Jane Roberts–Expanding The Definition Of Gender Based Violence

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Apr 072010
 

As long-time FPN members and  blog readers know, when FPN began, our focus was on the impact militarism had on women’s lives.  Within a short time that expanded to include a definition of all violence against women as terrorism and over the years the lens has expanded to include the full range of women’s human rights and the myriad of ways in which they are violated.

Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA and a member of FPN has an excellent piece out that looks at the need to use a broad brush when discussing gender based violence that amplifies much of what we address on this blog and her piece is a very important read. Here is an few excerpt:

Whether there is an epidemic of gender based violence now, which seems to be the prevailing view among knowledgeable people committed to its curtailment, or whether it has always been just as prevalent but without the communications technology to holler it to the world is debatable. I suppose it really doesn’t matter. What matters is how broadly we define it now, and depending on that definition how we deal with it.

The web site of the United Nations Population Fund lists 16 forms of gender based violence. “Violence against women takes many forms: sexual assault,  child marriage, incest, wife beating, prostitution, female genital mutilation, dowry-related violence, trafficking, sexual violence during wars, femicide, sexual harassment, ‘honour’ killings, forced sterilization, date rape, pornography and bride kidnapping.  Violence against women may also take many forms of psychological abuse, intimidation and harassment. All are unacceptable violations of human rights. Together they form a huge obstacle to gender equality and genuine human progress.”

My view is that psychological abuse, intimidation and harassment are as equally unacceptable as physical violence. In fact they may in some cases be worse. I believe there is a huge opening for scholarly research into the effects of the psychological  abuse of women and of the psychological effects of gender inequality on women and on men.

I would like to expand the definition of gender based violence. Maternal mortality, dying in the process of giving birth, is the ultimate gender based violence. This should not happen in the 21st century. It is just a question of priorities.

Gender inequality where the male model is preferred to the female is a form of violence. To hazard a guess I would say that perhaps sixty-five percent of pro-creating couples would prefer a boy baby at least for the first born.  Is this psychological preference a form of gender-based violence?  Yes, because when the girl baby appears, at least at first, the parents have a feeling of let-down. At some level, this must have an effect on the baby. And then think of the psychological and cultural ambiance that has made both parents prefer the son first.

We all know that there are 1 billion hungry people in the world today.  Joan Holmes, the former head of The Hunger Project has stated: “In much of the developing world, a little girl eats last and least.  She is up to three times more likely than boys to suffer malnutrition.”

Now, I ask you, isn’t this gender-based violence?

With the world’s present balance of decision making power, if men could get pregnant, family planning would be universally available and abortion would be legal and safe everywhere.  The present system is violence personified.

I have never in my life been aware of militant pro-lifers admonishing men to prevent abortion by the most obvious means.  Men share equal responsibility with  women for abortions that result from “not wanting a baby at this time.”  Only  women are screamed at, prosecuted, prayed for, and blamed. It was Eve who ate the apple. Only she is the embodiment of sin.

There is so much more to this  article–usually it is easy to pick out an  excerpt that really stands out–that was not the case here, the whole article, particularly  Jane’s conclusions, difficult as they are to read in their truth-telling, is a must read.

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 Posted by Fempeace on April 7, 2010

Family Planning For The Planet a.k.a. Population Control–Disingenuous Patriarchy That Does Not Empower Women

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Dec 032009
 

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA)’s recent report, “Climate Change Connections:  Gender and Population’s” linkage between access to family planning and reproductive healthcare and climate change has led to some troubling analysis regarding population control. According to the overview of the report,

The world’s population is forecast to grow from today’s 6.7 billion to between 8.0 and 10.5 billion by 2050. The majority of this growth is likely to be concentrated in areas and among populations—poor, urban and coastal—that are already highly
vulnerable to climate change impacts. Population growth typically means increased emissions. However, demographic factors such as household size, age structure of the population and urbanization also affect emissions patterns and energy use.
Further, unsustainable consumption and per capita emissions are generally much higher in rich, industrialized countries. In this context, it’s important to remember that population is not just about numbers, it’s about people.

Many of the policies that affect population trends—such as more educational opportunities for girls, greater economic opportunities for women and expanded access to reproductive health and family planning—can also reduce vulnerability to
climate change impacts and slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, helping to ensure adequate energy and sustainable development for all.

Yet as I pointed out last week,

The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. “The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect,” the report said.

It also said that while there is no doubt that “people cause climate change,” the developing world has been responsible for a much smaller share of world’s greenhouse gas emissions than developed countries.

Nonetheless, articles such as this  from Agence France Presse, were quick to focus on reducing births in developing countries,

In the world’s poorest countries, where 99 percent of the growth of the world’s population will occur over the next four decades, reduced fertility would be a boon for adaptation.

It would mean fewer demands on the environment and fewer people exposed to water stress, floods, poor harvests, bad storms and loss of their homes.

“How Niger is going to feed a population growing from 11 million today to 50 million in 2050 in a semi-arid country which may be facing climate change is unclear,” Lord Adair Turner, a British businessman and academic, observed crisply.

