Global

In Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich famously made the distinction between the institution of patriarchal motherhood and the experience of motherhood. I’ve always wondered to what degree this distinction bears out in other countries and cultures. According to a new book, Motherhood in India: Glorification without Empowerment?, published by Routledge India and edited by Maithreyi Krishnaraj, India also suffers from a gap between the cultural glorification of mothers and the actual treatment of mothers. Many thanks to writer and Feminist Review blogger Mandy Van Deven, who just told me about it! Mandy wrote a great piece for The Women’s International Perspective (The WIP) in which she interviews Veena Poonancha, one of the book’s contributors. Read her article, “Parvati’s Burden: Scratching the Surface of Motherhood in India,” over at The WIP.

Speaking of motherhood: I’m heading out to the National Women’s Studies Association conference in Atlanta tomorrow, where I’ll be on a panel entitled “Globalizing Motherhood Studies” (and another one on “Feminist Publishing 2.0″)–and will be conference blogging (along with fellow Girl with Penner Alison Piepmeier) over at She Writes!

On October 27, the World Economic Forum released its 2009 Global Gender Gap report, which ranks countries according to four categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. Who wins? Iceland, with the world’s smallest gender gap. Who loses? Yemen, coming in at 134^th place. But lest we point fingers, the U.S. dropped four places, to 31^st place, owing to minor drops in the participation of women in the economy and improvements in the scores of previously lower-ranking countries. (Though we’re top of the heap for educational attainment, we’re #61 for political empowerment. Ouch!)

The authors, Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University, Laura D. Tyson of the University of California at Berkeley, and Saadia Zahidi of the World Economic Forum, have put together an accessible and informative report. Among many other issues, their report suggests how motherhood can, in a word, kill. Consider a few of the statistics surrounding maternal health in many parts of the world:

Annually, more than half a million women and girls die in pregnancy and childbirth and 3.7 million newborns die within their first 28 days. (Appendix E, “Maternal Health and Mortality”)

Approximately 80% of maternal deaths could be averted if women had access to essential maternity and basic healthcare services. (Appendix E, “Maternal Health and Mortality”)

The need for paying greater attention to maternal health has been underscored by Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times column and his recent book Half the Sky, co-authored with Sheryl WuDunn. And while plenty of criticism has been levied against Kristof’s book, succinctly and fairly voiced by Katha Pollitt in her review in The Nation (thanks to my colleague Amy Kesselman for bringing her review to my attention!), Kristof deserves kudos for bringing media attention to the health issues that needlessly affect mothers in many developing countries, such as obstetric fistula.

The Global Gender Gap report provides other glimpses into how the experience of motherhood varies from country to country. Consider what Ricardo Hausmann, Ina Ganguli, and Martina Viarengo have to say about the relationship between marriage and motherhood, and their impact on the labor force participation gap between men and women:

…while the education gap has been reversed in quite a few countries, the employment gap has not. This gap is related to the compatibility of marriage and motherhood with a lifestyle where women can work.

(Here, the U.S. has a dubious distinction: of those countries where the employment gap has been rising, it has seen the biggest increase.)

Overall, however, there are some signs of positive change when examining the “motherhood gap” within labor force participation globally:

Motherhood has not been a universal obstacle for female labour force participation. In almost half the countries we studied, women with three children work at least as much as women with no children. However, in other countries, especially in Latin America, the motherhood gap is very large, with Chile exhibiting the largest gap. But there is good news: the motherhood gap has been falling in almost two-thirds of the countries, with the biggest reductions shown again by Brazil and Greece, accompanied by Austria and Bolivia.

There isn’t room in this report to explore all the complexities of paid work and mothering–such as who cares for children when mothers work in countries that don’t support working mothers, the working conditions mothers face, and so on–not to mention the wide spectrum of how women experience motherhood according to identity (class, ethnicity, religion), educational background, and geographical location (whether mothers live in a village or an urban environment). Even so, the report provides some broad brushstrokes that help situate the many different kids of gendered gaps in the world.

Hi, everyone!

