From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgFri Sep 15 10:27:47 1995
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 01:01:00 +0100
From: Debra Guzman <DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org>
Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
Subject: WCW: Third World Network Papers: Key Issues

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## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN
## author     : ngonet@chasque.apc.org
## date       : 11.09.95

------------------------------------------------------------------------
KEY ISSUES IN THE BEIJING CONFERENCE:  A SOUTHERN
PERSPECTIVE by   Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

The world today has 1.3 billion people in absolute poverty
and 70% of these are women. Within the last 20 years the
number of rural women in poverty has doubled. This data is
consistently reflected in various UN agency reports. Three
UN conferences on women have come to pass and the fourth one
is just around the corner all bearing the theme "Equality,
Development and Peace". However, if we look around us, we
cannot in all honesty say that there have been substantial
improvements in many women's lives. This can be borne by
research results done by the UN, in the academe, and by
NGOs. Even the draft Platform for Action admits that "most
of the goals of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for
the Advancement of Women have not been achieved."

The 1995 UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) which was
released very recently, says that "..despite two decades of
material progress, no country in the world treat its women
as well as its men.." Mahbub Ul Haq, the main author, said
in an interview that "over the past 20 years, doors to
education and health have opened rapidly to women, but the
doors to economic and political power are barely adjar."

20 years have passed since the l975 Mexico conference and
women are still crying for equality, development, and peace.
However, these goals are becoming more elusive each day to
the majority of the world's women. Where lies the problem?
It is about time that we, in the women's movements,
seriously examine and assess our analysis, our strategies
and tactics, which includes our participation in the UN
conferences, and our goals. The central question to ask
ourselves then is, have we been addressing the main roots of
the totality of our oppressions as women?

The draft Platform for Action which came out of the second
and last PrepCom had 60% of it bracketed. The issues which
had biggest number of brackets are those on Human Rights and
on Health. During this Prepcom word has spread that the
women are out to carry further the ideology underpinning the
Cairo conference. The Conference intends to impose on all
governments of the world a secular humanistic philosophy
which promotes contraception, abortion, and sterilization,
diversity of sexual orientation, plurality of family forms,
which seeks to approve lesbian and homosexual relations. The
delegate from Guatemala proposed that the word 'gender'
should be bracketed. There were materials spread around
saying that the feminists are proposing that 5 genders
should be recognized - male, female, bisexual, homosexual,
and transexual. Obviously, these propaganda materials were
produced by the Right to scare the government delegates.

These issues were used to exacerbate the north-south divide.
Some G-77 representatives were convinced that the NGO women,
especially those from the north were being made use of by
the powerful nations to push their own agenda. Their
tendency, therefore, was to bracket the concepts and phrases
which to them were the agenda of the north, such as
reproductive and sexual rights, universal human rights,
abortion, contraception, etc.

WHAT HAPPENED IN CAIRO?

It is important to go back to Cairo for us to be able to
interpret better what has been happening during the whole
process of the Beijing conference. The Vatican and the
Islamic fundamentalists unleashed their lobbying prowess in
Cairo. The feminists got themselves trapped between the
Christian and Islamic Right and the demographic
fundamentalists or the neo- Malthusians. Many women's groups
allied with the population establishment and the United
States government to fight against the Religious Right.

The United States which was the bad boy in Rio during the UN
Conference on Environment and Development became the good
boy in Cairo. It became the champion of women's rights and
women's empowerment. I clearly recall how the northern
women's groups gave a standing ovation to Timothy Wirth of
the US State Department, when he gave his speech during the
First PrepCom of the ICPD (International Conference on
Population and Development) in New York.

There is a broad range of views by feminists of what
happened in Cairo. Some say that Cairo was a victory for the
women's movement because it succeeded in transforming the
neomalthusian population policy into a women's empowerment
/reproductive health approach. Other feminists think
otherwise. Drs. Vandana and Mira Shiva concluded that the
development amnesia and biological reductionism which
characterized Cairo spelt defeat for Third World women as
they are once again blamed for resource scarcity and ethnic
conflicts. They argue that because of the almost exclusive
focus put on the reproductive roles of women, patriarchy
gained an upperhand through the religious fundamentalists.

