An extraordinary question at an unexpected moment cropped up during a meeting on gender Issues.
The question: “Is women rights still relevant to women from the West?”. An ambassador’s wife, from one of the EU member countries, and herself from the medical field, visibly alarmed by the question responded, “Yes, we have to take care of our health!”, alluding to the basic right to live a healthy life.
One common misunderstanding, despite extensive literature and UN Declaration on Human Rights, is the fallacy of perceiving “rights” as an absolute set of “code”, to be prescribed in absolute terms, at all situations, to all peoples in the world.
Human rights in general, and women rights in particular, is codified law now in many countries in the West, South and Southeast and East Asia. Yet what remains largely an unexplored territory of investigative research and understanding is how cultures and societal structures within a community influence the absolute code of “the right”.
Whether it is the personal choice of burqa, divorce, abortion, change of name and religion, to disregard education and be a school dropout, or to gregariously pollute the surroundings in course of industrial revenue, the choice is exercised almost never in isolation but in relation to communal beliefs and societal codes of behavior.
The interesting paradox is this: all rights is fundamentally based on individual needs to further dignified life and survival. Women rights in particular cannot always be a set of codes, handed down to the international community of women all over the planet. It would be useful to examine if culture specific and country specific women rights need to be incorporated as by laws to the already existing body of International Legal Tenets on Human Rights.
The difficulty and challenge in a country specific/culture specific women rights is of course the vast scope for legal or illegal suppression and oppression of women, wives, mothers and daughters. Too often we are surrounded by real life facts of housewife torture and harassment, bride murders, female infanticide, workplace bullying, abandonment and trafficking, and illegal oppression towards childbearing roles. And too often we hear too of women organizations, and commissions working to protect the rights of women and children.
But how far have policies and projects helped in curbing domestic violence, halting trafficking of women and children and promoting equal rights in the work place? While the latter two phenomena can be assessed and quantified by project managers and NGOs, domestic violence remains elusive, un-assessed and much unreported in both western and eastern parts of the world.
The second common misconception is that codified women rights exist to only “protect” women’s welfare. But “rights” in this modern age need to reach out beyond protection and protectionism, in order to create new opportunities towards women’s empowerment.
This brings us back to the all encompassing matter on health pointed out by the medical doctor and diplomat’s spouse. Health and the right to health services is one of the most controversial and the most basic human right. Health as a basic right is linked to our right to live, but exercising this right has become controversial, because far too much of health services and medical advancement is now privatized as businesses and linked to a quagmire of insurance investments. Hence invariably, the right to quality and timely health services has evolved as the privilege of the rich, while the poor and the rural community are marginalized, isolated and untreated.
It is of course the job of another “Undercover Economist” to study the link between suppressed women’s rights and lagging economy, proportion of migration spurred by inadequate health nutrients and facilities, to unemployment statistics in overcrowded cities linked to street violence and syndicated business of begging, prostitution and regrettable escalation in crime.
Human rights has now evolved as a full-fledged industry with international franchise offices of the much needed management and legal consultants, with writers and academics discussing human rights violation cases to bring to the world’s attention some of the unthinkable cruelties in the world. But it is important to recognize the extremism that prevails at both ends of the spectrum.
The necessity of the International Court of Justice for Human Rights is indisputable, to deter, curb and try human rights violations. However, women’s rights wavers between conformity to communal practices and internationally recognized rights, and practitioners need to recognize this subtle web of personal choice versus objective standards. Thus, the third misconception arises out of individualistic one dimensional view of “rights”. As early as the 19th century, a little known writer then, Charles Lamb examined the issue of balance between personal rights and personal responsibility.
The freedom that “rights” affords is inevitably coupled with “responsibility”. Ultimately, both human and women rights is about personal and social responsibility of individuals, activists and governments. What needs to be urgently recognized by both leaders and common people is an imminent need for peace and stability in every society, by acknowledging and curbing militant and demonstrative activism as well as militant politics. At extremes, both militant governance and human rights demands lead to violence and crime.
Women’s right is still an international issue because it is politicized. But in actual terms in the new millennium, we have soared to a different level beyond the 1960s and 1970s militant feminism. Today’s women rights is a far subtler art of “balance”– balancing family, profession, politics, faith and friends. Complemented by the international legal framework of “rights”, understanding and exercising women’s rights in every culture is more of a personal struggle and journey towards empowerment, freedom and love of belonging to a place, and to a community of friends.
The writer is president of ASEAN Secretariat Women’s Wing. The author’s views are personal.
