Ten Years Later–The ‘Liberation’ Of Afghan Women

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Oct 052011
 

When the United States attacked Afghanistan ten years ago, we were told that not only were we going after those who had attacked us but also that we would liberate Afghan women from the Taliban.  It was a very effective selling point, there is nothing we tend to like better than rescuing helpless women.  But let’s be clear–that was not the reason we invaded Afghanistan–women had been being abused by the Taliban and the warlords before them for quite some time by then.  As we observe the 10th anniversary of what now seems like an endless war, it is important to look at what Afghan women have experienced since the U.S. invasion and what needs to be considered going forward.

ActionAid and Oxfam have both issued lengthy reports addressing these issues.  In a survey of 1000 Afghan women, ActionAid found that,

72% of Afghan women believe their lives are better now than they were 10 years ago, while 37% think Afghanistan will become a worse place if international troops leave. A massive 86% are worried about a return to Taliban-style government, with one in five citing their daughter’s education as the main concern…

…However women’s rights groups in Afghanistan say they are being kept in the dark regarding the talks with the Taliban, as well as being frozen out of an important international conference on the country’s future and transition of power, which will take place in Bonn, Germany in December 2011…

…Women who have stood up for women’s rights in the past 10 years are also worried about their own personal safety if the Taliban returns to power, with some activists making plans to leave the country.

The report goes on to say that today,

  • 39% of children who attend school are girls
  • 27% of MPs are women (higher than the world average)
  • 5% of positions in the army and police force are filled by women
  • 25% of government jobs are filled by women

These achievements are real and should not be underestimated. Yet huge challenges remain and too many women are still denied rights that should be taken for granted. Even now, a woman who runs away from home to escape domestic abuse is seen as dishonouring her family and often loses the right to see her children.

Forced and child marriage are common and only 13% of women are literate (the figure for men is 43%). Eighty-seven per cent of all women in Afghanistan suffer domestic abuse, according to a UN survey and life expectancy for both men and women is around 45 – more than 20 years lower than the world average. The Save the Children index this May described Afghanistan as the worst place in the world to be a mother – one in 11 women perishes in pregnancy (one every 30 minutes) while one child in every five dies before reaching its fifth birthday. This means that every mother in Afghanistan is likely to face the loss of a child. And many women remain isolated. The ActionAid poll found that four in 10 women never leave their village or neighbourhood.

It is important to note, which this report does not, that not only do women run away from home to escape domestic abuse, but all too often they attempt suicide to escape, frequently setting themselves on fire to do so.  The abuse itself is often horrific beyond description, including brutal disfigurement and outright murder.

As for where we are now, ActionAid reports,

“After the fall of the Taliban things got better. But then gradually, after 2006, the situation got worse,” says Selay Ghaffar, executive director of ActionAid partner HAWCA. “All these efforts were undermined because of security and the presence of people who committed crimes and abuses in the past who are still in power. Girls’ schools shut down, acid was thrown in girls’ faces, schools were burnt down.”…

…And despite the early statements from international leaders, women’s rights seem to have been deprioritised as the military operation against the Taliban and other insurgents has been stepped up…

This is  delusional phrasing–women’s rights have never been the priority in Afghanistan except to the extent that they are politically expedient towards other ends.  The report continues,

…In September last year the Afghan government set up a High Peace Council – a 79-member body which is tasked with talking to the Taliban. There are just nine women on the council and many women’s rights activists say they hold merely symbolic positions and are not part of the real negotiations.

…The international community can also support Afghan women through deeper engagement with women’s civil society and community-based organisations. Direct funding to women’s organisations to build their capacity as advocates and leaders will enable funds to aid transformation to a more democratic society, not just facilitate transition without the promise of sustainable change…

…However, providing this support will require a fresh look at funding priorities, and methods to ensure aid reaches women and can address the root causes of women’s inequality. Women’s organisations working to reduce poverty and empower women and girls say they receive little or no funding, forcing them to operate hand to mouth and limit activities to practical services rather than also being able to lobby for long-term changes for women….

…In addition the international community should broaden diplomatic efforts to include consultations and information sharing with women’s organisations. Amplifying the concerns of women’s organisations and ensuring women’s voices are heard is a valuable role the international community can play.

Conspicuously absent in ActionAid’s analysis is the existence of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1889 as  framework for conflict resolution and peace negotiating which are however addressed by Oxfam (see below).

According to Oxfam,

Western leaders have a responsibility toward Afghan women, not least because protection of women’s rights was sold as a positive outcome of the international intervention in October 2001. Ten years on, however, time is running out to fulfill these promises.