I’m a somewhat familiar face here at GirlwPen.  Deborah Siegel and Kristen Loveland have both very graciously edited some of my guest posts featured at this site over the last year, including interviews with noted feminist authors such as Leora Tanenbaum, Kyria Abrahams, Susan Campbell, and Kathryn Joyce, as well as the occasional book review.  I’m very excited to be a part of the new GirlwPen editorial staff and I greatly look forward to writing here alongside their work, every second Monday of each month!

For those who are not familiar with Shira Tarrant’s excellent new book, Men and Feminism, Shira will be on tour this fall, sharing her ideas on masculinity, feminism, and intimate connections between the two with longtime readers and newcomers alike.  Please check out her tour schedule here and make sure to take a look at her new book!

Identity politics are central to the writing I hope to share in this space.  Patricia Hill Collins, a black feminist writer and scholar, defines intersectionality as “the focal point where two [or more] exceptionally powerful and prevalent systems of oppression come together” (please see the article Patricia Hill Collins: Intersecting Oppressions for further explanation).  As a feminist, I have often been complacent in allowing my identity as a woman to exist solely without descriptors, as though my womanhood had no context other than gender (and not even an understanding of cisgendered womanhood, at that!).  It has taken me a lot of time, reading, reflection, and then some more time to come to terms with the impact of intersectionality in my life.  It has also taken me just as long to understand many of the ways in which the theory of intersectionality is both embraced and/or ignored by various feminist groups. I still have a ways to go and the journey, as far as I’m concerned, will never be complete and will never rest solely in my hands.

The description of this column includes a definition for one of the least-known but greatly critical academic terms: kyriarchy.  Like many in the blogosphere, I was introduced to the concept of kyriarchy via this fantastic post by Lisa at My Ecdysis.  In reading, I began to understand that unlike the term “patriarchy,” kyriarchy provides a much-needed framework for understanding many varied systems of oppression, domination, subordination and superordination.  Arwyn at Raising My Boychick notes that “most of us exist with a complex array of privilege in some areas and oppression in others” (see her complex and highly informative perspective on kyriarchy here).  These include, but are not limited to: age, race, gender, gender expression, nationality, social class, sexuality, disability, body type, weight, citizenship, religion, and much, much more. 

In understanding kyriarchy, I can see where parts of my identity have contributed to my personal experiences of oppression and subordination.  Just as importantly, it also helps for me to understand where I act as an oppressor through unearned privileges granted to me by facets of my identity.  As a white, cisgendered, twentysomething, bisexual, middle-class, able-bodied, zaftig, American citizen and woman, I struggle to fully own my identity and the facets which might seem contradictory.  One example: I was raised in a large family  by a single mother; there wasn’t much money growing up, and I find that even though my class status has changed from scholarship-student to white-collar employee and freelancing writer, I worry over money in many of the same ways I did as a child.  Despite having savings and some of the trappings of middle-class privilege, my mentality of being raised on food stamps, free lunches, and living on only a few “extra” dollars from paycheck to paycheck has not evolved as quickly as my circumstances have.

Yet kyriarchy has not only contributed to self-awareness, but also to a greater understanding of global politics.  Kyriarchy is never static; the shifts in power and powerlessness depend on context, and with ever-changing circumstances, we are all forced to contend with our changing social roles.  I often wonder how kyriarchy contributes to certain power structures and how those structures are overtly and subtly underminded by those who are not in power, yet still work to implement social change. 

I hope to reflect on some of these ideas, and hopefully more, in posts yet to be written.  I hope readers of GirlwPen will embrace this journey with me.

This was the reaction of more than a few folks when they heard that I was starting to blog about motherhood. While it put me on the defensive, I also concede that they have a point. My single friend in Manhattan is feeling a bit inundated on Facebook by friends writing about their children; my husband points out that given the amount of blogging about motherhood, a lot has already been said (some of it very eloquently, I might add!) and that I should probably think hard about what, exactly, Global Mama is going to contribute.

