Happy (?) International Women's Day
March 8, International Women's Day, brings a slew of news on women's lives and struggles around the world, most of it bad, and this year is no exception. The World Health Organization notes that one in five women is a victim of sexual violence by the age of 15, and that half a million women die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth -- a number that has barely changed in 20 years. The UN Security council has passed a non-binding resolution condemning violence against women in armed conflict, and called for women to be included in peace making, while Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon gave a speech deploring women's low status around the globe. Big whoop.
From MADRE, the women's human rights organization, comes a report on the rise of gender-based violence against women in Iraq -- assaults by islamists, honor-killings by relatives, torture in detention, rapes of Sunnis by Shia and vice versa, and more. (Laura Flanders at www.thenation.com has a full report on today's press conference on the report.) And from a coalition new to me called Women Can't Wait comes a paper slamming the major international anti-AIDS agencies for ignoring the role played by violence against women in spreading the virus.
The message I draw from these last two items is that women's equality belongs at the center of progressive politics, not just because women are half the human race, but because women's equality is not something that affects only women. Islamist attacks on women in iraq are an attack on secularism and democracy generally; honor killings corrupt the very idea of family. In the same way, failing to see how domestic and sexual violence and coercion affect women's ability to protect themselves from HIV has fanned the epidemic. if your husband beats you for asking him to wear a condom, you're probably not going to bring it up.
To end on a hopeful note, over in Brazil, Lula urged men to use condoms. "Sex is something everybody likes, it's a biological necessity for humans, so what we must do is teach,'' he said. ``We have to improve the gray matter in people's brains so they understand that women should be respected.'' Note to country: let's find a president who talks like this.
And one who acts like this: the AP has a story about the extraordinary changes Michelle Bachelet has been able to make in Chile's highly sexist and socially conservative society. Under her aegis, hundreds of childcare centers and women's shelters have been opened, women have won the right to breastfeed at work, penalties have been increased for alimony avoidance, and women have been admitted to the naval academy. In a country where women are grossly underrepresented in politics, women now hold half of all top administrative government posts, including the Cabinet. Most controversially, and despite bitter opposition from the Catholic Church, Bachelet has issued a decree mandating local government to offer free emergency contraception to girls and women 14 and older.
All this in just one year! Let's hope for more wonders in time for International Women's Day 2008.
Comments (13)
Thank you, Ms. Pollitt, for gracing TPMCafe with your writing!
March 8, 2007 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just wanted to second this, and I always enjoy reading you.
March 8, 2007 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you think about the complexity of women's global political challenges, it's worth wondering, Why don't we have an International Women's Month, instead of a single day? This day doesn't receive the publicity it deserves, and one day is over before you know it. Because even small symbols can affect the way we think about issues and can change the media's perceptions, I think something like this (or at least a designated week) ought to be considered. And Katha, great work as always.
March 8, 2007 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I often find it difficult to keep track of the ever-changing debates within western feminism on what truly constitutes freedom and equality. But I try to remain focussed on what seems to me to be the most fundamental fact: The roots of the subordination of women, wherever it occurs, are male violence and male control over the reproductive life of women.
I would love to see US progressives re-acquaint themselves with a more full-throated support of abortion rights, and recover the old spirit of viewing abortion and contraceptive rights as an essential component of liberation from subordination. For one thing, it would be good to hear them say "abortion rights" more often - not "choice". Whatever the intent behind the use of the latter term, it is a euphemism, and I fear it has contributed to the continued stigmatization of abortion, and reinforces the sense that abortion is something inherently ugly, dirty, monstrous and disreputable. Increasingly, even those who support abortion rights tend to do so regretfully, remorsefully, hand-wringingly, and shamefacedly - and they play into the hands of patriarchy by treating abortion as the proper occasion for morose guilt and self-flagellation.
But the vindication of abortion rights is the affirmation of an individual's absolute sovereignty over what takes place within the space confined by their own bodies. The respect accorded these rights should be celebrated - not treated as a dismal and disreputable necessity.
As I said earlier, I find myself reacting with ambivalence to many of the shifting trends of contemporary western feminism. Some of the supposed efforts on behalf of "freedom" and "equality" strike me as awkward efforts to achieve equal levels of unfreedom in our atomized and dehumanizing commercial society. Is it really liberation to deliver oneself from the obligations of domestic work into the oppresive, brutalizing regiments of capitalist work soldiers? Is one really more free if one has acquired the male social license to treat other human beings as objects for the satisfaction of one's own desires? Couldn't one argue that our society's many ingenious means of cultivating addiction to the ephemeral pleasures of the flesh is its chief means of chaining us to its grueling service?
