Part I: Overview and Analysis of
Global Forces --
Framing the Questions
August 31, 1995
This
panel has confirmed my sense that we
are indeed a global movement because
although we are all supposed to speak
from our regions, Gita, Gina and Wain
have already given much of my speech.
But I am not going to pass up the opportunity
to reinforce what they said and to add
how I view this critical juncture from
what we used to call the "belly of the
beast" - Europe and North America.
This Conference is occurring at a critical
juncture in time throughout the world
because it is a time of transition -
a time when the ways of governing, the
ways of living and of doing business,
the ways of interacting amongst people
and nations are in flux. In my region,
Europe and North America, which has
a long history of war and domination
that has affected the entire globe,
we see this transition in what is called
the end of the cold war. We have now
what I call the hot peace. Rather than
a truly peaceful era, we are seeing
a shift in power blocs in which the
anticipated peace dividend has turned
instead into increased racial, ethnic,
religious and gender-based conflicts
and violence. In this escalation, the
role of women - questions of women's
human rights and the violation of women
as a symbol of their cultures and peoples
- has become central.
These
global changes are offering both opportunity
and danger for women, as in any time
of crisis. The opportunity is there
for women to offer new solutions, to
enter the public policy debate in a
way that we have never been able to
do before. And the danger is that even
those advances we have made in this
century will be reversed if we are not
able to take this opportunity to move
forward. When I talk about women entering
the global policy debates and influencing
those discussions, I don't see this
as totally separate from, but rather
building on, the work that women are
already doing. Women are usually the
leaders at the local community level.
Women are the leaders who have held
families and communities together in
times of crisis. Women have managed
budgets that were inadequate to raise
children and have managed to keep people
together in times of war and other conflicts.
And yet, as power moves up the ladder
from that local community to national
and international policy making, women's
voices and women themselves disappear.
It is precisely a movement to change
this that women have begun in the last
two decades - we have begun to demand
a place at the table of global policy
making as well as at the table in the
kitchen. The incredible failures of
international policy in this century
make it clear that women's expertise
and experience must be brought to the
global agenda if we are to see change
in the 21st century. Let me give one
poignant example - Somalia. For many
years during the various conflicts there,
women preserved the communities and
sustained daily life as they have in
many other conflict situations. Yet
when efforts were made to seek peace,
these women were not given any role.
They were not recognized as important
to the future. The international community
did not bring them into the peace-making
negotiations, did not ask them to participate
in the peace keeping process. I believe
that if these women had been legitimized
by the United Nations, by my own government
and by other governments in the world,
then we would have seen a different
resolution to that country's problems.
And so too in many other parts of the
world.
While
there is much talk these days around
the United Nations about global governance,
there is not yet talk about global governance
that includes our half of the population.
But in reality we already have a form
of global governance in the world. We
have an undeclared, unaccountable governance
by the global economy with the IMF and
the World Bank and various military
alliances making the basic decisions
that govern our lives. The other speakers
have described the impact this has in
the third world in terms of structural
adjustment policies. I would like to
add that in the North we see the dismantling
of social welfare in both formerly socialist
countries and in the West, which is
structural adjustment in our part of
the world. This dismantling of social
welfare has the same impact as structural
adjustment in that it sacrifices human
needs and human rights for economic
expediency. And it is women who suffer
the most in all of our countries from
these policies because it is women who
must make up for the services lost to
family and community.
Both
economic and cultural life are becoming
more global as they are more dominated
by global market values. Even in my
own life time in the United States which
probably seems very homogenous to most
of you, I have seen the erasure of distinct
geographical diversity and cultural
variations in the process of the creation
of a common MacWorld of consumerist
culture that sacrifices difference.
And now I see that process being transported
throughout the world. Women have to
find a better way for the world to have
development and find common ground while
still retaining cultural and other forms
of diversity.
While we have a global economy and a
growing global culture, we have no effective
global political structures for overseeing
these processes. On the contrary, in
the world today, we are facing two polar
opposites; we are told we either have
to accept the global economy with its
homogenized consumerist culture or we
have to return to "traditional" cultural
patterns and life. I believe that women
must devise a third way, a third option.
On
the traditional side, we see groups
that are reacting against the global
economy and their lack of control over
their economic life by clinging to local
identities which involve more and more
narrow definitions of who they are and
what they are about. We see the growth
of a narrow nationalistic ethnic fragmentation
into separatist enclaves where all "others"
are demonized and seen as less than
human. This is obviously expressed in
ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia
or in the ethnic battles in Rwanda.
But it is also present in the neo-fascist,
white supremacist forces that are rising
in the United States, France, Germany
and many other countries in my region.
Another
form of such reaction is the rise of
religious fundamentalist movements that
take a narrow patriarchal view of religion,
whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish
or others. These movements often cross
national lines and sometimes become
global forces, but they too are based
on a narrow call for identity that dehumanizes
"the other" as those who are not members
of their religious group. And therefore,
the identity, the commonality that is
developed is in opposition to and seeks
domination over others, rather than
building a spirit of solidarity, of
humanity and tolerance for those not
like oneself.