While it has been excruciatingly difficult for women in poorer countries to gain access to family planning because of fundamentalist governments, the influence of religious institutions, the U.S. Global Gag Order, etc. despite overwhelming evidence that family planning would greatly increase women’s empowerment and well-being, it is disturbing that reproductive empowerment is now being touted as a panacea for combating climate change.

It is instructive to look at  which countries have the most people:

  1. China – 1,330,044,544
  2. India – 1,147,995,904
  3. United States – 303,824,640
  4. Indonesia – 237,512,352
  5. Brazil – 196,342,592
  6. Pakistan – 172,800,048
  7. Bangladesh – 153,546,896
  8. Nigeria – 146,255,312
  9. Russia – 140,702,096
  10. Japan – 127,288,416

and at those which are the biggest polluters:

Country Emissions (million tons CO2):

  1. China 6,027
  2. United States 5,769
  3. Russia1,587
  4. India 1,324
  5. Japan 1,236
  6. Germany 798
  7. Canada 572
  8. Britain 523
  9. South Korea 488
  10. Mexico 437

Per-capita emissions (tons CO2/capita):

  1. United States 19.1
  2. Canada 17.37
  3. Russia11.21
  4. South Korea 10.09
  5. Germany 9.71
  6. Japan 9.68
  7. Britain 8.6
  8. South Africa 7.27
  9. France 5.81
  10. China 4.57

In countries like the U.S., Germany, Japan, Britain, France and Canada, access to birth control is widespread, and China’s one child policy has clearly decreased the number of births in that country but yet these countries are top polluters.  In fact these lists don’t even include  poorer  countries with the least amount of access to family planning.  So where is the connection?

Going back to the paragraphs I highlighted above, what concerns me is that while acknowledging that the  U.S. and China are the worst offenders, the concern seems to be for poorer, darker countries where populations are expected to increase significantly even though they don’t make an appearance on the list of countries which are contributing the most to the degradation of the planet.

Cut to the punch, in all these decades that we have been polluting like there’s no tomorrow, the more developed nations have been practicing a de facto kind of population control in poorer countries by not providing the necessary funds to combat  Malaria, hunger and  HIV/AIDS.  We’ve had little concern about the maternal mortality that kills hundreds of thousands of women in poor countries every year and we’ve done little to empower women in these nations.

To be clear, you’ll get no argument from me that less humans would in general be better for the health of the planet. And unquestionably, we need to address the gendered impacts of climate change (which, incidentally are thoroughly detailed in the UNFPA report). But, and particularly against the backdrop of abortion rights being under the worst siege in decades in the U.S., linking population control and reproductive empowerment is extremely troublesome.  Betsy Hartmann puts it well:

A world of difference exists between services that treat women as population targets and those based on a feminist model of respectful, holistic, high-quality care.

There is no question that better access to reproductive services is desperately needed and that empowering women is crucial in addressing climate change.  But equating family planning with population control is disingenuously patriarchal and a slippery and dangerous assertion for women.

———-

Note:  Gender CC has an excellent website with resources and information about women and climate change.  George Monbiot dissects the patriarchal underpinnings of population control here.

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 Posted by Fempeace on December 3, 2009

Demanding A Paradigm Shift That Ensures Women’s Leadership And Participation In Climate Change Discussions

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Nov 122009
 

From Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA):

The women of the world are demanding a paradigm shift that ensures their participation and leadership on decisions that affect their very survival and that of their families and communities,” said Lorena Aguilar, Senior Gender Advisor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on the occasion of the UNFCCC negotiations currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain, ahead of the Copenhagen session this December.

A team of women’s organizations and gender experts from around the world representing the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA) has been following the UNFCCC negotiations since the Bali Climate Change Talks in 2007, providing technical assistance and training to government delegates on the gender aspects of the Bali Action Plan building blocks of mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance. As a result, the negotiation texts contain the first ever language on gender equality and women—including 43 references in the texts earlier this year, and 8 references in the current “non-papers”. The Barcelona session is critical for retaining key references, particularly the recognition of women as agents of change, the prioritization of vulnerable groups, the active participation of all stakeholders, and a commitment to gender mainstreaming.

The climate change convention is the only major environmental agreement from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit that does not address gender inequality. Winnie Byanyima, Director of the Gender Team at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), noted, “If we do not address the importance of gender in the climate change debate, we will be responsible for the death and impoverishment of millions of people—many who already suffer extreme poverty, hardship and indignation.”

Cate Owren of Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) and the GGCA Advocacy Team added, “This is an historic time for gender and climate change. We’re very inspired and positive that something will emerge from Copenhagen, and that it will be gender-sensitive.”

The GGCA will attend the Copenhagen COP, continuing to work with the many supportive Parties on gender-specific text; raising awareness and networking with UN, intergovernmental and civil society organizations; and launching new initiatives by bringing high profile women leaders to speak at a side event and commissioning two major performing arts events.

The GGCA is a joint initiative of 13 UN agencies and 25 civil society organizations working to ensure that climate change initiatives and decision-making at all levels are responsive to both women and men.”

For further information, please visit Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA).

