Women at the Crossroads: Advances and Setbacks

▪ 2000

by Siobhan Dowd

      At the 20th century's close, 50 years after the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's classic treatise Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), feminists and human rights activists pondered whether women fared better now than they did 100 years ago. For American women, World Wars I and II propelled their entry into the workplace; technological advances in birth control gave them reproductive choices; and the strong vocal feminist movement won them votes, education, and parity before the law in theory if not always in practice. These advances, however, were visible primarily in the affluent West. Women in less-developed countries still fared less well. Many could not vote, read, or make basic life choices; many faced extrajudicial killing and rape, especially in times of war; and many were subjected to state-countenanced violence both outside and, more commonly, within the home. Amnesty International reported that the practices of dowry deaths and female genital mutilation persisted in many countries, and thousands of women and girls fell prey to the trade in sexual and domestic slaves.

      During the 1990s these problems became prominent in debates within the United Nations, and perhaps the single-most-important advance for women during the decade was a resulting realization at the international level that the chronic violation of women's human rights needed special addressing. The UN “Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women” explicitly included a condemnation of domestic violence. At the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, governments agreed in principle to build protection of women's human rights into their domestic agendas. Wholesale rape of women in wartime, such as occurred in the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was officially condemned as a war crime. Waris Dirie, a fashion model from Somalia who was subjected to a ritualized “circumcision” when she was five, was appointed UN special rapporteur on female genital mutilation. The UN's newfound commitment in this realm was underscored by the appointment of a new commissioner for human rights—Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. None of these developments, however, would have been possible without a strong women's lobby at the UN, organized mainly by women in nongovernmental organizations.

      Although women in such countries as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates still could not vote, women elsewhere increasingly gained positions of political prominence. U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (see Biographies) expanded her role in the White House and explored her own political career; Latvian politician Vaira Vike-Freiburga (see Biographies (Vike-Freiberga, Vaira )) was elected the first woman president in Eastern Europe; Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia (see Biographies (Sukarnoputri, Megawati )) spearheaded a popular opposition that was in part responsible for the downfall of the long-incumbent Suharto family; and in Myanmar (Burma) opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi continued to lead a dogged movement against the military junta. More generally, women's participation in politics remained slight. Fewer than 10% of U.S. senators were women, and the same statistic applied to women MPs and senators in France. Many calls have been made to redress the balance. In France—where women gained the vote as late as 1945—a constitutional amendment was passed stipulating that the sexes should divide elective jobs. Government delegates from 16 countries at a U.S.-sponsored conference in Yemen pledged to appoint women to top posts and surmount legal barriers to women's full political participation.

      Women remained the second sex when it came to their economic status. In the West the earnings of women who were young and without children approached that of men, but among older women inequality in wages increased. In the U.S. the White House's Council of Economic Advisors found that women's average pay was 75% of men's, rising to 88% when their skills and experience were equivalent. The European Commission found a similar disparity in Europe. The publication CQ Researcher, quoting statistics from the Center for Policy Alternatives and the Pew Global Stewardship/Population Reference Bureau, estimated that globally women did 66% of the work, earned 10% of the income, and owned 1% of the land.

      Education proved woman's best friend when it came to attaining full rights. By the late 1990s American women were earning more than half of all college degrees, and the rate of women earning doctoral degrees increased by 50% during the '90s. The global picture was less promising. A 1990 international $6 billion initiative to make education of girls universal by the year 2000 largely failed. Of the millions of children not in school, two-thirds were female, and according to UNICEF, school-enrollment rates for girls were “virtually static.” In Malawi, however, a gender-sensitive seven-year program achieved an attendance rate of 80% for girls in primary schools. Women in countries such as Egypt, Iran, and Bangladesh also gained improved educational prospects and simultaneously made significant advances in their overall status.

      Professionally, women continued to lag behind men in many fields. By the century's end only a small proportion of women were scientists and engineers—about 25% in countries such as the U.S., Canada, China, Italy, and Turkey but only about 5% in Germany. Medicine, however, was an exception; in the U.S. there were nearly as many women qualifying as doctors as men.

      Women also penetrated professions hitherto seen as male bastions, with mixed reactions from feminists. Women soldiers broached the battlefield in such varied arenas as the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where 41,000 American women were deployed, and Eritrea's war with Ethiopia, where women carried AK-47s and fought and fell alongside men. Meanwhile, Col. Eileen Marie Collins made a giant step for womankind when in 1999 she became the first female to command a U.S. space shuttle mission.

      Women's stature in sports also grew. Association football (soccer) attracted more women players, and the attendance at the 1999 Women's World Cup topped that of the 1998 Men's World Cup. In 1997 the U.S. Women's National Basketball Association made its debut, while in Canada women's rugby became suddenly popular, with an estimated 46,000 players. The yachting world was revolutionized when Dawn Riley became the first woman in the 148-year history of the America's Cup to manage her own yacht-racing syndicate. Women professional athletes, however, were almost always paid less than men.

      The century closed with some women urging others not to imitate men but to concentrate instead on strengthening their own way of confronting life's challenges and conflicts. Helen Fisher's The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World posited that women might not merely catch up to men but predominate in the 21st century. Their “web thinking”—their ability to see the big picture—would, she argued, prove vital to the new globalized, knowledge-based economy and to the forging of new international partnerships.

Siobhan Dowd is a columnist for the London Literary Review and represents the writers organization PEN in its human rights campaigns.

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