The Afghan government and the international community must:

  • Ensure women’s rights are not sacrificed, by publicly pledging that any political settlement must explicitly guarantee women’s rights;
  • Make a genuine commitment to meaningful participation of women in all phases and levels of any peace processes.

The Afghan government must:

  • Enhance efforts to increase representation of women in elected bodies and government institutions at all levels to 30 per cent;
  • Encourage religious leaders to speak out on women’s rights in Islam;
  • Intensify efforts to promote female access to education, health, justice, and other basic services.

The Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defence must:

  • Improve awareness of women’s rights and human rights law in the justice and security sector, and ensure effective imple- mentation of these laws;
  • Increase substantially women recruits in the security and justice sectors.

The international community must:

  • Support expanded civic education programmes to raise awareness of women’s rights at community level;
  • Support efforts to improve female leadership;
  • Intensify support to promote access to education and other key services, and ensure this support will continue at current or in- creased levels even as international military forces prepare to withdraw.

The UN must:

  • Continue to monitor all government actions including the peace processes and provide increased support to the Afghan government on all negotiation, reconciliation, and reintegra- tion processes.

The report points to the dichotomy between the current lip-service regarding Afghan women and the realities of how the issue is being approached,

Publicly, Western politicians are still backing Afghan women. In July 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated her commitment to women, saying: ‘Any potential for peace will be subverted if women and ethnic minorities are marginalised or silenced…And so when we look at what will happen in Afghanistan, the United States will not abandon our values or support a political process that undoes the progress that has been made in the past decade.’ But behind the scenes it is less clear what will happen if the Taliban make demands that require compromise on women’s rights, as the US government prepares to withdraw the majority of its troops by the end of 2014 and seeks a political settlement to bring an end to the fighting. In July 2011, a Washington Post article reported one USAID official as saying ‘gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities’.This reflects ‘growing realism’ tempering expectations of what they can achieve on the ground after ten years. As one analysis puts it, ‘On this list of priorities, ‘gender’ is generally seen as a luxury to be left aside until the supposedly gender-neutral objectives in the domains of security and governance have been achieved.’ (Emphasis mine.)

Let’s be very clear here–gender issues have always taken a back seat.  This isn’t a question of ‘growing realism’, it is a question of persistent, pandemic misogyny that has infested and damaged life on this planet since the dawn of patriarchy.  It is precisely the stupidity of seeing these issues as a luxury that undermines any realistic achievement of security since the day men first started going to war.  But as Oxfam points out,

The vital role of women in peace-building at the national level and in peace negotiations has been recognised in UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1889, applicable to all UN member states, including Afghanistan. The Afghan government reaffirmed its support for women’s role in peace-building in its national peace plan, the donor-funded Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP), which began to be rolled out nationwide in early 2011.

Yet women are currently under-represented or not represented at all in the APRP, which augurs poorly for female participation in any future formal peace talks with the Taliban. There are just nine women on the 70-member High Peace Council (HPC), which was created to lead the peace process. Many of the male members are former warlords and powerbrokers who do not take their female counterparts seriously. The APRP has also established provincial peace councils under the HPC, composed of between 20 and 35 members, with a minimum of three women, one of whom must be a representative from the Department of Women’s Affairs (DoWA). However, no council as yet has more than three female members. Women at the community level have little understanding of APRP; their formal role, at the moment, is unclear but is likely to be limited to involvement in community development programmes. According to a provincial DoWA head, ‘although women have great potential as negotiators and peacebuilders, the will and commitment from Kabul to involve them is almost nil.’

In their conclusions, Oxfam writes that, “words must be matched with action and firm guarantees,” and this is indeed true but not sufficient.  Our words in regard to Afghan women were used in 2001 as a tool to garner support for the invasion of Afghanistan, not a call on its own merits to address Afghan human rights issues.  Just bringing women to the table will not be enough–it must be insured that the women who come to the table are not puppet window dressing proxies for warlords or the Taliban and that they are allowed to safely speak freely and that their words be taken seriously.

The most crucial point to be made however is that while women’s human rights, progress and security are a huge concern, they should not be construed as a reason for continued, never ending foreign military presence in Afghanistan, which is only aggravating the continuing violence that pervades the country.  Killing and maiming people does not secure human rights, it destroys them.  There is no possibility of living in peace until the violence ends.  It is time to disarm the warring factions within Afghanistan and for the U.S. military to leave–only then will there be a realistic chance for women’s human rights in Afghanistan.

