Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice

5. Lessons from the UN's Sixth Decade, 1996-2005

135 5 Lessons from the UN’s Sixth Decade, 1996–2005 “The main thing of the powerless is to have a dream,” [Aunt Habiba] often told me while I was watching the stairs, so that she could embroider a fabulous one-winged green bird on the clandestine mrema she kept hidden in the darkest corner of her room. “True, a dream alone, without the bargaining power to go with it, does not transform the world or make the walls vanish, but it does help you keep a hold of dignity.” —Fatema Mernissi1 • Poverty and Inequality Strike the Globe • Beijing • Women within the UN • Full Circle: From “Gender” to “Women” • Thinking for the Future:The Way Forward? By the turn of the century, the harsh impact of structural adjustment policies had greatly increased inequality around the globe. The convergence of militarization , globalization, and conservatism has dealt a blow to the progress that was made at the UN on the social justice front and changed political configurations in ways that have hampered its ability to respond to the crisis. These changes revealed the fragility of the gains made in the arenas of women’s rights and development policy and practice, especially in the period 1985–1995. The UN’s responses to the growing crisis, such as its advocacy of microcredit for poor women and the Millennium Development Goals, have been unable to address the root causes of poverty and its attendant problems. However, there has been progress in several areas. The gendering of various dimensions related to the theaters of war culminated in the now-famous Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security, which was a first for women.2 There has also been a shift in the location of the energy of the Women, Development, and the UN 136 women’s movement from global to regional and national spaces. The momentum generated by the significant conferences and development of networks in the previous decade has continued at the national and even local levels. The period also ushered in the beginnings of what can be called the political maturing of the women’s movement. Because the worldwide women’s movement had established its political identity over the previous decades through its effective participation in world arenas, it has become possible for that movement to engage with other social and political movements with a strong sense of self. While the women’s movement has gained in strength and confidence,women at UN headquarters in New York, its Secretariat, where policy is set, ideas are generated, and data is gathered and analyzed, remain largely excluded from the corridors of power, despite some modest progress. Perhaps in response to their small numbers, women have adopted mainstreaming as a strategy to access resources at the world body. The way forward in the new political context is not clear. Yet this review of sixty years of history suggests some possible strategies and offers signs of hope from recent developments on the ground.Despite the challenges and disappointments of recent years, women’s journey with the United Nations on development issues is by no means over. Poverty and Inequality Strike the Globe The reflections that emerged at the end of the millennium were accompanied by a number of studies and surveys by UN organizations and other sources. These studies continued the bad news of the previous decade: inequality was growing,poor people had even less access to economic markets,and gender parity was absent in governments. Traditional economics was unable to account for these changes. The harsh and unequal impact of poverty on women and men is affirmed in many sources. UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s Women report for 2000 noted that although many obstacles to women’s employment had crumbled, women in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe faced deteriorating economic conditions ; many lived in nations facing increased indebtedness, which is often correlated with lower rates of schooling for girls, and household income inequality increased across a wide range of countries in both developed and developing nations. These trends suggest that “poor women have not enjoyed much of the fruits of any progress.”3 The Department of Economic and Social Affair’s World’s Women 2000 noted higher rates of unemployment for women than for men and a higher propor- Lessons from the UN’s Sixth Decade, 1996–2005 137 tion of women than men in the informal economy.The report...