There is no shortage of feminist advisors on "gender issues" who flitter from one government funded organization to another, promoting the feminist agenda. Gender "experts", buoyed by affirmative action pressures, globe trot to UN conferences, international forums and political hot spots, busily trying to entrench the feminist world view in dozens of developing countries, under the guise of democratization.
A panel discussion was held in Ottawa on April 3, 2006 on "Governance, Women's Rights and International Development" sponsored by the Society for International Development (SID). It revealed yet more layers of feminist activity. Panelists represented at the SID conference included the federal government's international funding agency, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the crown corporation, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Carleton University. SID has been in operation since 1957 and focuses on "institutional transformation" for livelihoods, gender and social justice. Its international advisory board includes representatives from UNICEF, the UN Family Planning Agency (UNFPA), and Nadis Sadik, the UN General Secretary envoy on HIV/AIDS, Harvard University, Yale School of Medicine and others. Its publication, "Development", is available on the Internet at www.sidint.org.
SID International Senior Advisor Profile
With a steady supply of tax dollars from unsuspecting working families, feminists have expanded their reach from equality with men, to governance, democratization, globalization and market forces, political and social policy, legal and economic reform, and with the advent of military conflict, "peace and security." A special guest on the panel, Wendy Harcourt, senior gender advisor to SID International in Rome, Italy, stated that sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) "covers vast ground", no doubt to match feminists' vast ambitions for control and acceptance as the exclusive spokeswomen for all women worldwide. SRHR includes "pre and post-natal care, family planning, obstetrical services, sex education, men's responsibilities to prevent unwanted pregnancy, the feminization of HIV/AIDS, violence against women, and gender equality practices in the home community." This touches a vast array of government departments and social institutions.
In SID's publication, edited by Harcourt, she describes a feminist AWID (Association for Women's Rights in Development) forum in Bangkok, October 2005: "Beside a starlit Bangkok river I sat with over a thousand feminists from around the world watching an open air stage filled with a beautiful transsexual and transgender troupe in Marilyn Monroe pink and pearls performing Helen Reddy's 'I Am woman', the song of my early Australian feminist days." As the feminists were swept away with "the networkings, the meetings, the shows, the dances, the early morning swims and yoga..." they recognized the contradictions, "Burmese workers would spend 5 months salary to have one night in the Forum's hotel", the luxurious Shangri-La. As one AWID participant noted "...the concept of binary gender is long past, as are heterosexual norms.... Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer, Confused are political categories of self but also of survival and well-being." Another was quoted, "sexuality is a cross-cutting issue that lies at the heart of disempowerment of women. So if women are to be empowered, work on sexuality is essential." Another commented, "The challenge was out there of how to go beyond sexual identities...to a movement based on demands and desire rather than identities - destroying the gender system rather than just shoring up the interests of one group within it."
Would our Prime Ministers and their Cabinets be surprised that their support for the feminist agenda has reached the point of "destroying the gender system?" Who knows?
Harcourt added a personal note on an issue which perennially concerns global feminists - migrant women and their exploitation. She confessed that it is hard to discuss this issue from a feminist context considering a woman from the Philippines works to look after her children and family.
The SID panel and publication indicates, however, that there are concerns by ordinary taxpayers about funding activists and academics as they push feminism's perpetual "evolution."
Panel Reveals Feminist Woes
Senior policy advisor Julie Delahanty stated that CIDA is spending $50 million of its $300 million budget for Iraq (over seven years), specifically on women's rights in Iraq, which, under Saddam Hussein, developed "the highest levels of women's empowerment in the Arab world." According to Delahanty, former CIDA director, Diane Rivington, once stated that she believed the entire CIDA annual $3.312 billion budget should be at the disposal of gender equality.
But the international women's empowerment network is being challenged. The high-flying days of abortion and contraception promotion appear to be waning, as countries are more concerned about stability and security. When SID wanted to organize a panel on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Washington D.C., they were told that this approach came from the 1960's, and that organizations receiving government funding had signed an agreement not to promote legalization of prostitution or abortion. A panel on sexual and reproductive health could endanger their funding so it was not possible. In The Hague, the rebuff to SID was almost identical: "this used to be the issue, but we've moved on, we're talking about security now." One former Prime Minister of a European nation and former head of a UN agency would not allow any discussion of this issue on an international panel he was chairing.
Feminists are trying to hold the line and "prevent steps backward." IDRC's objective ($133 million annual funding), according to Claudie Gosselin, is to "fund what Americans are no longer funding" as a result of U.S. pro-family non-intervention into private sexual and reproductive areas. She listed Canada's IDRC's gender unit concerns as "gender roles and power in sexual relationships, ... access to choice - contraception and safe abortion, ... regulation of new reproductive technologies, ... women's rights in marriage, including polygamous unions, ... safe sex, keeping in mind AIDS, ... negotiation of spacing of children - a key area for gender equity, … research in trafficking." Is this what the Canadian taxpayer wants?
Many governments are questioning the use of tax dollars to interfere with what Wendy Harcourt defines as sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) which "brings tabooed 'private' subjects into the public sphere.... It translates intimate, highly culturally specific behaviours into medical, technical and legal terms within the discourse of rights and development." Julie Delahanty laments moving away from a "giddy sense of optimism" in the 1990's to the prospect of feeling "dispirited by the roll back in progress towards sexual and reproductive health" (Development, December 2005). Feminists are apparently hitting a wall of reality. Delahanty even suggests that feminism can be a fundamentalism which has failed to appreciate the "lived experiences of women who have had abortions and miscarriages" as a result of feminist strategies of focusing on choice and definitions of the unborn child as an impersonal fetus.
The "rights approach" to reproduction is now "under fierce attack" according to an essay in Development, December 2005. "Since George W. Bush came into power and since the events of September 11th, mainstream political debates no longer have a strong rights approach." The publication also analyses "regressive forces" such as politico-religious fundamentalisms and conservative forces under which it classifies "Bush", neo-liberalism, the Vatican, capitalism, privatization and business outreach.
Health care reform also affects women's reproductive rights, according to a Development article. "Preventive and public health services", rather than "individual curative care services", that is, state health care, rather than medicinal care, are better suited to women's rights advances. Perhaps this shift in focus explains the recent uncontrollably high cost of "health" in Canada and a decline in services to alleviate disease and treat illness.
"Constraints already appear" in Canada the Ottawa panel noted. People working with CIDA were disappointed with the cutting of funding to Palestine by the Conservative government. They expect even more changes. CIDA, by the way, in the fiscal year 2004 - 2005 had a budget of $3.312 billion dollars.
The fact is, unless deep funding cuts are implemented, the well oiled feminist machine will motor on, nationally and globally, harming families, genuine education, health and demographics, as professional feminists use tax dollars to create their own ever changing and evolving bizarre version of Shangri-la. |
