such as violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights;
* their silence on the context and institutional environment in which they are to be met.
I could go on…
I first heard of the MDGs in the outraged response of the global feminist community when the hard-won goal of women’s sexual and reproductive rights was excluded from the list. This is even more inexcusable given that women’s sexual and reproductive rights are not only a goal but a crucial target and/or indicator of progress under at least four goals—goal #3 (women’s equality and empowerment), goal #4 (child mortality), goal #5 (maternal health) and goal #6 (combating HIV/AIDS). The deliberate exclusion of this fundamental indicator of women’s human rights and empowerment from the MDGs symbolizes both the lack of sincerity on the part of the majority that voted on them, and the struggle that lies ahead for anyone who seriously seeks equality, equity and empowerment for women.
In fact, a major problem of the MDGs is their abstraction from the social, political and economic context in which they are to be implemented—the ‘political economy’ of the MDGs.
1.2. The Political Economy of the MDGs
Specifically, the exclusion of the goal of women’s sexual and reproductive rights reflects the power of the forces of religious fundamentalism that emerged from the processes surrounding the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, that continued to gain strength in the context of the ongoing economic struggles of the South against the spread of neo-liberalism in the late 1990s, and that have received a boost from the right-wing control of the current US administration.
In the Caribbean, the impact of the ‘male marginalisation’ thesis—the regional equivalent of the worldwide backlash against advances in women’s rights—reinforces the opposition to women’s sexual and reproductive rights and serves to inhibit women’s activism.
In addition to the political context of the spread of religious fundamentalism and the male backlash against women’s rights, there is the spread of economic fundamentalism in the form of the neo-liberal agenda through the World Trade Organization (WTO)-enforced trade liberalization. In fact, the major limitation of the MDGs lies in the absence, in the official literature on these goals, of acknowledgement of the extent to which the neo-liberal policy framework, starting with the 1980s macroeconomic policy framework of the Washington Consensus (including structural adjustment policies), served to halt and reverse progress toward the achievement of these goals (with the possible exceptions of goals #3 and #7). There was widespread consensus of such a finding in the UN Development Decades of the 1960s and 1970s—in other words, until the election of Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in the UK as the 1970s came to an end.
This policy framework, with its ‘marketisation of the state’ and its emphasis on privatization and reforms that diminish the role of the state, has been reinforced by trade liberalization and the new trade agreements enforced by the WTO. A consequence of trade liberalization that has immediate relevance to the implementation of the MDGs in the Caribbean is the loss of government revenues resulting from tariff reductions and the sale of profitable government assets. For example, estimates were that in Grenada, over 50% of government revenues were derived from import duties. How are governments now to finance primary health care and basic education when they are under pressure to reduce their sources of public finance?
To the extent that all the goals relate to the role of the state, one must ask how feasible it is that states weakened by the requirements of neo-liberalism and whose revenues are reduced by privatization and trade liberalism can be expected to achieve the goals and targets of the MDGs?
2. Women and the MDGs
From the perspective of women, the context in which these MDGs are discussed contains the twin demons of religious and economic fundamentalism, which both have, at their core, the subordination and exploitation of women’s time, labour and sexuality for the benefit of patriarchal power on the one hand, and capitalism on the other. I cannot imagine a less ‘enabling environment’ for the promotion of policies and programmes for the achievement of women’s equality and empowerment—as well as for all MDGs, dependent as they are on this central goal.
On the other hand, since all the goals (with the exception of the last) relate to biological and social reproduction, women’s equality and empowerment are critical to their achievement. This provides women with a strategic opportunity for engaging in the policy dialogue around goals that have come to occupy a privileged position in the processes of socio-economic planning and in the policy dialogue between governments and donors. The inclusion of goals and targets of major interest to women in the MDGs provides a strategic talking point for assessing the barriers to the achievement of these goals, and to the extent that women’s subordination and exploitation represents a major barrier to the achievement of most of the goals and targets, the MDGs can be a tool with which to hold both donor agencies and governments accountable.
With all their limitations, therefore, women’s advocates inside and outside the bureaucracies of governments and donors ought to use the opportunities they provide for advancing our agenda.
2.1. Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
Goal #3, gender equality and women’s empowerment, is the goal to which women are expected to pay greatest attention. Time does not permit me to go into detail about the problems associated with this goal, and in particular, its totally inadequate target (for the Caribbean) of “Eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education” and indicators of
* ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education (indicator #9);
* ratio of literate women to men in the 15-24 age group (indicator #10);
* share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector (indicator #11); and
* proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (indicator #12).
The inadequacy of these indicators in advancing the rights of Caribbean women is plain to see, because apart from the indicator on “women in parliaments,” women in CARICOM countries have already achieved this target! As they say, we’ve “been there, done that,” yet we can hardly speak of equality, equity and empowerment in a situation where
* poverty persists,3
* violence against women continues unabated,4
* there is increasing hostility against women (possibly generated by these very achievements in education and employment),
* the spread of HIV/AIDS is the second highest after Sub-Saharan Africa and spreading most rapidly among women,5 and
* only two CARICOM countries (Barbados and Guyana) provide for abortion services that are accessible, safe and affordable.
So, while the indicators on education and literacy represent major achievements for women everywhere, the Caribbean experience shows how inadequate they are as indices of empowerment. Here in the Caribbean, they certainly have not translated into improved access to employment, incomes and decision-making positions in the public domain, or political office. Moreover, despite efforts to change this, there is still a great deal of sex-role stereotyping in the school curriculum that limits the options of girls.
Regarding the indicator on the number of women in parliaments, I would say that whether this is an indicator of women’s empowerment depends on the circumstances under which women candidates take part in parliamentary elections. In CARICOM, with few exceptions,6 the women who run and win owe their victories to the men who make the decisions within the political parties. And, women who challenge male privilege are not likely to be among these. More important, once in office, women (and men) tend to cede their own power to that of government and are unlikely to have the freedom to “make definitions about their lives and act upon them”—that is, to demonstrate empowerment and agency, especially in relation to gender issues.
UNIFEM has proposed additional indicators,7 and the addition of indicators on women’s economic equality in relation to
* tracking women’s participation in informal wage work,
* developing a decent-work indicator
* creating a target to end gender disparity in wages, and
* measuring the extent to which women are paid a living wage.
These are useful, but they are still not adequate for a region that has one of the highest levels of literacy, education and labour force participation rates in the world. The indicators of women’s equality and empowerment in the Caribbean would have to include indicators on
* the incidence of rape and domestic violence,
* access to health services that respect women’s sexual and reproductive rights and embody the principles of the Programme of Action from the International Conference on Population and Development,
* access to and control of land, access to credit, and
* equality before the law.
