Arquivo de etiquetas: Genero

Lectures / Readings

Manifesto Ciborg

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Fonte EA Arthur Fontgaland e Renata Cortez

O Manifesto ciborgue -­ ciência, tecnologia e feminismo­ socialista no final do século XX (1985) é um ensaio escrito pela bióloga e filósofa norte-americana Donna J. Haraway (1944). Com título que alude ao Manifesto Comunista (1848) de Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels, o Manifesto Ciborgue integra um conjunto de posicionamentos públicos do feminismo socialista estadunidense acerca dos rumos dos movimentos sociais de esquerda desse país na década de 1980. Trata-se de uma obra central para a compreensão da crítica feminista da ciência proposta pela autora, que reverbera em suas obras posteriores, entre as quais Primate Visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science (1990); Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991); The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003) e When Species Meet (2008).

Em diálogos com o feminismo norte-americano, em especial com o feminismo negro e latino, com a economia, com obras literárias e com a biologia – área na qual a autora é formada, Haraway produz um texto polêmico ao propor uma postura feminista apta a refletir sobre a influência da ciência e da tecnologia do final do século XX sobre as relações sociais. Para a autora, tanto os feminismos socialistas e marxistas quanto os feminismos radicais conceberam a categoria mulher a partir do que seria considerado comum a todas elas, por meio da “política da identidade”. Haraway sugere uma ruptura com tal política para dar lugar a uma coalizão capaz de considerar as diferenças e as afinidades entre mulheres, denominada por ela “política de afinidades”. O ciborgue, criatura formada por fusões entre máquina e organismo, mistura de realidade social e ficção, não constituindo um corpo sólido com componentes definidos, seria uma metáfora dessa nova política em um mundo marcado de forma crescente pelo binômio ciência e tecnologia, no qual as fronteiras entre humano e animal, organismo e máquina, e entre físico e  não-físico mostram-se fluidas.

Essa confusão de fronteiras é necessária para que a autora repense as questões de gênero, de sexualidade, raça e tecnociência, uma vez que a passagem das tradicionais dominações hierárquicas para um sistema de dominação baseado na informática global coloca em cena novas formas de poder e, com elas, novas configurações e significados de sujeitos. Haraway mostra como o desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico está presente no mundo do trabalho, na alimentação, na produção do conhecimento e nas mais diversas dimensões da vida. Nesse novo enquadramento histórico, seriam desfeitos pela tecnologia alguns pressupostos científicos e políticos que por muito tempo nortearam o pensamento ocidental e serviram à dominação das mulheres, das “pessoas de cor” (“people of color”, no original) dos trabalhadores e animais; por exemplo, os dualismos mente/corpo, natureza/cultura, macho/fêmea e organismo/máquina. Essas dicotomias anteriormente rígidas seriam então desmanchadas, dando espaço a conceitos maleáveis e passíveis de reconstruções, produzindo alternativas às tradicionais concepções de corpos e modos de vida a partir da apreensão da tecnologia no cotidiano.  Esse processo de remodelamento de corpos e de relações mostra como os corpos são construídos e podem ser desmontados, colocando à prova sua suposta naturalidade e revelando suas possibilidades políticas. Daí a necessidade das mulheres apreenderem e se apropriarem da linguagem da tecnociência, tendo como inspiração a figura do ciborgue, de modo a contestar esses dualismos clássicos e alterar as relações de classe, raça e gênero, em uma tentativa de superação das dominações e da construção de um mundo a favor das diversidades.

Ao analisar as relações dicotômicas entre natureza e tecnologia, e o lugar da mulher no interior desse cenário, a política ciborgue proposta no manifesto de Haraway pretende ampliar o conceito de biopolítica de Michel Foucault (1926-1984) pela elucidação das complexas conexões entre cibernética e corpos e por meio da visibilidade conferida a inúmeros arranjos possíveis de subjetividade e de organismos. Tal contribuição torna o Manifesto Ciborgue fundamental para o pensamento pós-feminista, ao lado das obras de Judith Butler (1990), Teresa de Laurentis (1997), Judith Halberstam (1998), Audre Lorde (1984) Gloria Andalzua (1987) e Marie-Hélène Bourcier (2001). O ciborgue de Haraway contribuiu também para a problematização contemporânea das questões de gênero e sexualidade propostas pelo movimento queer, reverberando naquela que seria uma das obras mais emblemáticas acerca do tema, o Manifesto Contrassexual: práticas subversivas de identidade sexual (2000) de Paul Beatriz Preciado (1970). Desde a concepção de ciborgue cunhada por Haraway em seu Manifesto, a preocupação política com a ciência e tecnologia é reconfigurada ao longo de sua obra, alimentando diálogos constantes com os debates da Antropologia da Ciência que mobilizam, por exemplo, Bruno Latour (1947) e Marilyn Strathern (1941).

PALAVRAS CHAVE

ciência, corpo, feminismo, gênero, raça, grande divisor, identidade, sexualidade, tecnologia, Estados Unidos

BIBLIOGRAFIA

ANDALZUA, Gloria, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco, Spinster; Aunt Lutte, 1987

BUTLER, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London & New York, Routledge, 1999

FOUCAULT, Michel, Histoire de la sexualité. Tome I. Paris, Gallimard, 1976 (Trad. bras. Maria Thereza da Costa Albuquerque e J. A. Guilhon Albuquerque, Rio de Janeiro, Edições Graal, 1998)

GORDON, Richard, “The computerization of daily life, the sexual division of labor, and the homework economy”, Silicon Valley Workshop Conference, University of California at Santa Cruz, 1983

GROSSMAN, Rachel, “Women’s place in the integrated circuit”, Radical America, v. 14, n. 1, 1980, p. 29-50

HALBERSTAM, Judith, Female Masculinity. Durham, Duke University Press, 1998

HARAWAY, Donna J., “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York, Routledge, 1991 (Trad. Bras. Tomaz Tadeu.  In: HARAWAY, Donna; KUNZRU, Hari; TADEU, Tomaz, Antropologia do Ciborgue: As vertigens do pós-humano, Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2009, 2a ed.)

