Welcome to today's conversation
on investing in women's rights
to promote national security
with our guest today, Jennifer
Klein, who is a visiting fellow
at Yale University Law School's
Center for Global
Legal Challenges,
and Professor rose McDermott,
who is the David and Marianna
Fisher University Professor
of International Relations
here at Brown University.
I'm Susan Moffat, the
director of the Taubman Center
for American Politics and Policy
here at the Watson Institute.
So this year, the Taubman Center
is focusing on three things--
the cost of living,
the value of democracy,
the price of security.
And Jennifer Klein's work
really speaks to all three
of these and the ways that
they intersect, especially
in the context of
global women's issues.
Jennifer comes to us with
a rich array of expertise
that renders her unique
for these conversations
at the intersection
of these themes.
She has had a dual appointment
as both the domestic policy
advisor to the first lady
and special assistant
to the president for domestic
policy in the Clinton
administration.
More recently during the
Obama administration,
she served as the deputy
and senior advisor
in the Office of Global Women's
Issues at the State Department.
And she served as senior
advisor on women's issues
for the Clinton campaign
and transition team.
She is also an alum of Brown
University and Columbia
University, so welcome back.
We're delighted
to have you back.
And also joining our
conversation today
is Rose McDermott, who is
a world renowned scholar
of international relations.
Rose has authored over 200
academic articles and four
books and another one
on the way next year
on inequality for women
in the global context.
She is also a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts
and Sciences and one of
the principal investigators
of Woman Stats, which is the
most comprehensive compilation
of information on the status
of women in the world.
So thank you, Rose,
for joining us as well.
Our conversation today
is going to proceed
in the following way.
Jennifer will start us off
with about a half hour or so
of comments and then Rose and I
will engage in some questions.
And then we'll open up
the floor to all of you.
We're delighted to see so
many of you here today,
so we will all mind our airtime.
And we'll ask direct
questions and share the air
with our colleagues.
But now, would you please join
me in welcoming Jennifer Klein.
[APPLAUSE]
And I didn't know
that about you,
so now I'm going to
be super careful when
I cite my statistics that
I'm getting it 100% right
because I rely on Woman Stats.
So advancing rights
and opportunities
for women and girls
around the world
is both the right and
the smart thing to do.
Women's rights
are now recognized
as fundamental human rights,
and in addition, women
are critical to
solving virtually
every global challenge.
So investing in them is
also a strategic imperative
to advance critical US
foreign policy interests,
including economic prosperity,
stability, and security.
I'm going to talk
about three things.
The first is I will give
the very condensed version
of an entire law school class--
don't panic, very
condensed version--
on international human
rights law as women's rights,
women's rights as human rights.
Second, I'll lay
out what I think
is the strategic case
for advancing women's
rights and opportunities.
And third, I'll
talk a little bit
about what it means to
put this in practice.
What does it mean to put women
at the center of diplomacy
and development?
So first let's talk
about women's rights
and human rights.
Two decades ago at the
Fourth World Conference
on Women held in
Beijing in 1995,
189 nations gathered
and Hillary Clinton
proclaimed that women's
rights are human rights.
This was a seemingly
simple statement,
but it was hugely
controversial at the time.
She was, first of all,
representing the US at a UN
conference in Beijing, China.
She had been urged not to go by
cautious forces in the United
States government and
certainly if she went,
not to speak about human
rights at a conference which
was known for not being all
that hospitable to human rights,
but at the same time with which
the United States was trying
to develop a warmer
relationship.
So she not only went, but
she specifically set out to,
in her own words, push the
envelope by calling out
a litany of violations
of human rights,
things like honor killings,
gender-based violence,
forced abortion
and sterilization,
infanticide, and really rocketed
these issues to the world stage
and powerfully, I
think, made the case
that they were issues of
fundamental human rights.
So this seemed
shocking at the time,
but grounded in a history of
international human rights.
So what are international
human rights
and how did the doctrine
and institutions develop?
So first of all, they are
rights that belong to everyone,
everywhere.
So what does that mean?
It means that
international human rights
examines conduct that's
internal to state sovereignty.
So the rights exist no
matter where you live,
what country you live in,
and things like sovereignty
and culture do not trump them.
It attaches rights
to individuals.
So they apply to people without
distinction of any kind,
such as race, color,
sex, or any other status.
And they're not conditioned on
things like property ownership
or literacy or taxation.
And governments must not
only protect those rights,
but they must
organize themselves
to respect those rights.
So it has a negative
implication,
and the negative
implication is nations
must not obstruct
an individual's
exercise of their human rights.
But it's also an
affirmative obligation
to prevent human
rights violations
and to ensure the
exercise of human rights.
Where did this all start?
So the first conceptualization
and public use
of the term human rights took
place at the Dumbarton Oaks
Conference in 1944.
So this is where
the UN was formed,
which was done in
recognition of the need
for a new postwar
international organization
to succeed the
League of Nations.
But the secondary purpose of
the UN, this organization to be,
was to promote respect
for human rights
and fundamental freedoms.
And in fact, in
the first article
of the charter of
the UN, it really
articulated that a core
purpose for the UN was--
and I'm going to quote this--
"to promote and encourage
respect for human rights
and for fundamental freedoms
for all without distinction
as to race, sex,
language, or religion."
Shortly after, in 1948,
the UN General Assembly
adopted the
Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,
which really was
and is a remarkable
document in many ways.
It really codified the
description of human rights
that I talked about earlier.
It basically said that
human rights exist simply
by virtue of being
human, they don't
need to be granted
or legislated;
that these rights belong
to everyone without any
of the distinctions
that I mentioned;
and that they exist everywhere,
that they are rights that
are not conferred on protected
by the state or the government,
but rather, the individual has
these rights in every context.
And I won't read
the whole quote,
but at the 10th
anniversary of the UN
Declaration of Human
Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt
had what I love.
It's just a great description
of what human rights are.
And she says, "Where
do human rights begin?
In small places closest to
home, so close and so small
that they do not appear
on any map of the world,
yet they are the world of
the individual person."
And she talks about
how they exist
in neighborhoods and
communities, on factories,
on farms, and every person
has those rights inherent.
So that was the first thing
that was pretty stunning
about the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
But the second thing was its
definition of human rights.
So it covered political,
social, and economic rights,
including things like the
right to social security,
the right to work, the right
to education, to health,
and even the right to just
and favorable remuneration.
Which is interesting-- we
can get back to this later--
that those are considered human
rights because we don't have
those everywhere in the world.
More to come on that later.
In the years following the
adoption of the declaration,
a number of covenants
and institutions
grew up to institutionalize and
protect the rights enshrined
in the declaration.
And sometimes this is
referred to as the era
of institutionalization.
The declaration has influenced
most national constitutions
since 1948.
It's been a foundation
for national laws,
international laws and
treaties, as well as
a number of regional and
national institutions
that protect human rights.
And it's also interesting to
note that during this period,
civil society organizations were
founded and grew up, as well.
So places like Human Rights
Watch, the Lawyers' Committee
for Human Rights,
Amnesty International
grew up at the same time
as part of this evolution.
However, by the 1960s,
it had become clear
that a general plea
for nondiscrimination
did not suffice to guarantee the
protection of women's rights,
and what followed was a series
of conferences and treaties
that were aimed at
securing and protecting
women's rights specifically.
So the first was
held in Mexico City,
and it laid the groundwork
for the adoption of a very
well-known convention
called the convention
to eliminate all forms
of discrimination
against women, which is
known as CEDAW, which
is arguably the most important
document guaranteeing
women's rights.
So what's the
significance of CEDAW?
Again, it was really
comprehensive.
It addressed women's
rights within
political, social, economic,
cultural, and family life.
So let me talk
about the substance
and the process a little bit.
So the significance
of it was, as I said,
first of all in its breadth.
It gave precise and actionable
definition and protection
to a broad range
of women's rights
in marriage and
family relations,
including property and
inheritance and access
to health care.
It explicitly mentioned
family planning.
It established the principle
of equal protection for women
as citizens in their own right
entitled to vote and to have
other legal benefits.