Nevertheless, in my view CARICOM women should pay as much attention to the gender dimensions8 of the other goals as they do to this one. We have much more to gain from this approach than to one that concentrates on the goal of gender equality.
2.2. Other Important Goals for CARICOM Women
For women in CARICOM countries, goals #1 (eradication of extreme poverty) and #6 (combating HIV/AIDS) should be of much greater concern, although the “extremes of poverty” suggested by a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) of $1 a day are probably uncommon in the CARICOM. However, there are problems with these goals as well. An obvious problem with the targets and indicators of these goals is that they are not disaggregated by gender, although the gender dimensions of all are clear.
True, disaggregation is not without its problems. As Diane Elson warns, “The basic problem with disaggregation is that it focuses on the separate characteristics of men or women, rather than the social institutions of gender as a power relation.” (Elson, 1998:160). Despite this, the recognition of the disparity between men and women in terms of poverty or the incidence of HIV/AIDS is an important starting point in designing policies, programmes and strategies that address the specific problems of women in these areas. Moreover, to the extent that both areas represent priorities for most CARICOM governments—in the way that gender equality and women’s empowerment certainly does not—a focus on these goals can be an especially useful for CARICOM women.
2.3. Poverty Eradication
Along with violence against women (not included as a target or indicator in the MDGs), poverty is one of the leading concerns identified by Caribbean women. The gender-blindness of the goal on income-poverty eradication is particularly problematic especially as poverty is recognized as a “highly gendered phenomenon, and in ways that are not captured by income or headcount measures.” (Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:10)
For Caribbean women it is particularly important to recognize that the “outcomes of poverty are embedded in processes and relations of gender” and that poverty reduction programmes must take these into account. For example, poverty reduction programmes must provide for a range of services, including low-income housing; access to water and sanitation; health services that integrate primary health care, maternal and child health, family planning, cancer detection, services for the detection and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS; free and compulsory primary education; day care programmes; and access to credit, land and skills training. They must also ensure that the minimum wage legislation extends to domestic workers and other categories of low-income work.
Because of the primary responsibility most women have in the care of children, the elderly, and the sick and disabled, their income-earning capacity is more limited than the men’s. This also means that the incidence of poverty among women is higher. Moreover, in the Caribbean, given the characteristics of the majority of families,9 the earnings of women also affect the wellbeing of the entire family, especially the children and the elderly. Women’s poverty is therefore more severe than men’s, and has more serious consequences on vulnerable groups.
However, while poverty is a major concern for women, women advocates should be aware of the tendency of governments and donors alike to “collapse gender concerns within the wider category of poverty as it enables the use of a fairly depoliticised and needs-based discourse as requiring focus on women within poor households, rather than gender disadvantage per se.” (Ramya Subrahmanian, 2002:11). This masks the uneven distribution of power and resources within households, especially when there are men10 Caribbean women know only too well that the men of the household receive the major share of food, and their needs take priority over those of the other household members. The assumption (often accepted by the women themselves) that men are the “heads” of the household could work against the interests of women who indeed carry the main responsibility for the care and maintenance of households.
Finally, the link between gender equality, women’s empowerment and food security is critical in poor households: while Caribbean men can (and do) walk away from household responsibilities when they are not in a position to offer financial support, women stay and will do whatever it takes to “put food on the table.”
2.4. Combating the Spread of HIV/AIDS
The lack of attention to gender in the goal and indicators on the spread of HIV/AIDS is especially problematic. As in the case of poverty, HIV/AIDS is a highly gendered phenomenon. Central to the spread of the disease is the issue of sexuality and women’s sexual and reproductive rights. No amount of education can protect a woman from exposure to the virus if she cannot negotiate safe sex. As Sheila Stuart points out, young women and girls are particularly vulnerable when they engage in sex with older men, especially those in positions of authority, such as clergymen, teachers and employers. In the Caribbean, there is also a high incidence of incest and the exposure of young girls to sexual assault by the male partners of their mothers is common. The figures confirm this. According to a UNAIDS Fact Sheet dated February 2001, in Trinidad & Tobago, HIV rates are five times higher among girls than boys aged 15-18 years, and this is probably true of other countries in the region.
These are issues that should be discussed as part of any programme for combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in this region, and it is up to women to raise these questions. Unfortunately, the hostility and resentment shown by men toward women that underlies the ‘male marginalisation’ thesis in this region makes an open discussion of these issues especially difficult and hardly conducive to the kind of mutual respect and consideration necessary for the exercise of sexually responsible behaviour.
The indicators of prevalence rates among pregnant women 15 to 24 years old, as well as those of condom use, are especially appropriate for the region. According to the same UNAIDS Fact Sheet: (i) at one surveillance centre for pregnant women in Jamaica, girls in their late teens had almost twice the prevalence rate of older women, and (ii) a large survey of men and women in their teens and early 1920s in Trinidad and Tobago shows that less than one-fifth of the sexually active respondents always used condoms, and two-thirds did not use condoms at all.
Although the ratio of male to female in adult AIDS cases is 2:1 in the region, the rapid increase in HIV/AIDS among women can be gauged by the increase from 5:1 in Barbados when the disease was first detected to the current 1:1.
The ratio of 2:1 also conceals the ratio by age group. When the figures are closely examined, the difference between male and female becomes smaller, and there is evidence that the rate of increase among young women may be higher than that of men in the same age group. Thus, in Barbados in January to June 2002, more girls than boys in the age group 15-19 have AIDS, while in the age group 25-29, the ratio of male to female is about equal, and the ratio between men and women in the 35-39 age group is lower than for the other age groups. Women advocates should press for sex-disaggregated data in this area.11
Above all, women’s advocates ought to draw attention to the imperatives of women’s sexual and reproductive rights as the cornerstone to any effective programme for combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, even if this is presently excluded from the MDGs, targets and indicators.
2.5. Other Goals and Targets of Special Concern to Women
Other goals and targets of special concern to women are
* reduction of under-5 mortality rate (Goal #4)
* improved maternal health (Goal #5)
* access to safe drinking water (Goal #7, Target #10) and
* improvements in the lives of slum dwellers (Goal #7, Target #11)
Statistics are needed to understand the extent of these problems for the Caribbean. For example, while there have been substantial improvements in infant and maternal mortality rates in the 1960s and 1970s in the processes leading up to and following independence, it is important to examine how these reversed in the past two decades with the onset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, along with the deterioration in public health services.