HARAWAY, Donna J., Primate Visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science, New York and London, Routledge, 1990

HARAWAY, Donna J., Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York, Routledge, 1991

HARAWAY, Donna J., The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003

HARAWAY, Donna J., When Species Meet, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008

Hutchinson, Evelyn, The Kindly Fruits of the Earth: Recollections of an Embryo Ecologist, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1979

KING, Katie, “The pleasure of repetition and the limits of identification in feminist science fiction: reimaginations of the body after the cyborg”, trabalho apresentado em California American Studies Association, Pomona, 1984

KING, Katie, “The situation of lesbianism as feminism’s magical sign: contests for meaning and the U.S. women’s movement, 1968-72”, Communication. v. 9, n. 1, 1986, p. 65-92

LATOUR, Bruno, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris, La Découverte, 1991. (Trad. Bras. Carlos Irineu da Costa. Rio de Janeiro, Editora 34, 1994)

LATOUR, Bruno, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999 (Trad. Bras. Gilson César C. de Sousa. Bauru, EDUSC, 1999)

LAURETIS, Teresa de, “Feminist studies/crítical studies: issues, terms, and contexts” In: Feminist Studies/Critical Studies,  Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986

LORDE, Audre, Sister outsider,  Trumansberg (NY), Crossing, 1984

MARX, Karl & ENGELS, Friedrich. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, 1848 (Trad. Bras. Marcus Vinicius Mazzari.  Estudos avançados, v.12, n.34. São Paulo, set-dez, 1998)

MORAGA, Cherríe, Loving in the War Years, South End Press, 1983

MORAGA, Cherríe & ANZALDÚA, Gloria (orgs), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Watertown, Persephone, 1981

PRECIADO, Paul Beatriz,  Manifeste Contra-sexuel. Paris, Ballard, 2000 (Trad. Bras. Maria Paula Gurgel Ribeiro. São Paulo, n-1 Edições, 2014)

SANDOVAL, Chela, Yours in struggle: women respond to racism, a report on the National Women’s Studies Association, Oakland, CA, Center for Third World Organizing, [s. d.]

SANDOVAL, Chela,  “New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed” In: Chris Hables Gray (ed.),The Cyborg Handbook, New York, Routledge, 1995

STRATHERN, Marilyn, Reproducing the future: Essays on anthropology, kinship and the new reproductive technologies, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992

Lectures / Readings

Género

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Fonte EA – Carolina Cordeiro Mazzariello e Lucas Bulgarelli Ferreira

O termo gênero é comumente utilizado nas ciências sociais e humanas para enfatizar o caráter cultural das diferenças existentes entre homens e mulheres. As assimetrias de poder que demarcam estas distinções e discriminações são justificadas pela atribuição de características entendidas como naturais entre homens e mulheres, traços decorrentes das distinções corpóreas, em especial as associadas às capacidades reprodutivas. Os estudos clássicos de Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), As técnicas do corpo (1934) e de Margaret Mead (1901-1971), Sexo e Temperamento (1936) já indicavam que certos padrões de conduta não estavam relacionados à natureza de homens e mulheres, mas antes aos diferentes processos culturais e de socialização.

É possível recuar às décadas de 1920 e 1930, em diferentes países, para verificar, principalmente no continente europeu e na América do Norte, que as mulheres romperam com formas agudas de desigualdade, especificamente no que diz respeito ao direito à educação, à propriedade e ao voto. Esta dinâmica de equiparação de direitos foi central no pensamento feminista, sobretudo a partir dos anos 1960. Diferentes correntes feministas questionavam o suposto caráter natural da subordinação feminina e sustentavam a ideia de que essa assimetria era decorrente do modo como a mulher havia sido construída histórica e socialmente. Para além das diferenciações teóricas, as causas do jugo feminino foram apresentadas a partir de dois aspectos determinantes, um biológico e um social, isto é, a reprodução e a produção social. O corpo passa a ser considerado a principal causa da opressão sexual e da desigualdade social. Para o debate feminista pós 1960, no qual se destacam os nomes das ativistas Betty Friedam (1921-2006) e Bell Hooks (1952), as categorias “mulher”, “opressão” e “patriarcado” tornam-se centrais. A relação homem/mulher passa a ser entendida como uma relação política e a dominação masculina, postulada como universal, presente em diferentes épocas e culturas. A noção de patriarcado sai de voga, ao passo que o uso da categoria “mulher” é substituído por mulheres no plural, com o intuito de evidenciar as diversas “mulheres”, já que a mulher branca não seria dominada da mesma forma que a mulher negra; ao lado disso, distinções como posição social e geração também passam a ser entendidas como fundamentais nesse processo.

O conceito de gênero se desenvolve em um quadro marcado por intelectuais e militantes feministas em todo o mundo, abrindo espaço para a consolidação de novas formas de conhecimento e de luta política. Foram em especial as feministas norte-americanas e inglesas que se apropriaram do termo gênero, pioneiramente utilizado pelo psicanalista Robert Stoller (1924-1991) em intervenção no Congresso Psicanalítico Internacional em Estocolmo (1963), para marcar a distinção entre natureza e cultura. Apresentado por ele como “identidade de gênero”, o conceito enfatizava o caráter social em contraste com a diferença sexual tida como natural e inscrita no corpo fisiológico. O ensaio clássico da antropóloga Gayle Rubin (1949), O tráfico de mulheres: notas para uma economia política do sexo (1975), torna-se uma referência para o debate feminista e para os estudos antropológicos. A partir das leituras de Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – 2009),  Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) e Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981), a autora cria o conceito “sistema sexo/gênero”, descrito como um conjunto de arranjos modelados pela intervenção social que incidem na matéria prima biológica do sexo humano e da procriação. Os princípios fundamentais para a manutenção desse sistema seriam o constrangimento da sexualidade feminina, o tabu do incesto e a heterossexualidade. A análise de Rubin esteve marcada pelo princípio da igualdade presente na teoria marxista, tendo influenciado os estudos feministas nas décadas de 1960, 1970 e 1980.

