Can the United Nations deliver a feminist future?

Abstract

The multilateral decision-making enabled by the United Nations (UN), as the world’s only forum for negotiating agreements between almost all countries, has been both fertile and frustrating for advancing women’s rights. The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing, held at a post-Cold War high point in international co-operation, generated a significant political settlement on women’s rights, the Beijing Platform for Action. Twenty-five years later, however, that agreement is out of date. Not only has progress in implementing it stalled, but the very notion that advances can be made in women’s rights through multilateral negotiation is in doubt because of the illiberal and anti-feminist agendas of some particularly influential countries. On top of this, the lack of an effective multilateral response to the current COVID-19 global crisis has put in question the continuing relevance of UN processes. Misogyny and homophobia also characterise the rhetoric and goals of some sectors of civil society that target multilateral processes, such as the annual Commission on the Status of Women. The sense of intensified polarisation on gender equality has informed a decision not to hold a fifth UN World Conference on Women, in spite of the fact that gender equality remains an urgent and under-actioned global priority. The 25th anniversary of the Beijing Conference will be marked instead by a collaboration between UN Women, Mexico, and France, with civil society input, to foster a global conversation for urgent action and accountability for gender equality, while avoiding the kind of multilateral review and consensus that fuelled action in the aftermath of 1995. This article asks whether the UN is still ‘fit for purpose’ as an engine driving women’s rights gains. It outlines four ways in which multilateralism and the UN’s unique convening and normative authority can be repurposed, with feminist civil society support, to drive feminist social justice agendas more effectively.

La prise de décisions multilatérale rendue possible par les Nations Unies, le seul forum du monde permettant la négociation d’accords entre presque tous les pays, s’est révélée tant fertile que frustrante au moment de promouvoir les droits de la femme. La quatrième Conférence mondiale sur les femmes, qui s’est tenue en 1995 à Beijing, à un point culminant de la coopération internationale post-guerre froide, a donné lieu à un accord politique significatif sur les droits de la femme, le Programme d’action de Beijing. Vingt-cinq ans plus tard, toutefois, cet accord est obsolète. Non seulement sa mise en œuvre a cessé de progresser, mais l’idée même que l’on peut promouvoir les droits de la femme grâce à la négociation multilatérale est mise en doute en raison des ordres du jour illibéraux et antiféministes de certains pays tout particulièrement influents. La misogynie et l’homophobie caractérisent également la rhétorique et les objectifs de certains secteurs de la société civile qui ciblent les processus multilatéraux, comme la session annuelle de la Commission de la condition de la femme. Le sentiment de polarisation intensifiée autour de l’égalité entre les sexes a éclairé la décision de ne pas organiser une cinquième conférence mondiale des Nations Unies sur la femme, malgré le fait que l’égalité entre les sexes continue de constituer une priorité mondiale urgente et faisant l’objet de mesures insuffisantes. Le 25^e anniversaire de la conférence de Beijing sera plutôt marqué par une collaboration entre ONU-femmes, le Mexique et la France, avec la contribution de la société civile, afin d’encourager une conversation mondiale en faveur de l’action urgente et de la reddition de comptes concernant l’égalité entre les sexes, tout en évitant le type d’examen et de consensus qui ont nourri l’action après 1995. Cet article pose la question de savoir si l’ONU est encore « adaptée à son ojectif prévu » comme moteur des progrès en matière de droits de la femme. Il souligne quatre manières dont le multilatéralisme et le pouvoir rassembleur et normatif sans pareil des Nations Unies peuvent être réaffectés, avec le soutien de la société civile féministe, afin d’impulser plus efficacement les ordres du jour féministes pour la justice sociale.

La adopción de decisiones multilaterales, facilitada por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas en su calidad de foro mundial único para la negociación de acuerdos entre casi todos los países, ha sido un mecanismo a la vez fértil y frustrante en la promoción de los derechos de la mujer. La Cuarta Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer, celebrada en Beijing en 1995, en el momento culminante de la cooperación internacional posterior a la Guerra Fría, generó un importante acuerdo político en torno a los derechos de la mujer, llamado Plataforma de Acción de Beijing. Veinticinco años más tarde, ese acuerdo se ha vuelto obsoleto. No sólo se estancó el progreso en su aplicación; además, debido al posicionamiento antiliberal y antifeminista de algunos países especialmente influyentes la idea de que puedan lograrse avances en los derechos de la mujer a partir de la negociación multilateral se ha puesto en entredicho. Por otra parte, la misoginia y la homofobia también caracterizan la retórica y los objetivos de algunos sectores de la sociedad civil que buscan debilitar los procesos multilaterales, por ejemplo, la Comisión de la Condición Jurídica y Social de la Mujer celebrada anualmente. A pesar de que la igualdad de género sigue siendo una prioridad urgente y poco atendida a nivel mundial, la sensación percibida de que existe una mayor polarización en materia de igualdad de género llevó a que se decidiera no realizar la quinta conferencia mundial de las Naciones Unidas sobre la mujer. En cambio, se conmemorará el 25° aniversario de la conferencia de Beijing mediante una colaboración entre onu-Mujeres, México y Francia, con aportaciones de la sociedad civil. El propósito de dicha celebración es fomentar una conversación mundial sobre la adopción de medidas urgentes y la rendición de cuentas en materia de igualdad de género, con lo que al mismo tiempo se evita el tipo de revisión y consenso multilateral que incitó la acción después de 1995. El presente artículo plantea la pregunta de si las Naciones Unidas siguen siendo "aptas para tal propósito", como motor que impulsa los avances en materia de derechos de la mujer. En este sentido esboza cuatro formas a través de las cuales el multilateralismo y la autoridad normativa y de convocatoria única de las Naciones Unidas pueden readaptarse, con apoyo de la sociedad civil feminista, para promover con mayor eficacia los objetivos feministas en pos de la justicia social.