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 Posted by Fempeace on November 12, 2009

Women’s Childbearing Blamed For Carbon Emissions

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Nov 092009
 

While many of us are still reeling from the Saturday late night Congressional massacre of women’s reproductive rights, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that women’s childbearing is responsible for global warming.  Who knew.  In an excellent piece on the harms of ‘solving’ global warming with population control, Betsy Hartmann writes in On The Issues,

Overconsumption by the rich has far more to do with global  warming than population growth of the poor. The few countries in the world where population growth rates remain high, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have among the lowest carbon emissions per capita on the planet.

Serious environmental scholars have taken the population and climate change connection to task, but unfortunately a misogynist pseudo-science has been developed to bolster overpopulation claims. Widely cited in the press, a study by two researchers at Oregon State University blames women’s childbearing for creating a long-term “carbon legacy.”

The entire piece is highly recommended.

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 Posted by Fempeace on November 9, 2009

The Crucial Need To Discuss Gendered Impacts And Reproductive Justice Require A Matridynamic Paradigm Shift In The Climate Change Discussion

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Oct 152009
 

In conjunction with the Climate Change Blog Action Day, I want to focus in  particular on the gendered impact of climate change.  Nowhere is this more obvious than after natural disasters, when women and children are particularly vulnerable, a point illustrated all too well in the post earlier this week on the horrific situation for pregnant women in refugee camps in the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Parma.

Gendered harms are also a consideration in understanding why utilizing population control is not a solution to Global Warming.

In the Different Takes Climate Change Series Winter 2009 issue, Betsy Hartmann lists 10 reasons why the linkage of population control and global warming is problematic.  Note in  particular points 3 and 4 below regarding reproductive and gender  justice. She writes,

Climate change is clearly one of the most urgent problems of our time.  It is also a highly contested policy arena with different actors from all sides of the political spectrum struggling to get a piece of the action. The population control lobby is no exception.  Today, a number of mainstream population and environment groups are claiming that population growth is a major cause of climate change and that lower birth rates are the solution. This view threatens to undermine a progressive climate justice agenda that seeks both to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce economic, social, gender and racial inequalities. It also poses a danger to reproductive rights.

1. The numbers don’t add up. The industrialized countries, with only 20 percent of the world’s population, are responsible for 80 percent of the accumulated carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The U.S. is the worst offender.  In 2002 the U.S. was responsible for 20 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person, compared to only 0.2 tons in Bangladesh, 0.3 in Kenya and 3.9 in Mexico.

2. Blame games target the wrong people.Wealthy countries, corporations and consumers are getting off the hook. The challenge of climate change presents an opportunity for affluent Americans to rethink their wasteful lifestyles and get on board with a transition to a just and green economy.  The problem is not ‘those people over there’ — it is us, right here.

3. Population control programs erode reproductive rights. Viewing family planning as a means to solve the climate crisis will set back progress on the delivery of safe, voluntary and ethical reproductive health services.  That’s because there’s a big difference between family planning programs designed primarily to reduce birth rates and those premised on reproductive rights as an end that is worthy in itself.

4. Population control is no substitute for gender justice.

5.  Linking population and the environment bolsters anti-immigrant agendas. By attributing environmental degradation to population growth, population and environment groups play into the hands of conservative anti- immigrant forces. In the greening of hate, anti- immigrant groups strategically deploy population arguments to gain support among environmentalists.

6.  Fear-based stereotypes of overpopulation contribute to the militarization of climate change.

7.  Population stereotypes victimize the displaced.

8. Population alarmism encourages apocalyptic thinking and distracts us from
the search for practical solutions to the climate crisis.

9. Shifting the blame for the climate crisis to the Global South prevents international solidarity.

10. Inserting population into the climate change debate divides the environmental movement at a time when we should be coming together. The implicit and explicit race, class and gender biases of population control are detrimental to building an inclusive movement for climate justice. This narrow worldview also blocks a deeper understanding of the economic and political forces that both drive climate change and prevent effective solutions.

In her conclusion, Hartmann writes,

Climate justice, not population control, is the starting point from which we can begin to build the kind of national and international solidarity that is needed to address climate change.  The world is waiting.  we are way behind, and there is no time to lose.

In framing this as an issue for which the solution is solidarity, not control, Hartmann crucially addresses the point that the human made causes of global warming and climate change are, at their root because of our attempts to control our physical world using a power over paradigm which inevitably means that those and that over which power is asserted become powerless.  In contrast, solidarity implies the utilization of power by connection which is a far more sustainable model for transformative change and empowerment.  Hartmann’s work exemplifies the kind of matridynamic paradigm shift that is an absolutely crucial requirement for responsibly addressing the issue of climate change.

———-

Addenda:  The latest issue of Sister Song’s Collective Voices is devoted to Environmental Justice and has several excellent pieces regarding reproductive justice, gender and climate change.  Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice also has a report, Looking Both Ways: Women’s Lives at the Crossroads of Reproductive Justice and Climate Justice which should be considered essential reading in understanding why the holistic linking of these issues is so crucial.

Please also see my post on Reclaiming Medusa, A Plea For The Planet.

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 15, 2009
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