It talked about
things like the rights
to education, to equal
employment, to equal pay,
to formal employment.
And it also really interestingly
took on the notion of culture.
So Article 2 of CEDAW
requires state parties
to take all appropriate
measures, including
legislation, to modify laws,
regulations, but also customs
and practices which constitute
discrimination against women.
And again, that might seem
like a litany of things,
but the notion that it took
on customs and practices
was hugely significant
at the time.
In terms of procedure, it's
used to petition for enforcement
against domestic laws.
So it has an
enforcement mechanism
in the form of a CEDAW
committee that meets regularly
to review the progress that
all of the member states that
have ratified CEDAW are
making to address violations
of the treaty's provisions.
And it also gives
individual parties
the right to petition
the committee
if they have not
been able to redress
their grievances locally.
Sound significant?
It is significant.
So what are the limitations?
The first obvious one
sitting here in this room
is that the United States
has not ratified CEDAW.
Six other UN member
states, only six others,
have not ratified CEDAW.
They are Iran, the Holy See,
Sudan, Pulau, Somalia, Tonga,
and the United States.
So entire books
have been written,
I bet Rose has written one or
two-- at least some articles--
on why the US has
not ratified and what
are the implications of
the US not ratifying.
But for today's purposes,
I'm just going to say--
and we can talk about
this later, too--
but I'm just going to say
it's very simply that treaty
ratification is very difficult.
Generally, getting 2/3 of the
Senate to agree on anything--
I don't even need to finish
that sentence these days--
is obviously pretty
difficult. Second, there
are some pretty
controversial provisions
in CEDAW, things like
abortion and family law
that some conservatives oppose.
And some even make
the argument that we
don't need CEDAW in
the United States
because of the relatively equal
status of women in the US,
as opposed to in other countries
that have ratified CEDAW.
And it's really
important to note
that countries can have legal
reservations to provisions
of CEDAW, which has minimized
its impact in many countries.
So you can have a situation
where there is a country that
has ratified CEDAW--
Saudi Arabia and Yemen
are two examples--
but they have a relatively
poor record on human rights.
So that was the first
conference, which led to CEDAW.
After that, every
five or so years,
a women's conference
was held that was
focused on particular issues.
So for example, in 1994,
the Cairo conference
focused on and talked
about the relationship
between gender equality and
reproductive rights and health.
And as I said, every five years
or so with slightly different
focuses--
violence, very, very
important issues.
These conferences were slowly
building toward the notion
of embedding women's rights.
But in 1995, there was the
Fourth Conference on Women,
as I mentioned, which was a
pretty significant conference
in a number of different ways.
First, it was 189 countries that
generated these commitments.
Second, the 189 countries
adopted the Beijing Declaration
and the platform
for action, which
set strategic objectives and
actions in 12 different areas
of concern.
So again, everything from
education and poverty,
economic empowerment, violence,
political participation,
even media and technology.
And the other reason that
this conference, in my mind,
was particularly notable was
for the presence and impact
of a parallel conference of
civil society organizations
that was attended by
over 1,000 people.
The Chinese
government, by the way,
put that civil
society conference
at [INAUDIBLE],, which was a
smaller city about an hour
outside of Beijing
because they were actually
concerned about the impact
of this big civil society
conference.
But it was really the
first of its kind.
Imagine a time before the
internet and social media.
So it was an amazing
opportunity for the exchange
of ideas for the development
of really a sisterhood
among advocates who were
coming from very, very
different places but had
some shared experiences
and many shared goals.
So an explosion of activity
followed in the 1990s
after Beijing as women's groups
and human rights organizations
demanded change.
Donors in the media,
governments, the United
Nations, and other
international organizations
responded with greater
resources, laws, and mechanisms
and greater attention to women's
rights and gender equality.
The activity really focused
renewed attention on CEDAW
and a treaty monitoring
committee and legal instruments
provided under CEDAW.
It also spawned greater
commitment from the UN.
So there were many,
and I'm just going
to mention a couple of
big markers, where the UN
and other organizations
really began
to focus on this thing
called gender integration.
So one example was the inclusion
of sexual violence in the Rome
Statute that created the
International Criminal Court.
Another in the year 2000,
the UN Security Council
adopted its first resolution
specifically on women.
It's called resolution 1325
on Women, Peace, and Security,
which addressed violence
against women in armed conflict
and the role of women
in peacekeeping.
So that was a body that had not
taken on these kinds of issues
before.
So again, hugely significant
that they did so.
And then in 2010, the
creation of UN Women,
which was a UN body
dedicated to advancing gender
equality and women's empowerment
as a key to global progress.
So that was my quick
outline of the human rights
basis for women's rights and
an overview of the architecture
that supports women's rights.
So a different argument
has emerged, as well.
We know that women's
rights and opportunities
is the right thing to do.
Why is that also the
smart thing to do
and why is this relevant at
all to US foreign policy?
I always start this
section in talking
about strategic
importance by noting
that I don't want to
minimize the power
of the moral argument.
We live in a world
where one in three women
have experienced physical
and sexual violence
in their lifetimes; an
estimated 20 million people
are trafficked and trapped
in modern slavery, which
generates a $150 billion of
profits for the perpetrators;
and five million girls
each year are forced
to marry under the age of 15.
So it's hard to not have
that sense of moral outrage
to appeal to the sense of
decency that these are rights
and these are crimes
and these things should
be prevented full stop
because they're wrong.
But as important as
this moral case is,
it's not the only
reason I believe
to care about gender equality.
And indeed, in
this world that we
live in which sometimes
feels dangerous,
it always feels
interconnected, that case
might not be convincing
enough for some
to put it high on the
foreign policy agenda.
And so I think it's
also important to note
that we have compelling
evidence that advancing rights
and opportunities for women
and girls around the world
is not simply just, it's
a strategic imperative
and it's one that we
ignore at our peril.
So I'm going to talk
a little bit about
just in a few categories--
this we could talk
about all day and I'm
happy to go back and talk
more about the evidence that
supports this-- but just
to give you a few examples.
Let's look, for starters, at
the issue of economic growth.
Leading international
institutions and private sector
corporations have
concluded that when
women participate
in the economy,
poverty decreases and GDP grows.
So for example, the Organization
for Economic Development
and Cooperation has
estimated that closing
the gap in women's labor
force participation
across OECD countries will
lead to gains of 12% by 2030.
Another institution, the
World Economic Forum--
which, by the way,
is not considered
a bastion of feminist theory--
now puts out an annual
gender gap report.
And it measures the gap
between men and women
in a country in terms of
economic and political
participation,
access to education,
and health survivability.
And again, this analysis
shows that in countries
where the gap is
closest to being closed,
those countries are the most
economically prosperous.
And private sector companies
have done similar analyses.
So McKinsey released
a study that
assessed the potential gain
of women's equal participation
in the workforce at $28
trillion or 26% of annual GDP
if the gap between men
and women were closed.
And that would happen by 2025.
And we also know that
investing in women
has a multiplier effect because
research shows that women
more often invest their economic
benefit in their families
and their communities.
Education, let's take
education as another example.
Let's think about the
transformative effect
that educating a girl has.
It's often said that
educating a girl
is the best development
investment that can be made
and that one extra year of
schooling beyond the average
can increase women's
wages by 10% to 20%.
We also know that
educating girls
has tremendous impact on the
health of their children.
The decline in maternal
mortality over the past decade,
50% of that decline
in infant mortality,
is attributable to increased
educational attainment
by women and girls.
And finally, women's
participation
in peace and security process.
So on this one, there has been
historically less evidence
because there have been
fewer women involved
in peace negotiations.
But the evidence is growing.
And we know a couple of things.
We know that higher rates
of female participation
in government mean lower
levels of corruption,
it's co-related or associated
with lower rates of corruption,
and that a growing
body of evidence
suggests that women bring
unique contributions to making
and keeping peace.
So they raise issues like
human security issues,
like health and
education that are
increasingly important to
making peace longer-lasting.
So we've learned that when women
participate in peace processes,
the resulting agreement
is 35% more likely to add
to last at least 15 years.
