Here's a forwarded message from FEMISA. I think the topic is
particularly relevant to ECOFEM, so I decided to send it, although
it's rather lengthy. I apologize for any cross-postings or mailbox
fatigue. Stefanie
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 23:05:45 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Long Text: International Conference on Population and Develop
--
Here is a fascinating analysis of the Cairo Conference on Population and
Development which certainly contributes to a discussion last week, including
the disparity between Western and Third World feminism.
** Topic: Cairo-Empowering T. World women? **
** Written 8:04 PM Oct 10, 1994 by twn in cdp:twn.info **
Was Cairo a step forward for Third World women?
In this assessment of the International Conference on
Population and Development, the writers consider whether the
Conference contributed to the empowerment of Third World
women. They also xdraw attention to the important issues andconcerns which
were deliberately ignored by the Conference.
Drs Vandana & Mira Shiva
THE International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) has been celebrated as a victory for women. However,
to assess whether Cairo contributed to empowerment or
disempowerment of Third World women, it is necessary to
analyse what war was won, in terms of people and resources,
politics and policies, power and control. It is as
important to bxe aware of what was ignored and left out ofthe text as
what was introduced in it. It is in this
larger perspective that we weigh the outcome of Cairo for
Third World women.
The most important process underlying Cairo was the
disjunction of 'population' from 'development'. The signs
were clear early. The Draft Programme of Action of the ICPD
had already put into square brackets' those specific
paragraphs which dealt with the right to development, with
resources and the exnvironment, with poverty, the debt trapand unequal
trade relationships. (paras 3.16, 3.22)
The second equally important process that was
accomplished at Cairo was the conjunction of 'population'
with 'women's rights' which were reduced to merely
'reproductive rights' _ reducing the option of 'choice' from
the right to sustainable development to the right to
contraceptive technologies.
The two processes _ the one of development amnesia and
the other of biological xreductionism _ made defeat certainfor Third
World women. Cairo firmly placed the blame for
ethnic conflict and resource scarcity in the South on the
Third World women's fertility.
Development Amnesia
Tim Wirth, head of the US delegation mentioned at a
briefing in Cairo that agreement on the text was important
to set new goals for US foreign policy. He saw five issues
as controversial. These included references to reproductive
health care and reproductive rights, the references x to sexually active
adolescents, to family and other unions and
abortion. Since the last was seen as the most
controversial, the substantial negotiations began with the
chapter which refers to it. (Chapter 8, especially paragraph
8.2.5) However, no agreement had been reached and the
abortion debate was put off to the end when consensus was
reached. In his briefing Tim Wirth made no reference to
Chapter 3, which covers the right to development. The US,
therefore, did noxt expect a controversy in deleting
references to development issues.
This was also confirmed at a briefing by the Indian
delegation at which the representative said that development
was not germane to the population issue and India would not
be putting up a fight to retain references to the right to
development. Thus, both the governments of the North and
South put issues of economic and social justice aside.
The non-governmental organisation (NGO) community too
seemed to haxve forgotten about issues of equitable distribution of
natural resources and economic wealth. Most
of the NGOs present at the NGO forum were family planning
NGOs or representatives of women's organisations and groups.
The former are the delivery mechanisms of population
policies and programmes and they were therefore not expected
to raise a critical voice. The latter, victims of
reductionist biologism, end up ignoring the fact that women
are human beings, not just reproductixve beings and have political,
economic and environmental rights, not just
reproductive rights. [is this because of their ethnocentrism? The
limitations of their own experiences?] They also overlooked the fact that
population programmes violate the reproductive rights of
Third World women either through coercion or through the
introduction of hazardous contraceptive technologies.
Thus, women's groups who should have been the ones to
raise issues of women's right to development and right to
resources joined the governments of the North and South in
developmexnt amnesia. While being very active in resistingthe imposition
of the agendas of the religious
fundamentalists, they unwittingly become promoters of the
agenda of demographic fundamentalists who believe that all
problems _ from ecological crisis to ethnic crisis, from
poverty to social instability _ can be blamed on population
growth, and as a corollary population control is a solution
to all problems facing humanity.
The exception was the 'Women's Caucus' organised by
xWomen's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO)which
repeatedly tried to refocus the debate on population
and 'development'.