These
conservative reactionary forces, whether
nationalistic or religious or both,
all seek to control women. This control
is absolutely central to religious or
ethnic or cultural purity and identity.
If they cannot control the women, they
cannot ensure purity of race and identity,
and in that very key point lies the
vulnerability and potential strength
of women. Women must refuse these narrow
definitions and say that there can be
diverse cultures and ethnic identities
living together, that there can be tolerant
religions that don't have to be in opposition
to the other, that we can live in solidarity
and respect with those who are different.
If women do this, we can be the key
to denying narrow fundamentalist movements
their source of power and source of
regeneration. In this area, women must
speak more forcefully about how we are
being manipulated, and we must redefine
this debate and create the third force
that I mentioned earlier.
Another
reason women are key is that many of
the fundamentalist forces see the family,
women, and culture as areas that they
can control even when they can't control
global economic forces. This has fueled
the conservative backlash against women's
autonomy and against all minority "others"
who might live differently, such as
immigrants, gypsies, lesbian and gay
people, etc. This brings us to the question
of the very definition of the family.
Feminists have been accused of being
anti-family, but the conservative forces
have continually narrowed the understanding
of what the family really is. Women
must point out that we are pro-family,
but we are pro democratic, pluralistic,
non-violent, tolerant families that
are based on respect for the human rights
of all. Such families do not form the
basis for narrow ethnic enclaves which
will fight other families and other
ethnic groups but instead create the
basis for family members who respect
minorities and other groups.
The
same forces that seek to return women
to narrow definitions of our role in
the family solely as reproducers and
caretakers of the race are agitating
against the rights of minorities, whether
racial, ethnic or religious groups,
gay and lesbian minorities, gypsies
and immigrants. Whoever gets defined
as "the other" in your culture, that
is part of the way in which all of our
humanity is destroyed. If we accept
that any group is less than fully human
and therefore deserves to have fewer
human rights, we have started down the
slope of losing human rights for all.
And women especially should understand
this. After all, as women, we live in
a male-defined world where we are still
the original "other," and most of the
definitions of issues and approaches
in this world do not fit our experience.
For
example, many of us have worked for
the last few years to transform the
definitions and interpretations of human
rights so that they will recognize the
reality of the violations that women
experience every day. The original terminology
of human rights as we know it today
came initially from the experience of
the white propertied European/American
male who did not need to worry about
violence in the family or poverty because
those were not his problems. His human
rights needs, where he felt his humanity
was most violated was in relation to
the state, in terms of matters such
as his right to freedom of religion
and speech. While these issues are also
important to women and other groups
around the world, we have had to seek
a redefinition of human rights that
acknowledges that the first fundamental
of all human rights is the right to
exist, the right to life itself. This
requires looking at the right to food
and the right to freedom from violence
both in the home and in the streets.
Of course women also need the right
to freedom from violence from the state.
But many women do not even get to the
point where the state is the problem
because they are still so oppressed
in their homes and by the economy that
they are often unable to take political
actions which might put them into human
rights conflict in the political sphere.
This
work on human rights is part of the
process of redefining what women are
doing in relation to all the fundamental
questions of our global order - of democracy,
development, environment, peace etc.
We must look at these questions from
the point of view of women's lives and
from the point of view of all of those
who have been marginalized by the dominant
paradigm and definitions of these concepts.
In this way we begin to pose alternatives,
to move toward a model of society that
is not based on domination and alienation
and the divisiveness that we see in
the world today.
The challenge in terms of human rights
is to find a model that shows one can
have respect for the common humanity
and universality of the human rights
of every person regardless of gender,
race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation,
age, disability, etc., while also respecting
and creating space for the incredible
multicultural diversity that exists
among us so that everyone doesn't have
to become like the dominant group in
order to have rights. Human rights is
not static but is an evolving concept
that responds to how people see their
human needs and dignity over time. Thus
as people exercise their human right
to self-determination there will always
be a dynamic process of both expanding
the concept and ensuring that the exercise
of rights does not allow for domination
over others.
Women's
involvement in this human rights dialogue
is part of the process of breaking away
from the polarization that the global
economy has brought on between moving
back to the past to preserve identity
or moving to the future simply by accepting
the values and domination of the global
economy. Women must become more involved
in seeking to develop global democratic
structures for global governance and
in demanding accountability and respect
for human rights from those bodies like
the United Nations that are engaged
in these conversations. Because the
United Nations itself is the ultimate
expression of male domination, it can
hardly become the body that will create
global governance that respects women's
human rights. That is, not unless it
too changes. So as we enter into this
NGO Forum and send our messages back
to Beijing to the government conference,
one of those messages has to be that
women in the world are watching the
United Nations. We are watching, and
the UN itself is on trial here. We are
watching to see whether the UN can become
the governing body from which we develop
global democratic structures of governance
that fully include women or whether
indeed, we will have to go elsewhere.