Betsy Hartmann of The Committee on Women, Population and the
Environment (CWPE) said that "The main victors at Cairo were
the proponents of the New Population 'Consensus' (NPC).
This consensus among population agencies, the environmental
mainstream, governments and multilaterals largely blames
poverty, environmental degradation, and political
instability on overpopulation, while maintaining that
women's empowerment is the key to reducing population
growth...Structural adjustment, free trade, consumerism,
corporate pollution and militarism were once again let off
the hook in the grand call for population stabilization as
the cornerstone of sustainable development.. The NPC largely
views women's rights - as a means to the end of reducing
population growth, rather than as ends in and of
themselves.."

This divergence of views is a manifestation of the tensions
within the women's movement.The earlier UN conferences
reflected the tensions and differences between the First
World feminists and Third World feminists. "The battle lines
were often drawn..over what constituted a feminist issue,
and therefore what were legitimate feminist foci and locus."
(Johnson-Odim, 1991).

Basically, the source of conflict lies on how the gender,
race, class, and national questions are articulated and
dealt with. Third World women activists feel that the women
from the north or the First World were "attempting to
depoliticize the conferences and implicitly construct a
women's movement and a feminism which confined itself to
issues of gender discrimination. It was part of the mission,
in fact, of the official U.S. delegation to Nairobi to keep
'politics' out of the conference, and instead concentrate on
'women's issues'." (Okeyo, l981) For many Third World women
activists, however, it has always been clear to them that
women's issues' are highly political issues because these
are inextricably linked to all the oppressions they have as
women, as Third World citizens, as people of colour, as
members of the marginalized classes, as indigenous peoples,
and as minorities.

This tension was highlighted at Second UN Conference on
Women in Copenhagen (l980) over the issue of female
circumcision. Angela Gilliam in her article "Women's
Equality and National Liberation" (l991) described it
succintly;

"One of the most tendentious and divisive points raised by
Western women during that conference concerned
clitoridectomy and the practice of infibulation of female
genitalia which still exist in parts of Africa and the
Middle East. This became a rallying point for Western women
and as they promoted this issue, it seemed to establish a
heirarchical relationship to their Third World sisters
through intellectual neocolonialism. It revealed latent
racism, because the form in which issues were articulated
was in terms of those "savage customs" from "backward"
Africa and Arab cultures. Underlying this formulation was
the implicit evidence of rising anti-Arab and anti-Islamic
fervor that was starting to emanate from Western countries."

WHAT ABOUT BEIJING?

The Beijing conference and the road leading to it  once
again show how gender has been overemphasized to a point
where class, race, nationality, and ethnicity, are obscured.
The draft Platform for Action does present a comprehensive
list of the different problems of women and an even longer
list of things-to- do. It also attempts to build upon, not
only the Nairobi FLS, but also on the final documents which
came out of the Earth Summit in Rio, the human rights
conference in Vienna, the Cairo conference and the Social
Summit. There are inconsistencies here and there but by and
large it does not significantly detract from the main
thrusts of the earlier documents. The latest reports which
came out of the Informal Consultations done in New York at
the last weeks of July, say that most of the brackets are
already removed.

Consistent with the earlier UN documents, however, it does
not present a coherent and honest analysis of the increasing
inequality between nations, races, classes, and genders. It
does identify "the persistent and increasing burden of
poverty" as the number one critical concern. However, it
does not categorically state that what is causing this
situation is the increasing hegemony of powerful northern
capitalist nations and their institutions and transnational
corporations. What it only says is that the "global
transformations of the world economy profoundly affecting
the parameters of social development.." What is even more
ridiculous is its assertion that "all types of conflict,
displacement of peoples, and environmental degradation, have
further undermined the capacity of governments to meet the
basic needs of its population." The effects of poverty
suddenly are identified as the causes.

