| 摘要 | Thank you for inviting me to testify today. The rights and roles of women is a subject about which I have thought and written a good deal in the course of my life. The revived interest in the Treaty before us today, initially signed by Jimmy Carter, is evidence of renewed interest in this subject. I personally have lived through very significant changes in the opportunities and practices that shape the lives of women in the United States and elsewhere. My own life and experiences have been importantly affected by changes in attitudes and practices concerning women. So naturally I have been and remain interested in this subject.
At the time that I first sought employment as a teacher of political science at the university level, it was still commonplace to encounter frank admission by some persons in authoritative positions in public universities such as I encountered from one department chair: “We don’t have any women in this department and, frankly, we like it that way.” Fortunately I was able to identify a department whose members had more open minds on this matter.
When Ronald Reagan appointed me to serve as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in his first Administration, I became the first woman ever to represent a major power or a Western country in the United Nations; and the first woman to be “at the table” when major issues of foreign policy were decided. Since then Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice have occupied more significant roles in foreign policy, and, significantly, in both political parties.
This discussion and current effort to ratify the CEDAW Treaty accompany a renewed interest in women’s opportunities.
I desire today to address three questions:
There is widespread discrimination against women in many societies including, especially, most Third World societies. I have traveled widely in these societies and have been deeply disturbed by what I saw. In many, if not most, of these societies, girls and women have little control over their lives. In many, there is not even a pretense of equal rights and women are denied equal, legal rights, and equal educational and employment opportunities. In many Third World countries women can neither choose their husbands, nor their marital status, nor control the size of their families. In many of these countries women are denied contraception even where it is available.
In a number of polygamous societies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, women are trapped into early marriages, denied education beyond elementary school, if that, and destined to live as a dependent or a pauper should they become widows.
As all women (and men) familiar with life on five continents understand, there are no global standards agreed upon by all concerning what constitutes discrimination against women. The patterns of relations between men and women, the distribution of roles, responsibilities, rights, resources, and obligations are as diverse as the laws and practices governing courtship, marriage, divorce, death, inheritance and other matters. It is impossible to alter such practices by treaty, or quickly.
Issues of reproduction and education are more complex but equally or more resistant to regulation by global treaties. Views vary widely and deeply between cultures and civilizations about the education of girls as well as boys, about the appropriate age for marriage, for childbearing, grounds for divorce, and the distribution of responsibilities in a family. Many of these practices stubbornly resist change.
What can a convention eliminating discrimination do for women trapped by Sharia codes governing marriage, divorce and inheritance? I share the desire to see an end to discrimination against women. I know U.S. law provides important defenses for U.S. women against workplace discrimination. I would like to see these defenses available worldwide. But it will not be easy, or fast.
No U.N. body, no U.N. code can transform practices in, say, West Africa, where some farmers have four wives, and perhaps, a concubine or two; or India where girls are married off young and often without their consent. It may be that U.N. bodies can influence the age for marriage. It may not. Major cultural and social change will be necessary for that.
American women have almost achieved equality with men in their access to opportunity, success, and the good things in life. They have education and constitutional rights, the key to most other goals including jobs, good income, good health, influence, and status. The open U.S. political system has enabled women to speed their access to the principal values.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women cannot help girls being sucked into polygamous marriages or prostitution, nor women left penniless by inheritance laws that give everything to sons and nothing to widows or all to the favorite wife. The Convention will not prevent law codes in brutal societies from imposing a sentence of death by stoning on an unfaithful wife. It cannot do much for the women who need it most in the areas they are most deprived.
The establishment of universal norms and goals can be helpful if the norms are relevant to the deprivations. Democratic norms cannot help much if they are remote from the lives and societies of those women and men in need of help. A treaty such as CEDAW foresees an ideal society. It reflects aspirations for all women: for education, employment, medical care, and control over their own lives. If taken literally, this convention to eliminate discrimination is utopian and is more likely to breed cynicism than help.
There are actions that can be taken to help women.
Should the United Nations Secretariat, who probably drafted this treaty, desire to eliminate discrimination against women, they could and should begin with the U.N’s own personnel policies which, though less discriminatory than in the past, remain heavily biased against women at upper levels.
The U.N. could and should systematically eliminate discrimination in its programs — its refugee programs, its development programs, its health programs, its education programs. It could undertake a crash program to provide education for girls in societies where none is provided.
The Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women cannot begin to guarantee women all the opportunities and well-being our Constitution, our laws, and our practices provide American women.
It is cynical to pretend that a global treaty can transform societies and governments that deny citizens all rights. If we want to help women in the most repressive societies – and we should – we should share the lessons American women have learned from experience, about preparing themselves to participate, defending themselves, seizing opportunities, enjoying their rights. And we should face the fact that women have rights only in societies where men have rights. Freedom, democracy and rule of law are the prerequisites to eliminating discrimination against women.
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick is a senior fellow at AEI. |