There are also major problems with the indicators for Goal #5. To limit the indicator of reduced maternal mortality rates by three-quarters to the “proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel” is to ignore the importance of women’s access to maternal and child health services, including family planning services. In the context of deteriorating public health services and the hostility of the current US administration12 to the inclusion of abortion in family planning programmes, and even the use of condoms, this indicator is particularly inadequate.
As in the case of education, CARICOM governments held a record of steady improvements in the provision of public health services throughout the 1960s-1970s. These services are (at) jeopardized, however, by the pressures on states that came with the spread of neo-liberalism. It is important to assess the status of public health services in CARICOM countries at the present time,13 especially in the context of pressures to liberalise trade in services (through the proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services).14
There is a similar risk to public water supplies. A recent document by the European Union indicates its preparedness to pressure governments to privatize water supplies. It is difficult to reconcile the pressure from powerful governments on poor countries to privatize water and liberalise trade in services while appearing to support the goals and targets of poverty reduction, access to safe drinking water and improvements in the lives of slum dwellers.
3. Strategies to Ensure that Gender Inequalities Addressed in the MDG Monitoring Process
According to Jan Vandemoortele (“Are the MDGs Feasible?,” in the forthcoming Is ‘Development’ Achievable By 2015? ), the world is way off the mark in meeting the MDGs by 2015. Nevertheless, there is value in developing strategies to ensure that gender inequalities are identified and addressed in the MDG monitoring process and in national policy responses from governments. The discussion above suggests some of the areas where gender is crucial.
“The achievement of the MDGs will require broad-based social mobilization, including not only governments and development agencies but also civil society. Women’s organizations will have to be vigilant in international and national monitoring of achievement in assessing progress towards the achievement of Goal #3 and the gender dimensions of all other goals,” UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s Women 2002: Volume 2 on Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals (Elson, with Keklik) acknowledged.
Most of the portion “Innovations in Measuring and Monitoring” focuses on improving national statistics, creating alternative indicators and indices, and supporting studies. However, as valuable as these are, they are meaningless without a strong and active women’s movement to monitor those officials mandated to monitor the progress in the MDGs.
I am reminded of a project on gender-sensitive statistics undertaken by the Women’s Desk of the CARICOM Secretariat some years ago. Although the workshops were well-attended by statistical officers from across the region, the data available today hardly improved. The lack of sex-disaggregated data mentioned earlier—in the presentation on HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean funded by CAREC (Caribbean Epidemiological Centre), PAHO/WHO, and the Caribbean Development Bank—represents the norm. There is really no commitment to collecting such data because there is little agreement on the importance of this issue. It seems that for the bureaucracies in the region, it is sufficient for the governments to sign commitments, pledges and conventions. Taking action is an entirely different matter. Even when there is action, it is so ineffective it gives credence to those who dismiss the whole issue of gender equality as a gimmick.
My experience in setting up the Jamaican Women’s Bureau in 1975 was that a three-pronged approach was essential to effective action:
1. A well-placed and well-staffed mechanism within the bureaucracy with access to all government ministries;
2. Political support from the women’s organization within the political parties, especially the governing party; and
3. Strong autonomous feminist-oriented women’s organizations.
Working together, these three groups were able to generate and initiate strategies that ushered in real advances in bureaucratic arrangements, legislation and programmes within a relatively short period of time.15 The gender affairs bureaus have a crucial role in monitoring and measuring the implementation of MDGs, and this means three things:
* The bureaus should upgraded and their locations, reviewed;
* Their links with key ministries—health, education, labour, finance and planning, and foreign affairs—should be strengthened; and
* The bureaus have to have a strong relationship with women’s organizations, especially those with an activist orientation.
Another strategy worth examining is one that would link work on MDGs to work on gender budgets. The most effective work on gender budgets takes place at the level of civil society as well as within the bureaucracy. This work is just beginning in the Caribbean, and judging from experience in Latin America and elsewhere, a great deal has to be done to evolve a mechanism that ensures support to this within the bureaucracy. Here again, a link between those working on the inside and those on the outside is essential.
My own work in community development in the 1960s and 1980s and now with the Gender and Trade Network suggests that economic literacy programmes that enable women and men at the community level and in NGOs to understand how policy frameworks are influenced by global trends and agreements is an important base for the construction of proposals of policy alternatives that would lead to goals such as poverty eradication, advances in education, improved health and environmental protection—in other words, the MDGs.
All the MDGs are political issues, none more so than the goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment, and they will never be achieved if we continue to treat them as issues that can be addressed by purely technical means. No matter how good the indicators, no matter how accurate the statistics, nothing can be achieved without political will. A women’s movement with an analysis of power and a set of carefully thought-out strategies is essential to the achievement of the MDGs.
However, given that the MDGs are weak on the goal of gender equality and that the gender dimensions of the other goals are almost invisible, those committed to the advancement of women’s equality and empowerment, starting with UNIFEM and the women/gender desks and divisions of governments and donor agencies, to international and national women’s organizations, should consider putting their efforts into developing strategies for monitoring and measuring progress toward the achievement of the Beijing Platform of Action, rather than abandoning it for the MDGs. After all, the BPA is theoretically consistent,16 includes all the MDGs, and already has a constituency of support in an array of women’s organizations and networks, research and training centres, media and communications programmes and international campaigns, not to mention mechanisms within bureaucracies at every level already working on the follow-up to the BPA.
In order to benefit from the high-profile attention received by the MDGs as the new consensus framework for development discourse and assistance, work is needed to link the MDGs to the BPA in terms of targets and indicators. New targets and indicators drawn from the BPA—such as violence, sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality in the labour force, time use, etc.—will have to be added. This construction of new indices is ongoing. In Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) is working on a Gender Status Index and an African Women’s Progress Scoreboard, while in our own region, UNECLAC (the UN Economic Comission for Latin America and the Caribbean) is working on Indices of Fulfilled Commitments. While I do no know enough about these to know for certain whether they are linked to the BPA, my point is that the BPA is a better framework for addressing all the MDGs. Therefore, instead of abandoning this for a new project on gender equality, UNIFEM might support work that links the two. Strategically, this means that when others talk MDG, we must think BPA! We must substitute the Best Plan of Action (BPA) for the Most Distracting Gimmick (MDG)! Certainly, in the Caribbean, our resources are far too limited for us to spread them over a number of initiatives that are essentially no different from each other.
