A Modest Proposal for The "Feminist" Empire

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Dec 23 09:12:41 PST 2001


Madeleine K. Albright, "Women in American Foreign Policy," _SAIS Review_ 20.2 (Summer-Fall 2000): 65-70.

...Meanwhile, the gender issue, as it relates to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, should by now have been put to rest. Under President Clinton, women have filled six of the top nine positions in the State Department. We have found no obstacles to conducting diplomatic business with our counterparts anywhere in the world, including conservative Arab states, where I have made it a point to include the rights of women on our agenda.

Moreover, we have been key players on a successful team. Since 1997, the administration has worked hard with allies and friends to expand NATO, halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, support peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle east, help end the Asian financial crisis, promote stability on the Korean Peninsula, support democracy in key countries, and gain approval of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

But to say there should be no obstacles to women serving in the highest positions of U.S. foreign policy is not to say that gender makes no difference. After sixty-three male secretaries of state, I have been determined to make a difference.

At the president's request, I am serving as chair of the White House Interagency Council on Women, which is working to implement U.S. commitments made at the Beijing Conference. In tandem with USAID, I have made efforts to advance the status of women and girls part of the mainstream of our foreign policy, which is right where these efforts belong. Today, our overseas programs include many projects designed to expand the ability of women to succeed economically through legal reforms and access to education, credit and health care. In Uruguay, for example, we reinvested interest payments on the government's debt into financing for a hospital for children with severe health problems. In Ethiopia, we are helping to increase the number of female teachers, who then provide positive role models for girls. And in Kosovo, we are working with nongovernmental organizations to help women and girls recover from war, resume their education and generate income.

These initiatives make sense, and they are making a difference. Economists have found that, especially in the developing world, income controlled by the mother is many times more likely to be used to promote the health and education of children than income controlled by the father. When women have the knowledge and power to make their own decisions, whole societies benefit. For this is how the cycle of poverty is broken, birth rates stabilized, environmental awareness increased, the spread of sexually-transmitted disease slowed, and socially constructive values most readily passed on to the young.

This is one reason for our strong commitment to international family planning programs. Pregnancy-related complications are the leading cause of mortality among women of reproductive age in developing countries-killing an estimated 600,000 women a year. Experts believe that perhaps one in every four of these deaths could be prevented through access to family planning. Family planning also saves the lives of children. Eleven million boys and girls die each year before reaching the age of five. Many could be saved if births were spaced further apart, and mothers bore a higher proportion of their children during their healthiest reproductive years. Contrary to what some believe, the United States does not provide any funds to perform or promote abortions overseas. Instead, our assistance is used for services that reduce the number of abortions, promote maternal and child health, and save lives. These are sound investments, and merit the American people's strong support.

More generally, we work hard with our many overseas partners to equip women in emerging democracies with the skills they need to participate politically, whether as elected officials, advocates, or simply as citizens exercising what Susan B. Anthony called "the right protective of all other rights," the right to vote. For democracy is not possible if more than half the population is forced to remain on the sidelines.

American diplomats at every level have bolstered these programs and policies. Our message to all is that if you are fighting to advance the status of women and girls, wherever you may be, you are not alone. This message is crucial because we live in an age of networking, and the network supporting women's rights is growing stronger and broader every year. Evidence of this is provided by the Vital Voices Global Democracy Initiative, which was launched with the First Lady's strong leadership three years ago. Power comes from knowledge, and through Vital Voices, women from around the world are sharing knowledge about how to reform laws, win elections, grow businesses, acquire new skills and shatter glass ceilings.

There is a growing awareness about the need to assure the protection of women's basic human rights, not only in law, but also in policy and practice. Through concerted action before and after Beijing, we have achieved much. But this remains an uphill fight. In too many parts of the world, the habit of treating women as second-class citizens is deeply ingrained. This habit can show itself through such actions as domestic abuse, honor crimes, genital mutilation, dowry murders, and even the killing of baby girls. There are those who suggest these practices are the result of cultural differences, and there is nothing anyone can do about them. I say they are criminal and we all have a responsibility to stop them.

That is why we persist in our effort to persuade key members of the Unites States Senate that it is long past time for America to become party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. That is why we back so strongly the international war crimes tribunals, because we believe that the authors of ethnic cleansing should be held accountable, and those who see rape as just another tactic of war must pay for their crimes. That is why we are speaking up on behalf of the women and girls of Afghanistan, who have been victimized by all factions, including the Taliban, in their country's bitter civil war.

And that is why we are working hard to halt the egregious practice of trafficking in human beings. The buying and selling of people, mostly women and children, is one of the fastest expanding criminal enterprises in the world. It is now the third largest source of profits for international organized crime, trailing only drugs and guns. Trafficking distorts economies, degrades societies, endangers neighborhoods, and robs millions of people of their dreams, dignity, and sometimes their lives. Unfortunately, most governments are only in the early stages of attempting to address it. To one degree or another, this trade afflicts virtually every nation, including the United States. Tens of thousands of people are trafficked into our country annually. Recent cases include Mexican teenagers enslaved and forced to work as prostitutes in Florida and the Carolinas; Latvian nationals recruited for the sex industry in Chicago and warned that the mafia would kill their families if they tried to escape; and Thai women held captive and forced to work in sweatshops in California. President Clinton, Attorney General Reno, and I have made it a priority to halt this pattern of brutality both at home and overseas. Our strategy is to educate the public, assist the victims, protect the vulnerable, and apprehend the perpetrators.

Since coming into office, I have raised this issue at every opportunity with heads of state and my fellow foreign ministers, yielding some hopeful results. For example, as a result of my talks with the Israeli prime minister, Israel has set up special police units in Tel Aviv and Haifa. We have established a joint working group with Italy. We are working with Ukraine on a comprehensive strategy for responding to trafficking in and out of that country. And in March, the United States and the Philippines co-hosted a twenty-three-nation regional conference aimed at improving coordination in what must be a multi-year, multi-national, multi-dimensional effort to confront and defeat traffickers wherever they seek their dirty profits.

It is worth emphasizing that when the United States expresses support for women's rights, it understands that not every woman will choose to exercise those rights in the same way. No country or culture has a monopoly on what it is appropriate for a woman to think or believe, or for that matter, to wear. Certainly, not every woman looks to the Western model for emulation. Nor should they. Three of the most populous countries with a majority Islamic population have had female heads of government. So has the country with the largest Hindu majority. Indonesia and Iran have women vice-presidents. And in March, President Clinton and I traveled to Bangladesh, where the leaders of both major political parties are women. So when we talk about advancing the status of women, we are not trying to force our specific values or way of doing things upon other people. We are trying instead to make progress towards consensus goals that have been articulated and agreed upon by women everywhere.

In recent years, I have had the privilege of meeting women from every corner of the world who are championing the causes of equal rights, economic opportunity, representative democracy and tolerance among people of different races, cultures and creeds. Some of these are women who have been repeatedly beaten back, beaten down or beaten up, but they have never been defeated because their pride is too strong, and their faith in their cause unshatterable.

The women's movement has endured and prospered not because it is trendy, but because of the underlying power of its central premise, which is that every individual counts. This basic idea of valuing each person fairly is what has united our movement across the boundaries of geography and ethnicity, vocation and generation. It is what gives us faith that the day will come when every girl, everywhere, will be able to look ahead with confidence that her life will be cherished, her individuality respected, her rights protected and her future determined solely by her own ability and character.

This philosophy is not based on any illusions. Advocates of social progress have seen far too much of hardship and frustration to indulge in sentimentalism. But we live in a nation and a world that has been enriched beyond measure by those who have overcome enormous obstacles to build platforms of knowledge and accomplishment from which others might advance. I believe that of all the forces that will shape the world of the twenty-first century, the movement to recognize and realize the rights of women will be among the most powerful. To me, that is good news not only as a woman, but also as an American who cares deeply about improving prospects for our security, prosperity and freedom. For our country will do better and be even stronger in a world where the creative and productive capacities of women are progressively unleashed. This was an appropriate foreign policy goal for the Clinton Administration to establish for America. And it will be essential work for its successor of whichever party to pursue.

[The full article is available to those who have individual or institutional access to Project MUSE at <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/v020/20.2albright.html>. All articles in _SAIS Review_ 20.2 (Summer-Fall 2000) should be of interest to those who support or oppose Modest Proposals for The "Feminist" Empire. Its table of contents is at <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais_review/toc/sais20.2.html>.] -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list