And finally in the
area of security.
We know that higher
levels of gender equality
are associated with lower
propensity for conflict,
both between and within states.
So as you can see, there are
strategic and moral reasons
to protect and advance
opportunities for women
around the world.
And what has developed and
what I spent four years
working on at the
State Department
was implementing that vision.
And I'm feeling like maybe I
should stop and talk about that
more as our discussion.
I think hearing some about--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
--will be good.
We'll ask you more
in the questions.
OK.
So I want to start by
saying that this has
been a very bipartisan issue.
So often these days
when I'm talking,
I feel like when I
talk about what's
not happening in
this administration,
it's also very important
for me to point out
that that's not because this
is a Republican administration.
So I do feel like these issues
are seriously under challenge
right now, but it
is also really clear
that they have had a lot
of bipartisan support.
So leaders from
Madeleine Albright
to Condoleezza Rice
to Hillary Clinton
to John Kerry to
Colin Powell have
emphasized that women are
critical to solving virtually
every challenge we
face and have put them
at the center of our diplomacy
and development efforts.
Some people talk about
this as smart power--
the line between hard
power, meaning sanctions
and military force, and soft
power, which has historically
been the word used to describe
diplomatic and development
tools, are blurring.
And many people, including
the secretaries of state
that I mentioned above, think
about combining both strategies
in a notion of smart power.
The use of women in
particular or the focus
on women in particular in
the Obama administration
really started at the top
with President Obama's
national security strategy,
where he literally
said, and I'm
going to quote him,
"Countries are more
peaceful and prosperous
when women are accorded full and
equal rights and opportunity.
When those rights and
opportunities are denied,
countries lag behind."
So what followed was a
series of pronouncements
and executive
actions and documents
that really enforced that goal.
So the first thing was
that this president
appointed an ambassador at
large for global women's issues
and made that office permanent,
which doesn't actually
mean permanent.
And we can talk
about that later,
because it was done by
presidential memorandum.
But footnote, and we
can go back to this,
too, that the US Senate in a
rare moment of bipartisanship
actually just passed a law
to make the office permanent,
and that really means permanent.
Obviously, another Congress
could repeal their law,
but that's harder
to do, although less
hard to do than it used to be.
But in any case, that
was a strong message
from the president that
this office was important
and that these issues
were important.
And there was a similar
architecture put in place, also
by executive order, at USAID.
So there were these sort of
two parallel offices which
reported directly to the
secretary at the State
Department and directly to
the administrator at USAID,
both created by President
Obama and Secretary Clinton.
So in 2010, Secretary Clinton
issued the first ever QDDR,
which stands for Quadrennial
Diplomacy and Development
Review.
And what that was
was a policy document
that was supposed to set the
agenda for the State Department
and USAID for the
next four years.
And it was modeled
after something
the Defense Department
already did,
which was called the QDR, the
Quadrennial Defense Review.
And it really aimed to improve
the conduct of foreign policy
and development.
What was interesting in this
context is that it really
made the case that integrating
women into diplomacy
and development-- again, it's
not just a responsibility,
it's an opportunity
because it would further
US foreign policy goals.
And it really stressed
that this would
happen across all
diplomatic efforts,
whether that be
traditional, bilateral,
and multilateral relationships,
strategic dialogues
and public diplomacy,
relations with civil society,
community leaders, or
other non-state actors.
And by reaching out
to women and girls
and integrating them into
the diplomatic mission,
it would be ensuring
more effective diplomacy
and development.
What followed from
the QDDR, which
was sort of this
130-page broad document,
was a set of specific guidance
that Secretary Clinton
issued in March of
2012, which again
was the first of its kind.
And it was sent as a cable
to every State Department
bureau and mission.
And it outlined how to
take this vision that
was outlined in
the QDDR and really
implement it throughout the
Department in four key areas.
So it talked about strategic
planning and budgeting;
it talked about programs,
because the State Department,
as does USAID, actually
runs some programs;
it talked about monitoring
and evaluation, what
we measure is what
we do; and it talks
about management and training.
And it also included
an appendix of examples
of gender integration
at the embassy level,
in multilateral and
bilateral engagement,
and in policy and
program initiatives.
Because believe me, it was
not obvious to everybody
at the State Department what
it meant to integrate gender.
And I'll just give you another
one example of how we actually
put this in place, which was,
again, led from this guidance.
One of the things, as I said,
was management and training.
So we reformed the Foreign
Service Institute training
to include the first ever course
on gender in US foreign policy.
And under the
secretary's leadership,
they began development
of a gender module.
So not only as the first
year foreign service officers
went out into the
world, they would
have to have taken this
course, there would
be a standard module that would
become part and parcel of all
of the FSI training programs,
whether they happened in person
or virtually, that
would focus on gender
and US foreign policy.
So I thin I will stop there.
The only thing I would
say is beyond those,
and we can talk in more
detail about those, that
was sort of the
overall architecture
and then there were
very issue-specific
work that we did.
So there was work
on violence, there
was work on women,
peace, and security
that again further
embedded the focus on women
throughout diplomacy
and development.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I wondered if you could
tell us a little bit more
about some models that
we may want to follow,
either countries or regions of
countries that you think stand
out for us to
model, both in terms
of what they've accomplished
at the aggregate level,
but also for what they've
accomplished at intersections.
So for women for whom multiple
aspects of their identities
render them vulnerable
through socioeconomic status
or citizenship status, race,
ethnicity, religion, who
stands out as models for us?
Well, it doesn't
necessarily quite
get the second part
of your question,
but models are always
the Nordic countries.
Which is the easy answer,
but it's really true,
which is really pretty
much on every metric there
are greater levels
of equality in most
of the Nordic countries.
I mean, again, this is not
quite getting at your question,
but there are countries
that are taking steps
in the right direction
and in fact, they're
sort of embracing my theory
that there's a moral reason
but there's also a
strategic imperative,
and not necessarily they're
are models for us to follow
but they're interesting
case studies.
Japan, for obvious reasons.
So Prime Minister
Abe came into office
and noted that there was a big
demographic problem in Japan,
which was that they needed
more people in their workforce
because the workforce was aging.
And so he has created a whole
architecture and infrastructure
for getting women
into the workforce
because it was an important
strategic priority
for his government.
He's received some criticism for
the reasons that he's doing it.
But again, that's not exactly
what you're asking, but it is.
And another great example,
which is, again, a little bit
counter-intuitive,
is Saudi Arabia.
So we've all been reading in the
news about how Saudi Arabia is
about to in June-- they
haven't actually done it yet--
but it will lift
the ban on driving.
So again, is that my model of
thinking about women and gender
equality more generally?
Probably not.
On the other hand,
they are taking
steps in the right direction.
But again, they're taking
steps in the right direction
because there are
reasons for it.
They need more people.
As the oil revenues
are declining,
they need more people
in the workforce
and they have a high
unemployment rate.
Yeah.
And continuing with this idea
of steps in the right direction,
I'm thinking about
your work advising now
nonprofits and governments also.
And I wondered if you
could talk with us a bit
about some of the
different roles
that the actors could play in
this-- governments, nonprofits,
private sector.
Are they working on
different aspects of this?
Do you see natural niches
for them or important places
for them focus their
energy or are they
all working on the same thing?
I think there are
definitely natural niches.
I mean, I think a lot about--
I think about it right here in
this country, the importance
of civil society.
And as I mentioned, at
the Beijing conference,
one of the things that
was striking about it
was the fact that you had
189 countries gathered
talking about women's
rights and human rights.
But probably more
importantly, you
had the 1,000 people
gathered at [INAUDIBLE]
pushing the envelope and
really forcing governments
to pay attention to
issues, to take action.
So I think that's
a significant role.
And as I said, it's a role that
needs to be played everywhere
in the world by civil society.
And I think governments,
for all obvious reasons,
I firmly believe that
they should focus
on the rights of all of their
citizens, including women,
and particularly women
who have overlapping
reasons for discrimination
against them.