So here’s the idea that motivated me to start a column called Global Mama. A lot of the conversation I’ve seen about motherhood and family life is pretty focused on individual experiences in the good ol’ US of A, which is fine and well (and also important–last time I checked, we still don’t have universal health care or paid maternity leave or a host of other national policies that would help a whole bunch of working families). But we also live in an increasingly globalized world (witness the development of all those mom blogs and the virtual communities they have created). I’m not just talking about the fact that so much of what we bring into our homes in the U.S. is made elsewhere (plastic toys made in Chinese factories) but also that the U.S. is attracting huge numbers of immigrant women–many of them mothers–who come here to make money to send home to their families, so their kids can eat food and buy clothes and go to school. Many of them working for professional working moms. All connected by globalization and the changes we’ve witnessed over the past several decades. All global mamas.

This column intends to bring together a diverse community–including researchers, activists, writers, thinkers, scholars, parents, paid caregivers, and kids–about what it means to have families and provide care in a globalized world. What are the effects of globalization, migration, technological change, transnational and transcultural exchange, and the development of globalized media culture on mothering and parenting? on our ideas about what motherhood is and what it looks like? As Arlie Russell Hochschild puts it in the anthology Global Woman, how do we create a “global sense of ethics” in a globalized world? And how can feminist commentary from a range of perspectives help inform our take on the myths and realities of motherhood and on debates within the public sphere?

So here’s my invitation to you, dear Girl with Pen reader, to offer your feminist perspectives on motherhood and family life on Global Mama! Contact me at globalmama@gmail.com.

As we celebrated Women’s Equality Day* yesterday, we want to talk about one of the most enduring signs of the gender equality gap — the differences in how men and women spend their time on an everyday basis. Many of you have probably heard of the term the “double-shift” when talking about women’s work outside and inside the home, and anecdotally, we all have examples (“I came home from a 12 hour work day and had to pick up his socks.” Or “After work I had to pick up the kids, clean the house, and cook dinner.”) The recently released American time use survey proves what we’ve known all along: women bear the burden of household work.

A couple of snippets:
• At 5:10 pm, 17% of women are doing household activities – 11% of men are.
• At 7:40 am, 11% of women are doing household activities – 6 % of men are.

Really, do check out the link – they’ve done a cool interactive chart where you can compare time use according to age, gender, race, employment, educational attainment, and size of household. Categories vary from “household activities” to “eating and drinking” to (our favorite!) “relaxing and thinking”. The only downside to the chart is that you cannot compare by multiple qualities – for example, are black women doing more household activities than white women at 5:10? Then black men? What about black single mothers? And Hispanic women over 65? (You get the picture.)

Internationally, feminist economists have been arguing for the inclusion of household work into overall GDP estimates – where traditionally, the bulk of women’s work was uncounted, as it did not take place within the marketplace. For the past few years, the United Nations Development Fund has been tracking Gender, work, and time allocation in its Human Development Report. Although only 33 countries reported on time allocation in 2007, the results are nonetheless interesting – globally women aren’t faring that much better in balancing free time and personal care and family care.

Even the “wunderkind” countries of Northern Europe women seem to be putting more time into the children and the chores then men. In Norway, while women and men spent approximately equal amount of time on themselves, women spent more time cooking and cleaning (2:14) than their male counterparts (0:52). Women also spent double the time (34 mins) that men (17 mins) did on childcare.

In Nicaragua, a moderately developed country where interestingly even the one country where women and men have relatively equal free time women, women are the primary caregivers for the children (1:01 hours compared to the 17 mins men spent with the kids), the cooks and cleaners (3:31 hours to 0:31 mins) and less likely to be involved in market activities 28% to men’s 74%.

It is no surprise that the least developed countries have the widest disparities with regards to time. Women in Benin spend much more time (8:03 hrs) on market and non-market activities combined than men (5:36 hrs). Beninese women don’t have much time for themselves (1:32hrs) their children (45 mins) or their household chores (2:49 hrs) and yet they still spend more time on everything, except themselves, than their men. I’m exhausted just blogging about it.

Virginia Woolf spoke of the need of one’s own room and time (and of course money) when writing fiction. And truly, all of these things are needed for most successes. Who knows how much more the world could gain from women if more men got more involved in activities beyond the market? There are signs that times are changing, however: although recent studies do not indicate more equality in household chores, they do point to a shift in younger men’s (Gen X) attitudes and behaviors around fathering. Looks like we are one step closer to taking ALL work activities seriously, whether inside the market or out. And that’s what we call equality.