Trabalhos antropológicos posteriores voltam-se para a análise de contextos específicos, com foco em processos sociais que estabelecem a assimetria entre os sexos. A nova orientação tem por objetivo lançar uma crítica epistemológica às respostas transculturais oferecidas para enfrentar a suposta subordinação da mulher. Carol MacCormack (1933-1997)em Nature, culture and gender: a critique (1980) enfatiza que a dicotomia natureza/cultura é reflexo de uma concepção cultural específica e não uma característica universal, e, por isso mesmo, seria também necessário relativizar o conceito de dominação. Para a autora, há uma arbitrariedade de significação nos termos macho e fêmea tanto quanto nas noções de natureza e cultura. Nessa perspectiva, Marilyn Strathern (1941-) em No nature, no culture: the Hagen case (1980), utiliza a etnografia realizada no monte Hagen, da Melanésia, para evidenciar a inaplicabilidade dos conceitos ocidentais sobre outras culturas, uma vez que foram identificadas entre os Hagen concepções distintas das relações entre natureza/cultura e homens/mulheres.

Um novo paradigma teórico retira as questões de gênero do âmbito universal, situando-o como categoria de análise relacional e dinâmica; nessa vertente situa-se o ensaio de Joan Wallach Scott (1941-), Gênero: uma categoria útil para a análise histórica (1986). A autora, já distante das primeiras formulações sobre o tema, postula gênero como categoria histórica que permite pensar as origens exclusivamente sociais das identidades subjetivas de homens e mulheres. A análise de Scott se distingue de formulações anteriores por sublinhar que nenhuma experiência corporal pode ser compreendida fora dos processos sociais e históricos. A autora chama a atenção para a necessidade de examinar o modo como gênero é construído em relação a uma série de atividades, organizações sociais e representações culturais, historicamente situadas. Tais perspectivas sobre o gênero indicam uma leitura que estranha e questiona qualquer naturalização da diferença e dos processos de significação do poder. A partir da abordagem de Judith Butler (1956-) em Problemas de Gênero (1990), todos os corpos são entendidos como sexuados, generificados e racializados por meio de um processo regulado de repetição de discursos. Para Butler, referência incontornável nesse debate, o gênero é antes “o ato de fazer do que o de ser”, sequência de atos cadenciados no interior de um quadro regulatório rígido, não havendo sexo capaz de resistir sem o gênero. A emergência dessas leituras logrou mobilizar e reordenar argumentos não apenas da antropologia, mas também da filosofia, da linguística e, também, das ciências biológicas e da natureza.

Bibliografia

BUTLER, Judith, Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. Nova York, Routledge, 1990 (Trad. Bras. Renato Aguiar. Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira, 2003)

MACCORMACK, Carol, “Nature, culture and gender: a critique” In: Carol MacComarck l & Marilyn Strathern (ed.), Nature, culture and gender, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980

MAUSS, Marcel, “Les techniques du corps” (1934) In: Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris, PUF, 1950 (Trad. Bras. Paulo Neves. São Paulo, Cosac & Naify, 2003)

MEAD, Margareth, Sex and temperament in three primitive societies, New York, Dell, 1935 (Trad. Bras. Rosa Krausz. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2000)

MOORE, Henrietta, “Understanding sex and Gender” In:Tim  Ingold. (ed), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Londres, Routledge, 1997

PISCITELLI, Adriana, “Recriando a (categoria) mulher?”  In: Leila M. Algranti (org), A prática feminista e o conceito de gênero, Campinas, IFCH/UNICAMP, 2002, v. 48, p. 7-42

RUBIN, Gayle, “The Traffic in Women. Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex” In: Rayna Reiter,(ed), Toward an Anthropology of Women, New York, Monthly Review  Press, 1975

SCOTT, Joan, Gender: a useful category of historical analyses. Gender and the politics of history, New York, Columbia University Press, 1989

STRATHERN, Marilyn,  No nature, no culture: the Hagen case. In: Carol MacComarck  & Marilyn Strathern (ed), Nature, culture and gender. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980 (Trad. Bras. Iracema Dulley e Jamille Pinheiro. São Paulo, Cosac Naify, 2014)

Lectures / Readings

Why Did Some Countries Advance While Others Remained in Poverty? III

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The Role of Culture: Demography, Education, Gender

We’re making a differential diagnosis of why countries get stuck with their bad economic performance. We’ve looked at, how poverty traps can hold poor countries in a grasp preventing them from making the basic investments to move forward. We’ve looked at how physical geography, the presence or lack of fossil fuels. That the proximity to or distance to the coast.

431The nature of the climate system. Can shape economic development. Very often, people turn first to culture as the explanation, of why some places are ahead, and others behind. It’s often quite glib, because,rich people like to say, we’re rich because our culture is better, rather than to say, we’re rich because we have lots of energy resources, good coastal proximity, and a healthy climate. And rich people often like to blame poor people for their problems, say, well, they’re lazy, they’re not working very hard. And throughout history, places that were once poor and they became rich were known quote unquote as lazy places, during their period of poverty. And then once they became rich, their culture was used to explain their hard working ethos. So culture can be a bit of an optical illusion. A little bit to easy sometimes, as an attribution or a cause of a countries conditions. And we should remember that cultural phenomena, people’s beliefs and attitudes, their views towards appropriate roles in society. Change over time as well. SO culture isn’t a fixed monolit. I believe culture has a role, however, though not as big a role as sometimes thought. And we should focus on those atributtes of a societies values, its norms, Its attitudes. As ways that can be promotive or barriers to sustainable development. I want to focus on three. One is on demography and population. The second on education. And the third, regarding gender[1]. When we look at the population challenge, a good place to start is this world map of the fertility rate. The total fertility rate in a country, and you’ll recall Measures on average the number of children that a woman will have during her lifetime. It looks at the age-specific fertility rates for women in a society, and then says, if women age 20 to 25 on average have this many children, women age 25 to 30 have this many children, and so forth, Then on average over the course of a woman’s lifetime reproductive years, an average woman in this society would have this number of children. What the world map shows, is the tremendous variation in our world today in the total fertility rate. In many parts of the world, especially the high-income world today, fertility rates are below two.