KEYWORDS:

• Fourth World Conference on Women
• Beijing Platform for Action
• anti-feminist backlash
• Generation Equality Forum
• United Nations
• gender parity
• UN Women

Notes on contributors

Joanne Sandler is a Senior Associate of Gender at Work, was the Deputy Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) from 2001 to 2010, and on the transition team to establish UN Women. Postal address: Gender at Work, 1881 Steeles Avenue West, Suite 420, Toronto, ON M3H OA1, Canada. Email: [email protected]

Anne Marie Goetz is Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs, School of Professional Studies, New York University. She worked for the UN on gender and governance, peace, and security. Postal address: 15 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10007, USA.

Notes

1 ‘Gender’, originally a term used in linguistics, was adopted by second-wave feminists to signify the social construct of womanhood/‘femininity’ that human societies attach to people with biologically female bodies (Oakley 1972). Feminists have used the notion of gender to emphasise the capacity of apparently fixed gender roles and relations to change. They are not – as they are often presented – natural or inevitable, hence gender inequality can be challenged and changed. The feminist use of ‘gender’ triggered a right-wing backlash in international debates, spearheaded by the Vatican, in the early 1990s. Unease with the notion that gender is malleable, not fixed by the body, was expressed in a paper by a lay Catholic thinker, Dale O’Leary, circulated at the Beijing Conference, tellingly subtitled: ‘The Deconstruction of Woman’ (O’Leary 1995). The effort by the Vatican and its allies in Beijing to delete the word ‘gender’ from the BPfA is discussed in Baden and Goetz (1997).

2 Responses to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic include bans on large gatherings as well as international travel and therefore, at the time this article went to press, the Generation Equality meetings had been postponed to 2021. Feminist transnational civil society activism to support the Beijing +25 moment, however, has sustained its momentum.

3 Beyond the backlash against women’s rights (discussed further in this article and in Goetz 2020), even among feminists there are differences in understandings of sex and gender, and the description of ‘gender’ in Note 1 is not shared throughout the feminist movements today. For some, it is not a biologically sexed body that fundamentally determines whether one is a man or a woman, but an innate sense of gender identity as a woman, a man, or non-binary. Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) are key concerns for all concerned with complex inequalities and human rights, including international development and government. Questions have been raised by feminists on both sides of this debate about the synergies and also the tensions created by these very different notions about gender and women, and the political agendas to which they give rise. For instance, some feminists have difficulty accepting trans-gender women in the political movement to advance women’s rights, and in this, perhaps to their own surprise, they ally with right-wing actors. Some of these nuances are discussed in Maxine Molyneux’s article in this volume.

4 The CSW is a UN multilateral body within which 45 UN Member States hold rotating four-year tenures. It meets in New York at the UN headquarters for two weeks every year to review aspects of women’s rights and every five years after 1995 these meetings include a review of progress implementing the BPfA. The March 2020 meeting for the Beijing +25 review was reduced from two weeks to one day and the sizeable parallel NGO Forum was cancelled. For more information, see UN Women’s website: www.unwomen.org/en/csw.

5 For more information on Security Council Resolution 1325 and the nine others mentioned here, see the resources available on ‘Peacewomen’, which is part of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, in particular: www.peacewomen.org/why-WPS/solutions/resolutions.

6 The United Nations Secretariat, in September 1999, promulgated Administrative Instruction (AI) on ‘Special Measures for the Achievement of Gender Equality’ (ST/AI/1999/9 also Gender Equality A/I), to strengthen and expedite measures to achieve gender equality, especially in posts in the Professional category.

7 This view is widely held, as could be seen from perspectives from ten experts collated by Anne Marie Goetz in late 2018 in a consultation with feminists on the future of UN Conferences on Women (see Center for Global Affairs 2018).

8 This Gender at Work study, ‘The Power of Partnerships: UN Women’s Collaboration with Civil Society to Advance Gender Equality (2020)’, was commissioned by UN Women to support UN Women to enhance its ongoing partnerships with civil society, women’s rights organisations, and social justice actors. It consolidates results of consultations with 260 individuals working with CSOs from 26 countries. The full report (forthcoming) will be available at www.unwomen.org.

9 These interviews were conducted by Joanne Sandler between May and October 2019 as part of an assignment undertaken by Gender at Work, contracted by UN Women to assess the potential of UN Women–CSO partnerships. The full report (forthcoming) will be available at www.unwomen.org.