International Women’s Day: Should We Party About This?
I opened my email to a rush of notices celebrating International Women’s Day. One from Boutique Activist Consultancy suggested that what the women’s movement needs is a color (we should all wear purple), a sign (like the old two fingers gesture for peace), and a sound (like maybe Katniss Everdeen‘s three note call).
Maybe the women’s movement does need a new symbol. But let’s not have it be a party hat.
The Boutique Activists’ slogan is “We win lost causes.” I thought it ironic to pronounce the women’s movement a lost cause on International Women’s Day, let alone to propose it should be saved by marketing. Unfortunately, however, this “party time!” approach fits neatly into the packaged celebration International Women’s Day/Week/Month has become.
Social movements may benefit from slogans and songs, but they do not spring from them. Real historical uprisings, like the antiwar protest of the 1960s, the revolutions against colonial powers in Africa, the march from Selma, the Arab spring, or even the fictive planetary domination in The Hunger Games, begin first with a gut-wrenching recognition that deep, systemic injustice can no longer be tolerated. Stunned, shared realization is what gives the aggrieved group courage to speak, to confront, and to risk arrest or even death. Thus, that instant of group awareness opens up a heart-stopping possibility, through which the sheer numbers of the oppressed suddenly surge forward.
We are not there yet. Not this time, anyway. Instead, these days, we are trying very hard to put a positive spin on our own disadvantage, to argue that gender equality would be a “win-win” for the world. That’s because the harsh attitudes of some Second Wave feminists left a bad taste that still affects the response to the cause of women’s rights. So, on this round, we are trying to win with a softer persuasion, using data and collaboration. And it makes sense, especially since the numbers are all on our side.
At the event I attended in Brussels last week, the European Women’s Lobby offered this button. I loved the 50/50 sentiment and wore it back to Oxford. But then, this week, while visiting my mother in Texas, I was aware that the button would be offensive to many in that insanely “red” state. Yet most Americans agree that women should have equality with men. So how did it happen that saying so became an invitation to attack?
If we really are to win this lost cause, however, the deep recognition of injustice and its systemic nature must also come. Closing the gender gap would indeed produce a win-win, but there is risk in downplaying the tough realities that hold the system in place. If we ignore the pain points just because they don’t make for a good party, we are likely to entirely miss that heart-stopping opening through which historic change comes. Indeed, we may seduce ourselves into accepting cosmetic add-ons (like International Women’s Day?) instead of pushing for the courageous actions that really are needed.
The situation women face is no less dire than any other oppressed group has confronted. I know, I know: you are not accustomed to thinking of it that way. We are in the habit of believing our level of subordination is relatively tolerable compared to that of other groups (American blacks, British Muslims, India’s untouchables, and so on).
Actually, though, the big picture and the long view show that women are the largest group of oppressed people in history and that their circumstances of subordination, despite the comfort of a few in any given era, are every bit as brutal as others. Further, our situation is not localized, as have been other forms of oppression, but is global in its thudding consistency. If you think I am exaggerating, keep reading.
Based on profiles of victims identified by State authorities in 61 countries.
Let’s start with a scary fact. There is more slavery in the world today than ever before in history. 80% of the victims are female. Why is this? Girls are sometimes kidnapped, sometimes tricked, and sometimes sold into slavery by their own families. Boys can be tricked, kidnapped, or sold—but they nevertheless are four times less likely to be slaves. So, the explanation for this gender difference arises not from the particular event that led to enslavement, but from four general conditions that affect women in every country, at every level, but are more pointed among the very poor, traditional communities most vulnerable to slavery:
Females, as a class, are consistently more economically disadvantaged than males. Not only do they have less ability to earn, but their earnings are often confiscated. They frequently are allowed no way to save, cannot inherit or own significant assets. They are utterly vulnerable to the wishes of others. From the perspective of a father, they become an economic burden, all cost and no benefit. For a poor family, paying for a girl’s subsistence and, in many cases, being expected to provide a dowry for her, while seeing no future income stream or wealth ever coming from her makes the promise of a slave trader very seductive.
Females, as a class, participate much less in decision-making, whether it is in the home, in the village, in a corporation or a religious body, or the national government. In fact, women generally do not decide their own fate, but have it decided for them. It is, therefore, not a great departure among many poor communities for a father to make a decision for a daughter, whether about schooling or matrimony or slavery, without considering her wishes.
Females are expected to do unpaid work—a lot of it and without complaint. Their “duties” include childcare, housework, and sexual services. The 80% of slaves who are female also work, unpaid, in either domestic service or the sex trade. Their circumstances are not much different from those forced into early marriage. The line between marriage and slavery is, in many places, very blurry.
Females are more vulnerable to force. Most are easily overpowered by men. Females are less likely to be trained to defend themselves. And, they face a pervasive, constant threat, everywhere they go, all the time. In many places, violence against women is so common as to be invisible. The violence that makes human trafficking possible fades easily into this backdrop.
Females are subject, everywhere, to a belief system that says they are lesser. Less worthy, less intelligent, less important, less capable, even less human. World religion has held that females don’t even have souls, can never make it to heaven, and such. Females are more easily trafficked because their enslavement seems a lesser offense.
Every nation on the planet participates in the slave trade, as a source or a destination—sometimes both. Slavers treat their “products” (regardless of gender) like animals, boxing or caging them, sometimes whipping them or refusing to feed them. Traders are known to kill slaves at will, without remorse.
When you visualize a cage full of slaves, picture them as young females. Because that is the basic truth of it.
The global slave trade is a huge business that also sells drugs, guns, and counterfeits. This form of organized crime has outstripped governments in their use of technology and works easily within and around national borders. Police and customs agents are often in their pay. This global trade brings violence and crime to every community they touch; it is a fundamentally destabilizing force. We think the big focus is drugs, but the core business is selling women. If we could somehow level the playing field—by “empowering females” such that they are worth more than their bodies bring in trade—the whole world would benefit from the reduction in the reach of global crime. (Win-win, right? But, really, is that the reason to do it?)
Now, let’s take those same five factors outlined above and look at how they ripple out to other instances and populations.
Economic disadvantage. In every country in the world, women are paid less than men for the same work, despite decades of equality law. The discrepancy is even bigger at the top than at the bottom. Furthermore, access to capital is equally skewed: the gender gap in credit is $285 billion. Women own just 1% of the world’s land, though they do most of the farmwork. Globally, women are less likely even to have bank accounts. The economic disadvantaging just goes on forever.
It always kills me the way elite professional women seem to think they are exempt from pay discrimination. The data say otherwise: it’s the women at the top who are really taking a beating when it comes to pay inequality.
Decision-making. Even in countries where women have full legal equality, equal education to men, and the same labor force participation, they are nearly absent from the ranks where decisions are made. Whether you look at parliaments or priesthoods or private companies, there are painfully few women at the top. What it comes down to is this: half the world’s population is making all the major decisions for the other half. Why are we still standing for this kind of exclusion?