One of the problems with global targets is that they are not appropriate or easily applied across the board. As in the case of education in the Caribbean, the target or indicators may already have been achieved in a particular region or country, which makes the other targets or indicators appear “more important.” Each region must identify indicators and devise strategies that correspond to the resources and capabilities at its disposal. In the Caribbean, the goals of poverty eradication and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS must be the priority of those who wish to advance gender equality and empowerment.
Moreover, all of this must be done with the awareness of the ways by which neo-liberalism, religious fundamentalism and the male backlash have spread, thereby jeopardizing all the goals. We must develop an approach to the MDGs that allow us to use a redefined goal of women’s equality and empowerment as an entry point for addressing all the other MDGs. This way, women’s equality and empowerment might be seen for what it is: both an end and the means for making progress in all the MDGs.
This was the author’s presentation to the Working Group on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) & Gender Equality during the UNDP Caribbean Regional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Conference held in Barbados on 7-9 July 2003. Her e-mail address is <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>.
References:
Camara, Bilali. “Eighteen Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean: A Summary.” CAREC (Caribbean Epidemiological Centre), Pan-American Health Organization and World Health Organization
Clarke, Roberta. Violence Against Women in the Caribbean: State and Non-State Responses. UNIFEM and the Inter-American Commission of Women, 1998.
Howe, Glenford and Alan Cobley, eds. The Caribbean AIDS Epidemic. UWI Press, 2000.
Stuart, Sheila. “The Reproductive Health Challenge: Women and AIDS in the Caribbean”, in Howe, Glenford and Alan Cobley, eds., The Caribbean AIDS Epidemic. UWI Press, 2000.
Subrahmanian, Ramya. ‘Promoting Gender Equality’ forthcoming in R.Black and H.White eds. Targeting Development (London: Routledge) 2004
UNAIDS. HIV/AIDS Fact Sheet. February 2001.
UNIFEM. Progress of the World’s Women 2002: Gender Equity and the Millennium Development Goals. 2002
Vandwmoortele, Jan “Are the MDGs feasible?” UNDP Bureau for Development Policy. New York, June 2002.
Footnotes:
1 These include: (1) Halving extreme poverty and hunger, (2) Achieving universal primary education, (3) gender equality and empowerment of women, (4) Reducing under-five mortality, (5) Improving maternal health, (6) Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and (7) Ensuring environmental sustainability.
2 These include: (1) Poverty, (2) Education and Training, (3) Access to Health Care and Related Services, (4) The Elimination of Violence Against Women, (5) Women Living in Situations of Conflict and Under Foreign Occupation, (6) Economic Structures and Policies, (7) Sharing of Power and Decision-Making, (8) Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women, (9) Human Rights, (10) Access to Communications Systems, (11) Management of Natural Resources, and (12) Rights of the Girl Child.
3 While I have not had the time to review the data, we might note that the Caribbean Development Bank conducted a series of ‘poverty studies’ in the late 1990s and that these data were not disaggregated. It would also be interesting to see the data of other ‘experts’ at this consultation.
4 It is notoriously difficult to get accurate data on this. Roberta Clarke’s report “Violence Against Women in the Caribbean” prepared for UNIFEM and the Inter-American Commission of Women in 1994 highlights the problem.
5 Within three years of the report of the first case of AIDS, female and paediatric cases represented 23% of the total. There is now parity between the number of men and women with AIDS, and the spread of HIV/AIDS among women aged 15-24 is the highest for any age group.
6 The exceptions are those women too powerful to be ignored like Eugenia Charles in Dominica, Portia Simpson in Jamaica, and Billie Miller and Mia Mottley in Barbados. However, none of these identified themselves with the political agendas for women’s equality.
7 See UNIFEM, Progress of the World’s Women, Volume 2 on Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals for an assessment of progress on the MDGs and suggested additional indicators for the goal of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.
8 See paper by Ramya Subrahmanian on gender equality and the MDGs.
9 For example, the high proportion of families dependent on the income of women, and the high incidence of female-headed households.
10 A point of interest in the Caribbean is that women with limited resources often fare better in female-headed households than in one headed by a man. A study of women in Jamaica during the economic crisis of the 1980s by Lynn Bolles shows that when the woman is the sole breadwinner, a male partner is less likely to provide assistance in the domestic chores and child-care that the working woman needs. When there is a second woman in the household, she not only assists in household maintenance, but also engages in her own income-generating activities (e.g., small-scale trading, crafts or paid domestic work) to augment the household income.
11 It is disturbing that the presentation highlighting “Eighteen Years of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the Caribbean” does not use sex-disaggregated data in its chart tracking the rise of the disease, or in any chart other than a pie chart showing the male-female ratio. This only shows that the data exists but is not used.
12 The link between the right-wing Christian coalition in the US and the Vatican is clear in these matters.
13 Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) may have information on this. However, to the extent that PAHO, along with other UN agencies, has ‘bought into’ the ideology of neo-liberalism with its promotion of cost-recovery programmes in public health and the privatization of services as part of health sector reforms, the agency cannot be expected to present an unbiased picture.
14 The Caribbean Gender and Trade Network (CGTN), which is part of the International Gender and Trade Network, monitors the trade negotiations and is an important source of information. The programme of CGTN also includes research and economic/trade literacy. These are resources available to women’s organizations in this region.
15 Starting with the appointment of an Advisor on Women’s Affairs early in 1974, the women within the PNP were able to arrange for post to be converted into a Women’s Desk in the Ministry of Social Welfare, and within a year, into a Women’s Bureau in the Office of the Prime Minister. A full account of this experience is included in my Lucille Mair lecture delivered at the Mona Campus, UWI, in 2000.
16 It falls within a theoretical framework of social reproduction, which relates to the realities of women’s lives and the ways in which women organize.
Source: <http://www.dawn.org.fj/regional/docs/peggymdgpaper.doc>
The Imprint of Nationalism and Fundamentalism on Sexuality
I would like to share with you some ideas and experiences about the relationship between nationalism, fundamentalism and sexuality in Latin America. When I refer to “fundamentalism,” I follow the definition I learnt from my colleagues in Women Under Muslim Laws, that is, fundamentalism as the use of a distorted version of religion and/or culture to maintain or achieve political power.
In Latin America, the relationship between nationalism and fundamentalism has a very long history. It started with the indigenous empires that were ruled by an alliance of priests and warriors. Those empires subjugated other indigenous nations; exploited them economically, and offered women and men from the defeated nations as human sacrifices so their gods would grant them even more power. They tried to uproot all customs that did not fit with the empire’s militaristic and hierarchical vision, such as the power held by women in many of the subjugated nations, or the diversity of sexual practices and identities.