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 5, 2011

Pink-Washed Profits

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Oct 022011
 

I had harbored a fantasy of enjoying at least one day of October before getting irritated by the Pepto pink bombardment of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month merchandising.  Alas, this was not to be  While the usefulness of suggesting that we all be aware of breast cancer is questionable (as in seriously, how can you not be aware), the lucrative cause-branding that goes with it is an unquestionable abomination and the ad circulars which were tucked into my Saturday morning Washington Post were tricked out in pink to the max.  Perhaps the worst was a multi-page Proctor&Gamble ad:

How Much Are You Really Donating?

P&G offers three ways to “give”–if you use one of the coupons, they’ll donate $.02.  If you spend $50, they’ll rebate you $10 and donate $10, and (they may regret this one) if you ‘like’ their Facebook page, they’ll give $.10 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NCBF), which funds mammograms for women who can’t afford them and research (although I couldn’t figure out research into what on their webpage).  Not my choice of the best way to address breast cancer, but for the sake of using this as a math problem, let’s say that donating to them is a good idea.

So off you go to your favorite store and buy Olay Regenerist Moisturizer which costs about $19.00 (quick price check on drugstore.com) and use the $3.00 coupon.  You spend $16.00, but how much of it goes to P&G and how much goes towards something breast cancer related?  Bottom line for NBCF–$.02  Bottom line for P&G–$15.98.  Now if you buy two moisturizers and something else that costs $10.00, then you spend  $40.00 after the rebate and NBCF gets $10.00.  But P&G is still the big winner with $30.00.  So mostly your hard earned cash has gone to enrich the coffers of P&G, not to a good cause.

The point is this, just because it is pink doesn’t mean it is helpful–yes it is good that corporations give to good causes, but let’s be clear that it is very, very profitable for them to do so.  If you really want to give money to address breast cancer, do some research, decide what organization is doing the most important work and send them a check unless you really were going to buy the moisturizer anyway (and if so, check to be sure that the products in it aren’t toxic or carcinogenic because it really blows how many companies use products like this to pinkwash themselves).

__________

PS–please feel free to share links to any pink offenders you may run across–let’s help call these boob sponging profiteers out.

 

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 Posted by Fempeace on October 2, 2011

FPN Director Lucinda Marshall on KPFA’s Women’s Magazine

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Sep 262011
 

KPFA’s Women’s Magazine’s Kate Raphael interviewed me for today’s show regarding the HPV vaccine:

Women’s Magazine – September 26, 2011 at 1:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

Michelle Bachmann claims vaccinating girls against the HPV virus causes brain damage and encourages twelve year olds to have sex. Progressive pundits say the vaccine is safe and prevents cervical cancer.
Feminist Health writer Lucinda Marshall says the real issue is drug company influence on our public policy. In this segment we look at the aggressive marketing campaign launched by Merck Corporation for its vaccine Gardasil, and how that may have influenced the process of its becoming so prevalent.

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 Posted by Fempeace on September 26, 2011

The HPV Vaccine Debate And The Unhealthy Corporatization Of Our Political Process And Public Policy Decisions

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Sep 152011
 

In his critique of the recent CNN/Tea Party sponsored Republican presidential candidates debate, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart described the set as looking like the inside of Betsy Ross’s vagina.  Crude but apt for a debate that saw two candidates stumble badly on the unlikely political football that the HPV vaccine has become.

As has been well reported, Texas Governor Rick Perry has been trying to distance himself from his highly publicized effort to mandate the vaccination of all girls in Texas because in addition to sounding like the dreaded idea of  government interference in our lives which strikes maniacal fear in the hearts of Tea Partiers, it has served to highlight the large donations Perry has received from Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine Gardisil.  Michele Bachmann, not wanting to be left out, then claimed that she had heard from a mother whose daughter became mentally retarded because of the vaccine, a claim that is questionable and certainly not proven.  All of which has served to kick up some major dust in the absurd debate about whether it is un-American big government at its worst to mandate vaccinations as opposed to being un-American to not vaccinate children because it imperils public health.

Unfortunately, both stances not only lack subtlety, they  completely miss the real issues involved that need to be addressed in regard to the HPV vaccine.  In 2007, after Perry’s short-lived effort to mandate HPV vaccination, I pointed to some of the problematic issues in the debate about Gardisil:

Cervical cancer is only expected to cause 3,670 deaths in the U.S. in 2007, a miniscule percentage (less than 2%) of the 270,000 deaths from the disease worldwide and only 1% of the total annual number of deaths from all cancers in the United States.

While cervical cancer used to be one of the deadliest diseases for women in the U.S., the number of deaths it causes has dropped dramatically (by 74% from 1955-1992) and it continues to drop). Why then are so many states considering mandating a vaccine that costs $300-$500 per patient for a type of cancer that is already largely under control in this country and which can be almost entirely prevented by regular gynecological checkups and Pap smears?

