From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: WOMEN AT THE EARTH SUMMIT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:23:07 GMT

The ACTivist July/August 92

The ACTivist is published monthly (one issue during July and August)
by the ACT for Disarmament Coalition, 736 Bathurst St., Toronto, 
Ontario, Canada, M5S 2R4, phone 416-531-6154, fax 416-531-5850,
e-mail web:act.

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/** gen.newsletter: 121.12 **/
** Written 11:26 pm  Aug 11, 1992 by web:act in cdp:gen.newsletter **
WOMEN AT THE EARTH SUMMIT -- DEFINING OURSELVES,
DEFINING OUR ROLE

Pam Simmons
NGONET/Third World Institute

Principle 20 of the Rio Declaration promises women full 
participation in environmental management and development.
There are, however, two unwritten conditions. Women are not 
given the option to refuse to participate, and their participation 
is to be channeled by states. Both conditions create problems for 
women.

How is UNCED going to ensure women's participation? Agenda 
21 says women are to be "empowered" to be environmental 
"managers"; women's status is to be improved; their potential 
is to be tapped and catalyzed into appropriate, consensual action; 
and their essential role in sustainable development will be 
recognized.

This is what is intended to happen to women. This is what 
women will be allowed to do. But where are the women in this? 
Where are the active, dissenting, powerful, self-respecting women? 
Many of these women do not want to be labeled "managers" or to 
have their "potential" exploited. And many would resist being 
assisted to take "appropriate consensual action." Status will not, 
cannot, be passed out like manna from heaven. Status will be, and 
has been, fought for and gained through women's many specific 
battles, for votes and for trees, against violence and discrimination. 
This is participation. Who exactly will gain from women's participation 
in development? Official development projects do not address the 
exploitation of women in export-processing zones, the sex tourism 
industry or agribusiness. They do not question the basic sexual and
 international divisions of labour. Instead, they reinforce them, to 
ensure a source of cheap labour and economically dependent 
women. 

It is clear from UNCED rhetoric and agreements that governments 
and inter-governmental bodies will be responsible for steering us 
along the road to sustainable development. This is a problem for 
women. Such bodies are steeped in a patriarchal tradition that has 
not only excluded women from participating but has also mostly 
ignored women's interests except where they echoed men's. In too 
many instances the state has acted as an instrument of oppression 
against women, either by refusing to intervene in private matters 
such as "domestic" violence or by unnecessarily interfering and 
harassing women who dare to speak or act without the patronage 
of men.

The Rio Declaration puts 18 principles before women are mentioned. 
Each principle assumes the existence of benevolent, neutral, 
representative states. Most states, if not all, represent particular 
interests and certain groups of people. Are we to rely on these bodies 
to act against their own interests in devolving power to women?

Robert Goodland of the World Bank, one of these "neutral" 
international bodies, in writing on the need for state intervention 
in population control, states that "poverty, abandoned babies, 
unwanted children, starvation, massive deforestation, extinctions 
and irreversible environmental abuse are greater evils and dangers 
than freedom of choice for women." But freedom of choice for women 
is a prerequisite for solutions to any of the above: something made 
clear by the Women's Caucus at Rio in their call for measures to 
ensure the rights of women to decide the number and spacing of 
their children.

Women will play a vital role in future social change. But the role 
will not be conferred on them by official delegates at international
 conferences. The real issues will not be addressed by delegated 
management and participation within set parameters. The 
parameters are the issues, and women themselves will carve 
out their role in their everyday battles to conserve their 
environment and to win respect. 

** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **

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