432That means that each woman, on average, is having fewer than two children. It means, since half the children are boys and half the children are girls, On average, each woman is having less than one daughter. Or, if you say, 10 women, in total would be having fewer than 10 daughters. You can see that when fertility rates are below two. So, that, on average, each mother is not replacing herself in the next generation with a daughter. Statistically speaking that the population would tend to, be stable or declining. When the total fertility rate is above two, then the population would tend over the longer term to increase. So, if in high-income world on this map we see total fertility rates below two. We also see in some of the worlds poorest countries in notably in Africa and in parts of South Asia, total fertility rates above four and many rural areas in low income tropical Africa we have total fertility rates above six.

That is a pooe household would, on average, the woman would be having six or more children. This tremendously effects economic development because with very large populations of young children, poor families Have a very difficult time providing the basics for all of their children, maybe just the eldest son is able to go to school and the girls are married at a young age or working the fields about proper education and that means that in the next generation those young girls will grow up without the literacy and the skills that they need. To help their own lives their own children and the national economy to be productive. So countries that had made, a transition from high fertility rate to low fertility rates, have tended to have an advantage in economic development. Countries that have still today very high fertility rates tend to have much lower economic growth. To a certain extent, this is a matter of income itself. It’s not really a matter of culture. Poorer families, living on farms tend to have more kids. And have less access to family planning to contraception, the girls don’t have access to schools and don’t go to school and are married young and begin having children at a very young age, but to some extent at least fertility rates also reflect culture, lets look at one example of a society that move rapidly, From high fertility rates to much lower fertiliity rates.

433That’s China. They did that by and large through a government policy known as the One Child Policy. And while it’s been very controversial, notice the implications of this policy. What has happened, in a very short period of time. Family size has come down rapidly and parents have invested intensively in their one or sometimes two children. And so that within one generation, the levels of education, health, nutrition of Chinese young population has soared. This played an enormous role in China’s very rapid economic development. So some places by virture of culture, politics, of history, have still very high fertility rates. Other places have made a rapid transition. To lower fertility rates. And the record shows very clearly that those countries experience faster economic growth, better health for the children, and higher educational attainments. Over time this fertility rate shapes the population dynamics. Whether the population is rising or declining in overall size, and the age distribution of the population shown here by the age population pyramid so called, what these pyramids show, are the numbers of boys and girls or men and women at various ages,uh showing the age structure of the population If you look at Japan’s population, for example, in 1950 when fertility rates were still rather high, The number of children at the bottom of the pyramid was much larger than the number of their parents, and far larger than the number of the grandparents. By 2005, the shape of that pyramid had changed considerably.

Japan had reduced its fertility rates. Partly as a result of culture, partly as a result of economic development, partly as a result of public policy. And so now the number of children were actually fewer than the number of parents because the fertility rate had come down below two. And the whole age structure, therefore, wasn’t a broad pyramid with a big, big base of young children. But was now much more similar in numbers of population at all ages. By the middle of this century, because of the continuing low fertility rate, the population age structure will be an inverted pyramid. Few children, many more older people. And that’s how the transition occurs when fertility rates come down. Most of today’s very poor countries have that big base pyramid. Huge numbers of very young children to be supported. How are they going to be educated? How are they going to get the healthcare and the nutrition that they need? Only if today’s high fertility countries are able, through matters of public policy, cultural attitudes, and so forth to help reduce those fertility rates. And the best way is through the voluntary choices of, households who decide to reduce the number of children so that they can invest more per child and help raise healthy and better educated children, unless that happens, then the problems of the large numbers of children outnumbering their parents will continue to make very difficult the economic development of the poor countries. Another cultural phenomenon involved attitudes towards education. Some poor societies even in a state of great poverty, by tradition, by culture, focused a huge amount of effort and attention on literacy. Korea is one such country. Korea even when it was impoverished in the middle of the last century had a very high literacy rate, and there was always great attention in Korea’s modern history to broad based literacy. Well that’s a cultural attitude as well as a government policy. And it’s done very well for Korea since the middle of the century and the terrible Korean war that took place and devastated so much of Korea. In South Korea, we’ve seen some of the most successful economic development every attained, some of the fastest economic growth And with a rather widespread prosperity. A huge part of that has been facilitated by this continuing commitment to broad based, high quality education. And indeed this shows up in international test scores. What you’re looking at here are the rankings on International testing, in science and math. Where is Korea? Right at the top. It’s not the richest country in the world, but it is right at the top ranks number one or number two, definitely in almost every, test and cateogry, within the top few countries in educational performance. This reflects not only public investments in education, but it reflects parental support for their children, urging their children to excellence. It reflects a culture that has long strongly valued education, and thereby made it possible for Korea to become a world leader in technology. And one of the fastest growing countries in the world. A third cultural attitude, that deeply influences patterns of economic development, are attitudes towards women. Do women have rights? Are women participating in the labor force? Do women face massive discrimination? So, gender equality or inequality also has, political aspects, but culture plays a significant role. Once again, as with fertility and as with education, there are big differences around the world. In attitudes towards gender equality in attitudes towards women, even in the physical safety of women from violence. One can see the many, many ways that this influences economic development. There’s probably not a society in the world where women still do not face at least some discrimination. It took Tremendous political effort, social mobilization, and a lot of courage of women to break through this discrimination even in places today that we  view as close to gender equality if not fully there. But there are many parts of the world of course where women still face profound, profound barriers. To their economic participation, to their political particiiaption to hteir role in society. What are the consequences of that? A society that tries to run on half its brain power on half its human capabilities, block the role of women. In problem solving, in economic leadership, in a political role. A country that’s running on only half its human resources is bound to fall behind countries that are empowering all of their citizens, women and girls as well as men and boys. Countries where young girls may have one of two years of schooling, but then because lack of interest, lack of budget, lack of family attention and effort, are forced to drop out of school, marry young, start having children young, do not have the productivity to participate in a modern economy.