It continued with the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, with the genocide perpetrated by the military on the bodies, and by the catholic priests on the souls, sexualities, artistic expressions and languages of indigenous peoples in Latin America. The church and the military became allies again to traffic female and male slaves from Africa, who were subjected to the same genocide to destroy their cultural, sexual, religious and linguistic practices. During colonial times (before the 19 century), the catholic church, with the support of the secular power, persecuted and murdered hundreds of women that practiced their sexuality outside marriage (with men or with other women), male homosexuals, as well as religious and political dissidents, to preserve “natural order and public morals.”
With the 19th century came the builders of the new American nations, free from Spanish rule but slaves to English capital. The states that exist today in America were created, and nations had to be made up for them. That is how flags, national anthems and legends came to be—all of them of a military nature. All American national anthems are war songs.
The fundamentalist use of religious symbols is also common to all our countries: a virgin who incarnates the spirit of the nation, who goes to war with the troops, and to whom the national flag is consecrated. The indigenous, Afro and mestizo genocide continued, because the new nation-states needed more land and more wealth. Migrants from Spain, Italy, Russia, China, Japan, as well as Slavic, Arab and Jewish people without states, came in droves to the continent. The nations that were making themselves up needed homogeneous and strong identities, so the migrants were also forced to silence their languages, customs and particularities to be included. Church, police and medicine came together to persecute, torture, and in some cases, murder any person who wanted to live her or his sexuality outside the “natural order and the public moral,” as preserving these was key to building and then preserving the new nations.
With the 20th century came the USA empire, to impose the rule of McDonald’s and Coca Cola, of structural adjustment plans and privatisations. The military contributed with the “war against subversion” that meant death, prison, torture and forced exile for hundreds of thousands of people fighting for social justice. With some remarkable exceptions like Brazil or Chile, most of the catholic hierarchies in the continent joined in and blessed this new genocide, which was deemed necessary to preserve the “moral order” of the nation. They spread the idea that political dissidents also lack morals and engaged in a disorderly sexuality—something that was not true, because revolutionary groups were as puritanical and militarist as the system they were trying to destroy. It is worth noting that libertarian movements—from women to sexual dissidents— that started with much strength in the 1960s and 1970s were eventually “erased from the map” due to the urgency and violence of the genocide against fighters for social justice. It took almost two decades to recover the possibility to talk and organise politically around the issues of sex and gender, and when it happened, it was not in the quest for “sexual liberation” but of “sexual rights.”
A product of the alliance between the sword and the cross still very much in force is the idea of “public morals.” All over Latin America, trans people are arrested and tortured because their presence in the street is enough to offend “public morals.” A gay pride parade is forbidden for that same reason.
Penal codes in all our countries, as well as international human rights treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights itself, condone such violence because they mention “public morals” as a valid reason to restrict freedom of expression, including the expression of one’s gender identity. No law defines what is understood by “public morals.” It is the church, as embodiment of the nation’s soul that does so.
The empires—all of them—are always militaristic and puritanical because their strength is based on the control of people’s bodies, minds and wills. Most nations dream of becoming empires, and do their best to be as effective in controlling their people as the empires.
Nations dreaming to become empires—both those that achieve their dreams and those that do not, both those that were made up to fill up a state and those we can not remember when they them made up—all of them share some myths about their origin that justify their alliance with fundamentalism. In the origin that nations dream for themselves, there is always Nature and God.
The context, however, is not Nature as something we are part of, but as something foreign to us, something given to us by God, to serve Him through Her. And who knows what God desires? His representatives on earth, of course. They will tell us what the “natural” uses of Nature are, and these are only those that please God. As we are talking of an imperialistic logic here, of a logic of servitude, those “natural” uses will be exploitative: sexuality is for reproduction; the body is for work; animals, to be eaten or kept as pets; plants, or decoration; and earth, water and air, to generate wealth. Any other use of “nature” is “unnatural.”
How strongly are nation and nature related is seen when somebody becomes part of nation (acquires a nationality). We then say she or he became “naturalised.”
Contrary to what happens in Nature, where almost everything changes, grows, dies, mixes and mingles, in the human imagination, what is “natural” like the nation is that which does not and can not change, and that which is one. Nation is one people, one blood, one language, one race, one national anthem, one flag, one voice. Nation has always been and will always be.
Religion, which is inseparable from nation (there are no secular nations), is also one: one god, one book, one interpretation of that book.
In this context, sexuality is also one: for each person, there is only one sex that is possible and acceptable, one sexual preference, one sexual practice, one purpose for sexuality, one life stage to be sexual. All of that has been decided by Nature in such a way that pleases God.
It is difficult to be human. It’s scary. Because in fact we are alone, we never really get to fully know anybody—not even ourselves. At the most we can touch, for a moment, the mystery that other lives are, for a moment of love, friendship, ideological or artistic or spiritual communion, sexual pleasure. But only barely.
Then we are again alone, we will die and we have no way of knowing what happens to us half an hour from that moment. We fear everything that we can not control, and that is almost everything, even though we like to imagine it is not so much so. In some issues, we might fool ourselves but in others, like sexuality, it is impossible. Here, control fails us in seconds before a desire, a dream that we would have never thought ourselves capable of, and suddenly there it is, happening to us. That is why the alliance of the cross and the sword that maintains empires is founded on our loneliness, our fragility, our need for warmth and approval, our vanity that makes us need to feel part of something eternal and transcendental. What this alliance controls the most is that part of life most impossible to control, the part we fear the most: our sexuality. We thank the cross and the sword for protecting us from what we can not control by obeying, by being part of their institutions, by believing that we need institutions to mediate between us and the chaos of life, uncertainty and death.
Is it possible to attend to those fears and those needs in a different way? Yes. It is possible to base our sense of belonging to a particular place on the planet in values that are not militaristic or imperial, and do not need the protection of states, churches or dogma. It is possible to attend to those fears and needs in the way the air feels at home, the food, the stories, the jokes that need no translation, the songs our mothers sang and we know by heart without ever having decided to memorize them. It is possible to experience sexuality as play, communication, exploration, deep respect for our own body, its rhythms, its mysteries, its desires, and for the body of the other woman, other man, other trans person—or women, men, trans persons—that are honouring us with their surrender for a single night, for a couple of nights, for their entire life.
