International Womens' Day Marked Around the World

March 08, 2010 - Democracy Now

Thousands of events are being held around the world to celebrate International Women’s Day, an idea that was launched 100 years ago when a group of women from seventeen countries gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to champion the rights of women. Activists across the globe are drawing attention to a variety of concerns, including discriminatory laws, the high rate of pregnancy-related deaths in many parts of the world, the skewed sex ratio in China and India, the disproportionately high number of women who are killed and victimized by wars, the comparatively heavier burden of poverty on women, and the continuing disparity between men and women in terms of the quality of available employment and wages received.

Guest: Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women. She is following discussions at the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women meets to review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

ANJALI KAMAT: Thousands of events are being held around the world to celebrate International Women’s Day, an idea that was launched a hundred years ago, when a group of women from seventeen countries gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to champion the rights of women. Activists across the globe are drawing attention to a variety of concerns, including discriminatory laws, the high rate of pregnancy-related deaths in many parts of the world, the skewed sex ratio in China and India, the disproportionately high number of women who are killed and victimized by wars, the comparatively heavier burden of poverty on women, and the continuing disparity between men and women in terms of the quality of available employment and wages received.

AMY GOODMAN: This year also marks thirty years since the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW, by the United Nations General Assembly. Seven countries that have not ratified the international treaty are the United States, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Nauru, Palau and Tonga.

For more on the International Women’s Day, we are joined here in New York by the president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, Kavita Ramdas. She’s following discussions at the United Nations as the Commission on the Status of Women meets to review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

Kavita Ramdas, welcome to Democracy Now!

KAVITA RAMDAS: Thank you. It’s great to be here. Happy International Women’s Day!

AMY GOODMAN: Happy one to you, and to Anjali, as well, and to all of our listeners and viewers. Kavita, CEDAW, explain what it is and why the US has not signed on as of yet.

KAVITA RAMDAS: Unfortunately, the United States has remained one of, as you mentioned, seven countries that has refused to actually ratify the treaty. The United States technically is a signatory to the treaty. This treaty can best be described as a treaty on the rights of women. It’s not unlike the Seneca Falls Declaration that is so famously touted in the United States as being sort of the first changing point, turning point, for the women’s movement for suffrage. In the United States, however, there is a strong feeling both of being anti-UN, in general, and so a desire to essentially put forward the point that you can move gender equality forward without being somehow dependent on the United Nations.

A second major issue is a lack of comfort around the clear commitment to reproductive health and rights that is spelled out in the United Nations treaty. And a third reason is that the United States failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment Act many years ago, almost thirty years ago now, but there is actually a requirement in CEDAW to have an equal-pay-for-equal-work legislation in all countries that are signatories.

Now, there are countries that have signed the treaty and have signed with what they call clauses, which sort of allow them to express their concerns, or caveats on the treaty. The United States has simply decided that that’s not something that they actually want to move forward with. So we’re actually in the very strange position, once again, of being in the company of countries that really I don’t think anyone would hold up as models of democracy or gender equality, for that reason.

AMY GOODMAN: How does the Obama administration justify this?

KAVITA RAMDAS: Well, it’s somewhat distressing, I have to say. I think there’s very strong support for this from the State Department. Hillary Clinton is, as you famously, you know, remember, the person who said women’s rights are human rights at the Beijing conference. I was there in 1995. And I think all of us had this sort of moment of believing that that might actually be an example of the way the United States would end up. However, I would say the State Department is somewhat isolated in its position, and even within the States Department there is a sort of dismissal of “why are they bringing these women’s issues into the serious realm of national security?”

On the other side, the Obama administration feels that it’s going to run into unwarranted and unwanted, right now, opposition from Republicans and others in the Congress. And quite honestly, I think this is another example of the lack of spine that’s being shone by this administration on issues where I think they actually could be far more forthright and far more determined. We had a meeting about two weeks ago in which a number of women’s organizations gathered together at the invitation of the White House and were essentially encouraged to, you know, think about bringing the right poll numbers forward, so that then the administration could make a decision as to moving forward. And I think that’s somewhat disappointing to all of us who worked so hard for this election and who believed that, you know, we’d finally have an administration clearly on our side. I think we have a ways to go.

ANJALI KAMAT: Kavita, in a piece for Open Democracy, you write that you were told that ratifying CEDAW would be controversial.

KAVITA RAMDAS: Absolutely, and I think the controversy lies around some key points. The United States is far down on the list of countries in the so-called developed world, that actually, on the issues of gender equality, I think some 16 or maybe 17 percent representation of women at the highest bodies of the legislature, of the elected legislature, in this country. Compare that with 52 percent in Rwanda, and you get a sense of just how far apart we are right now. And there are provisions in the UN treaty on women, CEDAW, that call for the use of quotas, for example, to ensure women’s representation in the political process. That is something you can simply not say that word in the United States, perhaps no more than you can say the word “taxes,” without people breaking into a sweat.