* Don’t miss the National Council for Research on Women’s tribute to Women’s Equality Day on their blog, The Real Deal. (Full disclosure: both Tonni and I have posts up! We did them in our personal time.)

A few years ago (ok may more than a few) Gil Scott Heron said the revolution would not be televised and Tracey Chapman, when talking about the revolution, thought it would whisper, not ‘tweet’. Iranian women and men are risking their lives to protest for their rights and their voices will be heard, televised, and ‘tweeted’.

If you’re like us, you’ve spent the past couple of weeks glued to your computer, watching the historic Iranian election – and its aftermath – unfold. For us, what’s been important are not only the changes in Iranian society that the post-election protests signal, but women’s role in these protests (dare we say revolution) and what this election means for Iranian women.

On June 20th a young woman and her father took to the streets demanding to be heard, not knowing that hers would echo across the globe. When they named their daughter, her parents probably could not fathom how well her name suited her; Neda in Farsi means the voice or the call. Neda and thousands of women are taking to the streets and demanding equal rights. Dana Goldstein, of the Daily Beast, stresses that the underreported part of what is unfolding in Iran is women’s involvement in the protests.

Feminist politics are not new to Iran. According to Manilee Bagheritari, an independent gender consultant of Iranian descent, the feminist movement, or rather the ongoing three-decades old wave, is divided by two different approaches; the secular feminists (e.g. Shirin Ebadi) and Islamic feminists (though they might not prefer the label). What is important is that the two groups both demand that the state first ratify and second harmonize its laws with those of the international human rights instruments, namely the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW.

According to Haideh Moghissi, Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at York University and founder of the Iranian National Union of Women (and author of one of my favorite books, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis), although the Iranian women’s movement has a robust and long history, “at no time has the political influence of women and women’s issues been so profoundly visible as at present.” Prior to the election and women’s visible presence in the post-election demonstrations, women’s organizations came together to demand change from presidential candidates. The coalition, which included 35 women’s and social justice groups and 600 activists and intellectuals made two major demands

“under the banner of ‘women’s coalition movement’ (jonbesh-e Hamgerai’i)…
1) Joining the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); 2) A constitutional amendment to eliminate discriminatory articles that deprive women of equal rights with men.”

The blog Vital Voices has the following breakdown of the positions taken on these issues by Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mousavi:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

* Ahmadinejad changed the name of the government organization the “Centre for Women’s Participation” to the “Centre for Women and Family Affairs”.
* Ahmadinejad proposed a new law that would reintroduce a man’s right to divorce his wife without informing her. In addition, men would no longer be required to pay alimony. In response, women’s groups have initiated the Million Signatures campaign against these measures.
* Ahmadinejad’s administration opposes the ratification of CEDAW…
* Ahmadinejad implemented the Social Safety program, which monitors women’s clothing, requires the permission from a father or husband for a woman to attend school, and applies quotas limiting the number of women allowed to attend universities.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi

* Mousavi pledged to disband the “Morality Police” that monitor women’s clothing in accordance with traditional Islamic dress.
* Mousavi vowed to support legal measures to end violence and discrimination against women.
* Mousavi has sounded support for the ratification of CEDAW.
* Mousavi promised to appoint female ministries and other high offices, if elected.

Zahra Rahnavard, wife of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, addressed crowds earlier this month saying, “Thirty-four million women demand to have female cabinet ministers, 34 million women demand to be eligible to run for president, 34 million women want the civil law to be revised, 34 million women want the family law revised.”

What is truly beautiful about these protests is that men and women are protesting for human rights, which most seem to realize are incomplete without women’s rights. These protests feel like the modern day Middle Eastern manifestation of the French Revolution’s call for Liberté, Egalite and Fraternité…in this case a Fraternité that encompasses both brotherhood and sisterhood.

Quick round-up of links on women’s involvement in the post-election protests and demonstrations. Please feel free to add more in comments:

Iran and the Women Question

Iran’s Women’s Revolution

In Iran, “Pretty” is Sometimes the Protest

Who was really cheated in Iran’s vote? Women.

