The game is rigged. Stop playing.
April 3, 2009
by Sheryl Lee
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What do the United States, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Nauru, Palau and Tonga have in common?
They are the only countries that have failed to ratify the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) into law. Adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, at present 185 countries are party to the Convention. There are eight holdouts, of which the U.S. is one.
But one of these things is not like the others. Compared to Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Qatar, Nauru, Palau and Tonga, the U.S. is a wealthy, advanced nation that has made significant strides in women’s rights, right?
So what’s the problem?
The Obama administration has said it will make it a priority to reopen discussion of the treaty in the Senate, and CEDAW also has some Republican support. According to Peggy Simpson at The Women’s Media Center, “96 cities, counties and states have passed resolutions calling on on Congress to ratify CEDAW. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-California, introduced a resolution early in January with 121 co-sponsors, urging Senate action on the treaty.”
“CEDAW,” Simpson notes, is “essentially is a bill of rights for women and has been used as a gold standard for many global grass roots groups seeking to shape laws that would expand rights of women in their own countries.”
Simpson quotes Sarah C. Albert, “a front-tier activist on behalf of CEDAW,” who notes that there is “’a renewed interest in how the United States is seen from abroad,’” and “a realization that continued U.S. opposition to CEDAW complicates its efforts to call out human rights offenders in other countries.”
(Like, say, Afghanistan, for instance? That country which, despite having ratified the treaty in 2003, just this week passed a law that among other things will force women to have sex with their husbands every four days…or else?)
CEDAW was first brought before Senate by President Carter, and President George W. Bush gave it his support initially. “In 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that CEDAW was ‘generally desirable and should be ratified’,” according to Simpson, but Ashcroft opposed it, which effectively buried it for the remainder of Bush’s presidency.
“This year,” Simpson reports, “Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, is poised to hold Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearings on the treaty.”
Boxer has said she wants to start with a clean version of CEDAW, shedding the dozen restrictions added in 2002 during the unsuccessful attempt to ratify it. These so-called RUDs – for reservations, understandings and declarations – included stipulations that the treaty could not compel the government to provide paid maternity leave or force women to serve in military combat units. The most contentious stipulation, however, and the bid to win over religious right opposition, was that the treaty should not be construed as creating a right to abortion.
Ah. There it is: ”The most contentious stipulation, however, and the bid to win over religious right opposition, was that the treaty should not be construed as creating a right to abortion.”
Once again, American women’s rights are held hostage to the issue of abortion, and women on both sides of the aisle are trapped behind the logjam this issue creates.
So…what if a bunch of us elected to put the abortion issue aside -– not giving up our personal positions, but choosing to work together on other fronts, fighting any number of other fights for women? What if we decided that getting more women elected and addressing violence against women and equal pay for women and sexism in the media were issues that could be tackled by women from both the left and the right, while we refused to play with the political football that the abortion issue has become?
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t mean to trivialize reproductive rights, but let’s consider the lesson learned from CEDAW, which is that the issue of choice separates women and drains away our power.
Our government is comprised of 83% men. The status quo will naturally keep giving men a disproportionate degree of power, and choice is a convenient way to keep women divided and block any meaningful progress that we can make on the 80% of issues that impact all women — the issues that, if resolved, would give us more seats at the table, and shift the balance of power in our favor.
It’s 2009. CEDAW is 30 years old. The game is rigged against us. The old agenda doesn’t work. This is The New Agenda.
Excellent post, Sheryl. I totally agree. That is exactly how I see The New Agenda.
It is humiliating that we haven’t ratified CEDAW. Though at the same time, CEDAW is functionally meaningless. Saudi Arabia has ratified it, so that tells us how seriously it’s taken by its signatories.
By the way: is THAT what women have to wear to box?
Don’t those outfits just say, “I’m a walking uterus”?
Thanks, V. I took out the line about the Powers that Pee Standing Up. Seemed a little too blamey.
Great analogy Sheryl. Forget another 30 years – we start together today!
LOL V!
A brilliant manifesto. Thanks, Sheryl, I’m passing this one around.
Sounds like CEDAW is the international version of the ERA—-same quagmire.
Makes me just want to explode. But hey, I joined The New Agenda instead. Best to take that explosive energy and make positive things happen!!!!!!
Fantastic article, Sheryl. We needed this reminder of what we’re about.
The religious right is opposed to the CEDAW because they disagree with its core premise: equal rights for women. The abortion issue is just a smokescreen. The CEDAW doesn’t even mention abortion, and it has in fact been ratified by dozens of countries that outlaw abortion (in some cases even if the life of the mother is at risk).
This may not be the right place for it, but I wonder if part of your goals regarding women’s rights and the fair pay issue would be also related to minimum wage. I confess I thought that every state was required to have a min wage law and after talking to a relative in MS, I looked it up and found this site: http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm.
This was a shocker to me. And, of course, when there is no minimum wage requirement, I am guessing that the difference between men and women wages will be even greater.
I know this is not in line with this article but I don’t see a place for general comments but maybe there is one.
But I do think this country is or should be in shame for not having the CEDAW, and an even better version. We should be leading the world in human rights of all kinds. But I think I know why we don’t.
[...] The New Agenda reports that the US is one of the few holdouts to ratifying the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) into law. As we hear on the news horrifying stories of teenage girls getting beaten by the Taliban, you have to wonder why it is taking so long for women to achieve not just “true equality” but some semblance of true progress worldwide. [...]
Excellent article, Sheryl.
I tend to agree with Sasha on why the religious right is opposed to CEDAW. In Susan B. Anthony’s day, a powerful group of religious women who were against abortion supported Anthony’s crusade to gain votes for women. Now, I think the extremists have ventured so far into woman-hating that they would not have joined Anthony in her quest.
On the bright side, I think the reason they are pushing their anti-woman views so hard is because women are waking up to the existence of the patriarchy again. The Powers-That-Be have been hiding in plain sight for decades, and they were getting away with keeping women down. After the 2008 election, the curtain was drawn back and we saw what was really keeping women from achieving their potential. It’s not a lack of ambition, a lack of ability to compete with men, a lack of good looks or a lack of intelligence.
The game is rigged.
I agree with Sasha,
The Right has used abortion as its justification for opposing. It’s just a smokescreen- abortion has nothing to do with it.
The problem is the Right has devoted time and energy over the years lobbying their congresspeople, etc., to oppose this. The left never did a thing to stop them. This illustrates why we need more women in government and why the rest of us must join together and take a stand.
LOL, I love the line, “the powers that pee standing up”. Great wording!
I’m tired of women allowing themselves to be held hostage over reproductive rights. I think it’s done a great deal of harm to women’s progress.
Currently we have reproductive rights so let’s put the worry about them on the back burner and accomplish something else for a change. Feminist dogma has not served real women any better than religious dogma.
Republican men and the Republican party are not the friend of women. But get real, if you still think that Democrat men and the Democrat party are friends to women you haven’t been listening to them talk misogyny and fashion this last year. And Democrat males are not going to help women on reproductive rights because then they loose their favorite tactic for scarring women into submission. We need a vast voting block of women in the middle and both parties need to cut each others throats yearly to win our votes for that election only. Party loyalty is a crippling mistake for women to make. Just say no to loyalty.
[...] wrote a post the other day that does a good job of explaining what our coalition is all about. In The game is rigged. Stop playing, Sheryl observes that ratification of CEDAW has been blocked in this country by fears that the [...]
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