And so, you know, unfortunately, the things that are considered controversial are not the appalling treatment of women, not the fact that a woman is raped every three minutes in this country, not the fact that we have probably one of the highest spikes in domestic violence in this country in the aftermath of a hugely militarized ten years since 9/11. Those are not considered controversial. What is considered controversial is a treaty that essentially says nothing more, nothing less, than the Seneca Falls Declaration of 1858, which Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were willing to put their, you know, lives on the line for and which Frederick Douglass famously said, you know, needed to be one that we ratified as a country. So, here we are, almost 200 years later, not much progress.

ANJALI KAMAT: And Kavita Ramdas, you’ve been following discussions at the United Nations. It’s been fifteen years since Beijing. Explain what the Beijing Platform of Action was and what’s happening now in terms of the discussions on the international status of women.

KAVITA RAMDAS: The Beijing Platform for Action was truly a groundbreaking document. It laid out in some extraordinary detail the case for investing in women’s full equality, participation and leadership. It also made the case that the gross and continued discrimination against women and girls around the world was one that was simply not consistent with any understanding either of human rights or of our notions of what would actually bring about development in the world. That document, again, has been seen by progressive Republican governments in the United States as one that essentially challenges very conservative notions of women’s—particularly women’s reproductive health and rights. And there has been a concerted attempt to actually avoid having another UN Conference on Women, so you will see that the notion that it is Beijing-plus-fifteen suggests that we actually haven’t had another conference organized by the UN or indeed a large gathering of non-state actors, grassroots civil society organizations, to push forward a women’s agenda, a gender equality or gender justice agenda.

That situation actually leaves us in a place where, as the United States, we are actually seen as a country that jeopardizes the advancement of gender equality. Indeed, we’ve been hearing from many of the activists who were here in New York this past week that their countries are now using the fact that the United States hasn’t ratified CEDAW as an argument for exiting CEDAW themselves. This is not just true, by the way, of countries in the Middle East, although there are some there. Both—you know, activists from both Lebanon and Jordan have raised concerns around their governments’ recent comments around that, but also in places like Belarus, Ukraine, different parts of the former Soviet Union, parts of Central Asia. So you essentially have a situation in which not only is the United States not seen as a leader in human rights, but is actually now being seen as a legitimate excuse for other countries to withdraw their support for women’s equality. That seems extraordinarily troubling in 2010. And I think our hope is that the pressure from grassroots activists, both on their own countries and hopefully on this country, will succeed in turning that around.

One big problem in that area is that most Americans, women or men, have no idea. I mean, you mentioned that International Women’s Day started in Copenhagen; it actually started right here in New York City. It was a group of—prior to 1910, it was a group of activist women laborers in New York City who were challenging the fact that women in sweatshops used to be locked up in those sweatshops. And because the Socialist Movement made that workers’ struggle a banner and a cause, the United States essentially shut down any recognition of its own history in terms of that profound—most Americans have no idea what International Women’s Day is, although I grew up in India celebrating and singing songs in praise of the brave women workers of New York. So, I mean, I think there’s just a real irony here that is sort of manifest across this whole discussion, you know, which speaks both to the question of how deeply the question of labor rights is at the root of this. So…

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you very much, Kavita Ramdas, for joining us. Kavita Ramdas is president and CEO of the Global Fund for women, as you head off, once again, to the United Nations. Thank you.

KAVITA RAMDAS: Thank you for having me.

March 8 Marks The International Women's Day - 2010

March 8 Marks The International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

1908
Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women's oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

1910
n 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named a Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.

1911
Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women's Day events. 1911 also saw women's 'Bread and Roses' campaign.

1913-1914
On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1913 following discussions, International Women's Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen's Day ever since. In 1914 further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women's solidarity.

1917
On the last Sunday of February, Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the women's strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March.

1918 - 1999
Since its birth in the socialist movement, International Women's Day has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown from strength to strength annually. For many years the United Nations has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts for women's rights and participation in social, political and economic processes. 1975 was designated as 'International Women's Year' by the United Nations. Women's organisations and governments around the world have also observed IWD annually on 8 March by holding large-scale events that honour women's advancement and while diligently reminding of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women's equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

2000 and beyond
IWD is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy. With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google some years even changes its logo on its global search pages. Year on year IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally!!! Make everyday International Women's Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for women all over the world is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings

- By RON NIXON - April 14, 2011 - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Even as the United States poured billions of dollars into foreign military programs and anti-terrorism campaigns, a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in authoritarian Arab states.