It is possible to demand a redefinition of “public morals,” one that comes from people and communities, one that we agreed on after sitting together and talking about the boundaries we want to put on the way we behave in public, shared spaces. It is possible to build social movements like the Zapatista movement that articulates a strong claim not just for one culture but the right of many cultures to exist, for “a world with many worlds inside,” as they put it.
In Zapatista communities, girls are no longer kidnapped and forced to marry at 12, as was the custom before, because the women have decided that they want to choose when and whom to marry, if they want to. As far as I know, the Zapatista movement is the only social movement in Latin America that not only speaks of women and men, homosexuals and lesbians, but also of transsexuals. There is a Zapatista passage that best illustrates how the movement links sexual, ethnic, economic and politic forms of resistance:
Let us name any corner of the planet, and let us be persecuted together with the homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals there; let us resist together with women the fate of silly decoration that is imposed on them; let us resist with the young the machine that crushes down rebellion and non-conformity; let us resist with workers and rural peoples the bleeding that neoliberal alchemy imposes on them, to transform death into dollars; let us walk on the footsteps of the indigenous peoples in LA and, with their feet, let us give the world a rounded shape, so it can roll. Let us name and look at a world that does not exist right now, but that will start to exist in our words and in our eyes.”
The Future of Feminist Proposals in the Context of Globalisation
When I first started working in NOVIB, the Dutch Oxfam, not long before the 1995 Beijing UN Women’s Forum, I used to worry about my role, With which hat should I be speaking, my lesbian/feminist one, or as the director of a Dutch development agency? The nice thing today is that I do not have such worries anymore. I can speak, and am speaking to you with all my different hats on: feminist and lesbian activist, organisational consultant and development director.
Because we as Oxfam are working towards Global Equity, with a rights-based approach, we believe everyone should have: the right to a sustainable livelihood; the right to basic social services (health and education); the right to life and security (both in emergency and conflict situations and at home); the right to social, cultural and political participation (to have a say); the right to identity, ensuring that all these rights apply to women and whichever so-called ‘minority’ (including therefore my own lifestyle). And happily, this coherence is not only in me, but very much in the NOVIB and OXFAM development policy and practice that we stand for.
It is from my combined hats, and from a passionate ‘fair globalist’ (instead of ‘anti-globalist) position that I will try to give you some reflections on the future of feminist proposals in the context of globalisation. I will do so in three steps. First I will present a very quick rough sketch of feminist achievements in the last thirty years. Then I will present an analysis of why we possibly feel we have lost our focus or even the movement. Finally, I will describe some of my hopes about future feminist positioning.
1. Feminist Achievements in the Last Thirty Years
It is hard to realise today that before and during the preparations for the first UN Women’s Conference in Mexico, in 1975, women constantly met with strong resistance (politically, socially, from the media) for wanting to suggest that it was mistaken to say that the position of women was one and homogeneous. Much the same as we are now being wrongly dubbed as an ‘anti-globalisation movement’, feminists at the time were called ‘man-haters’ and lesbians. By the way most of them back then saw this as a serious accusation to be denied fervently whilst proclaiming everlasting loyalty to husband and children. Lesbianism was first openly discussed in the Social Forum in Copenhagen, in 1980, and at official UN level only at the third UN Women’s Conference in Nairobi, in 1985. But in 1975 the news did get out: women exist, are not happy about the deal they are getting, and demand their space. The women’s issue was put on the international agenda, even though not much homework had as yet been done.
By Nairobi 1985 this was remedied, and the facts were more truly staggering than imagined. It is to that conference that we owe the facts about women doing 80 percent or 90 percent of the world’s work, and owning 1 percent of the world’s property. And that 70 percent of the poorest in the world are women: lacking the most basic health and education, let alone decision-making power. The tensions in Nairobi were felt along the North/South divide. Our own non-stop lesbian workshop was seen as western and decadent by many (but not all) southern participants, although we argued that the right to decide about one’s own body was the most basic human right, closely connected to issues of reproductive rights and violence.
Ten years later, at the UN Women’s Conference and NGO Forum in Beijing, a solid programme of demands and action was agreed to following up on the World Social Summit in Copenhagen in that same year. The social agreements and pledges made at those two UN conferences, underwritten by nearly all countries in the world, stand today as a clear testimony that, by now, we know very well what problems women face. We also know how to solve these problems. And we have worldwide political agreements, even on issues of sexual orientation.
Outside the UN and NGOs movement, women’s lives have changed significantly in the sense that there is growing women’s leadership in the mainstream movement—social and government institutions—and that the percentage of women moving up in the corporate sector is growing. Women living in poverty are organising, and demanding and getting their rights: in small credit and saving schemes, microenterprise, more basic social services, more participation in local rural and urban decision-making. Women are organising against sexual violence, against AIDS, against trafficking. Women are using the Beijing agreements the world over to claim and demand their due. And the concept of ‘gender-equity’ has slipped into the most mainstream thinking from political parties to corporate management writing and personnel policies.
Books about social movements of the twentieth century hail the women’s movement as one of the most successful, with concrete results and progress visible. And without wanting to be partisan about it, it is my belief that much of this success was generated by strong, very hard-working feminists within the women’s movement, and quite a few lesbians among them.
Why then, are feminist groups so often complaining about lost battles, lost momentum, lack of direction, lack of energy and insufficient participation and leadership from young women? My own view is that this is partly generational, partly burn-out and partly a conceptual/strategic problem. It is this last issue that I would like to address.
2. Why Do We Feel We Have Lost the Movement?
Perhaps a slightly different way to look at what the feminist movement has or has not achieved is to make use of some analytical tools, which come from the world of conflict resolution. This work helps to analyse conflicts (and the potential solutions) at three levels:
* conflicts of means: who gets how much of what?
* conflicts of values: what do you consider right and wrong?
* conflicts of identity: who are you, and does this meet with acceptance?
2.1. Much of the words and work done by feminists (but also by development agencies and governments) is connected to the language dealing with ‘conflict of means’, or limited means. This is basically the conceptual thinking indicating that some (few, rich, western, white, male, etc.) are getting more, and too much more than a much larger majority of others (many, poor, southern, female, etc.).
This is absolutely valid. Governments the world over committed themselves at the Social Summit in Copenhagen, in 1995, to have reached 13 goals in 2000 (about infant mortality, life expectancy, education, water and sanitation, health services etc.). These commitments are all about which part of the population of which country gets how much of what. The Social Watch reports, which monitor the process of these commitments yearly, show convincingly that although progress is being made, more than half of the 160 countries have clearly not yet reached the very modest goals they set themselves in 1995. A significant number of countries have in fact slipped backwards. For instance, adult literacy went down only slightly, and although female literacy showed some improvement, it is still at a critically low level in many countries.