By ignoring global economic structures, and the clever
mechanisms by which they put the burden of adjustment on
Third World people, particularly women, the Governments and
northern NGOs at Cairo failed to address the real problems
women in the Third World face. The UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF
had proposed a 20/20 compact between North and South for
mobilxising resources for implementing the action agenda ofCairo. This
20/20 proposal requires the Southern countries
to increase their current level of public spending on basic
social services from the current average of about 13% to
about 20% which would yield two-thirds of the $30-40 billion
required for attaining universal access to basic social
services. The remaining one-third would come from donors if
they increased their allocations to basic social services
also to about 20%.
Howevexr, World Bank structural adjustment programmes are actually
forcing Third World governments to further reduce
their already meagre social service budgets including health
care. [even as these are increased by fundamentalists] While health budgets
are being slashed, epidemics are
spreading even in diseases that are supposed to have been
eradicated. India is currently facing an epidemic of plague
in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat and Delhi. There
has been a resurgence of several waterborne diseases like
cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hxepatitis and vector-borne diseases like
malaria, filaria, Japanese encephalitis,
kalazar and other diseases of poverty. These are the
biggest killers and cause of high morbidity in the Third
World, and are related to the polluted environment in which
the poor are forced to live. They receive the least
funding. Nearly two million people die of tuberculosis every
year, but only US$16 million is spent on this disease.
The World Bank, which was present in Cairo in full
foxrce, has emerged as a major funder of population control.
During 1969-70 it only spent $27 million on population programmes.
In 1987, the then President
promised this would rise to $500 million in 1990. In 1993,
it had already shot up to $1.3 billion. Preston has now
promised to raise it further to an annual $2.5 billion by
1995. The World Bank did not even once refer to the role
of structural adjustment in undermining health care while
increasing population contxrol financing. In spite of the rhetoric about
the changes affected
under the World Bank's guidance, which have resulted in
'pro-women' policies offering 'choices' to women and
coercion is the fundamental tool used to meet targets that
still exist.
This coercion has been extended to cover all aspects of
survival. Access to natural resources vital for survival is
being made conditional on women offering themselves to
becoming targets to family planning programmes.
'Lastx year, I was privy to a conversation between the Collector and
representatives of a group of villages who had
gone to complain about a serious water shortage. The
response was the same, 'You get me the cases, I'll take care
of your water problem.' Which is fine, except that
conversely it means, 'You didn't 'cooperate in the family
planning programmes, so sweat it out for water.'
Thus, in Rajasthan, there is a military style operation
on to meet targets. The village official,x the patwari,makes people
'an offer they cannot refuse' _ accept family
planning, or your land will be taken away. Acceptance of
family planning is also being tied to housing schemes for
the poor to which they are entitled even without such
acceptance.
'It's much easier to keep the patwari in good humour, by
driving your wife (or sister-in-law) to the camp to get
operated, even though she may have different ideas. So it's
never the women who are motivated _ they're the targets, xthe numbers that
decorate the Confidential Reports of doctors,
patwaris, and Collectors.'
Vehicles are despatched to different destinations to
pick up (and drop back) 'acceptors' and bring them to
camps, where out station doctors operate on them;
motivators and 'acceptors' are given on-the-spot payment
of 'incentives'. The responsibility of the medical
personnel ends here. Even in cases of sterilisation, the
removal of stitches and other post-surgical theraxpy are not considered
the responsibility of the surgeon who did
the operation; the victim is left to fend for herself.
The World Bank has cleverly redefined the 'population
and development' sector as 'population and women', thus
making invisible the destructive impact of its policies on
the lives of Third World women and ironically appearing as
a champion of women's rights.
Viewed in the light of the development amnesia that
afflicted the population debate at Cairo, it is evidexnt thatThird World
women lost the war by losing their right to
development.
The re-emergence of biological reductionism and the
politics of choice
The real gain of the women's movement over the past
three decades has been the rejection of the view women as
only sexual objects or as reproductive machinery. Cairo
reversed this gain by equating 'population' to 'women's
rights' and 'women's rights' to 'reproductive rights'. The
use of words such as 'rights' and 'choxice' in this paradigm
obscured the fact that demographic trends,
whether they are positive or negative, are not merely
reflections of the availability or absence of
contraceptive technologies. They are reflections of the
socio-economic patterns of society, which determine people's
options in terms of family size.
