Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter III: Critical Areas of Concern – Paragraph 44

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/20

44. To this end, Governments, the international community and civil society, including non-governmental organizations and the private sector, are called upon to take strategic action in the following critical areas of concern:

• The persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women
• Inequalities and inadequacies in and unequal access to education and training
• Inequalities and inadequacies in and unequal access to health care and related services
• Violence against women
• The effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women, including those living under foreign occupation
• Inequality in economic structures and policies, in all forms of productive activities and in access to resources
• Inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels
• Insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women
• Lack of respect for and inadequate promotion and protection of the human rights of women
• Stereotyping of women and inequality in women’s access to and participation in all communication systems, especially in the media
• Gender inequalities in the management of natural resources and in the safeguarding of the environment
• Persistent discrimination against and violation of the rights of the girl child

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in paragraph 44 covers a wide range of the possible terrain. To begin with this particular one, we can examine the areas of emphasis or the domains of discourse. These include the governments or the state actors, the international community, and civil society as well. While this chapter focuses on the strategic action on the areas of concern, we can run through some of these in a tad more depth, hopefully elucidating some of the aspects of it.

Let’s state with the penurious lives of women, they remain the most probable group to be in poverty. In particular, this is reflected in the national and international statistics with particular reflection in the developing nations of the world, especially, and with women of color specifically. It is an asymmetry need international work even to this day.

Some of the other problems persist in the access to education, training, and health care and related services. It is this form of deprivation that leaves women more peculiarly left in the dust. The inability, for instance, to get education and training can lead to worse life outcomes based on worse provisions in the access to education and so the insufficient skills and knowledge to take on particular jobs.

Those become the basis for the societally poorer outcomes for women. In contrast, this makes the landscape easier for men relative to the women. Same with health care and other services. Women get lesser services or worse access to them in a variety of contexts. It is, in this sense, the problem of the various inequalities and inadequacies in the provisions for women.

Even the healthcare and associated provisions took as the basis for the fundamental human rights of reproductive health services, or the principle of reproductive health rights, women remain kept from the proper provisions in most countries of the world. Often, this can come from explicitly religious and implicitly political organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church, and associated churches, becoming deeply involved in the political life of countries. They tend to have an abiding interest in the reproductive lives of women.

It is this interest that causes so much pain and misery in its followers and the women who are subject to the denial of basic rights and health care services. It, on the basis of the ethics espoused by the churches to make the strong case here, comes to the basic ethical precept in which the Golden Rule or the do as would be done by, becomes important because the right to freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of belief should be respected in the light of individual Roman Catholics, for example, possibly standing against and not wanting abortions for themselves and their families & communities, which should be respected in countries.

Similarly, the right to reproductive health services, also known as reproductive health rights, is in the same documents speaking about human rights for the freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of belief; that is to say, if one gets one right, and if someone wants to deny a right for another person, this violates the Golden Rule in the provision of rights for all or none – rather than some/most/all for one group and others not for another group.

The intrinsic core ethic of the churches gets violated as the hierarchs of the churches become deeply involved in the lives and livelihoods of women through inequality of consideration of the rights to be implemented. Indeed, a truly pro-life person, as in pro-infant and pro-maternal life, would be pro-choice, as the legalization of abortion leads to fewer infants and women dying or being injured in birth. Akin to euthanasia, it may, in fact, reduce the number of abortions too, through legalization.

If ethically consistent, the pro-life would, in fact, be pro-choice and the provisions for reproductive health rights would be respected as the right to freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of belief should be respected, too. It is this innervation into the operations of societies that mark the ways in which the religious institutions around the world are, in the matter of fact, political organizations, which, indeed, may explain some of the dogmatism and rigidity in the alignment of particular political parties and platforms with specific religious identities.

The next in the listing is the obvious problem of the violence against women and, to direct this comment at the men identifying as MGTOWs and otherwise, in particular, the disproportionate violence against women more often perpetrated by men. The men’s issue of violence against women comes with three frames of reference. Abused men need help, too; however, as a human matter, women are more abused and often more brutally by men than vice versa. This becomes a gender issue with an emphasis on a men’s issue in terms of cleaning their own house.

One is the need for men to stop abusing rather than make excuses for the abuse, by themselves or other men. The other is the non-need of women to have to appease or make excuses for being abused or for the abuser. The last is the societal impetus required to garner justice for victims and punishments/rehabilitation, as necessary, for the abusers, and then the work to create prevention programs and pathways for reportage – and for the aforementioned justice.

Various forms of conflict impact women more than the men. In particular, the innocent civilians tend to be disproportionately women and children, as far as I know; this creates the basis for needing to deal with the issues of conflict and the asymmetry in impact on the health and wellness, and livelihood and, in fact, lives of women. It is particularly egregious in the cases of foreign occupation of lands.

The next in the list is the emphasis on the economic structures and policies around the world. These are important, as they mark the restriction in choice. There are degrees of freedom, more of them, granted to women in the cases of more money meaning more choices; those expanded possibilities for selection give women real lives, or, at least, the potential for living equal to men.

But there is direct work to prevent this; there are also policies set about, and a culture of shaming and guilt, in which women remain prevented from or slowed in their work towards equality. In the rich societies, this comes, especially, in the cases of not having to fear for their lives as much in developing countries – minority not necessarily linked to skin color here – but still fearing for livelihood, e.g., education and training to garner access to decent work to pay for expanded services for themselves.

Then there is the “Inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels,” which there is, certainly, in a large number of the nations of the world. Iceland remains at the top of the list for more enlightened provisions for women with an expanded set of rights, policies, and resources set for them.