Protests in the Wake of Iran’s Election

The Women Protesting in Iran

You can also get up-to-the-minute info on Twitter by searching #iranelection

Check out this amazing interview over at ForbesWoman, “Iran and the Woman Question”. Roya Kakakian, an Iranian poet and author now living in the United States, talks about feminism in Iran, and the climate over there right now.  A brief excerpt:

Forbes: What was your first reaction to seeing women among the protesters in the streets of Iran?

Hakakian: The presence of women is not a surprise to me at all.

Iran has had a robust women’s movement for several decades now. But in the late 1990s, a new generation took charge; and in the early 2000s, they managed to organize and unite in ways that women had not since the revolution in 1979. It started as petition movement to collect signatures to ban stoning women to death and has spun out to become the “One Million Signatures Campaign.” So this is precisely what I expected.

Read the rest.

Travels and graduations behind us, we’re back! This month foremost on our minds is the issue of budget cuts. How many times will history have to repeat itself before we get it right?

Question: What do cuts in services for disabled and vulnerable people, shoddy food regulation practices that are making people in some states very sick, the recent rise in crime and simultaneous reductions in police resources, and even Nebraska’s inability to provide adequate services for troubled children and their families have in common?

Answer: These recent phenomena can be traced in some part to the reduction in social services that is common in national, state, and local budgets when trying to prevent the onset of a deep fiscal crisis. While these phenomena are all deeply troubling, even more troubling is the fact that there is historic evidence that such cuts do not work and, in many cases, actually have the opposite effect. That is, when the state no longer pays for things like health care, education, and even local security, there are extremely negative consequences for everyday people, especially for vulnerable groups such as the elderly, the disabled, and children, who depend on such services for daily survival.

In the 1980s, the world saw the effect of these policies writ large in the international arena, with so-called “Structural Adjustment Plans”, or plans put in place by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which laid out various conditions that had to be met by countries in order to get a loan from both establishments. Most of these conditions involved the opening of markets, “free” trade conditions, and extreme reductions in state provisions of social services like health care and education; it was argued that such services should instead be privatized. In short, the prevailing sentiment was this: let the markets take over and we’ll see what happens.

What happened was that structural adjustment plans had disastrous effects, particularly in many parts of Latin America (where the period of heavy structural adjustment has led many to refer to the 1980s as the “lost decade”) and Africa (where 34 countries implemented some form of a structural adjustment plan in the 1980s). Further, women were the ones to bear the brunt of many of the negative effects of these policies. According to Dzodzi Tsikata of the Third World Network, this is because such policies “assume the unlimited availability of women’s unpaid labour and time and… have tended to see women as a resource to be tapped to promote the efficiency of free market policies and to deal with the short-fall in access to social services.” In many instances, this leads to an increase in women’s working burdens and social responsibilities. In other words, women are expected to shoulder the majority of the burden of reductions in state provided services. And this phenomenon is not limited to developing countries (and surely not when the developing countries in question are following the economic prescriptions of their Western donors and lenders) – critics in the US have also argued that domestic budget cuts have a disproportionate effect on women and children.

The USA’s neighbor up north hasn’t done much better. Kathleen Lahley, a Law professor at Queen’s University in Canada outlined in her gender analysis of the 2009 budget, key ways in which the Canadian government has missed the mark. Not only does her analysis make for good reading, it also demonstrates how women in Canada will not directly benefit as much as men will from the $64 billion in spending and tax cuts. Gender equity requirements have not been included in the spending programs – the result is a gender-skewed stimulus.

With so much evidence on the negative effects of cuts to social services, one wonders why this model is still pursued in such a fashion and, further, whether there are any movements (policy or otherwise) to reverse the ongoing trend, particularly as global leaders consider changes to international economic frameworks in light of the recent crisis.