But when they don't, I think
that the most important role
is in civil society and
international bodies that
pay attention to
these things, as well.
I wonder if we could talk a
bit about the ripple effect.
And your mention of the
memorandum that had originally
created the office and now
it's congressionally created
reminded me that one of
President Trump's first actions
in office was his memorandum
rescinding federal funds
for organizations that
support and promote abortion.
So this was originally, right,
a Ronald Reagan memorandum.
It's rescinded by
Clinton, put back in place
by George W. Bush, then
rescinded by President Obama,
and now the restriction is
in place again with Trump.
And so on the one hand,
is this the usual politics
bopping back and forth when
there's a new president,
or how is this moment and
this president different
and the ripple effect
that that may have?
Yeah.
Can I just add onto that?
I'm just curious
because I think it's
something we're all
conscious about,
about how you see the not
just abortion but other issues
related to women
being rescinded or not
under the current
administration.
And especially for our
prominent future female leaders
in the room, what actions can
we take as a civil society
to try and foster these
really important rights
from your perspective of
having worked institutionally?
OK.
There were so many questions
there, all really good ones.
OK.
So on global gag, just to start
with, you're exactly right.
It has been historically
a political football
between Democrats
and Republicans.
But I would want to note one
really important thing, which
is that this imposition
goes far beyond what
any other Republican
administration has ever
done because it applies
the restriction only
to foreign NGOs, which is
an important distinction.
It sounds like a
nitty-gritty one,
but it's an important
distinction.
It only applies to
two non-US-based NGOs.
But what it says is if you
even talk about abortion,
you will not receive US funds.
And what is different
about this one
is that it applies to all US
global health programs, so
even programs that
focus only on HIV/AIDS.
There's a program
which many of you
may be familiar with called
PEPFAR, which was actually
put in place by President
Bush, the President's Emergency
Response to AIDS.
I missed several parts of the
acronym, but you get the idea.
And it is actually the hugest
part of American global health
funding.
I think it's about a $50
billion or maybe even bigger
program at this point.
And this would apply to
PEPFAR funding, as well.
So that's dramatic.
And now I've forgotten--
Ripple effects of that
and then Rose's question.
Yeah.
I was just asking you to reflect
on differences that you've
seen between the administrations
you've been working on
and the current
administration in terms
of what was being
rolled back and what
we can do in civil society to
try and push for these rights
to be protected,
expanded, conserved.
Yeah.
So I made a point
which I really believe,
that global women's issues has
been traditionally bipartisan,
with the exception of abortion
rights, which is obviously
a huge exception.
But as I said, it
is more dramatic
in this administration.
But it has been
historically bipartisan.
And I think two things are
happening here, which are not
necessarily related, but
it is having a particularly
detrimental effect.
One is a pretty
dramatic disregard
for the State Department--
In general.
In general.
For USAID, for the
place of America
in the world as a world leader.
I mean, this is obvious.
And I think the use
of executive actions.
So these two things are
sort of on a crash course.
And while this administration
has talked about
and actually has--
the president's daughter talking
a lot about women's issues,
first of all on the substance
I take issue with the things
that they've
decided to focus on.
So there was big
fanfare at the UN
when Ivanka Trump
announced the Fund
for Women's Entrepreneurship.
And in my mind, it
is very difficult
to replace vast
amounts of funding
for development
programs and things
like family planning or
girls' education or health
generally because there have
been huge budget cuts, 38% out
of the State Department
budget, with a fund for women's
entrepreneurship.
And it also has a
very narrow view
of what entrepreneurship is.
So you can fund training
programs for women
but if, for example in my
mind, if they cannot choose
the spacing of their children,
it's very difficult to have
women be employed.
So I think on the substance,
there's been real retrenchment.
I think we're in a
really difficult period.
I think interest in
terms of, as I said,
the level of respect
and understanding
of the role of the
State Department
and of USAID, I think there
has been a dramatic difference.
And I also think just
sort of the sheer use
of executive power
which President Obama
got criticized for, too.
So it's not like this was a
President Trump invention.
But I think-- and again, this is
a broader conversation about US
government at the moment--
it's really hard to do
anything legislatively
so presidents have
more and more--
and actually, I recently taught
a class on executive action,
and you can see that
in recent presidencies,
the use of executive
action has gone up.
So I don't mean to suggest
that I blame him for using it.
Many, many presidents are,
but there is a danger to it.
Let's broaden our
conversation even further
and let's take some
of your questions.
Yeah.
So you mentioned this
morning and a few minutes
ago about how there is kind of
a fundamental misunderstanding
about the need
for women's rights
with higher up officials,
whether it be in the State
Department or the
Senate, and do you think
or do you see any trend towards
in ensuing decade having
more female representation in
the Senate or even higher up
official places like
higher up positions?
And do you think
that will ultimately
change how the Senate has
approach kind of not ratifying
CEDAW and you think
eventually if there
was more diversification,
that could transition
into a hard law?
So I actually think that
we've seen a lot of progress.
And I think the fact
that you have McKinsey
doing a study of women's
economic participation
or the UN even in the year 2000
passing a resolution on women,
peace, and security
and countries
around the world who have
devised coming from the 1325
resolution that I talked
about that the UN pass
national action plans
on how to inject
women's issues into
peace and security
negotiations and resolution.
I think if you look
at there's been
a steady march of progress.
And you see progress
on particular issues,
not only in the leadership
or the acknowledgment
that these are important
issues to focus on.
So I don't want to overstate.
We were talking
this morning where
I was telling my
funny war stories
about walking into
the State Department
and talking to people who
really didn't see this as part
of the work that they did.
But if you look
globally, I really
do think there's been a
tremendous amount of progress.
Obviously, the more
people you have,
whether it's in office
in the United States
or around the world or
in positions of power
in multilateral organizations
who either are or are women,
but they don't have
to be women, they
can be people who understand--
as I said-- the strategic reason
to include women in their work,
the better off you'll be.
But don't lose sight of
the progress we've made.
It's hard at this
particular moment.
Piggybacking off of
that, what do you
think from a legal
perspective is yet to be done
or in your perspective would be
the most effective law on paper
that would be ratified
perhaps in the US,
but also I'm curious
that we're still missing?
And the second part
of that question
is there is, as you said,
lots of progress that's
been made on paper and what
are the current enforcement
mechanisms to make sure
that these laws have teeth?
Laws where?
Laws I mean in America.
Let's just stick to America.
OK.
So I don't know if I would say
this is the most important,
but I will give you a fact that
I think is really stunning,
which is that in no
country in the world
are women paid equally and in
every country in the world,
women do more unpaid
work than men.
Now, if you're asking me,
if we fix that problem,
would we fix the
problem generally--
and I would love to hear your
answers on this question,
as well--
I would say no.
On the other hand, equal
pay has tremendous effects
on not only individuals,
but on entire families
and communities.
And both of those
have tremendous impact
on womens' ability to
participate in the workforce,
and that seems like
a pretty basic change
that if we could get
there, it would actually
have tremendous benefits.
I think I would love to hear
your views because I think
you could have an
argument for hours
about what is most important.
It's hard.
And I think the US
context also makes
very clear the important
aspects of intersectionality
that matter here.
Because on average, women make
$0.77 on the dollar for men,
but for black women it's $0.73
and for Latinas, it's $0.55.
And so it's important to take
that variation into account
as we're crafting our law.
But there is this tricky
part of the United States
about focusing on employment
and focusing on violence, too.
Because there's one
estimate that suggests that
collectively, victims of
intimate partner violence
lose eight million days
of paid work per year.
So if you pool altogether all
the victims of intimate partner
violence and how much paid work
they're not getting because
of violence, we also have to
take violence into account
also.
So I see it as a two-track
platform here in the United
States, focusing on the
employment dimensions,
also focusing on the
violence dimensions.
But how to do it-- so much
of this in the violence space
is happening at the
subnational level.
There are a lot of
variation in state
laws on what happens with
intimate partner violence,
for instance.
There is variation there, too.
But the other tough aspect
of this in the US is girls
outperform boys in
school, consistently--
higher graduation rates from
high school, higher college
attendance-- and
then the lines cross.