This is not, by the way, because the means are not available to meet these aims. Take the money western governments presently spend on agricultural subsidies, which too often leads to unfair dumping of agricultural products on southern markets to the detriment of local farmers. A mere 3 percent of those agricultural subsidies, some 10 billion American dollars a year, could mean schooling for the 125 million children who receive no education at all today. Similar arguments can be posed for women’s access to loans, credit, property and land rights.
There are visible improvements in the last decades, national laws have improved, loan schemes and banks have discovered how reliable women are, and yet the gains are still far too slight, and the gender gap in ownership of property is still immense.
Perhaps the conflict of means that we as feminists have addressed most forcefully is the division of power. It has been fought over mostly at three levels: the issue of violence against women, the division of labor within the home, and the issue of women’s leadership at civil, government and corporate level.
Feminists have realised that violence against women (and children) is connected to inequality of power and a huge amount of effective work has been undertaken to surface the extent of the problem, to help women to protect and heal themselves and to increase their level of assertiveness and personal power. Survivors of violence have become teachers and beacons for other women.
The sharing of child care and domestic chores has certainly been a major issue in the western world and role patterns have changed significantly although inequality continues. Similarly, women have worked hard to engender their organisations, to fight for equal wages and equal opportunities for women. With considerable success, we increasingly see women taking responsibility at management levels.
All the work I have been describing is tough, ongoing, and by no means finished. In this context, conflicts of means are solved in three ways: by creating more, by sharing more fairly, or by fighting it out.
Many of us are working in these ways. Our focus and goals are usually clear, and although we do not win all our battles, we are getting results. There are still new insights being learned: such as the importance of dealing not only with the victims, but also with the perpetrators of domestic violence. This is like the knowledge we gained within our gender work within NOVIB. We discovered that the partner-organisations, who showed no interest in or ability for improving their inadequate policy and practice in the area of gender, turned out to be the weakest partners in terms of organisational systems and accountability as well.
However, I do not think ‘getting our fair share’ should be our ultimate goal as women and feminists. We are certainly no longer the only ones working ctowards these goals, they have become mainstreamed in themselves. For we are also facing conflicts of values, and of identity. It is in these areas, I feel, that the feminist movement may have lost its way and possibly itself as a movement.
2.2 Conflicts of value are about more than ‘who gets what’. They are about what we consider right or wrong, good or bad, about how we want to live, about what kind of world we want to live in.
It is at the level of values that the global debate is at its most heated today. Whereas at the UN Women’s Forum (Nairobi 1985), strong tensions arose between northern and southern women, at the Beijing Forum (ten years later) a tough fight was on between progressive and conservative forces. Women of conservative and fundamentalist Christian, Catholic and Islamic persuasion fought back hard against the proposals of their progressive sisters. It has always fascinated me that the border fights in this conflict are about the right of a woman to take control over her own body. All the most emotional issues of value-conflict are dealing with this underlying question: be it about contraceptives, abortion, sexual preference or female genital mutilation.
Beyond this, the value-conflict is about the gender role-patterns. Conservative men want their daughters and wives under their control, fundamentalists of whichever religion usually want them permanently in the home, preferably with little or no education. The underlying value conflict is about who OWNS the woman, and particularly her body, but often also her work. In polygamous communities this becomes very clear, because a man in the rural areas can afford another wife when his wealth increases, but taking another wife also increases his wealth because that second or third woman and her children will work a new piece of land for him. In this sense he can count his property and his status by naming his amount of land, his number of goats or cattle, and his number of wives. A similar but more hidden pattern in western countries sees rich or powerful men ‘keeping’ a mistress.
The values on which the universal declaration of human rights was built (and also the International Labour Organization (lLO) and other subsequent UN agreements) should obviously apply to women. This has been internationally agreed to, time and time again. Yet the reality of oppression of women seems to create less emotional waves than the issues around women claiming back the ownership over their own bodies in issues such as abortion and sexual preference. I remember how upset I felt when more than a year ago Kofi Annan spoke out against the Taliban for blowing up the ancient Buddhist statues more strongly than I had heard him argue about the oppression and destruction of a generation of women in Afghanistan during that decade.
In a way, we could argue as feminists that we have made good headway in convincing many more women and men worldwide that women are more than property, and have a value in ourselves. That we are not inferior to men, or predestined to be locked into particular role-patterns. Those women have the right to decide how to live their own lives and what to do with their own bodies. That men and children too benefit from the sharing of childcare.
On the other hand we all know that feeling of losing ground again. When young women choose to stay home to look after children. When increased work-pressure overloads women who try to run a job and a family. When we see the results of fundamentalist neo-liberal economic policies during the Asian crisis or now Argentina’s, and we know how this will affect women living in poverty in those countries. When we see all those political promises for aid (the international 7 pledges), we know they are affordable and yet politicians, the world over, do not put their money where their mouth is. When we speak to women time and time again who have worked so hard to get their very reasonable aims (for instance for health or education) implemented, and who are losing faith, withdrawing, feeling tired or burned out, at times retreating into cynicism. Whilst we know that we can only win the battle of values by having energy, staying alert, continuing to lead, to convince and to connect with old and new allies.
2.3 This brings me to the deepest conflict of all, the conflict of identity. Back in the late seventies I was involved in analysis of educational material, uncovering the ‘hidden curriculum’, the instilled identity images of girls and boys. Similar work has been done and still needs to be done to uncover the underlying ethnic stereotyping and racism.
Apart from all the well-known gender stereotyping, the main lesson back then was that boys and men are always ‘DOING’ something (football, adventures, etc.), whilst girls and women were always ‘BEING’ something (sweet, pretty, bitchy, etc.). It struck me then, and never has stopped bothering me that much of our feminist literature carries these same identity-assumptions, this same hidden curriculum in it. Men are usually described as the actors who are responsible for having created this unfair world, who abuse women, and who do or do not support us. Women are still too often described as the passive partner in the world relationships, worse still too often as the victim. In this sense we are still not taking on the identity of power and responsibility.
We know, particularly from the work done on domestic violence, that the perpetrator and the victim are caught in a repeating pattern of violence, that can only be broken if the victim breaks out, or is encouraged to take power, to organise support. When she relearns how to take control over her own life.
