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"The Future of Family and Tribe," a seminar of CLAL’s Jewish Public Forum held January 28-29, 2002 in New York City, brought together a dozen leading thinkers on gender, gay rights, adoption, reproductive law, bioethics, and aging. eCLAL is publishing a series of articles based on participants’ contributions to the seminar. This seminar was part of Exploring the Jewish Futures: A Multidimensional Project On the Future of Religion,Ethnicity and Civic Engagement. For more information about the project, click here.
Laura Katzive, J.D., LL.M. -- Legal Advisor for Global Projects in the International Program of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, a non-profit legal advocacy organization dedicated to promoting and defending women’s reproductive rights worldwide -- participated in "The Future of Family and Tribe" seminar. Her contribution follows below.
Shaping a Future for Women in their Families and Tribes: An Activist’s View
By Laura Katzive
Inviting an activist to write about
the future is a little like asking a coach to predict the outcome of her team’s next
game. Those of us who devote our professional
lives to the realization of our ideals should be excused for not thinking too creatively
about the likelihood of our success. Even
more indulgence should be granted activists who rely on the law as an instrument for
social change. Underlying our efforts to make
the law conform to our understanding of justice is the belief that law can shape the
future, both by directing people to change their behavior and by influencing their
conceptions of right and wrong. So the work
we do today to impact laws and influence governments is directly related to our vision of
the future, to the world in which we wish to live tomorrow.
The vision of the future toward which
I am working includes some specific goals for the family, particularly for women’s
status and decision-making power. As part of
a non-governmental organization working to promote reproductive rights globally, I
advocate to ensure women’s choice in all matters affecting their reproductive lives. This means protecting women’s right to decide
on the number, spacing and timing of their pregnancies and their right to carry
pregnancies to term in safety. It also means
protecting women from violations of their physical integrity, including rape and harmful
practices like female genital mutilation. As
a legal organization, we focus on the manner in which official laws and policies –
and in some cases, the absence of laws and policies – may interfere with women’s
enjoyment of their reproductive rights. We
hold governments to international human rights standards, and our advocacy is premised on
governments’ duties under binding international treaties, such as the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Our focus on government action and
law does not exclude an interest in women’s status within their families and
communities – realms that have traditionally been thought to stand largely beyond the
state’s reach. In fact, there is
tremendous potential for human rights principles, channeled through international and
national-level laws, to enhance the decision-making power of women and girls within their
families. This potential has been recognized
within the text itself of CEDAW, an international treaty focused exclusively on
women’s right to equality. CEDAW entered
into force in 1981 and has been ratified by at least 168 nations, including all
industrialized countries except the United States.
Article 5 of that Convention declares: “States parties shall take all
appropriate measures: (a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and
women, with a view to achieving the elimination of . . . customary and all other practices
which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes
or on stereotyped roles for men and women.” CEDAW
also has provisions relating to women’s equal rights within marriage and the
state’s duty to ensure recognition of men and women’s shared role in the
upbringing of children.
The implications of these provisions
for women’s rights under international law are profound. They mark a dramatic shift in the common
understanding of the distinction between the public and private spheres. In the 20 or so years following CEDAW’s entry
into force, there has been increased recognition that international human rights law goes
beyond what we have considered the traditional subjects of human rights. CEDAW requires states to take affirmative steps to
ensure not only that the government itself does not undermine women’s human rights,
but that women’s rights within their families and communities are protected from
violation by private actors. This breakdown
of the public/private distinction has significant consequences in matters of sexuality and
reproduction, which – almost by definition – have traditionally been regulated
within the family. Now women’s rights
activists are invoking international norms to support their claims that: adolescents have
a right to access contraception without parental consent; pregnant women should have the
means to seek maternal health care without the authorization of their husbands; girls have
a right to protection from female genital mutilation, regardless of their parents’
wishes; and women have a right to terminate pregnancies without the permission of their
husbands. These claims have met with success
in countries around the world, as is evidenced by the adoption of laws and policies giving
them force. For example, since 1990, at least
15 countries have criminalized the practice of female genital mutilation, imposing
penalties for practitioners as well as parents who procure the procedure for their
daughters.