And that's true across all
racial and ethnic categories
in the US and then
the lines change
when we hit the labor market.
And that has a lot to do with
the structure of employment
and the lack of
support for childcare.
And the lack of
support for childcare
not only affects the
women with children,
but it affects the women
without children because
of the implicit biases that
employers have towards women
thinking, you're going to be
less productive because there's
a risk that someday you
might have children.
So I don't know
what we should do.
I don't have an answer
on what we should do.
But I think we have to
address both the employment
piece and the violence piece.
These two things intersect
with each other and.
And now that you've
raised violence, I mean,
to really not answer
your question,
the other obvious
area is health.
There are huge
gender disparities
and racial disparities
in health care.
And sort of if you think
about that almost as the base,
it's hard to not choose that
as the most important topic.
I'll just add a
couple of things.
I think the closest we came to
a law that would have enforced
equality was the ERA, the Equal
Rights Amendment, which we lost
in the early '70s at sort of the
height of the previous round,
the second wave of
the feminist movement.
And Jenny Mansbridge
has a wonderful book
on this called, Why
We Lost the ERA.
And Why We Lost the ERA
has an answer that's
quite similar to how and
why Trump got elected,
which is white college educated
women like Phyllis Schlafly
led the opposition to the
Equal Rights Amendment.
And it was a lot about the fact
that they wanted not to work
and they wanted
their husbands not
to be penalized by having
to compete with women who
earned equal amounts of money.
It's a complicated
but very repetitive
issue across class issues.
The other issue which both
Jennifer and Susan raised which
I think is really important is a
lot of the debate in the United
States, especially
the most recent round
with Sheryl Sandberg and
her lean in argument,
really relates to a
very small percentage
of the American
population, which
are rich, well-educated
white women.
And that's really
great, but the part
of the argument
about how leaning in
requires leaning on underpaid
often women of color
in order to do the
child care and elder
care and the domestic care that
women don't have time to do
or don't want to do is the
other part of the issue.
And I think that that speaks to
a fundamental biological fact
that divides men
and women, which
is that women have to trade
off reproductive and productive
work in a way that men do not.
So that trade-off between
reproductive and productive
capacity requires
a trade-off that
leads to things like
differences in paid work.
If you take 20 years
off from the workforce
to raise your children,
is it surprising
that you're not going to
be paid at the same level
as somebody who's been in
the workforce 20 years?
And so that is the
downstream consequence
of earlier inequalities,
especially around not
having paid childcare leave.
So America is one of three
countries in the world that
doesn't have--
two, the other one really did?
So was it Papua, New Guinea?
Is that the other one?
So it's us and
Papua, New Guinea.
And everyone else
goes, hey, it's
actually good to help
people have healthy babies
and help women have healthy
children and to pay for that.
I mean, in Denmark you get a
monthly stipend every month
for two years when you have
a baby because they actually
want you to invest in things
like bonding with your children
because then it leads to less
violence when you grow up.
I mean, it's not like these
things don't have consequences.
And so this is, again, to
not answer the question
in an even broader way.
Sorry.
I think that there's lots of
pieces that are intertwined
around not having paid
childcare, leading
to not having equal
pay for equal work.
Because in some ways,
the work itself is equal,
but the history
of work has often
been truncated by female
reproductive demands that
are not equivalent
between men and women.
Even if men help
with child care,
they're not pregnant
for nine months.
And pregnancy is demanding
physically and intellectually
and all these other
kinds of ways--
not that I would know.
But these things are
intertwined both legally
and socially in ways that have
consequences well beyond that.
And so thinking, as with
health care, as a society,
who do we want to decide
is part of the in group
that we're going to protect as
a collective and who are we not?
And I think that those
decisions have moral evaluations
that we are fighting over at
the moment as a broader society.
Yeah.
Hi.
You mentioned earlier
that sometimes people
have different reasons for
defending legislators that
helps womens' equality so
it's either for a moral reason
or it's more strategic.
Do you see a difference
in the execution of action
over legislation that
follows that because
of the reasons behind it?
That's a good question.
yes.
Yes.
I mean, I think--
that's a really good question.
I think there's differences
in how it gets done.
Do I think the result
is different in the end?
Maybe not.
And again, it's probably is
very dependent on the context
and the country and the issue
that you're talking about.
But I think there
are instances where
it is hard to protect
somebody's rights and maybe
the benefit that you see
long-term is long-term,
you're not going to
see it for a while.
So that's in that sense, I
guess the answer is, yes, it
would sort of be better to argue
it from a rights point of view.
But whether you're
actually going
to get there in the first
place is a different question.
But I think that's why
for me, I always come back
to saying first and foremost,
it's an issue of rights.
Because if you're
just relying on it
as a strategic imperative,
like to take the Saudi example,
they may get enough
women in the workforce
by removing restrictions
on women's right to work,
for example, that a
male relative doesn't
have to provide permission or
that they can drive to work
and you're never going
to get to true equality
if you can sort of eliminate
some of those restrictions
and meet your actual goal of
increasing the number of women
in the workforce.
I don't know if anybody has a--
So you talked this
morning about wanting
to combat social norms as
a way of effecting change.
And it seems like
some of our most
kind of sticky,
persistent things
hindering that change are
around social norms that
stem from religious reasons.
So our not wanting
to pass abortion
or the strong paternalistic
kind of [INAUDIBLE] household
are a lot in this country
around religious issues, which
is really hard to combat.
So how would you
go about combating
those sort of social norms that
come from religious contexts?
I mean, I can take a stab at it.
One is I think that when
we talk about religion,
we have implicit assumptions
in the United States
that certain
religions are better
than other religions
about women.
But if you actually
look at the data,
it turns out that all
religions kind of suck,
except the Buddhists.
So I'm not saying the
Buddhists are good with regard
to the Rohingya, but if you
look at Buddhists worldwide,
they tend to be more endorsing
of equal rights for ants
and spiders and women
and people and whatever,
dogs and horses and things.
There's one group that
tends to be worse,
and they're the Hindus.
They definitely are worse.
But if you look at religions
like Catholicism and Islam,
they're not actually
that different.
So there's only two
or three countries
in the world where
you have higher
rates of successful female
suicide than male suicide.
So the rule about
suicide is that way more
women attempt and way
more men complete,
and it's because women tend
to choose non-lethal methods.
They tend to do things
like take pills.
So they don't die as often
as men who shoot themselves
in the face, where you have
a much higher rate of dying.
Part of that has to do
with, it turns out--
and they know this from studies
with women who tried and failed
to commit suicide--
is they don't
want their bodies to
look ugly and so they
don't shoot themselves.
And shooting yourself is
a really effective way
to kill yourself, and
that's how most men
tend to kill themselves.
But one of the few countries
where it's true is Peru.
So Peru has a lot more
completed female suicides
than male suicides, and it's
one of the few countries
in the world where you
have dominant Catholicism.
So it's not necessarily
attached to a specific religion.
So that's the first point.
The second point
is what that really
tells us is that most religious
structures are patriarchal.
And so part of
what you're trying
to dismantle with religion
is a patriarchal structure
of which religion is a part.
So the way that I've
come to think about it,
and you can totally
disagree, is that religion
is one of the mechanisms
supporting the patriarchy,
rather than the thing actually
creating the patriarchy.
And so it doesn't mean that
that isn't one of the places
you can try and chip
away at it, but there's
other foundational places
where you can chip away at it.
And as you change
laws and regulations,
it can change the way that
particular religions evaluate
those kinds of
downstream effects.
But again, you can disagree.
What are some of
those foundations?
Things like laws, like
equal pay for equal work,
paid childcare leave,
those kinds of things.
I think that a lot of them
are social and cultural.
So my big thing, which most
people really disagree with,
is I think one of
the problems is
too much interest, sexual
competition among women
for male attention.
So they never engage
in the kind of
coalitional
collective action that
can lead to equality
because they always
allow men to get in the way.
Men never allow women to get in
the way of collective action.