Face a tremendous amount of poverty and suffering themselves. And by dint of that are likely to be raising children in poverty as well. Now, this is an area where there have been huge changes, fortunately, in the right direction. Over the last 30 years but by no means uniformed. Look at this wonderful picture of the rowandan parliament, it may surprise you to know that rowanda’s parliament is not only more than half  omen, but has the highest porportion of women in it’s parliament in comparison with the rest of the world. And women’s participation in politics has soared in Rwanda and it is rising in other parts of the world, though still with the huge inequalities and still a tendency towards men dominating. Political power. In Rwanda you can see the wonderful benefits of this turn towards women’s empowerment.  and Rwanda has made astounding progress in reducing child mortality. It’s making big progress in improving education. Social conditions have improved dramatically. And while there are many factors that are contributing to Rwanda escaping the poverty trap, the role of women in the parliament in my opinion has played a significant role, Not only are, these women powerful role models for young girls in Rwanda, and I think Rwanda’s success. In light of this experience is a very powerful nessage for countries that are still lagging behind. Don’t try to develop with only half of your citizenry. Take the lesson that a country that is mobilizing all of its citizens, its girls, women, as well as its. Boys and men, is a country that’s going to have more success in the 21st century

[1]http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2014/feb/04/womens-rights-country-by-country-interactive

Lectures / Readings

Human Rights and Gender Equality V

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Gender Inequity 

Social inclusion is a challenge across groups racial groups, ethnic groups, linguistic groups. It’s a challenge across classes, especially when market forces and politics combine to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. And it is from time immemorial been a challenge, across the gender. Because from traditional societies until today in most parts of the world, women have faced massive barriers to their effective participation in the economy. To careers, to earning a living. To the right to own and inherit property, or to start businesses. Often this discrimination has been, legally imprinted, it’s in the books, in other words. Often it has been cultural barriers. Fortunately, this is changing and changing fast in many parts of the world. indeed, my own experience working in poor villages, in remote areas that are known to be traditional patriarchal communities where the men are in charge. Even in such places, one can observe dramatic social change before one’s eyes, where villages that, up until recent years, never contemplated that a young girl would complete a primary education and go on to secondary school are now actively pursuing, when given the opportunity, the education of their girls, not only through secondary school, but of young women into higher education, and then coming back as leaders of communities. And this in places with the reputation of being highly discriminatory in practice. So, we’re in an environment of flux, where age old practices of discrimination against girls and women are changing. Where ideas are changing, where economic demands are changing. And where economic possibilities for girls and women are changing in the right direction. Our purpose in sustainable development is to help that process to help insure that  societies make all opportunities open to girls and, and to women and thereby dramatically to improve their economic performance. Often this is a key step out of poverty. Often it’s a key step to overall sustainable development because when girls are educated, when women are empowered, many very important and powerful and wonderful things happen in society. That help not only the economic development and social equality, but also the environmental sustainability. And of course, the quality of governance in society. All of the aspects of sustainable development. The Millennium development goals, took on gender equality in a quite strong and direct way, MDG3, says that the goal was to promote gender equality, and empower women. And the specific target attached to that is in the education sector. To eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. And this should be measured by the enrollment rates and the completion rates of girls compared to boys, and primary secondary and higher ducation. Let me emphasize the many many gains that will be achieved by honoring and fulfilling MDG3. First, of course is human rights. This is a basic question of human rights. Back in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights. The rights of, girls and women are protected, absolutely as clearly and strongly as the, the rights of, boys and men. Gender equality is at the core of universal human rights from the very start. But the economic gains the practical implications of this, are enormously strong as well. And that’s why Jeremy Bentham, with his Utilitarian philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number, would be the first champion of gender equality. Because, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian calculation would be very very clear that, it can’t work for society, as a whole to try to operate on half its brain power, half its human potential, half its investments in skills, training, and know-how. So the returns to investing in girls and women from a, quote unquote human capital point on view, the productivity of women in any sector of the economy, whether they’re farmers or workers in industry or workers, workers in the service sector. Of course, is greatly enhanced, as it is for men by more education, better literacy, numeracy,and advanced skills. But when investing in women, there’s a, an added dimension that is extremely important. Women are biologically and socially the main caregivers of children in the family. Of course, that’s a, a bit of a social phenomenon, but it’s also a very real phenomenon naturally, because the health of the mother in pregnancy, for example, is absolutely pivotal for the well being throughout the lifetime of of, of the child. We’re learning how intrauterine development, what happens to the, the fetus during pregnancy, can create the conditions for health or ill health throughout the, the entire subsequent, life. So if a mother faces discrimination, if she’s not eating properly, if she is not literate and able to secure access to antenatal care for example, the consequences can be devastating for the child. Of course, the mother then by best health practice, will be the exclusive provider of nutrition for the newborn for the first 6 months in breast feeding. And will play an important role of breast feeding and a complementary feeding basis, for another year or year and a half after that. Say for, the period from 6 months to 2 years. And so the mother’s health, her well-being, her knowledge of how to take care of the child is absolutely essential to the well being of the next generation. Invest in a girl, you’re investing in a mother. Investing in a mother, you’re investing in a child’s wellbeing in the next generation.  You are thereby having a fundamental role in intergenerational social mobility. And so that’s an added, decisive reason why gender equality is so essential, and why gender discrimination, discrimination against girls and women, has such a pernicious effect on societies, causing one of the most profound reasons why they may remain stuck in extreme poverty. We’ve also noted that, as the woman is empowered with more skills, as she is therefore enabled to enter the labor force, earn a decent income. It will be very much expected on a variety of reasons for the mother to have fewer children. To have a voluntary, rather quick reduction of the total fertility rate. One thing is that the woman herself will be empowered within the household. Sometimes, there’s a difference of opinion between the the, the mother and the father about how many children. The father says, as many as possible. The mother says, I’d rather have fewer, but in many traditional societies, the mother’s voice is very weak, in that negotiation if it even is a negotiation. But more importantly, both the husband and the wife very often agree completely, that if the mother is with skills, with education, especially, able to be in the labor force earning a decent income, then the opportunity cost of having more children is very, very high. The time taken out to raise the child may be very expensive in terms of lost income, and then it’s not a difference between the father and the mother, but rather an, an alliance of views that say, better to have fewer children, to invest more in the health, nutrition and education of that smaller family, and we’ve seen for so many reasons why that’s a better deal for the children themselves, and a better deal for the society in accelerating the end of extreme poverty. And in combining the economic development with the social inclusion in that next generation. We have new tools very good ones, and ever-improving tools to assess the state of gender inequality, and to make comparisons across societies in ways that can give good direction and impetus to societies to to do better.