As we can see, leaders in North America don’t seem to be the fastest learners, but what about the rest of the world? The World Bank and the IMF? In 2007 Elaine Zuckerman, a former World Bank economist, challenged the Bretton Woods institutions to improve their track record of short-changing women. For all intents and purposes, it seems that World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, is trying to rise to the challenge. At last month’s G20 meeting in London, he spoke of the Bank’s plan to develop a Vulnerability Framework. The fund would provide support infrastructure, agriculture, small- to medium- size businesses and micro-finance. Past lessons may just be paving the way to a more gender-balanced future for the World Bank. This plan would benefit not only men through infrastructure jobs, but also women who are heavily involved in agriculture, are the majority of small business owners, and represent 85% of the poorest 93 million clients of Microfinance Institutions. This effort would require a contribution of 0.7% of more “developed” countries’ stimulus packages. Maybe this is their way of making up for the gaping holes left at home through budget cuts…nice but gender equality should happen at home too.

Who would have thought that the G20 would bring us even more good news?! We were a bit skeptical at first; the official documents that come out of these meetings rarely mention gender equality. Oh, we of little faith! The G20 countries pledged to support the World Bank’s Vulnerability Framework AND addressed the human dimension to the crisis and the pledge to “build a fair and family-friendly labour market for both women and men.” Steps in the right direction. Let’s hope this will manifest itself in thoughtful gender-conscious budget cuts across the board. The entire Official Communique can be seen here.

Finally, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner called for a “new starting point” in hemispheric relations at the recent Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago (the country that gave you Blogger TAB 🙂 ). While much attention has been given to Presidents Obama, Castro and Chavez, we recommend you take a look at President Fernandez’s speech, which was in our opinion one of the, if not the, best (though we haven’t been able to find any links to it). Further, the Summit’s Declaration of Commitment’s preamble Point 6 is calypso music to our ears: “We recognize the importance of considering the differentiated needs of women and men in promoting and ensuring the integration of the gender perspective as a cross cutting issue in national and hemispheric policies, plans and programmes to be implemented in the political, economic labour, social and cultural spheres…’’

At the very least, countries globally have demonstrated a rhetorical commitment to gender-balanced recovery and development. It remains to be seen how these plans will be put into action. Judging from past experiences, the best way to ensure that these rhetorical commitments are implemented in practice is through the work of gender researchers, advocates and practitioners, who must hold governments and international organizations accountable for the commitments that they make in these international forums. So, please, join us in reminding local, state, and national leaders to stick to their commitments to build a more gender-inclusive world. Let the fiscal crisis be used as an opportunity to strengthen gender equitable programs – not an excuse to cut much-needed services for women, men, and children.

Image Credit

Busy month for the Global Exchangers!

This month we’ve been extra busy at the Global Exchange – Tonni’s finishing up at ESADE and Gwen took off for fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and Haiti – so we’ve only had time to compile a roundup of interesting links to studies and articles that we’ve recently come across. Please feel free to leave additional links in comments!

ActionAid recently released a report on the rise of “corrective” rape of lesbians in South Africa.

AWID has a really cool project that highlights 10 case studies from around the world where women mobilized to make a difference.

The folks over at Gender Action just came out with a report that provides a much-needed analysis of the gender dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction.

Along these lines, UN-INSTRAW are doing some amazing things as part of their Gender, Peace & Security project, including a project on <a href="gendering security sector reform in Haiti (more on this from Gwen in the future).

Following the headlines on the G20 meetings in London, check out this Q&A with Rosa Lizarde of Global Call to Action Against Poverty’s (GCAP) Feminist Taskforce on the implications of the G20 meeting for women. (These are the same people who have coordinated the incredible Poverty Hearings and Women’s Tribunals – one of which Gwen was lucky enough to attend in New York last fall.)

And finally, for those interested in issues of translation, please consider answering the Call for Book Reviews for the Graduate Journal for Social Science’s special edition Lost (and Found) in Translation.

See you at the end of April!

Gwen & Tonni

We’ve been marinating on 2008; what an incredible year! Turbulent, exciting and really most of our wishes seemed to be granted in one fell swoop with the outcome of the US election.

There was China’s Olympic moment of glory, the first female Mayor in Egypt and of course the highs and lows of the U.S. election and then the same sex marriage Proposition in California. For all the leaps forward there is still more to be done for gender equality globally. Next year we want more inclusion! We wanted to share our top 5 wishes en route to inclusion. Enjoy and add your own in comments.

Our Top 5:
more...