They just [INAUDIBLE] and they
engage in coalitional action
and they have great wars
and they kill each other
and then they get the
spoils of said war.
And so part of it is thinking
about how to educate around
intersexual competition
in a way that
allows effective
collective action on women.
Are there examples
of [INAUDIBLE]??
Not in large scales that I'm
aware of, unless you are.
Sophie?
[INAUDIBLE] question
about religion.
[INAUDIBLE] the
ability to kind of take
on culturally embedded
ideas of gender
in one of the [INAUDIBLE]
we talked about.
So if you could talk
a little bit more
about kind of how to take
that on in a way that
is respectful of target
populations but also really
sticks [INAUDIBLE].
Well, I'm glad you ask.
And I was going to go back
to sort of the practitioner's
view of that question.
You have to break down
what religion prescribes.
So in my work, I
worked a lot on FGM
and family planning in
Ethiopia is another example.
There are huge religious
differences, obviously--
to state the obvious--
when you're talking about
women's reproductive health.
There are also areas
where there's not
actual religious
teaching one way
or the other or
various religions
have various different
interpretations
of their own religious teaching.
And in fact, you can
work within the religion
and work with religious leaders
to actually change culture
and you can have a
tremendously beneficial effect.
So to take the
example of Ethiopia,
we worked closely
with religious leaders
in the north of Ethiopia
to talk to the people
in their communities to
talk about family planning.
Because once the
religious leader had said,
it's OK to have family
planning, not only the men
but also the women
in the community
were able to listen and
to access family planning
services.
And there's a well-known
NGO that worked in Senegal,
still works in
Senegal, to combat FGM.
And the woman who founded
it, Molly Melching,
that was her insight.
And she was actually
pretty unique
at the time of
thinking about engaging
with religious leaders.
But that's exactly what she did.
And she realized that
if those messages
that FGM had been a
traditional practice that
had been happening
for hundreds of years
but it didn't have
to happen, there
was no religious
prescription requiring it
in families, that
actually that would
lead to part of the solution.
It doesn't address all
of your question, but.
But you had another
question related?
I meant to answer both.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
I think that was part of it.
I think that was a
big part [INAUDIBLE]
in terms of implementing in a
way that's respectful but also
[INAUDIBLE] what you just said.
Yeah.
So I think one thing
that I find interesting
about kind of the pay
inequality is to me,
there are maybe two kinds of
people who really can take
action on that, and one
is, of course, the state,
and then also the
employer itself.
And so I'm really curious in
terms of maybe just staying
within the realm of
the United States
as a focus, what has in the
past been more effective
or are there differences?
And then what are
kind of some models
that we can follow in terms of
really who is able to create
effective change?
So there's actually
three components.
You talk about equal pay.
Only 1/3 of equal pay is
actual discrimination.
The other two pieces are
occupational segregation,
so women end up in
lower paid fields;
and the third is what Rose was
talking about earlier, which
is caregiving
responsibilities, so
women who literally are out
of the workplace for periods
of time to have children,
to care for children.
And so those three
things add up to when
we say equal pay or
the pay gap, those
are the three things that
add up to the pay gap.
And Susan made a really
important point earlier,
which is when we talk
about the pay gap,
there's actually a range of pay
gaps, which are as you heard,
dramatically different
based on race.
And I'm so glad you asked that
question because I actually
think you could
talk about equal pay
and you can also talk more
broadly about the roles
that lots of different
players have,
particularly in
the United States.
And I think this is one
where you're exactly right,
the private sector has
a huge role to play.
So there are laws on equal pay.
They're not as strong as
I would like them to be,
but there are laws on the books
that prevent discrimination.
There are executive
actions that have
been taken to
strengthen those laws
and to require companies
to report on pay data,
for example.
That was one of the
executive actions that
has just been revoked,
but it was there
and it could be there again.
But you're exactly
right, which is
that companies and
employees themselves
have a huge role to play.
And one of the things that
I've worked a little bit on
is the notion of
pay transparency.
So what we've learned over
time-- and there examples,
there's a company
called Glass Door that
makes pay data
accessible to individuals
so that they know what
they're negotiating
when they're negotiating.
But if you require companies to
make their pay data transparent
or if you, even better,
get them to voluntarily
make their pay data
transparent, what you learn
is that the pay gap
goes down over time
in that particular either
company, industry, group
of companies.
So absolutely
there are, I think,
businesses in particular
on that issue.
But also nonprofit
organizations that
are engaged in
thinking about this
can come up with
lots of creative ways
to get the private
sector to do two things.
One, to get the private sector
to be better actors and two,
to help individuals
to do other than
lean in to be able to
negotiate for themselves.
There is, by the way,
really interesting data
that shows that when
women negotiate for pay,
it ends not so well for them.
When men go in and negotiate
for raises, they get raises.
When women negotiate
for raises, they
are penalized for those
negotiations, for pushing that.
You just have to negotiate
in a different way.
Women have to negotiate
in a different way.
Exactly.
They're perceived differently.
Yeah.
I just would like to mention a
few other strains of research
that I think are relevant
to this argument.
One is a really
interesting psychologist
in Boston named
Maureen Perry-Jenkins.
And she looks at women who
work in minimum wage jobs
for like Walmart.
And part of what she
shows is that there's
enormous self-selection of
women into those jobs because
of their caretaking
responsibilities.
So if you're taking care
of not just your children,
but in many cases--
especially Hispanic
communities--
people are taking care of
brothers, sisters, cousins,
and everybody is
taking care of parents
because parents don't
die like they used to.
And so it's both
elder care, as well as
childcare becomes an
increasing demand on everybody.
And so she talks a lot about
self-selection, whereas men
in those situations,
they just won't work.
They'll do things
like go on welfare,
as opposed to take
minimum wage jobs.
And there's various
reasons for both of those,
and that's interesting.
Another is a sociologist in
Minnesota named Phyllis Moen.
A lot of these people
actually work on work,
but they're gendered components.
And she talks about how
a really important aspect
of getting to equal pay has to
do with work flexibility, which
again, relates to
this childcare issue.
If you're having to drive your
kids to school, then maybe
you can't start at the
same time as somebody who
can go into work at 6:00 AM.
And so maybe what we need to
do is actually change the time
that school starts to be more
commensurate and thinking
about other kinds of
structural features
that cause more flexibility
in the time demand.
So everybody works
eight hours, but people
get to choose which eight
hours they work, for example.
And the other is this work
that this economist at Harvard,
Claudia Golden,
has done, where she
shows that you get a lot
closer to pay quality
when people have
interchangeable talents.
So her best example
is pharmacists.
If you work every
other day, if you
work the morning and somebody
else works the afternoon,
your job doesn't
actually change.
You just know the medication,
you fill it out, whatever.
But there are some jobs that
are less interchangeable.
And so coming up with
mechanisms by which we
can make jobs both more
flexible in terms of timing
and more interchangeable
in terms of tasks
leads to greater
pay equivalency,
not just across
gender, but across race
and across sexuality and
across all these other things
that ordinarily would
otherwise introduce
discriminatory aspects.
So you've been talking a lot
about policies [INAUDIBLE]
womens' rights and
now a part of that
is evaluating
[INAUDIBLE] impact.
So I was just wondering for
increasing womens' rights,
is there a better framework
to evaluate the impact?
Because I know for poverty,
for example, there's
been a lot of different
questions about can we do that
and how do we do that?
And one of them is looking
at statistics and seeing,
can we see a
difference in pay rate
or seeing that gap diminishing?
But do you think there is a
better framework for talking
about womens' rights, or
do you think that's still
a question [INAUDIBLE]?
Well, I'll mention
just something
that I've been trying to start
here at Brown in the course
that I teach on gender
and public policy,
and that's to develop a gender
impact analysis that we would
do for every policy
the way we might do
an environmental impact analysis
or an economic impact analysis
but not just treated
on the binary.
So think about gender in
a much more complex way
and then apply that
framework-- and this
what I have my students
do, and we're not
quite ready to take it public.
