In-Sight Publishing

2022-04-26

Paragraph 134 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/06/27

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

134. In a world of continuing instability and violence, the implementation of cooperative approaches to peace and security is urgently needed. The equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts are essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. Although women have begun to play an important role in conflict resolution, peace-keeping and defence and foreign affairs mechanisms, they are still underrepresented in decision-making positions. If women are to play an equal part in securing and maintaining peace, they must be empowered politically and economically and represented adequately at all levels of decision-making.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Continuing on from the previous session, we can note the ways in which the world of sexual trafficking and prostitution, or paid sexual exploitation and slavery without consent, leave women and girls with brutal, harsh, and miserable lives. The prior context was conflict or territorial aggression, and also the annexation or taking over of land in an illegitimate way.

As noted in the outset of these particular paragraphs, we look at the instability and violence in specific circumstances, which can lead to the conditions in which women can be subjected to the issues of prostitution and sexual trafficking. Typically, with a reduction in the level of peace and security in a region, or a country, the lesser access to equality in the society for the women.

These, in the terminology of the Beijing Declaration (1995), amount to the power structures of the society. Indicatively, this amounts to some feminist, or specifically power-oriented feminisms, analysis of the context of peace and security and gender equality. When we look at the full participation of the women in the efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts, as per United Nations stipulations and news reports, they have become integral to the full equality of women within the society.

Thusly, women become important to the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. As we reflect on some of the earlier, and more recent stipulations, we can develop insight into the self-preservation and self-interest of women in the encouragement of peace and security in general, as more men commit atrocities in the world and more women & girls remain the civilian casualties of conflict.

However, this self-interest and self-preservation of women become the benefit of societies in the reduction of the numbers dead or murdered, or killed in combat, in war and the associated atrocities, where fewer rape victims exist and then the intergenerational contexts with the children of rape and the obliteration of families/family links.

But looking at the ways in which we can find the urgency stipulated on the cooperative approaches to peace and security, and in the necessity on the inclusion of women in these power structures or decision-making apparatus, another – and something I didn’t think about enough – was the defence and foreign affairs mechanism of the societies or the governments, hopefully, representative of the best collective will of the citizenry in the societies.

If we take the Canadian context, we can note the ways in which the Hon. Chrystia Freeland works in this domain for human rights cases. At the same time, we can, also, see this in a general context, whether with the current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or in the instance of the Official Opposition party leader in the Conservative Party of Canada with Andrew Scheer. Both will have stances informed by ideological orientations on the funding and aims of the defence and foreign affairs apportionments and outreach portions from Canadian society, respectively.

One of the important notes almost a quarter of a century ago is the importance of women in the important decision-making aspects of peace and security (and defence and foreign affairs) mechanisms within a society, which would mean the inclusion, deliberate policy oriented as such and moving the dial towards this, of women in important junctures and positions for the improved status of the world’s girls and women – as the majority of the victims of war, i.e., civilian victims of violent aggression, in immediate effects and derivatives – and, therefore, the status of the world’s populations most vulnerable to war. This may require a metaphorical breaking of the back on the knee of the intolerable, to most women, innate trait and prime weak spot of males: vanity and pride – intolerable as they tend to have more sense.

All levels of decision making for political and economic empowerment – and this form of empowerment for better representation politically and economically, presumably. What comes of this? The improved status of women and girls, reduction of war, increase in peace and security, and the different approach, apparently, to the defence and foreign affairs orientations of nation-states. Fewer wars means fewer civilians in sex trafficking, full stop.

–(Updated 2018-11-10, only use the updated listing, please) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 133 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/06/26

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

133. Violations of human rights in situations of armed conflict and military occupation are violations of the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law as embodied in international human rights instruments and in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Additional Protocols thereto. Gross human rights violations and policies of ethnic cleansing in war-torn and occupied areas continue to be carried out. These practices have created, inter alia, a mass flow of refugees and other displaced persons in need of international protection and internally displaced persons, the majority of whom are women, adolescent girls and children. Civilian victims, mostly women and children, often outnumber casualties among combatants. In addition, women often become caregivers for injured combatants and find themselves, as a result of conflict, unexpectedly cast as sole manager of household, sole parent, and caretaker of elderly relatives.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration, as noted in the prior casual commentary, is an extensive declaration to the rights and privileges of women and girls, and the responsibilities of the international community, national governments, organizations, and individual global citizens to them, and vice versa. None of this negates issues faced by the old, by majorities and minorities, by boys and men, and members of the LGBTI+ community, and so on.

With this 1995 emphasis on the sexual trafficking and prostitution in the world, we can see the problems not in the Super ZIPs or the modern bourgs, but in the more poor areas, rural areas, and so on. Of those poorer areas of the world, or those individuals in areas of the world in more desperate circumstances, the obvious ones can be seen in the areas of armed conflict and military occupation.

The places in which nation-states violate, often, international law and human rights norms. The bigger and more powerful the nation-state then, probably, the greater the propensity for the violation of human rights and the breach of international law. We can see this in the maxim of Thucydides of the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, to some great degree true.

If we’re looking at the context of prostitution and the trafficking of women, then the general context becomes the base violation of one’s own bodily autonomy and general wellbeing. We are not talking here of the consented selling one’s body, which remains a separate issue. Here, we speak of the ways in which the armed conflicts and military occupations around the world have been utilized in such a way as to render women’s bodies utilities in the acts of war – before, during, and even after.

This can even come in the cases of rape following or during war and then the women being left with a pregnancy and, thus, a child – assuming no miscarriage or abortifacient used – resulting from it. These become children of both rape and of war. Human rights have been created in a concrete sense and then abstracted. These abstractions relate to the real experiences of those who are dead and gone, and to the livelihoods and justice of those alive now

Looking at some of the documentation here, we can see the ways in which the “fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law” are violated in – extremely important – documents like the Geneva Conventions from 1949, in addition to the “Additional Protocols,” all of these provide a framework for the rights, laws, and situations in which sanctions can be placed on an aggressor nation. The one being violent as a state entity.

Some of the “gross human rights violations” stipulated here include ethnic cleansing in the areas that have been torn apart and ripped to shreds by war, or continue to be occupied by an aggressor nation-state. Gross because of the size of the violations. If we look at the ways in which women have been used in war, one of the main tools has been as pawns and producers, i.e., as tools for torture to get things or to be raped as such, or to produce children for the aggressor nation-state – in a historical sense.

What comes with this aggression in violation of the Geneva Conventions, for instance? We can see those whose homes have been demolished, lives have been disintegrated, and worlds ripped apart, even family members murdered in cold blood – lead to the PTSD stricken masses of refugees and displaced persons in the world today.

Those “in need of international protection and internally displaced persons, the majority of whom are women, adolescent girls and children.” These are the issues that many in the world – and mostly women and girls – are having to deal with on an ongoing basis. This is the sense of “pawns.” Their lives become cheaper in these contexts, where life already can have almost no value.

Often, those dead civilians will exceed the levels of the dead soldiers or combatants. Stated another way, those who in all likelihood had nothing to do with the crimes of aggression in violation of the Geneva Conventions in many places around the world have been the majority victims. That’s the true tragedy here, based levels of callous indifferent murder and exploitation of lives for, probably, national gain.

In those contexts, of those who may be surviving, those women and girls can then be subject to the true tragedy here tht comes from the fact that majority of the victims in these mass crimes is the civilian victim trafficking and then sexual exploitation in a variety of ways. Many times, we can see the exploitation in the forms of selling their bodies, basically, as meat and parts for the use of pleasure of another person – a complete stranger, likely – and rape of them.

Those who we could consider lucky, by the roll of the dice in a situation of war and post-conflict, would be those who become the only parent and caretaker of the young and the old left alive in the family.

Such is life, such is war, and are the contexts for those devasted by wars; which can lead to some disturbing reflections, what nation-states commit these violations as the aggressor nation?

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 132 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/05/19

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

132. The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 1949, and the Additional Protocols of 1977/24 provide that women shall especially be protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights, states that “violations of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict are violations of the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law”./25 All violations of this kind, including in particular murder, rape, including systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy require a particularly effective response. Gross and systematic violations and situations that constitute serious obstacles to the full enjoyment of human rights continue to occur in different parts of the world. Such violations and obstacles include, as well as torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or summary and arbitrary detention, all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, denial of economic, social and cultural rights and religious intolerance.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The reduction in the trafficking of women and the victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking is incredibly important, as these represent grave violations of human rights and international law.

The conventions and declarations within the international community remain important for the upholding of the apparently universal values set forth in the global organizations such as the United Nations for the implementation and maintenance of the rights standards seen as desirable to actuate within the real world rather than simply on paper.

The protocol stipulates protections for the honour of women – sounds almost like the Middle Ages but is not. It deals with serious and perennial issues around the degradation, humiliation, and mistreatment of women around the world and right into the present, especially as regards human rights and their violations.

This does not relate in a direct manner to the chivalric code or something like this. As noted in the paragraph, the protection of women in armed struggle becomes extremely important, as one of the most important considerations of the combatants throughout most or probably all the armies in the world is that they are men.

In this sense, the protection of women from sexual assault, trafficking, and prostitution becomes important in the consideration of women as full human beings and, often, civilians within the contexts of wars and other tragedies. Not only human rights violations, but the paragraph also cites precedence decades into the past about violations of international in these contexts.

As stated, these are the rape of women, the murder of women, sexual slavery of women, forced pregnancy of women, and so on, in “gross and systematic violations” of international law and of the human rights of women.

The full rights of humanity cannot be enjoyed without the recognition of the full rights of women in general. Women can be subjected to all forms of discrimination mentioned above based on a number of identifiable factors, whether on innate appearance or on the statuses found in governmental/official documentation.

Trafficking and prostitution are not to be taken lightly or to glossed over. In an international and a national context, women remain amongst the most vulnerable in the areas in the midst of war, and, even in the times of no war, can be seen as, in essence, public utilities for use and abuse by state authorities, whether the armies invading other countries or the patriarchal structures within a society (those in which we see direct attempts to silence critical analysis in the current moment, in those nation-states with some modicum of infrastructure and honest intelligentsia willing to direct attention to those structures and to enlighten, critique, and mobilize individuals within the populations, especially women, rather than see them kept willfully naive and open to the aforementioned perennial abuses.)

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 131 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/05/18

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

131. An environment that maintains world peace and promotes and protects human rights, democracy and the peaceful settlement of disputes, in accordance with the principles of non-threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political independence and of respect for sovereignty as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, is an important factor for the advancement of women. Peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men and development. Armed and other types of conflicts and terrorism and hostage-taking still persist in many parts of the world. Aggression, foreign occupation, ethnic and other types of conflicts are an ongoing reality affecting women and men in nearly every region. Gross and systematic violations and situations that constitute serious obstacles to the full enjoyment of human rights continue to occur in different parts of the world. Such violations and obstacles include, as well as torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, summary and arbitrary executions, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, all forms of racism and racial discrimination, foreign occupation and alien domination, xenophobia, poverty, hunger and other denials of economic, social and cultural rights, religious intolerance, terrorism, discrimination against women and lack of the rule of law. International humanitarian law, prohibiting attacks on civilian populations, as such, is at times systematically ignored and human rights are often violated in connection with situations of armed conflict, affecting the civilian population, especially women, children, the elderly and the disabled. Violations of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict are violations of the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. Massive violations of human rights, especially in the form of genocide, ethnic cleansing as a strategy of war and its consequences, and rape, including systematic rape of women in war situations, creating a mass exodus of refugees and displaced persons, are abhorrent practices that are strongly condemned and must be stopped immediately, while perpetrators of such crimes must be punished. Some of these situations of armed conflict have their origin in the conquest or colonialization of a country by another State and the perpetuation of that colonization through state and military repression.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 131 of the Beijing Declaration represents a significantly large and almost self-descriptive paragraph in it. If we’re looking at the main issues involving the reduction to elimination of the trafficking of women, the establishment of safe and functioning institutions within the society become important parts of it.

This covers a lot of ground and, therefore, will need much time to cover. But I will work to keep this more compact in proportion to the paragraph. Its emphasis on the protection and respect for human rights are integral to the peace desired by most, but its not within a naive context. There is an indication of the necessity of the “peaceful settlement of disputes” and keeping things within the framework of three principles focused on the advancement of women.

The first principle is the idea of non-threat. There should not be threats made in order to maintain the aforementioned peace desired by most. In addition, we can see the second principle in the “use of force against territorial integrity.” The annexation of land, the attempt to take land or step onto the territory militarily without permission, becomes part of the principle here.

Nobody likes to have tanks arbitrarily step onto their sovereign territory; they’re generally touchy about it. The third principle is the political independence of a territory or, typically in the modern period, the state and then the respect (implying a prior acknowledgment and acceptance) of the sovereignty of the state.

All important for the advancement (and empowerment) of women (and girls). Sex and gender equality becomes an impediment to peace and development. Indeed, for the most developed states or nations, in general, the highest ranking economically and in terms of social development come from the most gender equal.