Somehow I feel this is what has happened to the feminist movement. We self-identify with, have become caught in (addicted to?) the role of the victim. We do not recognise enough the ground gained over the last decades, let alone that we congratulate those who have worked so hard to get us here. We do not identify and celebrate our leaders. We do not like, as a movement, the identity of power and success, we are more used to focussing on the next issue of discrimination and suffering. And to be honest, there is plenty our there. But many young women and many successful women of whatever age do not want to self-identify as victims, do not feel symbiotically connected to suffering, and do want to break free.
Of course there are plenty of women who do break through glass ceilings, who hold powerful or leadership positions within government, civil society and the corporate sector. They are leaders, but does the movement see them as (still) belonging to the feminist movement?
The issue gets even more painful when outside voices claim that the feminist movement has become privileged, closed, not inclusive to diverse voices and opinions. The reflex is to deny. Like the woman daily living in domestic violence, who denies beating her children. This is not the only response, of course. There is excellent thinking and writing emerging about diversity and feminism, about plural feminist leadership. There are women who are not only writing but also living such leadership models.
But my challenge about our underlying identity, about the self-chosen identity of the feminist movement stands. Can we individually and collectively shake off the victim identity, take power and begin to see ourselves as DOING, as actors? Can we see it as our responsibility, not anyone else’s, but our own responsibility to shape the world at whatever level we can? For it to become what WE want it to be: fair and equal, based on values of respect for life including the environment. Taking our feminist leadership position in whatever mainstream or movement position we find ourselves: from an identity of capacity and confidence, working towards a culture of respect for diversity and pluralism.
If we can, I do believe there will be a movement again, which can get energised and which can attract women (and also men) from all ages and backgrounds.
3. Hopes About Future Feminist Positioning
We have individually and collectively come a long way as women and as feminists. Many of us have had to overcome negative stereotyping, and social pressure not only as women, but also as women of color, from varying social backgrounds and lifestyles. In this we have had to fight ourselves free from a conflict of values which will resurface time and again, because long-standing xenophobia, racism, homophobia are not beaten that easily. Many of us have been involved in claiming our fair share: of income, health, education, decision-making power. For ourselves and for our sisters wherever, working hard to make the best of unnecessarily harsh and inhuman conditions.
Now it is time, in my mind, for many of us (many more than today), to take primary responsibility for shaping our world at micro, meso and macro level. In other words, to take feminism, the feminist movement and feminist leadership one step further. To be not only concerned about the shape of the lives of women, but to be concerned about the quality of the lives of men, women and children in a more general sense. To be concerned about finding solutions for the tensions and conflicts in the world, to take leadership in organisations, to look for ways to make our lives and our world more inclusive and more diverse.
For this we need to take on a different level of responsibility in our thinking. We need to recognise dilemmas, contradictions, difficult judgement calls. Let me take Afghanistan as an example once more. Through the years various women’s voices spoke and wrote about the atrocities women underwent at the hands of the Taliban. As a movement we wanted this stopped. But we did not identify what we wanted done, by whom, exactly. Obviously asking the Taliban nicely was not going to do the trick. If we wanted this to stop, what were we asking for: sanctions? A military intervention?
When the present bombing of Afghanistan started I heard and read feminist voices against it. Fine, but if the USA had not gone in to find Bin Laden, but rather a UN force had gone in to fight the Taliban because of the human rights abuses of women, would we have been in favor? How would we have dealt with the predictable fact that some of us would have been for, and some against? Could we face a similar dilemma tomorrow, and come up with an advocacy position that we can carry as a movement? How do we organise that?
The feminist movement has always worked strongly on developing consensus. But when, in my hope and view, many more women take power and move into positions of responsibility, we will have accept more wholeheartedly the existence of diversity in our positioning—and we will have to debate that diversity more freely, more openly. In order to deal with diversity, I believe we will have to learn to be more autonomous in our relationships to each other, less symbiotic. I may always extend a basic solidarity to any woman, but beyond that I will want to know her views, her commitment to change, her energy, her ability to take on responsibility. This is actually more important to me than whether this woman self-identifies as a feminist or not. Many women doing excellent work do nor.
What I really hope is that the debate on feminist leadership will become a reality. That more and more women will recognise the importance of being inclusive in how we organise, in recognising diversity and backgrounds and positioning. But I hope that this does not lead to endless attempts to discover consensus or inertia when predictably we cannot.
I hope that more and more women will take the lead from our battered sisters in other walks of life: that more and more women can and will take power and responsibility, and can begin to self-identify as strong and positive actors.
Some of us will, rightly, continue to work on women’s issues. Others are involved in mainstream activities. Women are taking leadership in the corporate sector, in government, in social services, in civil society organisations. What a wonderful opportunity we have to network strategically. But then we have to learn to negotiate amongst ourselves. To build alliances there, where our interests coincide. To look for win-win opportunities. To accept that we can agree to work on particular plans and goals together, without agreeing totally on everything.
This is important to me, because NOVIB, as a funding organisation, gets approached very often for support. I find it very uncomfortable when this somehow gets tied into loyalty questions, instead of discussions about the goals and quality of the proposals. Because it reeks of clientelism.
My dream for our feminist future, then. More and more women having the courage to take on more power and responsibility, and to work from the premise that we can indeed successfully change the world, not only for women but also for everyone. More inclusive organising, more acceptance of diversity, more open debate about differences, less need for a symbiotic type of consensus. More alliance building amongst some women, but also men, in all different walks of life. More clever strategising towards particular goals, such as education for all, or reproductive rights, including contraception and abortion.
The goals I will work towards, with many other women and men, are about a world of global equity, with the rights-based approach to development. I know there are many women who share those goals, those values. We must continue to gain ground in the conflict of means, we must get more to girls and women the world over: more education, more health, more income, more decision-making power.
I hope also to see more women standing up to take power and responsibility and leadership to work towards those goals: working from an underlying assumption of capacity, the ability to deliver, and the wish for success.
I then hope that we will get more clever and successful in strategising for change. And that women will begin to lead change in the world, and to find support: not because we self-identify as feminists necessarily but because we walk our own talk about inclusive leadership, supporting diversity. But particularly because we can design, plan, implement, and deliver, as feminist leaders in the mainstream or alternative circuits, with success. That is the kind of feminist network/movement I want to belong to.
Source: Challenges for feminism in a qlobalized World, paper presented at the Seminar “Global, diverse and plural feminisms,” organized by Agencia Latinoamericana de Información (ALAI) and NOVIB during the World Social Forum 2002 on 2 February 2002 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, pages 12-25
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Isis Resource Center holds one of the largest feminist collections of materials in the Global South. With 40 years of publication experience, Isis holds a vast collection.