Personally, I think the struggle for women's reproductive autonomy is not really a struggle for "equality" at all. For one thing, there is nothing equal about the roles of men and women in the generation of new human beings, nor should their be. The basic provision of new human beings into the world is predominantly the domain of women (as opposed to the rearing of children that have already been born, which can be a shared responsibility.) My deepest reaction to witnessing childbirth was the conviction that children are women's free gift to all of humanity. Nobody has a right to additional children, or a claim on any woman to provide them for us. They are bestowed on us as an act of "free grace", one might say. Enduring a pregnancy, carrying it to the fruition of childbirth, and then using one's own body to provide sustenance for the newborn baby are all supererogatory acts. So, in the sphere of reproduction women are and should be, by natural right, privileged and superior to men - not equal. The role of males in the creation of children, while still crucial, is marginal, and there is no sense in which they are entitled to an "equal say" in how and when childbirths occur.
March 8, 2007 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
"half a million women die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth -- a number that has barely changed in 20 years."
Assuming the number has remained constant at half a million, there has nonetheless been a considerable percentage drop, because the population of the globe has increased by nearly 40% in the last twenty years.
In other words, worldwide, a woman has today about a 28% lower chance of dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth than she had twenty years ago. This has to be called progress. The rates in the US and Western Europe have not changed much during that period, so most of the improvement is in the poorer countries.
March 8, 2007 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
What happens to Iraqi women when we pull out of Iraq and Religious fanatics destroy democracy and adopt Sharia and global Jihad. Women will return to Slavery, rape and death. How can we help them?
Since it is International Womens day, what better place to fight for women than the bondage of Radical Islam. What can we do for them on this special day?
March 8, 2007 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Women throughout the muslim world are suffering, not just Iraq.
March 8, 2007 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just read your comments Dan K.
I have a suggestion for you my friend.
Wake up and smell the coffee!
Liberation from subordination? unfreedom? Supererogatory acts? privileged and superior? Brutalizing regiments of capitalist work soldiers? Your disscussion has no bearing on anything in the real world, therefore however interesting to read has no substance or good advise to those you were addressing.
Half the woman in the world wake up hungry, exploited, in war and poverty. They have no medical care for themselves or their children and they cannot find a clean glass of drinking water.
Your "in the clouds" discussion has no place in their lives or in the reality they experience every single minute of every single day. For most of them survival is the "plan of the day".
I have lived in Asia, Africa and have just returned from eight years in the Middle East, the past three years in Iraq.
Womans liberation in parts of those places? Liberate them from hunger Dan and then desease. After that adequate drinking water would be nice and medical attention on your spare time. Liberate them from their real repressors, hunger, thirst and desease Dan. Then your lofty disscussion might have some real meaning. Look in the mirror Dan and ask that guy what he has done to rescue the people he writes about.
God bless you Dan and you concern, but that is only a gesture. Those people have more gestures than they know what to do with.
Stop the War and the killing, then work on the equality of the sexes. Getting shot at and fearing for your life tends to minimize the other issues in life.
MARSHALL ADAME
March 9, 2007 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Marshall,
War, disease, poverty and hunger afflict people around the world - men and women. But in addressing the problems facing women around the world and in our own society, it is appropriate on International Women's Day to recognize that in addition to facing those other evils, women are also subject to forms of oppression based on a relation of subordination to the men in their own societies and families.
And their subordinate status makes them more likely to face the brunt of all those other evils. The lowest-status members of a society always get the worst of whatever evils are visited on that society as a whole. It is bad to be hungry and diseased and shot at. It is worse to be hungry, diseased and shot at while being raped and beaten and subjected to serial pregancy leading to early death. And it is worse to be prevented by a patriarchal social structure from playing any role in the response of one's community to those other evils.
March 9, 2007 5:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Which women in the Muslim world deserve women's liberation?
March 9, 2007 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
This post does a great job of pointing out the linkages between violence against women and the spread of HIV. One correction: the campaign cited is actually the "Women Won't Wait" campaign. It issued a report "Show Us the Money: Is Violence Against Women on the HIV&AIDS Donor Agenda?" at it's launch on March 6. To read the report and learn more about this new campaign of international women's organizations dedicated to ending violence against women and the spread of HIV, visit www.womenwontwait.org.
While contrasting President Lula's candid talk about the realities of human sexuality with those of our current U.S. leadership is important, even more important, especially in the wake of International Women's Day, is that Lula has launched a program that promises to distribute 14 million free female condoms. Female condoms are a severely underused resource in the fight against HIV, and an investment of this magnitude in the only currently available female-controlled HIV prevention method is monumental both for women and for curbing the spread of HIV.
March 9, 2007 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Recognize that governments need to recognize that talent is independent of gender, and feel free to give women major roles in WMD development, as did Saddam Hussein?
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 9, 2007 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
What was her name, Chemical Alice or something? I remember thinking she was like Natasha of Moose and sqweeril fame.
March 9, 2007 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink