—
46. The Platform for Action recognizes that women face barriers to full equality and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion or disability, because they are indigenous women or because of other status. Many women encounter specific obstacles related to their family status, particularly as single parents; and to their socio-economic status, including their living conditions in rural, isolated or impoverished areas. Additional barriers also exist for refugee women, other displaced women, including internally displaced women as well as for immigrant women and migrant women, including women migrant workers. Many women are also particularly affected by environmental disasters, serious and infectious diseases and various forms of violence against women.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Strategic Objectives and Actions of the Beijing Declaration open with paragraphs 45, covered in the previous article, and paragraph 46. These represent the introductory portions for it. If we look at Paragraph 46, we can see the ways in which the different types of women lead lives of barrier after barrier, not to the same degrees or in the same ways but definitely with somewhat similar outcomes – prevention of access in part or whole.
Now, this is an interesting paragraph in its compactness, concision. The factors taken into consideration are some of the most important in terms of the cross-sections of identities.
For those within the intersectional feminist research community, these intersections of identity tied to the barriers in the “full equality and advancement” of women represent the intersections of oppression based on the various identities of women; to the individualist libertarian academics of a Western philosophical bent, these individual characteristics of the women in the world have consequences based on social, economic, legal, and, at times, religious & cultural systems in which they inhabit, where, even in spite of the meritocracy of the industry in which they partake, they exist with additional barriers based on individual traits of their self, e.g., skin color or gender.
But, of course, merit matters as a high value in all this, as a proper retort to the intersectional feminists. These and other sides of the discussion speak in different vernacular but point to the similar pathologies, problems, in the individuals and in the societal systems.
For example, both want freedom of expression or, as they term it, “free speech,” which remains a sub-categorization and extension of freedom of expression enshrined in the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, it becomes freedom of speech; in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Section 2(b), it remains the freedom of expression; in the UK constitution, it stays as freedom of expression in Article 11.
One calls someone a fascist or an ur-fascist, a Nazi, a racist, a xenophobe, right-winger, alt-right, Status Quo Warrior (SQW), identitarian, or a homophobe, even a transphobe, and so on; another calls the other leftist, Social Justice Warrior, regressive, regressive leftist, left-winger, communist, postmodernist, neo-Marxist, Marxist, identitarian, and so on. Interestingly, the term “identitarian” is hurled from either side, as a humorous minor observation.
But this has real effects. Hate groups from several sides commit violence; then, the government can step in to add state violence, with everyone pointing fingers and not examining their own contributions to violence and the ways in which the government can take this as justification for state repression.
Duly note, the lack of advancement of the conversation or the acknowledgment of the points or the premises in the arguments of the other side, probably as covers for insufficient intelligence and rationality of the leadership to solve the problems facing themselves, especially as some just want their personal status increased alongside their financial advancement as fake victims, and of everyone facing the transition from a unipolar global system to a multipolar global order as, prior to his death, astutely noted by former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew.
That is, this becomes a basis for, even the most famous adults of each grouping who have careers and kids and the most distinguished stations, denigration, disrespect, and degradation of other groups as a whole or individuals as well as the prevention of thought about the other side.
Individuals from these entrenched groupings will lose jobs, careers, finances, be sued, and so on. Congratulations, we’re all worse off, because of a) the thin skins and litigious nature of the leaders of the movements – on either side, for simplicity’s sake – and b) the poor examples set by the leadership, in either of the cases. Then those purporting to walk the fine line between the two prominent sides fail to do it, simply posing and making a pretty penny as faux vanguards or false prophets in Abrahamic terminology.
But back to the main thread of discussion for this paragraph, as many of you know, the classifications are easily identifiable within everyday life. Each with a result of potential discrimination against women as a group and as individuals. As stated, the classifications taken into consideration for barriers against women are as follows: “race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion or disability, because they are indigenous women or because of other status.”
Indeed, it even extends into the parental status of some women, who, for examples, may be single mothers; these exist as the dominant or most populted demographic of the single parent population. It is in this sense that we can see the discrimination against women in a number of domains. This is particularly pronounced in the rural areas in which women lack the ability to have recourse with the injustices facing them, again as individuals to the more individualist Western-philosophical minded and as a group to the more intersectional feminist oriented.
Both make valid points. They might talk some more if they got off their high horses and listened to one another without the vitriolic tone, inherent distrust, ad hominem hurling of insults, or the use of lawsuits to settle academic disagreements, or simply making claims to shut down entire disciplines and lackadaisically work to construct entirely alternative academic institutions.
The power of myth exists, especially in a scientific and metaphysically naturalistic era; the influence of oppression structures exists, especially with mass communications and analysis of personal and interpersonal experiences through the new media. The question for them and several others, now, comes in finding common ground in their respective ideological entrenchments. Of course, these only amount to two of the identified prominent groups.
Now, to the main point of this specific documentation, we can mostly agree with the premise that women in rural, remote, and other areas tend to be impoverished compared to others. It is the demographics here who become the least provided by the national and the international system, as the heart of provisions, for the greatest number of people, tends to be in the city centers and metropolises.
Those other women with refugee status or displacement become important to equality of women because the advancement of women in these conditions create the greatest impact on the lives of the world’s women. The provision of food, finance, and education, as well as choice in reproduction, mark the possibilities for taking a different path in life for women.
However, for those displaced immigrant or migrant women, this is a serious set of issues facing them. These are women in some of the poorest and most destitute circumstances. Their concerns should, potentially, dwarf some of the concerns of the more advanced industrial economies – though important – that comprise the massive amount of emotional energy and intellectual resources seen in some of the aforementioned trivial aspects of popular culture and modern academic life.
These individual women deal with poor or no infrastructure in the cases of “environmental disasters, serious and infectious diseases and various forms of violence against women.” These create problems for many women, not in their limits in freedom of expression but, more properly, in the potential for dignity and respect in communities; even further, the possibility of being alive in the case of an environmental disaster. Their chances are far less with the possibility of greater individual loss of livelihood but also quantity of women as a group. Things to bear in mind, in the proportional consideration of what different people see as problems in the world – and what the practical realities of a large portion of the world’s population, often women, are, regarding livelihood.
—
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
Got Writer’s Block?
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash