The oppressed majority - Part 4

In an effort to raise the profile of women's oppression to a level where nations will begin to come to grips with it, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently labeled its continuation as a security threat. In her speech she said 

"The status of the world’s women is not only a matter of morality and justice. It is also a political, economic, and social imperative. Put simply, the world cannot make lasting progress if women and girls in the 21st century are denied their rights and left behind." 

"Women's progress," she said, "is human progress."

And there has been much progress in the 15 years since Mrs. Clinton declaimed that "Women's rights are Human rights" in Beijing China. 

"Micro loans," small short term business loans, have helped women by the millions begin to have control over their own sources of income in areas of the world virtually ignored by the financial industry. 

Efforts have been made to address issues such as rape, domestic violence and contraception around the world, with generally good effect.

What is missing is a unifying perspective, a statement issued by the nation states on this globe that indicates acknowledgement of women as equals in all respects to men. Political and economic distinctions based on gender would need to be abolished and secular law must be restructured to eliminate any bias in legislation, regulation or operating procedures.

The fly in the ointment of course is religion. There are about 25 major religions on the earth, most with deep roots in ancient mythology, including primitive understandings of gender roles and relationships between the genders. With the exception of the Goddess cults and their descendants, these religions are deeply paternalistic and rigidly insistent on the preeminence of human beings in the universe and men as dominant within the culture. 

The political systems that evolved from religions necessarily reflected their qualities. But the systems - religious and political - now stand as distinct entities battling for influence over the people. And wherever the church has predominant influence on the culture, attitudes - as expressed by religious policy - will continue to favor paternalism. Efforts at secular government are greeted in these cultures as evidence of either the dawn of the apocalypse or a gradual slide towards anarchy. 

But secular government is the only chance that women have to becomes partners in the enterprise of progress. We cannot undo our myths, nor can society and government interact in such a way as to force philosophical change on this or that sect of this or that spiritual movement - that would be acid thrown on the roots of our society.

Secular government can establish egalitarian standards of human interaction and religion can - and some will - buy in… or not. The standard of gender egalitarianism is quite simple: there is no difference between the genders in the eyes of the state.

This argument is the Occam's Razor of the debate. Philosophical perspectives must retreat into the mythological or metaphysical to explain different treatment of women and men; egalitarianism says simply that there is no difference. Egalitarianism is the most straightforward generator of policy: there is just one policy for everyone. Egalitarianism provides the most straightforward basis for interaction in the public sphere: everyone get's treated the same.

I don't think that I am saying anything new here. Indeed my arguments reflect those of John Stuart Mill, made in 1869 and thousands of women both before and since. Nor do I expect this process to go forward without major confrontations within and without the cultural structures of our world. But there are steps that we can take to improve things. 

The first and most important is to address the issue of systematic violence against women. I encourage everyone who reads this to check out The Pixel Project: "...an innovative Web 2.0 effort to turbo-charge global awareness about violence against women." 

Unless and until we can end systematic violence, rape, genital mutilation and domestic abuse faced by women around the world, the middle class feminist concerns about wage equality, pornography and hostility towards sex workers  just seem silly.