The negative growth rates in the industrialised
societies are the result of the absence of social choice
related to bringing up children wixthout adequate social support for
childcare. Processes of bringing up children,
which in non-industrialised societies take place through
social relationships in extended families and kinship
networks, are absent in the industrialised world.
Childcare, like everything else, has to be purchased in
the market place. Children thus become economically non-
viable in spite of the overall affluence of the society
and a surrogate economic drain on the individual family.
xSimilarly, positive growth rates also reflect the absence of social and
economic choice under conditions of poverty
and economic insecurity. Under these conditions children
become a surrogate economic resource.
Thus in Cairo, women's groups, particularly Northern
women's groups, with the exception of the 'Women's Caucus'
organised by WEDO, unwittingly engaged most vigorously in a
politics that reduced and limited women's rights to the
domain of reproduction and sexuality. This was xmost obvious in the
domination of the ICPD by the abortion debate and by
the language of reproductive rights and choice.
Reductionism in the language of choice is intimately related
to polarisation of ethical and moral positions as discussed
below. When choice is reduced to contraceptive choice alone,
and other aspects of life which influence reproductive
behaviour are negated or ignored the space is created for a
fundamentalist religious response for the 'protection' of
life and xsociety. Further, it was taken for granted that for Third
World women even this choice cannot exist if the planet was to be
saved. The only 'choice' offered them was the choice of
contraceptive technology.
Whether it is the 'pro-choice' fundamentalism limiting
itself to contraceptives, or the 'pro-life' fundamentalism
limiting itself to the foetus, women's socio-economic
choices and health rights are sacrificed by both.
Women's health issues, which include issues of
xnutrition, infectious diseases, violence against women,etc. are being
put aside in a discourse where women's
health is being reduced to 'reproductive rights' and
reproductive rights are being equated with women as
consumers of contraceptive technologies. Even when
international and national policies have worked against
women's health and women's rights in population policy,
they have used women's rights and women's health and
women's choices as the jxustification for population control. Thus even
as the foreclosure of economic rights forces
its young women to offer sexual services to plane-loads of
pleasure seeking men from the North, leaving only the choice
of contraceptives, Thailand, like Indonesia which has
maternal mortality rate of 450 per 100,000 women, is proud
of its successful family planning programme.
A woman-oriented family planning programme is only
meaningful if it is associated with upgrading women's status
in x the social, political and economic spheres. 'SafeMotherhood' is
only possible in the context of 'Safe
Personhood'.
Choosing is an activity of a subject able to determine
the conditions of her life and her well-being. Passive
recipients of other people's choices are not subjects but
object of choice. When reproductive issues are not
determined by women, and contraceptive technologies are not
evolved in response to their health and economic needs, the
women themselxves become the objects of the demographic establishment's
choice. When 'Choice' is used as a
justification for population control, it is an example of
Orwellian doublespeak.
Thus at Cairo, women's multiple rights as full human
beings in society were reduced to 'reproductive rights'
alone. The western women's movement contributed to this
biological reductionism in Cairo by failing to focus on
women's productive roles and by focusing exclusively on
their reproducxtive roles, by failing to draw attention todenial of
women's economic rights through structural
adjustment and GATT, and allowing 'unmet needs' to be
redefined as needs for contraceptives alone, and not needs
for food, water and livelihoods. Further, by reducing women
to their biology alone, and divorcing them from the economy
and society, the western feminists have created a discourse
which strengthens the hands of patriarchy based on religious
fundamentalists.
Western feminists stxrengthen religious fundamentalism in theThird World
While Western feminists falsely believed that the battle
was between women and the church, they were engaging
vicariously in a war between two partriarchies _ the
demographic establishment and the religious establishment.
By not being fully aware of how the Northern women's
movement is being used by the patriarchal establishment,
Western feminists were actually contributing to the growth
of religious fundamentalism in xthe Third World. Instead ofpointing out
that it is women who are taking care ofchildren, and holding family
and community together in a period of social breakdown, women's groups
contributed to a discourse that allowed 'women's rights' to be seen
as antithetical to the rights of children and women's freedom
as based on neglect of family.