The money spent on these programs was minute compared with efforts led by the Pentagon. But as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The work of these groups often provoked tensions between the United States and many Middle Eastern leaders, who frequently complained that their leadership was being undermined, according to the cables.

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.

No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from “foreign influence,” as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders.

“We didn’t fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, a Washington-based advocacy and research group. “That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn’t start it.”

Some Egyptian youth leaders attended a 2008 technology meeting in New York, where they were taught to use social networking and mobile technologies to promote democracy. Among those sponsoring the meeting were Facebook, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School and the State Department.

“We learned how to organize and build coalitions,” said Bashem Fathy, a founder of the youth movement that ultimately drove the Egyptian uprisings. Mr. Fathy, who attended training with Freedom House, said, “This certainly helped during the revolution.”

Ms. Qadhi, the Yemeni youth activist, attended American training sessions in Yemen.

“It helped me very much because I used to think that change only takes place by force and by weapons,” she said.

But now, she said, it is clear that results can be achieved with peaceful protests and other nonviolent means.

But some members of the activist groups complained in interviews that the United States was hypocritical for helping them at the same time that it was supporting the governments they sought to change.

“While we appreciated the training we received through the NGOs sponsored by the U.S. government, and it did help us in our struggles, we are also aware that the same government also trained the state security investigative service, which was responsible for the harassment and jailing of many of us,” said Mr. Fathy, the Egyptian activist.

Interviews with officials of the nongovernmental groups and a review of diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks show that the democracy programs were constant sources of tension between the United States and many Arab governments.

The cables, in particular, show how leaders in the Middle East and North Africa viewed these groups with deep suspicion, and tried to weaken them. Today the work of these groups is among the reasons that governments in turmoil claim that Western meddling was behind the uprisings, with some officials noting that leaders like Ms. Qadhi were trained and financed by the United States.

Diplomatic cables report how American officials frequently assured skeptical governments that the training was aimed at reform, not promoting revolutions.

Last year, for example, a few months before national elections in Bahrain, officials there barred a representative of the National Democratic Institute from entering the country.

In Bahrain, officials worried that the group’s political training “disproportionately benefited the opposition,” according to a January 2010 cable.

In Yemen, where the United States has been spending millions on an anti-terrorism program, officials complained that American efforts to promote democracy amounted to “interference in internal Yemeni affairs.”

But nowhere was the opposition to the American groups stronger than in Egypt.

Egypt, whose government receives $1.5 billion annually in military and economic aid from the United States, viewed efforts to promote political change with deep suspicion, even outrage.

Hosni Mubarak, then Egypt’s president, was “deeply skeptical of the U.S. role in democracy promotion,” said a diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Cairo dated Oct. 9, 2007.

At one time the United States financed political reform groups by channeling money through the Egyptian government.

But in 2005, under a Bush administration initiative, local groups were given direct grants, much to the chagrin of Egyptian officials.

According to a September 2006 cable, Mahmoud Nayel, an official with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, complained to American Embassy officials about the United States government’s “arrogant tactics in promoting reform in Egypt.”

The main targets of the Egyptian complaints were the Republican and Democratic institutes. Diplomatic cables show that Egyptian officials complained that the United States was providing support for “illegal organizations.”

Gamal Mubarak, the former president’s son, is described in an Oct. 20, 2008, cable as “irritable about direct U.S. democracy and governance funding of Egyptian NGOs.”

The Egyptian government even appealed to groups like Freedom House to stop working with local political activists and human rights groups.

“They were constantly saying: ‘Why are you working with those groups, they are nothing. All they have are slogans,’ ” said Sherif Mansour, an Egyptian activist and a senior program officer for the Middle East and North Africa at Freedom House.

When their appeals to the United States government failed, the Egyptian authorities reacted by restricting the activities of the American nonprofit organizations.

Hotels that were to host training sessions were closed for renovations. Staff members of the groups were followed, and local activists were intimidated and jailed. State-owned newspapers accused activists of receiving money from American intelligence agencies.

Affiliating themselves with the American organizations may have tainted leaders within their own groups. According to one diplomatic cable, leaders of the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt told the American Embassy in 2009 that some members of the group had accused Ahmed Maher, a leader of the January uprising, and other leaders of “treason” in a mock trial related to their association with Freedom House, which more militant members of the movement described as a “Zionist organization.”

A prominent blogger, according to a cable, threatened to post the information about the movement leaders’ links to Freedom House on his blog.

There is no evidence that this ever happened, and a later cable shows that the group ousted the members who were complaining about Mr. Maher and other leaders.

In the face of government opposition, some groups moved their training sessions to friendlier countries like Jordan or Morocco. They also sent activists to the United States for training.