This is not to say that feminists
worldwide are seeking a future in which the state plays an ever-expanding role in family
decision making. To the contrary, we are
working toward a scenario in which law is not the primary determinant of women’s
status in the family. When respect for
women’s equality, autonomy and self-determination are internalized by women, their
families and communities alike, state recognition of rights will be secondary to customs
and norms that reflect women’s empowerment.
Women will need to resort to legal mechanisms for vindication of their rights only
under exceptional circumstances.
What makes me think that we will
arrive at this future? Rapid gains in
women’s rights over the past several decades, as evidenced in the short run by legal
reform, provide some basis for optimism. But
even the activist must acknowledge that while law is an agent for social change, it is an
imperfect indicator of evolving mores. History
provides examples of widely resisted attempts to alter accepted and ingrained patterns of
behavior through top-down law reform. The
United States witnessed virulent Southern opposition to Supreme Court rulings requiring
school desegregation, beginning with the case of Brown
v. Board of Education. While the
Court’s rulings were instrumental to the success of the Civil Rights movement and to
a process of social change that continues today, the magnitude of the initial resistance
called into question the very ability of the Court to remedy long-standing and widely
perpetrated rights violations. Where there is
a dissonance between human rights standards and the prevailing values of those bound by
the law, shaping those values may require more than law reform alone.
So I will not rely on international
law or national legal reform as the sole basis for my vision of the future. I will also point to the efforts of activists
around the world who have taken inspiration from a global women’s movement to work
toward changing the way people think. While
the immediate goal of these activists is often to influence legislation, they know that
gender equality will be a reality only when communities internalize the values of the
human rights movement as their own. In Nepal,
a women’s legal advocacy group has taken the message of CEDAW and United Nations
conference declarations to the national media and to women’s groups around the
country, raising awareness about widespread legal and cultural forms of discrimination. In Mali, a group of women lawyers has engaged a
nationwide network of local activist groups – whose interests range from health care
to the environment – to call upon policymakers to promote women’s equality
through law reform and education.
We are already seeing some evidence
that recognition of women’s rights at the international and national policy levels is
affecting the way women perceive their own rights within their families. In February, a young girl in Kenya went to court
to enjoin her parents from forcing her to undergo female genital mutilation. She was granted her request. This is the second case of its kind in that
country.
What will be the ripple effects of
women’s expanding autonomy and decision-making power?
Some fear that privileging the “individual rights” of women
jeopardizes the continuity of communities and the survival of unique cultures. I do not regard recognition of individual rights a
threat to the continued existence of community. While
in my vision of the future women have choices, I do not presume to know what choices women
will make. Many will choose to leave behind
traditional gender roles. For these women,
this may mean smaller families and greater participation in government and the formal
economy. There is nothing, though, to prevent
women from choosing lifestyles that at least preserve elements of their traditional roles. While CEDAW calls for the elimination of
“customary and all other practices which are based on the ideas of the inferiority or
the superiority of either of the sexes,” the change that is required may pertain less
to a given practice (excepting those that are violent or inherently degrading) than to the
social messages underlying women’s conventional roles and to the ability of women to
opt out if they choose.
When considered in that light, any supposed tension between rights of individuals and survival of communities is dispelled. True, in a world in which women’s autonomy is respected and their decisions upheld, communities may no longer rely on coercion, violence, and suppression of choices for survival. But ultimately survival is more sustainable where members of a community have chosen to be there and the traditions they embrace are perpetuated by choice. And communities themselves that are struggling for survival will have to take steps to make membership attractive by reconsidering practices that have historically marginalized women. Women will play a key role in both identifying those practices and in showing that their abandonment is compatible with the fundamental values of their communities.
I am an activist and my job requires
optimism. But as an activist, I have
witnessed great strides towards social transformation around the world. And the agents of change have been other women
activists, who have gained legal and political leverage from the global human rights
movement. I cannot help but see their efforts
as an investment in our future.
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