However, in reality, it is women who are protecting
children and carrying family responsibility. Today, more
than one-third of the hoxuseholds in Africa, Latin America and the
developed world are female headed; in Norway the
figure is 38% and in Asia 14%. Even where women are not the
sole family supporters, they are primary supporters in terms
of work and energy spent on providing sustenance to the
family. For example, in rural areas, women and children must
walk further to collect the diminishing supplies of firewood
and water while in urban areas they must take on more paid
outside work. Usually, more time thus spent on xworking tosustain the
family conflicts with the time and energy needed
for child care. At times girls take on part of the mother's
burden in India, the percentage of female workers below 14
years increased from 4% to 8%. In the 15-19-year age group,
the labour force participation rate increased by 17% for
females, but declined by 8% for males. This suggests that
more girls are being drawn into the labour force, and more
boys are sent to school. This sizeable proportion perhaps
explains thex high female dropout rate, a conclusion that is supported by
the higher levels of illiteracy among female
workers, compared with 50% for males. It has been projected
that by the year 2001, work participation among 0-14-year-
old girls will increase by a further 20% and among 15-19-
year-olds by 30%.
By ignoring the social, economic and family
responsibilities that Third World women carry, the exclusive
focus on 'sexual and reproductive rights' is disempowering,
not empowering, foxr Third World women because it makes women appear
socially irresponsible. As the social crisis grows,
people will have to find ways of holding society together.
In real life, it is women who have shown leadership in these
matters. Wherever women have been active and articulate in
rebuilding community and society, fundamentalists have been
silenced. However, the Cairo Conference was dominated by
Northern women obsessed with individual sexual freedom,
indifferent to society and to otherx freedom. They,therefore,
failed to highlight how women carry a
disproportionate share of social responsibility and thus,
crated a stereotype of women's rights as implying social
irresponsibility. The vacuum created in the domain of social
responsibility, we know by experience, gets filled by the
emergence of religious fundamentalists who create new
restrictions on women for the cause of maintaining 'family
values' and social norms. Western feminists, thus,
uninxtentionally create new space and power for the religious fundamentalists
while shrinking the space and reducing the
power of women within their societies. The politics of
Cairo therefore, rendered women's multiple social and
economic roles invisible, reduced women to their biology and
put the entire burden of family planning on women. These are
gains for patriarchy, not for women.
The Third World War: Blaming everything on 'Population'
Who controls the planet's resources has always beexn animportant
aspect of the population and development debate.
It is not the large numbers of Third World poor who use most
of the world's resources. Seventy per cent of the planet's
resources are used by 20% of the population in the
industrialised North. As Emory Lovins has shown, 98% of
energy rise is not by people but by 'energy slaves'
associated with the industrialised economy. The average
inhabitant of the US has 250 times as many 'slaves' as the
average Nigerian.
x However, in Cairo, it was the poor of the Third World who were
identified as the real threat to the planet. A
book by Michael Tobas entitled 'Third World War' which was
an conspicuous display at the NGO forum stated, 'We are on
a collision course between humans and the biosphere. It
has escalated to full blown warfare.'
Cairo made it clear that it is only humans in China,
India, Indonesia and Africa who are engaged in this 'war'
against the planet.
The wife of the US Vixce-President, Tipper Gore, in a speech in the
US forum even explained the current genocide
in Rwanda as rooted in population growth. No reference was
made to the impact of structural adjustment, the collapse of
coffee prices, or to the aid conditionalities attached to
multi-party democracy by Northern governments which
encouraged the emergence of parties based on ethnic lines
and divided society, instead of creating democracy.
The Third World is paying for globalisation and free
trade through accelerated environmental degradation and emergence of
ethnic conflicts and religious fundamentalism.
It is important to remember that the roots of social and
environmental decay are nurtured in a highly unjust global
economic system. The development amnesia of Cairo carries
the risk of putting aside the right to survival of poor
people in the Third World by denying them their right to
development and blaming them for all the political, economic
and environmental problems of the world of which they arethe worst
victims, but not the primary cause.
Rather than representing a 'victory' for women, Cairo
has thus proved to be an even powerful weapon against
Third World women in their struggle for life with dignity.
Dr Vandana Shiva is a well-known ecologist. Mira Shiva is
an MD, specialising and working in community health. The
above is from a position paper written by them for the Cairo
Conference.
** End of text from cdp:twn.info **
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