One in Three Women

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Those who are fighting for their own liberation and that of their societies are embarked on a long-term struggle. It is not a race for the sprinter but for the long-distance runner. Let women equip themselves to win this race.--Awa Thiam

March 8th, International Women’s Day (IWD), is a time to assess our progress in this race. It is a day for women and men to pause in appreciation of our common global struggle, recognize our achievements, and revitalize our energy for the next lap.

It was just about a hundred years ago that groups of imaginative women labor organizers and peace activists came together in Europe, the United States (U.S.) and Australia to promote IWD. The idea took off in 1975 when the United Nations (UN) formally recognized it, and before long it was officially sanctioned by heads of state and established international institutions. This article celebrates IWD by recalling important events in the development of the international women’s movement, with special emphasis on campaigns to stop sexual violence and abuse in intimate relationships and families.

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The first giant step in the global movement for change was to break the silence. Before the 1970’s, just about anywhere in the world, rape was a word women whispered, but rarely spoke aloud. Domestic violence, honor killing, eve teasing and date rape were not in our vocabulary. In England, the U.S., and Australia 1975 was a watershed year in recognizing rape and intimate partner violence as crimes. Publications about violence to women heightened awareness, which evolved into the establishment of crisis lines and shelters. Yet much of the world remained silent about abuse of women.

The 1975 Mexico City UN conference on women fueled the global movement to end discrimination against women. For the first time spousal violence and rape were formally recognized as crimes. Conference participants were bursting with excitement about our widening horizons through exhilarating, inspiring -- and sometimes troubling -- connections with women from all over the globe. Our differences, though often stimulating, also exacerbated tensions. Many Western women had never before heard of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), “bride burning,” or “honor killings,” and believed such practices signified the backwardness of cultures in the South and East. Participants from poor countries with histories of economic and cultural imperialism resented Western women’s ignorance of our countries’ roles in subjugating other people.

At the 1976 grassroots International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Belgium, more women broke their silence in testimony about the crimes they had endured. They came from Egypt, the Antilles, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Greece, Mozambique, Iran, India, Brazil, and many from Europe. They spoke of forced motherhood, compulsory non-motherhood, and persecution of non-virgins and unmarried mothers. They told stories of medical professionals perpetrating crimes, of persecution of lesbians, violence within families, economic discrimination, and many forms of violence against women including rape, battering, forced incarceration in mental hospitals, genital mutilation, and much more. An Indian woman stated that she had waited for a very long time to speak of the oppression of women in her country, where women, she said, “suffer from a triple sexual exploitation. They are exploited by the men in their families… discriminated against by the State, and… sexually victimized by the international system of male complicity and…by a system of male domination.” Over the next decade and more, her sentiments would echo throughout the world.

FORWARD MOVEMENT AND RESISTANCE

Inspired by what they had learned at the conferences, women from many parts of the world returned home ready to take action. But their African, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Latin American families and colleagues often dismissed the new ideas. They insisted the women were dupes of “man-hating Western feminists.” They accused Western women of trying to destroy others’ traditions, cultures, and religious practices. They refused to admit that some customary practices violate women’s human rights. They would not recognize that over time all cultures change. Nor would they accept the idea that women as well as men deserve a powerful voice in guiding that process.

Each phase toward achieving our goals seemed long and discouraging, but each has contributed to laying the track for our long-distance race to freedom and equality. It took several years for Western women to realize the commonalities among methods of oppressing women in each part of the world. Honor killings, genital mutilation, dowry murders, and trafficking in Eastern and Southern nations are different from date rape, marital rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence in the West. But they all exemplify an underlying campaign to deprive women of power. Women in each country began to see their cultural traditions in a new light and, slowly, some men began to admit that they place women under the control of men. Recognizing the injustice, some began to help women confront cultural norms, modify laws, and create new medical protocols. East, West, North, and South: a host of tireless workers carried out reforms at all levels.

Few people realized that in the years when little public attention was paid to women’s rights, dedicated members of the UN Commission on the Status of Women quietly worked on a universal declaration of women’s rights. At last, in 1979, they celebrated success with the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). By 2004, 177 countries would ratify the Treaty, the first critical step in developing a standard for basic human rights for women. The U.S. would become the only industrialized democracy that has failed to ratify CEDAW – along with Iran, Sudan and Somalia, among others.

THE SECOND DECADE

The Mexico City conference had been planned as part of International Women’s Year, but quickly evolved into a decade for women, and that decade culminated in still another conference. Each UN conference was composed of a formal body of governmental delegates and a separate group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals. The process of agreeing on resolutions pulled together voices of officialdom and grassroots women, reflecting the movement’s two-pronged thrust. Eventually, there would be four international meetings, each one creating increasingly detailed Plans of Action to change women’s lives.

As Western women prepared for the 1985 conference in Nairobi, a significant controversy arose. President Moi announced that lesbians would not be permitted to enter Kenya, and in response, some U.S. feminist activists urged a boycott of the conference, while others vociferously objected to that strategy. A third faction thought it would be disrespectful of African cultures for lesbians to be outspoken about their sexual orientation. Imagine the stunning surprise when members of an organization called ILIS dared to set up information tables on the University of Nairobi lawn. Even more amazing, the tables were surrounded by Kenyan men asking questions about what it means to be a lesbian. During the days that followed all workshops about lesbians were filled to overflowing by women – and some men – from many cultures.

