Feminism Is Still Needed
The last baby who was raped, it was in April. She was ten months old, so a very small baby. She was raped. The same gang raped the mother during two weeks. Then they came to Bukavu into my office. I wanted to bring the baby to the hospital, but she was so injured she died in my arms. Ten months-can you imagine that? And these people, these women in Congo, are just begging for life, not begging for money, just the right to live in their country safely.-Christine Schuler Deschryver, in an interview on Democracy Now
Rape as an instrument of war is not at all unusual, and it's by no means limited to the civil conflict in Congo, though it seems to have taken on a truly horrific dimension there recently. Rape camps were widely reported in the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s. According to Catherine MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, rape was used by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims as a kind of genocide specifically directed against women. In Burma, Karen women have repeatedly been forced into slavery during the day and subjected to brutal rape at night by government soldiers. Major-General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo said rape is an effective weapon of war because it destroys the whole community, commenting that "It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict."
UNICEF's 2007 report on state of the world's children focused largely on discrimination against and disempowerment of women at every stage of life because humanitarian workers and human rights activists have long known that gender equality and the wellbeing of children go hand in hand. A quick look at the status of women throughout the world makes it clear that this is very bad news for our future generations. Even during the heavily hyped Decade of Women (1990s), Richard Robbins wrote, "The informal slogan . . . became 'Women do two-thirds of the world's work, receive 10 percent of the world's income and own 1 percent of the means of production.'"
An article on globalissues.org provides some alarming statistics - more than half the food in the world is planted and harvested by women, yet many are not even paid for their labor. UNICEF (State of the World's Children, 2007) reports that unpaid housework often takes up most of a woman's time, and even if she enters the labor market, she usually does most of the housework and is relegated to low-paying jobs with little security or benefits. Poverty has increasingly become a gender issue - the feminization of poverty - with women and children being its primary victims worldwide.
In most parts of the world women also still have fewer assets, less wealth, and less control over the family income than men, and they face gender biases in property and inheritance laws. The 2007 UNICEF report states that in cultures and economies where men and male children are clearly favored, female infants are at greater risk of infanticide, will receive inferior education, be subject to exploitation and violence during adolescence, have higher rates of reproductive health problems and AIDS, and be more likely to die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The report concludes that to achieve control of their lives and the wellbeing of their children, women need more influence in the decision making that will shape their lives - in the family, the workplace, and the political arena.
In the Western societies, we may have equality in the home, but women and children are still far more likely than men to fall into poverty, and women still earn only about 75 cents for every dollar earned by a man for comparable work. There are currently 17 women senators out of 100, and 75 (17.2%) women in the House of Representatives. This is far from equal representation, and without a significant representation of the female population, issues perceived as "women's issues" (education, health, peace, for example) are unlikely to be taken as seriously as they should be.
No, I don't think feminism is outdated. I wish it were, but the evidence to the contrary is simply too overwhelming.
I consider myself a feminist not simply because I was born female, though I strongly believe all women should support the rights of their own gender. I'm a feminist because I believe in the equality and rights of all people. How can be hope to overcome problems of racism, fanatical nationalism, and religious intolerance when in so much of the world some 51% of the population can be regarded as second-class citizens, victimized by systemic violence and chronic poverty? President Obama has declared the UN Treaty for the Rights of Women a priority, but the United States has yet to ratify it. If we can't bring ourselves to promote the rights of women for their own sake, maybe we could do it for the sake of our children.