But it forces us to think
about gendered implications
of any policy in lots
of different ways
to help us understand,
for instance,
the higher dropout
rates among boys
or higher incarceration
rates among boys,
the higher rates of homelessness
among transgender youth,
for instance, or how might our
policies around homelessness
have differential
gendered impacts?
So one place that we
start is that there
are gender impact
analyses, of course,
that the Nordic countries do.
They tend to treat gender
on the binary, though.
And so we start with those
as our point of departure
and then for each policy
think about how could we
construct a model that would
fully express gendered impacts,
and then get in and think
about what data are there
and what data are not there.
And we explore
the power dynamics
behind where we're collecting
information, where we're not
collecting information,
but then come up
with some conclusions based
on the data that we can get.
What would a gender
impact analysis look like?
But another piece of our
recommendations are always
and here are where we need to
get more data because we just
can't answer the questions.
And interestingly, we did
two somewhat similar things
at the State Department--
and I wish your work
had been done when I was there.
But as part of the policy
guidance that the secretary
issued, which I
mentioned earlier,
and the parallel
guidance at USAID,
everybody for every
program or every policy
was required to do a gender
impact analysis, which
was very novel at the time,
somewhat controversial and very
novel at the time.
And the second
thing we did was we
actually had a day-long
conference on gender data
which everybody, again,
thought we were somewhat crazy.
In fact, there were
a number of people
arguing that the
Secretary of State
should not spend her entire
day focused on gender data.
And she was the one who
insisted that she was
going to spend her entire day.
But one of the things that came
out of that was we actually
launched an organization
called Data 2X, which
had two purposes.
One was to do a landscape
analysis to figure out
what we knew and
what we didn't know
and where the data gaps
were, and the second
was to actually start
launching partnerships
to fill those data gaps.
So while I was
still working on it,
we launched a partnership to
fill data gaps on civil birth
registration and
civil statistics
because in so many
countries in the world,
they don't record births
or marriages, which
has fairly detrimental
impact generally,
but particularly for girls.
So just to take one
example, we looked
at big data and the
power of big data
and how you could get
information from sources
that didn't exist
five years ago.
So this is a wide open
terrain for more work,
which I hope you'll do.
Yeah.
Exactly.
When you say analyzing
policy, [INAUDIBLE]
not to use the gender binary.
What does that
look like when it's
implemented to focus on
gender not as a binary?
So in some ways, it's trying
to gather data on more than the
binary, and that is the first
hurdle for a lot of this.
And some of it requires
thinking hypothetically also.
So some of that impact
analysis was the data
that we have, but
then thinking about
even in the absence
of the data, what
would it mean if
we think about how
we structure our
prisons if we didn't
have gender just on the binary?
Or again, it comes up
in homeless policy,
for instance, but other aspects
of employment policy too.
So some of it is
a matter of data--
where do we have data,
where do we not have data?
But another piece of that
is then just thinking
conceptually, why does the
binary not help us here
or where might there be
differential impacts if we
pressed beyond the binary?
So just out of
curiosity, is that
also about dividing
it up by demographics,
so older women
versus younger women,
by race, by these other things?
It's absolutely trying to
think about the intersectional
dimensions here.
Because we're not just
a gender, but a gender
plus so many other things, and
thinking about how those all
come to bear on impact.
I think this going to be more of
an observation than a question,
but you guys have been
talking a lot about women
as a very broad term, slighting
bringing in race and ethnicity,
but have yet to mention
women who don't identify
as heterosexual,
which I think plays
a big role in a lot of
things not only in the US,
but outside.
So I was wondering if
you guys could maybe
give your opinions on
how you approach women
who don't identify as
heterosexual, how that changes
policy [INAUDIBLE]
implementation,
because I think that's
really important.
Well, that's a piece of what we
try to get at with our gender
impact analysis, too.
So trying to
specifically gather data
on women who do not identify
as heterosexual and think
about the implications of that.
Because they're absolutely,
if we look at the employment--
And housing.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So it's a key and
absolutely integral part
in doing our analysis.
And similarly, again,
some of the practitioners
from my standpoint,
it's something
that we thought about all the
time at the State Department
or when you're working
on development programs.
So as you well
point out, you can't
think about women as a
category without understanding
all of those
overlapping identities
and places where there
is discrimination.
And you know you know well that
in lots of places in the world,
there's a lot more
discrimination
against homosexual people
than there is against women.
And that was always sort
of front and foremost
when you were thinking in
the State Department issues,
human rights reports, as I
was talking about earlier.
And one of the issues,
again, this predated me,
but we talked
earlier about adding
things that were not
traditionally seen
as human rights violations.
When talking about sexual
orientation was added,
that was a huge, huge change.
And Secretary Clinton actually
went and gave a speech
about discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation
at the Geneva Human
Rights Council
exactly for all the reasons
that you're imagining.
But one other
important thing to keep
in mind which I
didn't talk about
is one of the things I worked
on at the Clinton Foundation
was this sense of what
progress had been made
and where the gaps still are.
And there are sort of these
broad categories where
you can say there's been a
lot of progress in health,
there's been a lot of progress
in getting girls educated,
and there's been less
progress in economic issues
or political participation
or insecurity issues,
whether that's
conflict resolution
or for personal security.
And so those are sort
of very broad topics,
but within those there's
tremendous differential
based on women who
are marginalized
for various reasons.
And again, to return to
Susan's point, in some cases
we don't even know because we
haven't collected that data.
And that's why what you're doing
here is tremendously important.
Other questions.
Yes.
You mentioned some
of the challenges
on collecting data
for this topic
and also on the data
gaps and knowledge
gaps that currently exist.
I was wondering if the
framework that you talked about,
the strategic importance or
motivation instead of more
of the human rights framework
and more motivation,
does that help to
close that gap at all?
Does that bring in other types
of data or ways of collecting
data that were previously
ignored with the human rights
framework?
Sort of yes and no.
I mean, I think actually,
I would draw the arrow
in the opposite direction.
It's like when you start
collecting data on issues,
like for example time use, there
was historic data dearth I'm
looking at time use by gender.
And once people started
collecting that data
and understanding the
huge gap in time use,
it provoked policy change--
not done yet, but it's
at least on the map.
So we used to have a thing
in our office that said,
what you measure, you do.
And I think as we're
collecting more and more data
and understanding-- child
marriage is another example.
When you actually start
learning when people are born
and you start learning
that actually,
they're nine when
they're married instead
of 12 when they're married--
12 is young, but nine
is even younger--
it actually, I think, spurs
action on the strategic side.
Yeah.
And I just would like to mention
one other thing about data
collection.
I've been involved
in this big data
project for 10 or
15 years, and there
are some parts of the
world where it's just
really hard to get data.
We call it the Somalia effect.
Like we'd run these
missing data things
and where don't we have data?
And you could always count
on Somalia not having data.
I mean, there are some
places where it's very hard.
The other thing
is that you start
to realize that some places look
a lot better than others that
are actually worse because
some states are better
at investing money and
actually counting and measuring
these things.
So for example, if
you look at the data,
Switzerland looks like they're
way worse on rape than Nigeria.
I can promise you
they're not worse.
The difference is Switzerland
puts a lot of money
into tracking every case of
rape, every case of somebody
saying they've been
raped, tracking through
whether that person
was indicted,
whether or not the perpetrator
was incarcerated, whatever.
And they put a lot
of money into that,
whereas Nigeria puts no
money into following anything
and so they look like they
have zero rapes because they
don't count them.
So part of it is
recognizing that measurement
is part of actually recognizing
the severity of a problem.
Russia is this way with HIV.
They don't count it,
so they look like they
have really low rates of HIV.
But in fact, Doctors
Without Borders
will tell you it's a lot
higher than parts of Africa.
So part of it is
just your issues
around measurement actually
reflect both your biases
going in, but hugely affect
your behavior coming out.
And so how those things get
measured really matters.
We have time for
another question.
Yeah.
I get really worried--
obviously, our current
administration [INAUDIBLE]
there's been bipartisan
support for policies
that help women in
the past, but now
it's just I feel
like we talk here
at Brown about a lot of the
kinds of policies that could do
good things, but
none of those are
going to get passed right now.