Merck & Co., the giant pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccine Gardasil, (spent) millions of dollars lobbying state legislators. In Texas… Gov. Perry received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his last campaign. One of Merck’s key lobbyists in Texas is Perry’s former chief-of-staff, the mother-in-law of his current chief-of-staff, and the state director of Women in Government, a national advocacy group of female state legislators that has received substantial funds from Merck.

It is important to note that low-income women and women who do not have health insurance are most at risk because they are less likely to get regular Pap smears. More than half of the diagnosed cases of cervical cancer are in women who have not had a Pap smear in three years. While Gov. Perry has mandated that the state of Texas foot the bill for those who can’t afford the expensive HPV vaccine, it is unclear where those funds would come from either in Texas or in other states that are considering making the vaccine mandatory. And obviously the cost of the vaccine makes it prohibitive in the countries where it is most needed and would potentially do the most good.

What is clear is that Merck has a substantial financial interest in the vaccine becoming mandatory even though the added benefit to public health is both minimal and costly. With more than 10 million girls in the U.S. between the ages of 10-14, the drug company stands to make billions of dollars preventing a disease that is already treatable in the targeted population. Since the vaccine does not eliminate the need for regular Pap smears, it would appear that a far more appropriate and cost effective first step would be to make regular gynecological healthcare available for all women regardless of income and medical insurance, particularly since this step by itself would go a long way in reducing the few cases of cervical cancer that still occur in this country.

There is however another significant public health concern in regards to the HPV vaccine, namely that it is a very new drug with no history. We are of course being told that it is perfectly safe and has few side effects, but we were also told that about Thalidomide, DES, and Hormone Replacement Therapy. Negative health concerns have also been raised about other children’s vaccines and the Anthrax vaccine given to those in the armed forces as well as drugs such as Vioxx, another Merck drug.

While Merck says that Gardasil is 100% effective in preventing the two types of the HPV virus that cause 70% of all cervical cancer, questions have arisen about these results. In an article in Healthfacts, Maryann Napoli, associate director of the Center for Medical Consumers reports that according to Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center and a former member of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biologic Products Advisory Committee, the placebos in Merck’s studies contained aluminum (which is reported to cause inflammation and cell death in animals and humans) rather than saline solution, which according to Fisher “violates the principle of scientific method…making it hard to tell whether the many adverse events reported were due to the use of aluminum in both the placebo and the drug or to the Gardasil itself.

And in an essay published in The New York Times in July 2006, Roni Rabin points out that most of the subjects in the Merck trials were women over the age of 16. Rabin found that the vaccine was only tested on 1,200 girls under the age of 16. In addition, the vaccine is so new that it is not yet known for how long it will be effective or whether a booster will be required. It is also important to note that Merck’s own literature states that Gardasil, “has not been evaluated for the potential to cause carcinogenicity or genotoxicity.”

I also discussed Merck’s marketing campaign and the fast tracking of the FDA approval of Gardisil here,

The New York Times ran several articles by Elizabeth Rosenthal (here and here) that finally address the points that I had raised. Rosenthal writes that, according to the New England Journal of Medicine,

“Two vaccines against cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence about whether they are worth their high cost or even whether they will effectively stop women from getting the disease.”

Those are rather serious issues considering that 16 million doses of the drug have already been distributed in this country alone, at a cost of $360 and upwards for a series of 3 shots, putting a serious crimp on the pocketbooks of parents and public health agencies and billions of dollars into the Merck coffers. And as Rosenthal points out, while cervical cancer is a major killer in developing countries,

“In developed countries, Pap smear screening and treatment have effectively reduced cervical cancer death rates to very low levels already. There are 3,600 deaths annually from cervical cancer in the United States, 1,000 in France and 400 in Britain.

Given that there are still serious unknowns about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, it is important to examine the sudden concern about HPV and cervical cancer.

“”Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world.

“Because Merck was so aggressive, it went too fast,” Dr. Harper said. “I would have liked to see it go much slower.”

In receiving expedited consideration from the Food and Drug Administration, Gardasil took six months from application to approval and was recommended by the C.D.C. weeks later for universal use among girls. Most vaccines take three years to get that sort of endorsement, Dr. Harper said, and then 5 to 10 more for universal acceptance.”