751The United Nations development program beginning in 2010, has began to construct a Gender Inequality Index, which is a, a very handy and useful tool, like its Human Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index combines several different dimensions on a weighted average basis to give a Quantified Assessment of gender inequality that can be compared across countries. In this index, there are 3 different categories that are included. First, reproductive health. If mothers face very adverse conditions in, reproduction, then this is scored as a high degree of gender inequality. Two sub-categories to reproductive health, one is the maternal mortality rate. That is the rate at which mothers die in child birth or pregnancy, more generally. And the second is the adolescent fertility rate. The rate at which adolescent girls are bearing children. An indication of girls being forced out of their education into early marriage, and early child bearing. The second big category in the gender inequality index is, empowerment. And this is measured 2 ways in the index. One is by the share of total parliamentary seats, held by women. And the second is by the enrollment rates of women in higher education. In the third big category, of the gender inequality index is the measure of inequality of labor market participation. In some societies till today, women are simply not allowed to work in many sectors of the economy. This is especially true in the Middle East. Where women even very educated women, can’t work with men alongside them, or, are not allowed to work at all in particular sectors of the economy. In other places, labor force participation by women is very, very high. Public Policy plays a role here, not only in barring or allowing women to participate in particular sectors, but also in facilitating that participation. In Scandinavian countries, for example, with the social democratic ethos and the social welfare state. Every woman is afforded the right to have access for their child, in a quality daycare, financed by the state. And that enables mothers, even poor mothers who might otherwise not be able to afford the child care, to leave the children with the high confidence in a, a very safe  preschool environment, and often a preschool environment which does an excellent job of helping to prepare that young child for primary school education. Well, the result of putting together these 3 factors of reproductive health, of empowerment, and labor force participation, gives us a world map that you see in, in front of you. And the color code, as always, gives us an indication of the relative rankings of, of countries. What you can see is that, again, not surprisingly, because we’ve seen it again and again, northern Europe, and especially Scandinavia, Sweden, and Norway, Denmark, stand right at the top of, of the world league tables, in having the lowest gender inequality. A strong   representation of women in parliament, very high labor force participation, excellent coverage of reproductive health services. Then you have many countries that are a bit in the middle of the pack, still high. But not as high as Scandinavia. My own country, the United States is an example of that where conditions are relatively good on a global basis, and this is after decades of improvements of the legal status and the social status of women in the society and in the labor force. And then there are countries that are clearly places where girls and women continue to face a tremendous amount of discrimination. And you see this in West Africa, where the index scores are low.

752And you see it especially in the places where the inequality ranks the highest. This is in the Middle East and in West Asia. Typically societies, Islamic societies where women are not allowed to have an economic role where strict separation by gender is often enforced. As in many aspects of Saudi society. And where women’s participation in the political process is extremely low. so, this gender inequality index is rather vivid, in highlighting on a multidimensional basis, where progress has been high, and where progress is still very much needed if society is to reap the benefits of gender equality. We can see in more detailed way, the underlying factors in this index. Shown here is the participation rate by women in parliament. We know that in much of the world women are not well represented. This is true in a lot of Africa. It’s true in the Middle East. It’s true in large parts of Asia. At the other extreme, again, is the very high representation in northern Europe, and especially in Scandinavia. Remember that Rwanda is a remarkably exciting exception, to the general trends because there’s very very high women’s, representation in the parliament. More than 50%, the very highest in the world. And I think, causally a factor in Rwanda’s, large strides in social progress and social indicators in recent years. The next picture shows the labor force participation, differences across the world. The highest rates of labor force participation again are in the Scandinavian countries with all of the support of the social welfare system.

753The lowest rates are in the Middle East and North Africa, and Western Asia.and, and in South Asia as well, where women are not in the labor force, either for legal or for cultural reasons that anywhere close to the rates in other countries. These are tremendous lost opportunities. I’ve worked in a number of countries in this region. Often households are quite poor. The woman is quite skilled, maybe even with a college education, but not in the labor force, because of the prevailing ideas within the family, that it’s not right for the woman to be out of the house, for example. And I find it a bit frustrating, to see the family and the children suffering poverty, even when the opportunities are there, the skills are there.754

And with both the legal and social empowerment, the women would definitely find opportunities and a very gainful employment. Even in the high income countries where labor force participation has remained higher or has become higher, I should say, because it’s reflected a lot of social change over the last half century, there are still some significant gaps in the earnings of men and women. Women may take time out from the labor market, during child bearing and raising young children and this can cause them to suffer a strong loss of earnings, companies may discriminate saying we’re not going to invest in, in the skills or the promotion of women because we think they’re going to leave to raise families or simply because of social norms. And I’ve been shocked, I have to say, by sometimes what I’ve heard from CEOs in some parts of the world who just assume, them being, they being men, that women do not have a place in top management. But there is progress, and it’s important progress.755

In education, and, I think, with the good impetus of the Millennium Development Goals, there has been a narrowing of the gap at the primary level, the gap has nearly been closed, or has been closed in most parts of the world. Girls in primary school age are in school, they are completing school, they have comparable enrollments to boys. In some parts of the world, the girls have overtaken boys at secondary and tertiary level. This is an exciting development. Sometimes I’m wondering what’s happening to those young men, because they’re dropping out, the girls are staying in university. Latin America, which had a tradition and, and a reputation as a Makismos Society male-oriented is a place where girls have really done very, very well at secondary and tertiary education. And the gaps have been narrowed or fully closed or more, more than cloth closed, in recent years. And this is a, a very exciting development.

What can be done? What should be done when gender inequality is high and society is bearing the heavy cost of that? It’s clear that as always, a multidimensional process needs to be deployed because some of these barriers are legal, some are cultural, some are a matter of tradition and inertia.

Legal reform is often remaining a very important factor. Can women run businesses? Can they own property? Can they inherit property? Shockingly, the answer is often no, still today in the 21st Century.

Women’s representation in politics. Sometimes it’s a matter of women running for office and this becoming a normal practice. Some societies have, added quotas, that say that certain proportion of the votes on a proportional representation list of a party, must be taken by women. And this can have a very powerful effect of changing ideas, changing norms, and changing policies when the women are represented.

Government financial support for families, for maternity leave, for child care, play a huge practical role in the places that have had most success, especially in the Scandinavian context. The rest to the world needs to learn from that example. Early childhood development activities where government ensures childcare, preschool, health and nutrition programs for young children, obviously for boys as well as girls, is a big help for gender equality, because otherwise, the mothers are the caregivers, the mothers that don’t then have the opportunities either to provide the care that their young children need, or to be able to rejoin the labor market.

And finally it bears emphasizing that around the world till today, women face a terrible, terrible unspoken burden of violence. Whether it’s rape and and the kind of violence that once in a while gets reported, or it’s husbands beating wives and we know that this is a part of the real world around the world, UNICEF and other UN agencies have undertaken heroic efforts to bring this kind of violence against women and girls to light. To help advocate and press for changes of laws, and when the laws are on the books but the enforcement is not, to press for proper enforcement, and public leadership so that these laws are taken seriously, and they are enforced. In many traditional societies women were the property of their husbands and the property to beat if that’s how they saw fit. This inhuman approach that is a most fundamental denial of human rights has got to come to an end. It is a core part of gender equality. It is a continuing reality that must be brought to a close.

Lectures / Readings

Human Rights and Gender Equality III

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Divided Societies

Social inclusion aims for broad prosperity. For fighting discrimination, for equal protection under the laws, for enabling everybody to meet basic needs. And for social mobility to ensure that a child born in any part of the country in any part of the income distribution to any class or ethnicity or race has a chance. And through hard work, education, always a bit of luck mixed in, to achieve a good standard of living, and economic success in society. Of course, none of our societies achieves uniform equality. And nobody would want that. People differ by luck, tastes, work effort, and, naturally, this would show up in variations in economic outcomes and wealth.

People expect such differences to an extent, but societies, of course, can have differences far beyond anything that would emerge from normal differences between individuals and luck and circumstance and, for whatever reason, when inequalities are very, very large ethics and human rights would tell us that governments have some responsibility to look after those left behind. And many would think that helping to narrow the big gaps is part of our moral or ethical responsibility. We’ve already looked at the actual situation and how varied it is around the world.731

 

We’ve looked at this map of the Gini Coefficient. Remembering that the Gini Coefficient is a measure of income inequality that varies between zero and one. Zero would be a society where everyone has exactly the same income. One would be a society where everybody but one has zero income and one person has all the income that is complete inequality and the Gini varies between those ranges, of course. And what we saw is really some notable and important systematic differences across regions of the world in the extent of inequality, and therefore in the extent of social inclusion or exclusion. On the whole, the Americas, as I noted earlier, with the notable exception of Canada, the Americas is a relatively unequal part of the world. Western Europe is a relatively equal part of the world. Northern Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark or the Nordic countries, I should say. Those countries Iceland included are among the most equal places in the world and the Scandinavian countries, specifically of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are right at the top of the list of indicators of social inclusion and at the bottom of the list with the lowest value of the Gini Coefficient. When we look at this map, we should think history, because standing behind this is a long history, a legacy, that has led to certain kind of inequality that I want to focus on for a few minutes. This is inequality across groups rather than inequality of individuals alone or inequality of households alone. The inequality that we see varying across the world in this map of the Gini Coefficient reflects the fact that whole groups within society, defined according to race or, in some places, according to ethnicity or linguistic group, or tribe have very different life chances from other groups in the same society. And so, the map, while also reflecting normal variation across individual households, also reflects the interaction of different groups within society. Take the case of the Western hemisphere with, again, Canada being a notable exception, for a reason that will become clear in just a moment. The Americas were, from the time of the first arrival of human beings to the Americas, probably around 13,000 years before the present, or thereabouts. To the year, and we can date it to October 12, 1492, the arrival of Columbus in the island of Hispaniola. The Americans by and large had almost no contact with the old world population. Maybe there was a tiny bit of contact in very short period. When Icelanders arrived in the coast of Canada and the northeast of the United States for a brief sojourn but without long term settlement.

732The only long term settlement from that long period of 13,000 years before the present to the arrival of Columbus in October 1492 was by Americans, whom we now call Native Americans, that arrived fairly early on in migration from Asia after the last Glacial Period. And then settled throughout the Americas and the Caribbean in and, and established civilizations that developed completely independently of what was taking place in Asia, in Europe, and in Africa, until that connection was made once again with the arrival of the Europeans. The Europeans arrived with two huge advantages. One is they had more powerful weapons. The second is they had pathogens that to had developed the Old World to which the conquerors came already immune or protected. And those pathogens spread throughout the unprotected Native American populations leading to massive, massive set of epidemics and a massive dying off of Native American populations. Well, you know the history, the Americas became a kind of conquest society where European conquerors, and especially the Spanish Conquistadoras came and conquered a large part of the Americas, and generally ruled, and often ruled violently, over the indigenous populations. They added one more crucial element to the history of the Americas starting in the sixteenth century, and that was to bring in African slave labor, especially to the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, such as the Caribbean, the American South, northeast of Brazil. Not to Canada.

