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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 16 - 22 March 2000 Issue No. 473
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles 'And God created woman'
By Faiza RadySometimes, it can be hard to know what International Women's Day (IWD) is meant to celebrate: the liberation of half the population of the world from the unprecedented violence and poverty which increasingly mar the lives of many of them; or the ongoing aggravation of their condition by the brutal transformation of society and the economy commonly known as "globalisation." Either way, women had little reason to rejoice on this 8 March 2000.
Men, for their part, even when well-intentioned, still don't really get it. Pope John Paul II took the opportunity to pay gallant, if unnecessary homage to the "female genius"; elsewhere, women's continuing struggle against exploitation and oppression was widely trivialised by symbolic acts of political endorsement as right, left and centre rushed to pay lip service to a politically-correct ideal. Meanwhile, feminist groups sought to show how little had really changed, vehemently denouncing myriad national governments for reneging on their commitments to promote equal rights for both sexes.
"There have been very few positive developments to advance women's rights," declared the UK-based human rights organisation Amnesty International. "Every year a vast number of women and young girls are mutilated, battered to death, burned alive, raped, trafficked for domestic or sexual purposes, primarily because they are female."
Among other long-standing traditions, tokenism was once again high on this year's agenda for IWD, in accord with the habits of big business. "Since the 1970s, corporations have tried to divert, dilute, sanitise and co-opt the revolutionary message and promise of 8 March," prominent feminist and political analyst Sue Davis told the press. "But they have not succeeded."
In a much-touted response to worldwide criticism of women's unequal role in editorial decision-making in the press and media, women were offered the symbolic opportunity to be boss for a day, and to take the place of "serious" (that is, male) writers. In Bolivia, women played at being managers and editors-in-chief of the electronic and written press, while in Albania all the front-page articles in the daily press were written by women. In Britain, The Western Mail newspaper even changed its masthead to the none-too-subtle Western Femail. It is gestures like these which must make the spirits of Emily Pankhurst and Hoda Sharaawi feel that all their effort and suffering was worth while.
Feminist rights groups, not surprisingly, had little time for such Boy's Own games, having their own more serious work to attend to. Inaugurating the World March for Women 2000 (WMW2000) -- a year-long global event sponsored by 3,500 women's organisations from 145 countries -- hundreds of women demonstrated in protest at the poverty and violence directed against women outside the UN's European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
WMW2000 is planning a series of demonstrations and other actions across the globe, culminating in a final concluding rally in Washington, DC., on 15 October. "We unite with women around the world," declared the North American organising committee, "to demand that leaders of the United States, the United Nations and its member states... work to eliminate poverty and ensure a fair distribution of the planet's wealth between rich and poor, and between men and women; eliminate violence against women and ensure equality between women and men."
Far from the hullabaloo of papal pronouncements and media publicity stunts, and for all its cultural constraints and contingent limitations, it is probably WMW2000 that comes closest to expressing the original aspirations of IWD. For, although the concept has since been watered down so as not to offend against the reigning pieties of capitalism, IWD was from its origin a socialist celebration.
The idea of choosing a special day to pay tribute to the worldwide struggle of specifically working-class women was first sponsored by German socialist and feminist activist, Clara Zetkin, at the 1910 Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen. The date, 8 March, meanwhile -- which corresponds to 23 February in the Russian Tsarist calendar -- was chosen by Lenin in 1921 to commemorate the 1917 strike by thousands of St. Petersburg women needle-workers, who took to the streets demanding "peace, bread and land." According to French political analyst Françoise Picq, this historic women's demonstration was one of the essential catalysts of the February 1917 Revolution, which was to lead to the establishment of the world's first socialist state.
And indeed, women's rights did gain significant ground in the Soviet Union and the Socialist Eastern European bloc over the subsequent decades. However, many of these achievements, particularly in ensuring equal access to education, health services and welfare benefits, have rapidly been lost following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, violence against women has since scaled new heights, unsuspected under socialism, in the former Eastern bloc, in the form of the booming sex trade, which forms an especially lucrative component of these newly "liberalised" economies. The sudden eruption of the cut-throat entrepreneurial chaos euphemistically referred to in the financial press as "emerging markets" has created vast pockets of poverty, destroyed jobs and dismantled public social security networks, in the process generating a burgeoning underclass ripe for exploitation by the multinational Mafia. An estimated 500,000 young girls and women have since been "imported" into Western Europe as part of a business estimated to be worth $7 billion a year in profits. According to the UN's 1999 Human Development Report, "The illegal trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation is a form of slavery and an inconceivable violation of human rights. Women lose not only their freedom, but their dignity and often their health." Yet little is being done to prevent this trade, let alone to tackle its root economic causes.
While some forms of violence against women take a modern, industrial form, others appear in the guise of age-old "ancestral" traditions -- by which is generally meant the distorted traditions which are the heritage of societies deformed by many centuries of colonial exploitation. Among these we may include so-called "honour killings." Committed in the intimacy of the family by male relatives, "honour killing" is defined as an "ancient" tradition, which requires men to uphold the family's reputation and honour by killing women suspected of illicit sexual activity.
On 8 March, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy took the opportunity to denounce in no uncertain terms "culturally-sanctioned homicidal violence directed at women and girls around the world." "For too long, some men have been getting away with murder," said Bellamy. "It is time for governments and local communities to acknowledge these actions as crimes and to act decisively to prevent the continuing murder and disfiguring of thousands of girls and women." But once again, there was no attempt to set such violence in its historical, social and economic context.
In addition to such crimes horrendous, women also suffer from the far more mundane, but just as deadly, rigours of abject and often inescapable poverty. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the world's impoverished people are women. According to UN statistics, average worldwide employment rates for women are only half those for men. However, even in countries where as many women are employed as men, such as Japan or the Netherlands, these statistics should be approached with caution. A recent UNIFEM study found that an increase in women's share of employment is not usually matched by an equivalent increase in women's share of the national income, because women are still paid less than men, even in the richest countries, and tend to be employed at the bottom of the occupational ladder.
America may have Carly Fiorina running Hewlett-Packard, and the European Parliament may boast more women deputies than ever before. But, at the dawn of the third millennium, for most women across the world, true gender equality remains an elusive dream.
