Shadowing the U.S.

Activists Gauge America's Progress on the Beijing Platform for Action

BY JEN BLOCK

Five years ago, some 40, 000 women's activists met in Beijing, China to hammer out the Platform for Action--the most comprehensive set of goals for women's equality ever adopted by governments worldwide. At the same time, U.S. President Bill Clinton created the Interagency Council on Women, a governmental monitoring agency which, in Clinton's words, would "make sure that all the effort and good ideas [of Beijing] actually get implemented when we get back home." Five years later, at the end of March, the Interagency Council released an affectionate follow-up report to Beijing that detailed the Clinton Administration's progress in implementing the Platform.

At the same time, in preparation for the U.N.'s June review of its member states' progress after Beijing, women's rights groups are shining a spotlight on the U.S. government's self-administered pat on the back-and challenging its merit. At the end of March, as the Commission on the Status of Women's preparatory commission meeting for the June review wound to a close, the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) released a shadow report critiquing the U.S. government's so-called progress. The report, entitled "Women's Equality: An Unfinished Agenda" acknowledges the Clinton Administration's gains in addressing domestic violence and appointing a record number of women to top government posts. But the report also documents the U.S. government's failings in each of the twelve "strategic objective" areas of the Platform, including poverty, education, health, economy, human rights, and the environment. Each section of the report includes recommended actions for the U.S. government.

One of the report's highest priorities is addressing women's poverty. In America, women constitute 48 percent of the workforce and account for 80 percent of consumer purchases. Yet 70 percent of minimum-wage and part-time workers are women, and the wage gap persists in all sectors of the economy. "We've been experiencing incredible economic growth in this country, but it is being distributed very unequally-women and children are at the bottom. Poverty rates in the U.S. during this period of growth have only declined by 1 percent, and that is just unacceptable," says June Zeitlin, Executive Director of WEDO. The report charges that the 1996 reforms to the country's welfare system have disproportionately impacted women. Specifically, the report cites the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act, which ended federal subsidies for impoverished citizens and legal immigrants. The WEDO report also criticizes several of the government's anti-poverty programs for being ineffective stop-gap measures. Some of the programs highlighted include the Food Stamp initiative, which is intended to alleviate hunger in low-income families, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families, which limits income assistance to those in need to five years and requires recipients to work outside of the home.

The report also highlights several women's issues that the Clinton administration has failed to substantively address: universal health coverage, mandating paid maternity leave, reproductive rights and services, the wage gap, women's safety in prisons and the rising rate of military spending. Furthermore, the report contends, the Clinton administration has made no mention of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which funds programs such as anti-violence hotlines that ensure a woman's safety in both the home and the workplace. VAWA also requires local police to enforce court protection orders against abusers and makes it a federal offense for abusers to run away by crossing state lines. But VAWA will expire this year unless the United States Congress reauthorizes it.

The report's harshest criticism, however, is of the U.S.'s failure to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC). The United States and Somalia are the only two United Nations members that have not ratified CRC. And the U.S. is among only a handful of countries that have not ratified CEDAW, which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls "one of the most remarkable documents of our time." CEDAW is important not only for the sake of securing American women's rights, but also for the purpose of maintaining credibility in the international community. According to the WEDO report, "U.S.-based NGOs find themselves in the uncomfortable position of advocating change in other countries on the basis of international standards which their own government does not support."

The shadow report argues that CEDAW is being "held hostage" by Jesse Helms and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to the report which goes on to note that "the [Clinton] administration has not shown the level of political will necessary to bypass this barrier." (A sampling of Helms's logic, from a statement to the U.S. Congress on March 8: "It is a bad treaty...a terrible treaty negotiated by radical feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical anti-family agenda into international law...We need only look at the conditions of women living in countries that have ratified this treaty, countries such as Iran and Libya, to understand...") But Billie Heller, chair of the National Committee on CEDAW, insists that the problem "isn't just with Helms. It's time to get some new faces in the U.S. Senate," she says. "We haven't even taken the first tiny step in human rights. It's embarrassing."

In addition to the American failure to sign international conventions, June Zeitlin, Executive Director of WEDO, contends that the key area where the U.S. is lagging globally is economics. According to the World Bank, 70 percent of the poorest of the world's poor are women and children. She urges the U.S. to apply a gender lens when making economic policy decisions. "What we've been saying to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations is that before eradicating trade barriers, we have to look more closely at the social impact of globalization," says Zeitlin. "And gender must be a part of that examination."

According to Zeitlin, the U.S. government's central weakness in securing women's equality, is its inability to see the forest for the trees. "There have been many positive steps, but they are very piecemeal," she says. "In terms of poverty and the economy, you can't just look at one thing or fix one program; you have to look at the programs holistically." But the shadow report, which breaks down along the twelve critical issue areas outlined in the Platform for Action, was compiled in such a way that different groups and individuals with varying expertise developed each section without input or review from each other. "We just didn't have time for everyone to come together and deliberate on everything," Zeitlin says.

Some sections of the report are much more thorough than others, and at times the prescriptions for change are inconsistent. For example, the economy section recommends making the tax credit for parents fully refundable but the poverty section recommends only subsidizing child care. And on the issue of "living wages," both the economy and poverty sections recommend increasing the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour. Yet, for a family of three, this would yield an annual income of $13,520 which, according to the WEDO report, does not constitute a living wage for such a family.

Activists are hopeful that the WEDO report will exert much needed pressure on the U.S. government as the June review approaches. Since the President's Interagency Council "has no statutory base, no independent funding, no reliable staff, and will probably end with his administration," according to Zeitlin, it is crucial that implementing the Platform remains high on the agenda. "The government will know groups are watching them, and that we're going to be holding them accountable," says Zeitlin. Joan Ross Frankson, Communications Director of WEDO and editor of the shadow report, says "The very fact that we could come together and really put a critique before the government is a good starting point," she says. "But we also need to reach out to everybody else, especially men. We need to make it clear that these are not issues that just affect women. They affect us all."

For a copy of the report, contact the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), 355 Lexington Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10017-6603, Telephone: 212.973.0325, Fax: 212.973.0335, www.wedo.org

Jen Block is a freelance journalist based in New York.

EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA

Posted March 8, 2000

In January, the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) along with an American delegation, held its regional meeting to prepare for the Beijing Plus Five review. The group issued a landmark declaration broadly condemning violence against lesbians whilst calling for a global repeal of all laws against homosexuality.

Eastern European women’s groups, many of which were formed after the 1995 Beijing conference, are encouraged by the fact that the U.N. is now allowing NGOs formed after Beijing to participate in the June review and events leading up to it. One of the primary issues of concern to these women remains the trafficking of women into forced prostitution. Other issues on the top of their agenda include domestic violence against women. In Belarus, for example, women’s groups along with the government, are struggling to deal with the fact that the country has the highest number of women incarcerated for violent crimes. The reason? After years of enduring abuse from their husbands, women from Belarus are fighting back. In fact, many have taken up the ultimate revenge: murder.

Stay tuned to this site for events and developments from Western European women’s groups. For the most up to date information of Western European women, visit the website of European Women in Action for 2000.

In the United States, the administration of President Bill Clinton continues to stand by its pledge to the Beijing Platform for Action in word more than deed. To monitor the U.S. government’s progress of the Platform, the Women’s Economic and Development Organization (WEDO) is preparing a shadow report of the American government’s progress and has discovered that much more has been promised than delivered. Get involved with American women’s activists by signing on to the site of U.S. Women Connect, a Washington-D.C. based network of women’s groups in the U.S.