That’s one of the reasons why Canada is different. It never had a large slave population brought into Canada. And what emerged, of course, was a very complicated society of groups. A small European, dominant group, which ruled by force and power and the backing of empire, empires in Europe. A an indigenous population that was often broken by disease, by poverty, by forced labor. Essentially a kind of slavery or serfdom that was imposed in many places. And by the horrific institution of slavery itself based on the importation of African slaves into the Americas. And over time that three categories became more complicated of course, through a mixing of the three populations. So mulatto, or so called mixed populations of African slaves, European conquerors, indigenous populations, and so forth also developed across many societies. From the sixteenth century onward, those groups had completely different situations in their society, politically, socially and economically. And vast inequalities of wealth developed often with this small European population own, owning all of the, the good land in the country with the native inhabitants pushed, pushed, pushed into smaller and smaller land areas deprived of traditional land holdings. All of this is to say that the history of the Americas was a violent and conflictual one that created an extensive inequality, rather shocking by the standards of many, many other parts of the world. And that legacy of inequality continued past the sixteenth century, seventeenth century, eighteenth century, until the present day.

Slavery was eliminated, thank goodness, in the nineteenth century, usually by law in the United States, by, only by war, a violent war fought to end slavery. A very rare exception, because usually slavery was ended peacefully, but not in the United States, where the, the hold of White Southern land owners was so powerful that they resisted with a full force and a very violent war to try to protect slavery. And slavery was only ended in 1865, one of the last places in the world. And only two decades later, later in Brazil, so this is a phenomenon that comes into the twentieth century. And, of course, the descendants of slaves arrive to the twentieth century. And until the end of the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century, often with massive liabilities of poverty and difficulties of poor health, lack of rights facing massive social discrimination. I emphasize all of this because you look at the dark red of the Americas in the Gini map, and you have to remember the history behind this, of a whole region of the world essentially settled by conquest, and then a long legacy that results from that. So, when we think about the forces of inequality today, we need to keep a broad perspective. This is the holistic approach that I like to emphasize. Inter-generational dynamics plays a huge role. Even when slavery ends, the legacy of slavery continues. Even when the massive brutality against Native Americans in the United States, essentially a genocide, or the brutality against the so-called First Nations in Canada ends by law, the legacy of poverty and poor health in discrimination, in property holdings and so forth continues thereafter. Social discrimination continues. Racial discrimination. Ethic discrimination. Of course, the gender discrimination which I will turn to shortly. Regional differences persist. Sometimes for only geographical physical reasons climate distance, transport, landlockedness, sometimes for the historical reasons of how various regions fell under imperial domination, for example. As a backdrop, there’s also the individual differences. We should not forget that. There will be variations in effort, variations in capacities, variations in luck, which will create a level of inequality in any society. And then finally, public policies shape these inequalities. Does the state meet basic needs? Does the state truly ensure education for all children? Is the educational quality that is accessed by the poor up to the job of providing a base for social mobility, or is the education access by the poor so poor that the poor get stuck in an inter-generational cycle of poverty? All over the world, the indigenous populations, meaning populations that were the first arrivals in a particular location maybe arriving in, in a location even 10, 20, 30,000 years ago and then subsequently facing later migrations like the Native Americans facing the inflow of Europeans after Columbus’s arrival. You see, whether it’s in the U.S. with the Native Americans, Canada with the First Nations, Australia with its Aboriginal population, New Zealand with its Maori population, Malaysia with its Orang Asli population, and the name given to various indigenous tribes, a rather remarkable consistency of major social discrimination, a remarkable extent of poverty social, cultural exclusion. And usually a legacy of rather brutal state policy as well. State policy that uprooted populations, that pushed populations into forest regions or mountain regions or desert regions as enclaves. One of the big mistakes that we make, often by the way in naivete is to see a an indigenous group inhabiting a very fragile environment. For example, an extreme dry region of a country. And you read the tour book and it says that the tradition of such and such tribe is life in this near-desert region. And, very often, that’s a nonsense to say that’s a cultural phenomenon, or a tradition. More typically what’s happened is that that group has faced massive dislocation and displacement and so, maybe this group was in the most fertile lands before, but then when the later waves of migration came and more powerful successor rulers in the region came, these discriminated groups were physically pushed into isolated areas in the forests, in the mountains, in the deserts. And then, to justify that in a naive way the life in those extremely difficult regions is described as the cultural tradition of the group in question. The poverty rates of indigenous populations is very, very high around the world, and it’s not a small part of the overall global extreme poverty. Nobody has a precise count of indigenous populations, but I think it’s probably right to say that it’s around 400 million people, adding up indigenous populations around the world. At least, that’s an estimate that is often given and that means that it’s nearly 6% of the world’s population. And since many of those 400 million live in extreme poverty and abject social exclusion, it’s not a small part of the overall numbers living in extreme poverty. You’re looking here at a graph of the poverty rates in some relatively poor countries in the Americas, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. What you can see is that, in each case, the poverty rates among the indigenous populations, are higher than the poverty rates among the non-indigenous. And if one were to show the African-American population’s poverty rates as well, those would be much, much higher too. And, so, this is an example of how the indigenous populations in the Americas face continuing challenges which are long, long legacies of political military and cultural discrimination. And many, many acts of violence. This map of ethno-linguistic groups highlights another point for us. Which is that around the world, there are significant differences in the extent of ethnic diversity. Ethnic diversity sometimes measured along linguistic lines. And a map like this gives an indication of what’s called ethno-linguistic fractionalization. It asks how likely is it that two people selected at random within a population within a country belong to the same ethnic group or the same tribe as it might be called in some contexts. You can see that Africa, for example is just a maze of ethno-linguistic fractionalization. 733And the differences of tribes in Africa, and the fact that when one tribe comes to power, it may discriminate heatedly against others is part of the political and social reality that has made social inclusion so difficult. You see in the Amazon region the high degree of ethno-linguistic fractionalization as well. All of this is to emphasize that when we consider the challenges of social inequality and the application of human rights to those challenges, we will have to address this at several different ways, in several different dimensions. One is a class dimension. What to do to help poor people and especially poor children in poor households to achieve social mobility and the escape from poverty. Another dimension, which I’m going to discuss at greater length, is gender differences. The systematic discrimination against women and against girls in virtually all parts of the world, but here I’ve emphasized the inequalities across groups and how power structures, colonial history, discrimination systematically against indigenous populations has played a role. We need to be aware of that group-level discrimination as well if we’re going to be accurate and effective in overcoming social exclusion and achieving that major killer of inclusive growth that is at the core of sustainable development.