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To: nifl-womenlit@nifl.gov Message-id: <01e301c2e47d$fc5ea060$95255544@ewndsr01.nj.comcast.net> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-priority: Normal Status: O Content-Length: 14761 Lines: 331 ----- Original Message ----- From: Beth Myers <bmyers@womensedge.org> To: <bmyers@womensedge.org> Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 8:42 AM Subject: Happy International Women's Day! Dear Women’s EDGE Advocates, Happy International Women’s Day, Saturday, March 8th! Below are two new publications by Women’s Edge that may be of interest and helpful to you as you educate others in your community. If you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call. Sincerely, Beth Myers Publications 1. U.S. Foreign Policy Flouts Gender Equity Laws by Ritu Sharma, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Women's Edge 2. Fact sheet: The Women of Iraq: Conflicts and Peace Building ******************** Article ******************** March 6, 2003 U.S. Foreign Policy Flouts Gender Equity Laws Run Date: 03/05/03 By Ritu Sharma WEnews commentator (WOMENSENEWS)--Getting more women into foreign policy is crucial to global human security, especially now with current U.S. foreign policy being driven by leaders bent on pursuing war. Women can increase the safety of all if our values and holistic sense of approaching issues are brought to the table. In the critical areas of foreign policy that affect the lives of women and their communities --war, trafficking in small arms, global trade, and international corporate investment--women, as well as their values, needs, and creative solutions are totally absent. To examine women in foreign policy, we must first look at the important posts of ambassadors. Women ambassadors are to foreign policy what women chief executive officers are to corporate America--it is the ultimate job, the yardstick for measuring women's progress and the means to the end of changing these fields into something more women- or even people-friendly. In 1949, President Harry Truman appointed the first female U.S. ambassador, Eugenie Anderson, to Denmark as our pioneer. But she was not able to blaze a trail that would be followed by more top female internationalists. In the last 54 years, the United States has had 184 women ambassadors. Currently we have 30 women representing our country out of about 167 ambassadors (18 percent)--better than our representation in the U.S. Senate, but hardly enough to brag about. The biggest prize of all is, of course, the post of Secretary of State. Our "Amelia Earhart" pioneer is the former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, the first woman to ever hold that position. Former Secretary Albright's mark on foreign policy went beyond her being simply our nation's first leading diplomat to wear pantyhose (and brooches). She brought a somewhat different perspective to foreign policy that was influenced by her experience as a female and during her tenure she championed women's issues like no other Secretary of State. Some Women in Foreign Policy Ignore Women's Needs Clearly, not all women bring women's values and sense of what needs to be done to make this world a secure and prosperous place. Women comprised the majority of President Clinton's international trade negotiating team; however, these women had to "think like a man" when it came to making international trade policy. Bringing a set of values grounded in women's priorities for fairness and equality or stopping to examine how U.S. economic policies were affecting women was simply not seen as part of the job. The irony of a woman making foreign policy like a man could not be more poignant than it is right now with Condoleezza Rice's role as National Security Advisor. She is one of President Bush's strongest advocates for the war with Iraq and has been from the beginning. Her worldview is derived from years of study of chess-like Cold War foreign policy--one significant reason she made it to the top. She has shown no interest in women's issues around the world. Rice and others like her are missing a whole sphere of women's issues in foreign policy. War now impacts an ever greater share of women and children civilians as they are increasingly targeted as pawns in combat. International economic issues such as trade are affecting more and more whether women can get jobs, hold jobs or be paid a decent wage. Yes, generous U.S. assistance over the years has saved the lives of millions of women, provided critically needed basic healthcare and family planning and helped thousands of girls go to school. We know that these kinds of investments in women yield big gains: When women earn a little money they are far more likely than men to reinvest it in their children's health care, education and nutrition--ending poverty one family at a time and eventually leading to the overall economic growth of a country. Unfortunately, these beneficial programs are few and far between; overall, U.S. international assistance programs and policies ignore women's contributions and needs. In 1993, the Government Accounting Office conducted an independent evaluation of the U.S. Agency for International Development's progress in meeting the requirements of the 1973 Percy Amendment that requires U.S. aid programs to include women. The report stated that the foreign aid agency "has only recently begun to consider the role of women in its third-world development strategies, despite the fact that 20 years have passed since Congress directed that AID assistance programs focus on integrating women . . ." Ten years later, there is still little progress. Women and Their Values Must Be at the Table The positive evolution of U.S. foreign policy will come through the increased leadership of women, leadership that claims and expressly brings women's values to the table. We have suffered a temporary setback, but it will come in time. To speed up the process, the Women's Edge coalition brought together more than 60 organizations with a bi-partisan group of lawmakers to develop a women's blueprint for U.S. foreign policy. This blueprint has now been introduced into the U.S. Congress as the GAINS for Women and Girls Act (Global Action and Investments for New Success for Women and Girls). The GAINS Act is a straightforward instruction manual for how to integrate women's needs, priorities, and values into 11 different areas of foreign policy from human rights, conflict resolution, and international trade to basic education for girls and access to comprehensive reproductive health care. Already, two pieces of the GAINS Act have become law. We stand at a crossroads of values in foreign policy. The values currently dominating U.S. foreign policy (security through control, power, and lone-ranger "justice") do not represent the majority of women. The realization of real human security--being safe in your home and on the street, being able to send your kids to school, having a warm bed and a full stomach, pursuing your potential regardless of your sex, religion or ethnicity--this is the kind of foreign policy we need. Ritu Sharma is the co-founder and executive director of Women's Edge. *********************** Fact Sheet: The Women of Iraq *********************** 2. The Women of Iraq: Conflicts and Peace Building Iraqi Women Relatively speaking, Iraqi women have many rights not seen in neighboring Arab countries, including equal pay and the opportunity to work in many professions. According to Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times reporter, the Iraqi women can legally drive, uncover their heads, and serve in the army. The Iraqi Women's Federation boasts a million and half women members, spread out through the several provinces of Iraq. A working Iraqi mother gets one year of maternity leave. In terms of inheritance, women as well as men get what the law says, even the land. And there is an 85 percent literacy rate among Iraqi women. Indeed, a recent report prepared by Arab experts and compiled under United Nations support concluded that although Iraq remains among the region's least developed countries, it scored highest in women's empowerment. However, that being said, today Iraq is still a country where women suffer from honor killings, and other human rights violations, not to mention the gender-blind, vicious political repression where torture and execution are a fact of every day life. History Women began taking positions in the mainstream job market as early as the 1920s and 1930s. In 1970, the Iraqi constitution was changed to guarantee that all women and men are equal before the law. The 1970s and early 1980s were years of general economic growth in Iraq and state-induced policies worked to eradicate illiteracy, educate women and incorporate them into the labor force. Labor was scarce, and while the Gulf countries started to look for labor outside their national boundaries, the Iraqi government tapped into its own human resources. Subsequently, working outside the home did not only become acceptable for women but prestigious and the norm. Iraqi women became among the most educated and professional in the whole region. However, as in many other places, conservative views did not automatically change because women started working. And there existed great differences between rural and urban women as well as women from different social class backgrounds. Economic Embargos Living conditions for Iraqi women deteriorated after the 1991 Gulf War and economic embargos were applied. Prior to 1991, Iraqi women were able to find and retain jobs, obtain higher-learning, easily marry and receive medical coverage from the most extensive and free health-care system in the region. The choked economy has caused many women to lose their jobs and abandon their education, thereby losing both their financial independence as well as their best opportunities for self-determination and liberation. Today, most women in Iraq focus all their efforts in search of enough food and clean water to ensure their family's survival. In addition, the Iraqi women's movement has severely suffered due to sanctions and anti-women legislation imposed by Hussein's regime since the mid-90s. Consequently, this enabled the regime to further pass increasingly anti-women policies without any resistance from women’s organizations. Statistics on Iraqi Women Due to Embargos • There has been a sharp increase in maternal mortality because women are not getting emergency obstetric care for complications during pregnancy and childbirth. • Girls and women are facing a major learning gap. There has been a sharp decline in adult female literacy and nearly twice as many girls as boys are out of school. • More than 35 percent of girls drop out before the end of primary school due to the high price of school supplies and the need to help supplement the family’s income by going to work, likely begging Women and War War has displaced 35 million people worldwide; 70 percent of these refugees and displaced persons are women and children who, according to the United Nations, bear a “disproportionate share of the suffering” during times of armed conflict in ethnic and religious wars. Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo forced at least 750,000 people to flee their homes; an overwhelming majority of these refugees were women and children. Once war breaks out, women have little access to basic food, medicines, hygiene, or education and employment opportunities. Sexual violence and persecution are often adopted as tactics of war and terrorism; recent history has seen sexual violence and rape used deliberately and strategically as weapons of war. Little is done to protect women’s safety and rights in conflict situations, or to persecute perpetrators. If war breaks out in Iraq, it is possible that gender-based violence and violations of human rights will increase dramatically. Peace Building Violence and conflict are serious impediments to countries’ participation in the global economy. During major conflicts, it is often women that keep local economies running, and it is women who work to rebuild economies post-conflict. At present, economic aid to regions in conflict rarely takes into account women’s roles as economic leaders. In many countries, women have already taken the initiative to reach across the conflict divide and foster peace. In Mali and Liberia, women joined together to collect arms. In Northern Ireland, Catholic and Protestant women have organized community peace-building projects together. Yet, time and again, women are excluded from participating in the rebuilding of their countries. This has been the case in Afghanistan where women have had a limited role in shaping major policies. Only two women ministers are included in Afghanistan’s ruling cabinet. War and the GAINS for Women and Girls Act Women’s EDGE has developed the first ever comprehensive U.S. legislation on global women’s issues, the Global Action and Investments for New Success (GAINS) for Women and Girls Act. The GAINS Act includes a section that addresses “Women, Conflicts and Peace Building”. In addition to calling for the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, the GAINS Act also emphasizes programs that: • Support women’s efforts in conflict resolution • Promote multi-year gender-balanced economic development programs • Improve peacekeeping operations to include the rights and needs of women in war • Consult with women leaders during peace negotiations • Provide protection and assistance to refugee women and displaced women in war • Provide health services, including reproductive health services, to refugee women For more information contact Ana Rahona, Women’s EDGE at 202.884.8399 or arahona@womensedge.org 1. Women’s Enews, www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1140 2. Middle East Policy Council, www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol6/9806_halsell.asp 3. Women’s Enews, www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1088/context/archive 4. Act Together Report, www.acttogether.org/Womengender&sanctionsinIraq.htm 5. UNICEF, www.unicef.org/noteworthy/iraq/situation.html 6. Common Dreams, www.commondreams.org/views02/1017-09.htm 7. Refugees International, www.refugeesinternational.org. 8. United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. “Women’s Human Rights;” United Nations; Geneva; 2000. 9. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, www.unhcr.org. Beth Myers Director of Outreach and Membership Women's Edge 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 600 Washington, DC 20009 202-884-8971 For more information on Women's EDGE or to join, go to http://www.womensedge.org Beth Myers Director of Outreach and Membership Women's Edge 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW Suite 600 Washington, DC 20009 202-884-8971 For more information on Women's EDGE or to join, go to http://www.womensedge.org
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