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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Equality stalemate by Jayati Ghosh

The United Nations Conference on Women was held nearly 15 years ago in Beijing, China. This was an extraordinary moment in the history of the international women’s movements as well as women workers around the world, with unprecedented mobilisation of feminist policymakers, activists and academics in the international political arena, both prior to the conference and subsequently. The two-part conference, referred to as Beijing Platform and the Call for Action, were to guide policy-making and provide ideas and mobilising principles to women’s groups and representatives of civil society who were concerned with the empowerment of women.

It is intriguing, if somewhat depressing, to note how relevant the Beijing Platform remains today. Not only the goals and mission statement, but even the analysis seems eerily contemporary. For example, it was noted that "widespread economic recession, as well as political instability in some regions, has been responsible for setting back development goals in many countries. Recent international economic developments have had in many cases a disproportionate impact on women and children, the majority of whom live in developing countries. Economic recession in many developed and developing countries, as well as ongoing restructuring in countries with economies in transition, have had a disproportionately negative impact on women’s employment. Women often have no choice but to take employment that lacks long-term job security or involves dangerous working conditions, to work in unprotected home-based production or to be unemployed. Many women enter the labour market in under-remunerated and undervalued jobs, seeking to improve their household income; others decide to migrate for the same purpose. Without any reduction in their other responsibilities, this has increased the total burden of work for women".

It is a sad commentary on implementation if all of these points that were made then can be made with equal validity today, despite a relatively prolonged global economic boom with much greater international integration in the intervening period. Exactly because it is still so relevant, almost all of the points made in the Call for Action can be usefully drawn upon in the current context to drive a more equitable, gender-sensitive and sustainable pattern of growth. But this in turn points to a deeper problem: if all governments have officially accepted the Beijing Platform, and have supposedly undertaken steps in conformity with it, why has the progress on this front been so halting, slow and so easily reversed by factors such as economic crisis, war or violence?

There are several reasons for this less-than-satisfactory outcome. The most important reason is that the Beijing Platform, both implicitly and explicitly, was based on a different model of growth and development than the paradigm that has dominated national and international policy-making in recent decades. The Platform both called for and relied upon a model of economic growth that is egalitarian, inclusive, participatory, people-centered, sustainable in terms of the environment, accountable and based on a rights-based approach to much public service delivery.

This is very different from the unequal, market-led model that has underpinned recent growth. This was based on short-term profit maximising as the primary motivation, leading to biases in consumption, production, distribution and aspirations, simply could not be sustained. So the policy proposals in the Beijing document could not be achieved because wider economic and political processes were operating to push the economy and society in the opposite direction. To take a few examples, achieving better conditions of employment and remuneration for women’s work is obviously much more difficult when overall employment is on the decline, or when (even during a boom) employment expansion is based on strong competitive pressures that operate to suppress wages. Improving the lot of women cultivators is next to impossible when there is a widespread agrarian crisis. Eliminating the exploitation of the girl child through paid or bonded labour or even trafficking cannot be done if the material conditions of their households are so dire that there seem to be no feasible alternatives. And so on.

The Beijing Platform called for and required the creation and strengthening of health and education systems that are rights-based, universal and inclusive, emphasising accessibility, affordability and adaptability. However, the broad thrust of health and education policies has been to move to more commercialised and market-driven provision of both education and health services — including the introduction of user fees or minimal efforts to reduce the hidden costs of accessing health and education.

The Call for Action directly challenged many vested interests, power equations at all levels and entrenched patriarchal attitudes, so it was never going to be easy to push through in terms of actual interventions. There are deeply entrenched male biases in government, health, education, urban planning systems, international trade regimes, and approaches to the development of technology. As a result, much implementation has remained at the token or symbolic level. Governments have set up committees or institutional arrangements that meet the preliminary requirements, but often have not gone beyond that to transform policies in effective ways.

There are not enough forums or a range of civil society processes to hold policymakers at all levels accountable. This is compounded by the perception in some developing countries that gender awareness is a luxury associated with higher levels of per capita income.

All this has been associated with an erosion of the real content of many of the levers of change identified at Beijing — gender mainstreaming, gender budgeting, improved access to credit and education for women. These have been interpreted formalistically, or with minimum cost. Instead of financial inclusion, the focus was on microcredit; instead of universal quality education, para-schooling; instead of universal quality health services through the life cycle, underpaid village para-health workers.

So the Beijing Platform is more relevant than ever, but it has to be combined with very different economic policies, globally and nationally.