International Issues Addressed in Lectures

Charlotte Bunch is the director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She came to The George Washington University (where she taught a course on feminist theory in the 1970s) on October 16, to talk about women's challenges to human rights in the future. Her talk was co-sponsored by USAID's Office of Women in Development and GW Women's Studies Program. Bunch has been active in the women's movement since the late 1960s and has written profusely on a variety of feminist issues over the years. Her books include: Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women's Human Rights (1994), Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action (1987), International Feminism: Networking Against Female Sexual Slavery (1984), Lesbianism in the Women's Movement (1975), and Class and Feminism (1974).

Bunch emphasized the essential concept that women's rights are human rights, and that they are not a separate category but embedded in all human rights. She discussed the concept of using the "lens of women's lives" to study human rights issues. She believes that human rights depend on women's rights, and that the global women's movement is promoting a gender interpretation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (from the 1995 Beijing Conference). She noted that there also needs to be accountability and sophistication in what it means to integrate gender and human rights as well as serious commitments from the UN and other international agencies.

Bunch outlined three areas of challenge for 1998: the questions of universality, indivisibility, and implementability. She stated that the human rights movement is challenging to globalization, increasing fragmentation, and fundamentalism. It is the only universal discourse on values and standards for humanity which is defined from a global perspective and brings us together as a unified human community.

On the subject of universality, Bunch stated that human rights are universal and inalienable, meaning that everyone has these rights by virtue of being human. Secondly, human rights are indivisible in that all rights are equal and one set of rights should not have preference over others. Civil, political, social, and economic rights all need to be addressed simultaneously because they are inextricably linked. Lastly, she discussed the implementability of human rights standards. She emphasized that nation-states still have responsibilities to their citizens and hence must be accountable for human rights violations. States, however, cannot address these issues alone; they must engage and work with other groups, states, organizations, agencies, NGOs, etc., to bring human rights issues into the global arena. She also stated that the UN, however inadequate, is currently the only global arena for this discourse and must be used to work for human rights.

Overall, Bunch believes that the most important factor in implementation is to maintain an active and informed civil society that is educated about its rights and in which its citizens know how to use laws and institutions to claim their rights. As human beings, she stated, we need to understand laws in individual nations as well as global treaties, conventions, and standards.

The 1998 global campaign for women's human rights will advance human rights groups' understanding of women's rights as human rights, advance women's awareness at the local level of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and expand the definition of the Declaration to include gender. It will also celebrate women defenders of human rights, recognizing women working at the grassroots level. The campaign will push for the ratification of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and work at developing new strategies for addressing social and economic rights internationally.

Associate professor of anthropology and women's studies at UC Berkley, Aihwa Ong, served as guest lecturer at the seventh annual Women's Studies Yulee Lecture held November 19^th at GW. Professor Ong is the author of several books including: Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (1987), and the forthcoming Flexible Citizenship: Transnational Practices in Global Cultures, along with numerous journal articles. Her address for the Yulee Lecture series, entitled "New Muslim Feminists in the Shelter of Corporate Islam in Malaysia" explored the interaction between capitalist government, feminist movement, and Islamic fundamentalism that is occurring right now in that country.

A nation that's feverishly trying to become a player in the capitalist world economy, which also has a history of strict religious law, hardly seems to be an environment that would foster a women's rights movement, but that's exactly what Professor Ong says is happening. A former colony of China, Malaysia's new indigenous government is intent on developing a strong, capitalist economy which requires investment from other nations. The Malay leaders fear that strict Islamic standards in their country may scare foreign investors off. The Ulama (Islamic scholar-judges) are the men who enforce the country's traditionally restrictive lifestyle through their interpretations of the Qur'an. The government has an interest in loosing the Ulama's control over the population, but fears alienating them or losing credibility with citizens. This is where feminist movement, under the name, "Sisters in Islam," comes in.

Sisters in Islam is a group of only 10 highly educated women that is having considerable impact on mulitple aspects of Maylaysian culture. Members always represent

themselves as chaste, self-disciplined examples of Muslim women, and only pursue activism that can be defended through the Qur'an. The Sisters have been selectively endorsed by the government in some of their endeavors, such as their proposition for the relaxation of standards governing women's speech and dress. The group's central premise is that educated people are able to interpret the holy book for themselves and should have the right to do so rather than be subject to the arbitrary, sometimes extreme, renderings of the Ulama. It is on this premise that the Sisters receive considerable State support. The group says that women's equal rights are called for within the text and that Ulama's own sexist ideals color their interpretation of the Qur'an to women's detriment. The stance that Sisters in Islam takes on more moderate explication of the religious text receives official support because the government is seeking standardization and implementation of guidelines for enforcement of the Qur'an s teachings. As Ong put it, the Malaysian government has an interest in creating "a kinder, gentler Islam" that is less likely to intimidate businesspeople from abroad. In the quest for regulation of holy law, the Sisters in Islam are a convenient "stalking horse," putting forward controversial ideas that those in power share, then acting as targets in case the public has a negative reaction to new views on Islam.

It is at a unique point in history that Ong has been able to study Malaysian culture; a time that proves the adage that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Her work illustrates what can be seen time and again, that feminist activism can be perilous, but has the power to transform society. The George Washington University Women's Studies students are grateful to Professor Ong for taking the time to share her unique and valuable insights into international feminism with us.

Gail Omvedt, who received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, has been living in a village in Southern Maharashta since 1979 and working with rural women and Dalits, which literally means "the oppressed" (formally called "untouchables") in Indian society. During a recent trip to the US, she was invited to GW on November 18^th to give a lecture entitled, "Cultural Bondage: Women's Liberation and Dalit Liberation in India." Her talk was co-sponsored by the Human Sciences Program, the English Department, the Sociology Department, and the Women's Studies Program.

Dr. Omvedt discussed the strategies used by these two oppressed groups in India to overcome the confines of one of the most patriarchal and rigidly structured countries

in the world. Some women activists invoke imagery used by the female Bhakti poets to justify their fight for autonomy. Citing the work of these devotional women poets who used to wander the land in search of divine inspiration, modern women are utilizing their heritage to seek a role outside the restrictive traditional capacity of mother and wife.

The Dalits are not as fortunate, for there is no imagery in Bhakti poetry to help them in their struggle. The Dalits must look elsewhere for cultural traditions to inspire their fight for liberation. Women Dalits find themselves at the intersection of two distinct conflicts in which they are simultaneously included and excluded. As a result, they must organize separately to address their specific needs as Dalit women.