Most of the recommended strategic objectives and actions
focus on ensuring women's equal access and full
participation in power structures and decision-making; equal
access to resources, employment, markets; and integrating or
mainstreaming gender perspectives and gender analysis. There
is nothing new or radical in the draft platform for action
which can make a difference in changing the world especially
for the 1.3 billion poor. What it does is to give the
illusion that by ensuring women's equal participation in
decision-making then things will radically change for the
better. This is a very dangerous proposition. WOMEN'S RIGHTS
BEING USED TO FURTHER FAN ANTI-THIRD WORLD SENTIMENTS

The experience cited earlier on how the issue of female
circumcision was used to heighten anti-Arab and anti-Islamic
sentiments, is being repeated in the whole Beijing process.
Women's rights issues are being used in the intramurals
between the First World and the Third World. China, a
fast-growing economy can be a bane or boon to the northern
countries depending on how wide it opens up its economy. In
the meantime, it is convenient for the US to bash China
since it still proclaims that it is socialist.

The United States is being projected as the champion of
women's rights and women's empowerment. China, on the other
hand, is portrayed as the foremost violator of women's
rights and human rights because of its coercive one-child
policy, its not allowing women from Tibet and lesbians to
come to China, its transferring the site from Beijing to
Huairou, etc.

For sure, at Beijing the CNN and the BBC will highlight and
sensationalize how women's rights are violated in China. In
fact, as the conference is nearing the amount of news,
bashing China increases by the day. China as the "yellow
peril" once again becomes the message. News about how human
organs are being traded in China, about women-slavery still
existing, pervasive female- infanticide, etc. are found in
newspapers all over the world.

This bashing extends to the whole of Asia, so the "barbaric"
and "savage" customs and practices of Asians will be once
again become the focus. The use of the UN Conferences to
highlight issues in the host country and region may serve
the purpose of stressing the imperative of giving priority
to gender issues and there should be no problems about this.
However, this is being done in a very opportunistic manner
and it has strong racist undercurrents.

It won't come as a surprise if one of the recommendations
that will come out of Beijing will be the installation of
trade- related women's rights. This will legitimize the the
imposition of cross-retaliatory measures or trade sanctions
to countries which are violating women's rights.

By focusing mainly on the violations of women's rights in
the Third World, the powerful northern countries can get off
the hook and continue recolonizing, homogenizing, and
imposing their development models and monocultures on the
whole world. Their roles in perpetuating and increasing
poverty which is the key problem for the majority of the
world's women is glossed over. At the same time, their
perpetuation of neo-colonies in the south in collaboration
with southern elites who are in power does  not come into
the picture.

The most blatant forms of commodification of women, and the
increasing crime and violence  brought about by the
expansion of the global market economy is not projected and
discussed extensively. Sex tourism, child prostitution,
massive export of female labour, is happening in Third World
countries because they are caught in the trap of foreign
debt and their economies are export-oriented and
import-dependent. Why are these issues not equally
highlighted as the one-child policy of China or female
infanticide in India and China, etc.?

We are not saying that China should be absolved of its
oppression of its own women. We should still raise these but
not at the expense of neglecting all the other issues
mentioned above. There is also the need to understand the
effect of China's entry into the global market economy on
the situation of women.

CONCLUSION

The Beijing Draft Platform for Action does not address the
totality of the oppressions of women, especially Third World
women. It is still captive to the economic growth and global
market framework. Its clear bias for gender discrimination
inevitably sidelined race, class, and national questions.
All the governments will sign on to it as it does not
question the basic economic framework which they are
implementing. This signing on will not necessarily mean a
victory for the women's movements. Even if it is targeted
that this should be a conference of commitments, the
contradictions between the strategic objectives and actions
set and the economic growth development model will make this
difficult, if not impossible.

What this tells us is that feminism which has an ideology
mainly based on gender cannot bring about the liberation of
women from all the oppressions they are confronted with.
Third World women should take the lead in identifying and
defining what a women's movement is and what should be its
agenda. This does not mean that there is no basis for
solidarity with the women's movements in the north.
Solidarity at this age of globalization and international
trade is more needed than ever before. However, the northern
women's groups must be willing to broaden their framework to
include not just gender, but class, race, nationality and
ethnicity.


                             -ends-