Vienna +10: Speak Out
E-Consultation Survey Results

Identifying Major Challenges for Women's Human Rights Movement in Your Country and Internationally (three most frequent topics)

Influencing Governments and Government Institutions

• Naming the Problem
  • How to translate even the de jure equality achieved into de facto equality for women and to provide an enabling environment
  • Overcoming contradictions between protection/ right 'offered' to women and denied certain groups, e.g. refugees, asylum seekers
  • Ensuring equal opportunities for women - not just colloquially
• Courts and Legal Systems
  • Lack of judicial will to prosecute and punish perpetrators of sexual offences adequately
  • USA - obtaining legal and financial recompense for active and former victims of sadistic abuse, ritualized torture, and/or invasive, nonconsensual experimentation
  • Getting US to incorporate issue of rights into work on violence against women
  • U.S. family courts are virtually untouchable and are allowed to violate battered women
  • Securing collective land titles for indigenous peoples in Suriname
  • The lack of opportunity of using existing laws in particular concerning human rights
  • Disregard for human rights, due process of law and therefore justice in he wake of September 11
  • Biased/chauvinist police intervention
  • Lack of opportunity to use existing laws in particular concerning human rights
  • Batterers rarely go to jail
    
• Sources of the Problem
  • Lack of Lack of domestication of CEDAW
  • political will to implement laws and conventions
  • Lack of consistent state policy towards gender equity
  • OUR INABILITY TO ENFORCE WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS
  • Government cutbacks
  • So-called gender mainstreaming actually often eroding work done on women's rights to be recognized
  • Active promotion of gender-neutral public policies and gender mainstreaming that dilutes/undermines programs targeting women
  • How to implement very progressive policy and legislation
  • The Human Rights Department of the Attorney General be accessible to all
    
• Connections
  • Mainstreaming gender in macroeconomic policies internationally, regionally and national level
  • No gender budget in regular national/state budgets
    

Fundamentalisms Backlash and Conservatism

• General
  • Political power of extremists/fundamentalist forces on all continents and in the UN, at all levels of government
  • Ongoing and increased blocking of WHR by fundamentalist and patriarchal forces
  • Heavily male dominated society, with fundamentalism on the rise.
  • Religious or cultural fundamentalism
  • Fundamentalist forces that believe women's roles should be limited/subordinate to men's
  • Political power of fundamentalist practices
  • Development of fundamentalisms, including in Europe
  • Organized right wing opposition to women's human rights
• Governments and Government Institutions
  • Regressive & conservative US government
  • Bush administration
  • Bush Administration exceptionalism to HR
  • Bush Administration and other fundamentalists
  • The conservative federal court
  • Reconciling the dual systems of traditional and formal law
  • Gender biased service providers (police, health workers, judges)
  • US Government role in fostering anti-women foreign and domestic policy
  • Disproportional political power of ultra-conservative forces in executive, legislative and judicial branches of US government
• Religious Connections
  • Fundamentalist forces (mainly Muslim and catholic). Not in Switzerland, but internationally
  • Political power and influence of Hindu right wing fascist forces
  • The power of religious right/Christian fundamentalist forces as represented by the Bush Administration
  • Growing rise of the religious right (and other forces of identity or essentialist politics) and collusion of other forces with them; nationally and internationally
  • Turn to right and Christian conservatism
  • Strong influence of Catholic Church in policy formulation and legislation
  • Defending gender laws & projects from catholic church pressure
  • Scorn for Christianity/Judeo-Christian values
  • Political power of the Roman Catholic Church
• Backlash
  • Backlash from all sources - including from progressive social movements
  • Backlash of and growth in range of fundamentalisms
  • Backlash to the right
  • Insidious 'backlash' through internet hard and soft porn, making denigration/subordination of women
  • Influential anti-feminist ethos and backlash in media and public opinion
  • attack on the right to legal abortion
  • Backlash due to political power of fundamentalism and onservative forces
  • Domestic and international backlash to gains made
  • Backlash to feminism. The state, media, judiciary etc. are all aggressively damaging the gains made by feminists
• Cultural Biases
  • Deep-rooted cultural and social patriarchal norms
  • WIDOW INHERTANCE
  • Gender biased inheritance and land ownership laws
  • Socio Cultural attitudes that encourage gender bias
  • Gender biased inheritance laws
  • Unintended consequences of our culture
  • Persistence of discriminatory and demeaning socio-cultural and political attitudes and media portrayal of women and women's issues
  • Caste and communal violence against women
  • Influence of repressive worldviews, including misogynist religious and cultural traditions
  • Culturally condoned forms of violence against women
  • Continued social norms which work against women's equality
  • Manipulation of customary law to subordinate women
  • Persistence of cultural ideas that normalize violence in the home
  • Gender biased traditional customs
  • Entrenched gender biases in the socio-cultural economic setup of the country
  • Culturally condoned forms of violence against women internationally
  • Continued social norms with work against women's equality
• Organizing Strategies
  • Addressing racism and fundamentalisms, particularly as promoted by right wing governments
  • Changing the patriarchal system to a human rights one
  • Fractured organizing and religious /cultural extremists gains
  • Being reactive to policies and action of the right

Lack of Women's Political Participation

• The Problems
  • Lack of women in decision-making positions
  • Lack of women's political power
  • Lack of political power by women, and progressive forces
  • Lack of visible and audible women at top echelons of society
  • Lack of political will
• The Causes
  • Elimination of committed women from national decision making
  • High level of poverty and political disempowerment, that puts women's rights issues as a minor problem
  • Wage gap among gender and women's economic independence
  • Agenda of structural factors against women's political participation
• Strategies
  • Getting recognition and the right to participate politically
  • Representation of women in decision making bodies such as the peace process in the middle east
  • Equal participation of women who are promoting women's rights in governance
  • Increased representation in politics and business
  • Electing more women to office
  • More women ministers (currently only one)
  • Political participation of women internationally)
  • Breaking the male hegemonic power machine in governance
    
• Perspectives
  • Political power and equal representation are the most important means for achieving other basic human and women's rights
  • High degree of aggresivity in political discussions will endanger women's integrity