To what extent do you think from
your experience in the State
Department and with
Secretary Clinton
do you feel like social
movement tactics have
any sort of
persuasion [INAUDIBLE]
the conversation on our level
versus the conversation at that
level is actually
going to be helpful
in things like
the Women's March?
I'd like to get all
of your reactions
to that, what the
data show and what are
the conversations [INAUDIBLE].
So I am bizarrely hopeful.
First of all, nothing
lasts forever.
It feels like it does right
now, but nothing lasts forever.
And second of all,
I think if there
is any silver lining to what
we are experiencing now,
it is that no one is complacent.
And I think the
Women's March was
the first of many manifestations
of the power of people
coming together.
And I had some issues
with the Women's March,
which we can also talk about.
But it was powerful.
And despite arguing about
how many people were there,
there were a lot of
people there and a lot
of people around the world, not
just physically in Washington.
And I think what
you're seeing is that--
I mean, we have two things.
So you can look at this
as a positive or negative.
There are two things
that are preventing
bad things from happening--
well, three things.
The press, so holding on
to that free media, which
is in question but
we still have it;
the judiciary,
which is literally
on the front lines, who knew
this would happen of stopping
illegal executive actions; and
civil society and civic action
and grassroots movement.
And I think that that
is A, hugely important.
A friend of mine
just wrote a book--
not just, about a year ago--
David Cole, who's the
legal director of the ACLU.
And I can't remember
the name of the book,
but it's something
like Public Action.
And it's about how
important civic action
has been through the
course of American history.
And when you see it
in context and when
you see the power that
civic action has had,
it sort of is heartening
because even when
you have a federal government
that I'm presuming you don't
agree with but that is really
aggressively doing some things
that you find difficult,
there's a power in civic action
which I think is important.
And if I could add a fourth
in the American context,
it's states and localities.
Absolutely.
One of the things
that struck me--
again, we don't know
the actual counts--
but how many people turned out
in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
for instance.
And so even though we
have a long history
of discriminatory policy at
the state and local level
coming from the
states and localities,
they're also more permeable
spaces, some of the research
suggests, than the
national level.
So at the national
level, interest groups
based in the United
States are so dense.
Civil society action
can be tough to break in
at the national level.
The state and local levels
can be more permeable.
There can be more space
to exercise voice.
There's, again, a long
history of discrimination
at the state and local
levels, but they also
provide opportunities for
action and an opportunity
to check on whatever the
federal level is doing.
And on a policy
level, I mean, there
are some great things happening.
I work a lot on paid leave,
and while way before the Trump
administration there was you
know woefully little happy
being on paid leave
at the federal level,
you have five states
and some localities that
are passing paid leave laws.
And does that do away
with the need for this
to happen at the federal level?
Absolutely not.
But there's an opportunity
for actual forward motion.
And you have states like
New York and California,
where they are meeting their
obligations under the Paris
Climate Agreement.
They are you know they're
doing a whole host of things,
regardless of what's happening
at the federal government
level, which are
hugely important.
You don't look convinced.
[INAUDIBLE]
Time for a couple
more questions.
[INAUDIBLE]
I have a question.
You mentioned human
trafficking and you
mentioned global [INAUDIBLE].
The US State
Department pulled out
of the program ending
modern slavery,
and within the
past month they've
funded a global fund to
end modern slavery, as well
as the British government.
So the question I would have is,
how important do you think it
is in the content of women's'
security and equality?
And then secondly,
how effective do you
think something
like the global fund
to end modern slavery,
an NGO, will be
on [INAUDIBLE] global issues?
I think it's hugely important.
I mean, just the sheer number
and effect of trafficking
is overwhelming.
And having the US government
and many other governments
around the world
paying attention to it
and actually taking action
is hugely important.
And the particular
organization that you mentioned
is very well respected
and does great work.
I mean, it's obviously
a huge problem.
But if you even think about
the level of recognition
in recent years, it's
gone from being something
that people didn't talk about,
people didn't think about other
than the advocates
who worked on it
and the people who were victims
of trafficking themselves
and their families,
to an issue that
is at high levels
being discussed
at the UN and other
important international fora.
And interestingly,
that is an issue
where there has been also a lot
of bipartisan support, which
not incidentally is the reason
you're actually seeing forward
action on it.
Let's take our
last two questions.
So you said that you
actually had some [INAUDIBLE]
with the Women's March
and I was wondering,
what do you think that
we can do to improve
our current grassroots
movements [INAUDIBLE]??
Oh, boy.
So I'll say something that I
think might be controversial,
even at this table, which
is the thing that I found
about the Women's March which
was mostly great and mostly
heartening was that I felt
that it became the vehicle--
because people were frustrated
and also because women's issues
are a lot of different issues--
it became the vehicle
for everything else.
So I was there on the
Mall and I saw every sign
you could possibly imagine for
climate change, which I pick on
because that's what
my husband works on,
for every range of issues.
And I sort of felt like
this is about women,
this is about unique
forms of discrimination
that we are facing that
we have just experienced.
And so that was my
personal frustration.
And I also feel that in
terms of the sort of broader
implications for feminism--
and again, this is
the part that I think
will be really controversial--
is I do think that
there is something
that is important about
focusing that women
bring all sorts of identities.
And even the use
of the word women
is being binary in my thinking.
But I also think that
there is something
that we sort of need to
because women are perceived
around the world as
women, for the most part,
that there is something
unique to that discrimination
that women face around the world
and sort of like we shouldn't
lose sight of that in being
inclusive and understanding
that women bring a lot
of identities with them
all around each day.
So disagree.
No.
I'd like to operate in
a both-and framework.
So here I'm thinking about
two different strands
of scholarship, one that
cautions about what happens
in the big umbrella
organizations,
that even if the-- and this
is not just for organizations
representing women, but other
kinds of organizations--
that even though they profess
to be inclusive and progressive,
they continue to
prioritize the most
privileged of their members
and marginalize the least
privileged.
But that said, to be
aware that this happens,
there is some neat research on
state level policies related
to violence that find that
when you see both-and activism,
the a big umbrella organization
plus niche organizations that
will represent just black
women or just Latino women,
they're more effective
in getting policy done.
So big umbrella, yes can marshal
a lot of power and resources,
but the real importance of
having these organizations,
too, at the subnational level
we see some effect of this
that comes from that approach.
One last question.
Well, as you mentioned,
one [INAUDIBLE]..
I was wondering if you
two have any [INAUDIBLE]..
Oh.
I have two.
Kristin Luker's Abortion and
the Politics of Motherhood
really gets the [INAUDIBLE].
It's kind of an
ethnographic study
that gets at how identities--
it's more than interests that
identities really get embedded.
And then it's Torben Iversen
and Frances Rosenbluth's book,
help me with the title.
It makes the argument
about how we need--
send me an email or we'll post
it on the Taubman website.
It has Work in the title.
That'll narrow
the Google search.
But the argument
is how important
it is to change the
economic structure,
and that when you change
the economic structure,
you will see changes
in norms, too.
And Shirley Chisholm's
Unbought and Unbossed.
Those are three, beach reading.
I don't know the one you're
thinking of, but What Works.
And there's a subtitle to that
about changing gender norms,
but that's not the actual
subtitle, by Iris Bohnet--
B-O-H-N-E-T, which
I recommend reading.
Actually, in my own work,
I'm thinking a lot about--
as I was talking
earlier today, you all
heard about changing
attitudes and social norms.
So I read that
book just recently.
And it's not actually
all that helpful
because I think it talks
about working around norms,
rather than actually
changing norms,
but it is still a really
interesting book to read.
I'll add one, too, the
Sex and World Peace book
that Valerie Hudson did
is, I think, a really
great comprehensive thing.
And there's also a diatribe
that's free on the web
by Silvia Federici.
I can't remember the title, but
I can tell you the first line.
The first line is, you call it
love, we call it unpaid labor.
She's a feminist and
she's a communist.
Not that that will shock
you, given the first line.
Well, on that note, everyone,
thank you for your time.
[APPLAUSE]