And as anyone who watches television, reads teen and women’s magazines or has been in a pediatrician or gynecologists office lately knows, the Merck marketing campaign was indeed quite impressive. The campaign has included such tactics as getting hundreds of doctors as unofficial spokesmen (paying them $4500 for each talk given about Gardisil), letting girls sign up to get text messages reminding them to get their next dose of the vaccine (as long as they let Merck use the information they provide for marketing purposes) and funding ‘awareness’ conferences, sometimes not so transparently.  Merck also has provided substantive funding to legislative groups such as “Women In Government”, a group that suddenly appeared from nowhere to champion the vaccine (see this earlier post detailing the funding trail for this seemingly impartial group.)
There are also serious questions about the use of health dollars on this very expensive vaccine,

“(W)ith their high price, the vaccines are straining national and state health budgets as well as family pocketbooks. These were the first vaccines approved for universal use in any age group that clearly cost the health system money rather than saved it, in contrast to less expensive shots, against measles and tetanus, for example, that pay for themselves by preventing costly diseases.”

“Looked at another way, countries that pay for the vaccines will have less money available for other health needs. “This kind of money could be better used to solve so many other problems in women’s health,” said Dr. (Abby) Lippman at McGill (University). “Some of our provinces are running out of money to provide primary care. I’m not against vaccines, but in Canada and the U.S., women are not dying in the streets of cervical cancer.”"

Another concern is that since it is not yet known for how many years the vaccine provides protection, the vaccine could actually cause more deaths by, “giving girls false security that they are protected for life and no longer need to be screened.”

To be very clear, it is should be obvious that we should be completely in favor of a vaccine that effectively saves lives. The uncomfortable truth however  is that our health care decisions are all too often predicated by the corporate  bottom line rather than the public good.  When a large pharmaceutical company launches a huge advertising campaign and sprinkles huge campaign contributions around to secure the fast-track approval and use of a very expensive vaccine with known efficacy and safety issues (for an informed discussion of this, please see Marcia G. Yerman’s series on the HPV vaccine that begins here), we need to raise a caution flag. The key issue that we need to keep sight of  is how large corporations are framing (and funding) our political debate and the harm that does to our health and well-being.

———-

Addenda:  For more on Perry’s links to Merck, see this.

And while I don’t totally agree with her viewpoint on vaccines, Amanda Marcotte points to the issue of sexual control which is most definitely part of the rightwing argument against the HPV vaccine.  While I have questions about the vaccine, this kind of thinking is obviously harmful and should not be a factor in making decisions about this vaccine.

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 Posted by Fempeace on September 15, 2011

10 Years After 9/11–The Undeclared War Against Women Rages On

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Sep 072011
 

Ten years ago, after the World Trade Center towers crumbled, the United States declared a war on terror. At first we were told we would defeat the enemy quickly. But that war with its ever-shifting enemies and goals continues today with no end in sight. In late 2001, we were told that one of the reasons it was imperative that we attack Afghanistan was to liberate Afghan women from the Taliban. And then a few months later we were told that we must also rescue Iraqi women.

But the truth is that women’s human rights were never a priority, merely an excuse for exerting military domination. Today in Afghanistan and Iraq, the problems faced by women are myriad, little has been improved and much has been made worse. In Afghanistan, women continue to be maimed and beaten and their maternal mortality rate continues to be the second highest in the world. In Iraq, trafficking of women has increased dramatically, women human rights defenders are attacked in public places and women’s health, jobs and education has suffered dramatically as a result of the U.S. invasion.

Looking beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, the gender-specific impact of war and violence is all too apparent throughout the world.

  • It is not possible to say that  women’s lives are a priority while we stand by as crises like the never-ending mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue unabated.
  • It is not possible to say that women’s lives are a priority while women refugees are raped in Somali refugee camps or while women are murdered in Guatemala and Mexico and their killers go unpunished.
  • It is not possible to say that women’s lives are a priority when women’s reproductive rights are under siege in the U.S. and throughout the world.
  • It is not possible to say that women’s lives are a priority when women are afraid to walk down the street for fear of being attacked and harassed or of going home and being beaten and raped behind closed doors.
  • It is not possible to say that women’s lives are a priority when women are more likely to be food insecure, have less access to education and earn less than men throughout the world.

The monumental irony is that it has been proven time and time again that when women do not live in fear and when they have equal access to food and education and work, we are all better off and there is less likelihood of violence.  We cannot improve women’s lives by bombing their countries and when conflict does occur, we cannot truly resolve it unless women have a full and equal stake in the peace-making.

The only way to end terrorism is to quit creating terrifying conditions and the uncomfortable truth is that in the years since the World Trade Center towers fell, the U.S. has done everything in its power to create and further the conditions in which terror ferments.  As long as we persist on this path, we will live in a state of terror that only exacerbates the undeclared war on women.

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 Posted by Fempeace on September 7, 2011
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