Some biological facts remain stable, e.g., the ability to create new people or citizenry. Potentially, the 21st-century science may, in fact, remove this as a possible impediment for rich women through advances in the knowledge of the gestation of human zygotes from ovum, into blastocysts, to embryos, and fetuses to create eventual infants.

But the only current workaround is rich women taking advantage of the bodies of poor women through surrogates of children; or, in fact, the simple adoption of one of, or several of, the great number of children in need – who may not have a chance in life. The policies and flexibility need to be in the societal structures for this. In fact, not that difficult to implement, as has been showing success in a number of nations, including aforementioned Iceland.

The main issue is attitudinal in the perception of women as equals rather than men thinking and behaving as if the bodies of women are their own extensions, which, firmly, they are not; women do not own men and men do not own women. When the paragraph states, “Insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women,” that seems, more or less, correct because of the statements connected with one another from before.

The advancement of women tends to come packaged with the notion of the empowerment of women. It is an important marker of the socio-economic and cultural advancement/development of the society. If women are more equal in a society, then the societies continue to flourish more; thus, the development of a society can, in part, be distinguished by its level of institutional and cultural advancement and empowerment of women.

Indeed, this reflects the next statement about the “Lack of respect for and inadequate promotion and protection of the human rights of women,” as a pervasive problem of the international system; wherein, we can see the lack of the protection of the human rights of women, which is in, stark, contrast with the rights of men in far more contexts.

The promotion of women’s rights, as persons, in some Western societies, even in my own – Canada, come with ridicule or pseudoscientific explanations about some aspect of species over time and then taking the loose evolutionary explanations – because the religious assertions continue to fail scientifically and otherwise – to make a prescription on how women should be placed in society.

Interesting to note in some of these movements, such as the New Mythologists, this can be seen in failed explanations and extrapolations with lobsters and other critters.

Many men in advanced industrial societies, probably, because of the ease with which this suffices to explain and provide thin moral covers for their own prejudices, as expressed in the idea of women without autonomy in the arguments: the natural is one way and, therefore, the world should be this way in human-developed societies even whole civilizations, which becomes ritualized into arguments for “Western civilization” – often, simply, a statement of the status quo of Christian, Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon culture.

We see this in the immature back-and-forth, in the current phase of the non-discussions, with epithets of the socio-political left, or the left, – for simplicity’s sake – towards the socio-political right, or the right, with “Status Quo Warrior” or in the right to the left with “Social Justice Warrior,” particularly immature even among the leaders of these 2010s movements and communities dominated by Caucasian, Western Europe-North America acculturated, 18-to-35-year-old males. It adds to the reasons the general public does not take them seriously.

Other areas of concern within the paragraph, so then and now, is the stereotyping of women. This was covered in the larger article on the communications technologies and the representation of women. Women continue to be stereotyped as without agency around the world, even with this glorified in the religious literature seen throughout the international scene too.

These have downstream effects on the self-perception of women. It reinforces the stereotypes and negative perspectives of women. The same groups mentioned before may see some modern media of empowered women as propaganda, but, in fact, the longest term public relations or propaganda system has been that which reinforced the religious propaganda and narratives. Now, the media is working against some of this with input from women to represent females as a more empowered and independent rather than simply a side-story or peripheral narrative to the men of the world.

It is in this sense that we can see the narratives in the purported holy literature as reinforcing the subjugation of or subordinate status of women as either virgin or only as that which gives birth – preferably to sons to carry the family name.

This creates the cycle of oppression – Virgin Mary and Mother Mary Magdalene in the prominent case of half the world’s population with the Islamic-Judeo-Christian narratives. The oppression also reflects in the statistics of abuse of women, the disproportionate abuse of women. That is the definition of oppression, because these impacts come from explicit attitudes and, sometimes, policies.

It takes heavy propaganda of this historic religious flavor to engender it; then to feel, when there is a different presentation of women than the traditional stories, that there is some grand conspiracy to undermine traditionalism, religion, and propagandize the young and, in general, the whole culture.

It reflects a loss of control of the cultural narrative that is typified in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Protestant Church, Evangelical Church, and others, which can be seen in the over-the-top reactions of the movements. More people become more equal since the 1960s and 70s; therefore, the work and emphasis is to reverse the progress in culture, in calls for rights, in representation in work and higher education, in sexual liberation, in the provision of choice in reproduction through reproductive rights, and so on, become the sticking points – simply work to reverse all of them and damn the consequences.

But this media stereotyping of women is international. And it has real effects on the lives of women. This super-minority movement is only a sliver, in particular, quite insular and often only in discussion with itself. The bigger issues are the ones in contexts where women do not even have the most basic rights and then, to compound their issues of equality, become represented as less-than-equal with the men in the society through various tropes.

The management of the world’s natural systems is also important as there is a general inequality for the access to them for women. Take, for example, the ability to have some farmland. The ability to grow food independent of the dominance of the men in their lives, as a general rule. It is not much to those, probably, in advanced industrial economies with nearby grocery stores. But to women in developing countries, this is incredibly important. It is the same in the resources of the planet and the rights of women.

One of the more tragic violations of rights and bodies is in the case of the “girl child” or girls. Those who may be trafficked, forced into child labor, forced into marriage (as a child), or sexually exploited. It is tragic pervasive and an important reflection for those in luckier circumstances as to the ways in which a life can be turned completely upside-down, topsy-turvy if deprived of the basic right to be a child and to live one’s early life with respect and dignity.

–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
• Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
• Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
• Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
• The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
• Beijing Declaration(1995).
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
• Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
• The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
• Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.

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