Seeing
the importance of the recognition of
women's human rights and the need of
all these nationalistic and fundamentalist
movements to control women's sexuality,
reproduction, and labor helps us understand
why this conference and the Cairo conference
are under so much attack. These events
represent women's efforts to move into
the global arena, to have a voice, to
become a global force that must be reckoned
with. When I look at the list of the
global forces that we are to speak about
today, I realize the one most important
to me is the global force of women in
movement around the world today. This
global force of women around the world
has many different names, call it feminist,
call it womanist, call it women in development,
call it women's rights or women's human
rights. Call it many different things
because each of us has found different
terms that describe best for us that
reality of domination and change. Women
are the most important new global force
on the horizon in the world today with
the potential to create a more humane
future and a humane global governance.
For
women to be such a force, however, carries
great responsibility. We can not be
a movement that thinks and speaks only
from our own experiences. We began our
movement in this past few decades with
the concept that the personal is political
and with the need to put women's experiences
on the agenda because these were missing.
Women's issues, women's perspectives,
women's experiences were and still often
are left out of policy deliberations.
But if we don't want to be simply an
added on dimension, we must also bring
in all those whose voices are not heard
- all the diverse women and men whose
voices have been muted - so that we
show it is possible for this world to
hear from all its peoples. There will
be conflicts, but we must seek non-violent
ways to resolve them that move toward
the future and away from the militaristic
models of domination that the world
operates from today.
This
Beijing conference comes at a critical
time in the process of women becoming
a global force in the world and has
become in many ways a referendum on
the role that women will play in the
twentieth first century. In that regard,
it is also a referendum on the human
rights of women. It is about how far
we have come in being recognized as
full and equal citizens of the world,
with equal human rights and with full
responsibility for the future direction
of the globe. Whether addressing poverty,
education, health, violence, etc. all
of these are issues of women's access
to full humanity, to full human rights,
to the conditions necessary to exercise
political rights and to take responsibility
for enacting visions of where we want
to go in the world. This is what it
takes for us to become a global political
force involved in shaping the twenty
first century.
In
this process of empowering women to
become greater actors in shaping our
societies, women's human rights are
key in many ways. Perhaps the simplest
way to put this is, how can leaders
talk about creating a democratic, sustainable
development or a culture of peace and
respect for human rights in public life
if there is still pervasive denial of
development and violation of the human
rights of half of humanity in private
life? The violence and domination of
women that prevails at the core of society
in the family undermines any talk of
such goals. I believe that it is this
connection that women have understood.
The public and the private are not separate
spheres. As long as we teach violence
and domination at the core in our homes
and allow them to permeate children's
lives from the beginning, we are never
going to be able to end the militarism
and violence that dominates other relations
around differences of race or religion
or nationality. Children are taught
very early to accept domination based
on differences and to see violence as
an acceptable solution to conflict and
to believe that they have to be either
victims or the conquerors. To alter
such a dynamic and this violence in
public life requires eliminating it
in private life as well.
I
want to add that I think the United
States has a severe problem in its cultural
tradition of violence. We often refer
to cultural traditions as if they only
existed in the third world. One of the
traditions of the United states is a
tradition of violence. This violence
extends from the family to the media
to our sport stars to our militarization
around the world. And it is this cultural
tradition that we must counter in our
region just as women from other regions
challenge the domination of women in
their cultural traditions. So I ask
that we never again make the mistake
of talking about culture and tradition
as if they did not apply to every country
and every region of the world when we
speak of the changes necessary for the
achievement of women's human rights.
Finally,
at this conference, we must take one
step further into the global arenas
of this decade. I think of these UN
world conferences as global town meetings.
They are opportunities where we meet
and talk to each other across the lines
of nationality, across lines that we
don't often have other opportunities
to cross. But as global town meetings,
they are also occasions for us to show
the world our visions. Looking at the
world through women's eyes is an excellent
slogan for this forum because this is
the place where we can demonstrate the
visions of possibility that come from
women. In this week at the NGO Forum,
we must send forward to that UN conference
next week in Beijing the idea that we
believe the world can be transformed
by looking at it through women's eyes.
In so doing, we are opening ever wider
the horizon so that what gets onto the
global stage, into the internet, and
onto that CNN television screen reflects
more of reality and more of what women
believe can be done for change. So we
put the UN and the governments on trial
not only this week, but this year and
this decade. We are participating now,
we are watching, we are demanding, and
we are here to see if this can become
the arena of real participation where
global governance and policies can be
created with a human face that is both
male and female and where all the diversity
of both male and female can emerge.
And if this does not prove possible,
women must say to the United Nations
and to all of our governments, that
we have a vision for the future and
that is were we are going. We hope that
they will allow us to participate and
to lead. If they don't, we will take
leadership anyway and show that the
world can be better for all in the twenty
first century.
© Charlotte Bunch. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Center
for Women's Global Leadership
Douglass College, 27 Clifton Ave
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
USA
Tel: (1-908)932-8782 Fax: (1-908)932-1180
E-mail: [email protected]
DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR WOMEN'S
HUMAN RIGHTS