Conference delegates officially stated that violence in families crosses all race, class, and national lines. They recognized domestic violence as a crime and passed a resolution urging all governments to monitor the incidents and severity of battering, to treat it as a crime and to enforce the law. Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, India, and New Guinea were among the resolution’s sponsors, dispelling the illusion that domestic violence is merely a “Western feminist” concern. In the following years many African women were galvanized into action for women’s rights, including local movements to stop the customary practice of genital mutilation.

On the final day of the conference women from 17 countries gathered for a last informal discussion of violence against women in intimate relations. Eager to find a way of continuing the work of the conference, we agreed to establish a newsletter, which we would call the International Newsletter Against Violence Against Women (INAVAW). A grassroots effort with no funding, INAVAW enabled activists to learn from each other as stories of both failed and successful actions spread from one newsletter to another. (INAVAW was edited by the author of this article.)

All over the world women who had never published an article had begun to teach each other how to create newsletters, journals and books. Santiago-based “ISIS International” published extensive bibliographies of women’s global activism and distributed their magazine about women’s rights across the world. In one issue the magazine described how women in Lima, Peru spontaneously organized themselves into a mutual defense group. When a man assaulted his wife the women descended on him shouting, “Let her go, you brute, don’t you dare to touch her.” The man backed out of the doorway of a small shack, arms raised against furious blows raining down on him. Outrite, a British feminist newspaper, picked up the story and then INAVAW reprinted it and mailed it to women in 42 countries. The word was out. Women all over the world could cooperate to stop abuse – though rarely with raised fists.

RAPE: A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION

An earlier wakeup call had come in 1971 when the world learned that well over a hundred thousand Bengali women had been raped by Pakistani soldiers during Bangladesh’s war of independence. Women throughout the world protested the rapes and were outraged on learning that rape victims were deemed unmarriageable and treated as outcasts. (In 1996 Pakistani feminist activists published an apology on behalf of Pakistan for what the soldiers had done to Bengali women.) Amnesty International was one of the organizations that began to pay closer attention to women’s rights and that eventually recognized rape as a Human Rights violation:

“In the wars of today, 90 percent of casualties are civilians, 75 percent of whom are women and children. A century ago, 90 percent of war casualties were male soldiers…. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against women says, ‘Rape remains the least condemned war crime’…. The use of rape in conflict reflects the inequalities women face in their everyday lives in peacetime. Until governments take responsibility for their obligations to ensure equality, and end discrimination against women, rape will continue to be a favored weapon of the aggressor.”

Reports and Action Plans from Nairobi made it clear that another global meeting was essential -- to refine analyses of the problems and to follow up on Action Plans made at previous conferences. Beijing was chosen as the venue, and 30,000 people attended it. The conference identified 12 critical issues of concern, including poverty, education, violence, and mass media. Delegates published what was widely regarded as the “strongest policy statement in support of women’s rights ever made by the international community.” “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” was written into the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and approved by the Chinese government. Still not satisfied, delegates gathered in 2005 for a “Beijing +5” meeting to assess and reaffirm the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

THE INTERNATIONAL CULTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The international movement creates a framework for advocates for abused and marginalized women to learn from each other across national and continental boundaries. It enables women from many cultures to understand the pervasiveness of discrimination and to work collectively toward worldwide change. It is possible here to mention only a fraction of women’s actions that every day all over the world change the way we live. Pressuring power centers at the highest levels and working at the grassroots, women are creating an international culture of human rights.

• South African women gather in their microloan groups, and agree to discuss the dicey topics of sex, domestic violence and HIV-AIDS. At first, some resist, saying that the topics “are not our culture.” But later they question who it is that creates and names the culture. Gradually, they realize that no cultures are static. Next they dare to see themselves as agents of cultural change by passing on what they have learned about HIV-AIDS, sexuality, and women’s rights to their wider community. At the end of the year they discover that incidents of domestic violence have been cut in half. The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights prohibits FGM as a “harmful practice, which negatively affects the human rights of women.”
• At the Beijing conference seeds are planted for Indigenous women from Asia, Africa and the Americas to increase their role in international decision-making and advance women’s human rights work. As a result of their work the Beijing Platform for Action specifically addresses the role of Indigenous women. Five years later at Beijing + 5 they present the UN with their own report and form the network, FIMI (International Indigenous Women’s Forum) to continue their work.
• The Organization of American States adopts the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against women. It is ratified by all countries in the Americas, except Canada, Cuba, Jamaica and the U.S.
• Nepal adopts an interim constitution recognizing for the first time women’s reproductive rights, and ratifies CEDAW’s Optional Protocol, which empowers women to bring claims of gender discrimination directly to the UN committee.
• India passes a law addressing domestic violence, targeting husbands, live-in partners, and family members who abuse or threaten women verbally, physically, sexually, emotionally, or economically. Punishment can be up to a year.
• China marks the 10th anniversary of the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women, the first comprehensive law that guaranteed women’s rights and gender equality. Women’s federations carry on educational campaigns to encourage enforcement of the law, locally.

We in the international movement may sometimes feel as if we are running backward. But a mere hundred years ago no one imagined we would accomplish the actions listed here. Our campaign has existed for only a historical blink, and it is the most revolutionary movement the world has known. Our race is long distance, but it also takes the form of a marathon, as women from different generations, and numerous nations and religions, hand each other the torch that continues to fire our struggle.

Ginny NiCarthy is a board member of Chaya, which serves South Asian women at risk. She is a Seattle, Washington psychotherapist (www.ginnynicarthy.org), political activist, and writer (www.abusedwomen.org).