There is an acknowledgement of some of the poor circumstances throughout the work around conflict, terrorism, hostages, aggression, foreign occupation, ethnic and other conflicts, and so on, affecting men and women around the world.

All part of the continuous violation of rights and privileges given by the international community and, ideally, implemented – more or less – equally. The violations of human rights sit at the core of the problem of human trafficking and the problems following from them.

The human rights documents are intended to provide a framework in which individual human beings can lead decent and reasonable lives in accordance within a global and interdependent community.

As stated, “Such violations and obstacles include, as well as torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, summary and arbitrary executions, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, all forms of racism and racial discrimination, foreign occupation and alien domination, xenophobia, poverty, hunger and other denials of economic, social and cultural rights, religious intolerance, terrorism, discrimination against women and lack of the rule of law.”

In general, each of these categories will be worse for women than for others. Some of our central questions come in the form of the protection of civilians and ordinary citizens from the impacts of war and conflict, and the problems of human trafficking.

International humanitarian law is violated in the use of attacks on civilian populations and in the trafficking of civilians, whether in wartime or not. If individual states see themselves as above the law, then these individuals violate the law if they act in such a manner reflecting this attitude in violation of standards and norms in the legal contexts.

It is nearly identical with larger entities entitled states, nation-states, Member States, nations, or countries. Individual countries, or sets of them in regions or around the world, can violate international law. The governing set of legal norms important for the functioning of the international community.

This does not, in any way, imply the non-violation at regular rates by the international community of these internationalk8y legal frameworks. In fact, as with individual citizens in the Member States of the United Nations violating national law, we can find the general violation of the rights and international law by states.

The can be an ugly place, where there can be human rights violations and international law breaches “systematically ignored” in the cases of “attacks on civilian populations.” Those who can be affected by injury or death by the violations of international law in the attacks on civilian targets cases.

Any attacks on civilians in the conditions of armed conflict are “are violations of the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law.” Prostitution and trafficking become issues laden with the areas of international law and human rights.

In the context of those wanting greater freedom of movement and autonomy for their lives, the economic dependence or the lack of economic independence creates an issue for the women who become entrapped, deliberately by the purveyors, in the contexts of trafficking and prostitution. There can be arguments for legal prostitution.

However, these can be mixed with the contexts of the consent to a job as a sex-worker, which differs from the context of a prostitute in this legal framework and rights structure with the emphasis on human rights and international law. It is a violation of human rights and a breach of international law to enforce women in situations of prostitution and trafficking. (Let alone violating what seem like simply basic notions of human decency.)

The paragraph goes on to bring in the “massive violations of human rights” found in cases including “genocide, ethnic cleansing” and “systematic rape of women.” These create a variety of issues, e.g., refugees and displaced persons, pregnancies from the rapes, and the deaths of those of civilians caught in the conflicts – targeted or unintentional killings.

Even in the cases of conquest or colonization of a sovereign state by another one, we come to the problems of refugees and displaced persons created as a result of these. In addition, we can see the outcomes for women in regards to vulnerability to further rights and international law violations, whether in trafficking or in prostitution.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

On Gender and Some Religious Interpretations

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/05/12

Md. Sazzadul Hoque is an exiled Bangladeshi secularist blogger, human rights activist, and atheist activist. His writing covers a wide range of issues, including religious superstition, critical thinking, feminism, gender equality, homosexuality, and female empowerment. He’s protested against blogger killings and past/present atrocities against Bangladeshi minorities by the dominant Muslim political establishment. He’s also written about government-sponsored abductions and the squashing of free speech; the systematic corruption in everyday life of Bangladeshis; and the denial of the pursuit of happiness.

In 2017, after receiving numerous threats, he was forced to leave Bangladesh out of safety concerns.

Looking at the general perspectives of women throughout the history of the world, one general item comes to the fore: typically, a lower status compared to the others. Unfortunately, this does not have to occur, but it does – and so should be discussed. It should be talked about within a particular discourse about a specific set of interpretations and the times in which these behaviours impact the lives of women.

Those behaviours and attitudes are unhealthy to a better self-identity as a man leading to better treatment to women and, potentially, better treatment of women by men in the cases of the abuse of women.

Hoque, on some Bangladeshi versions of Islam and the treatment of women, stated, “Definitely, they are treated just as the holy hateful book Quran suggest them to do. Very selective few women were wearing hijab 20 years ago now it is widespread…Injustice to women to certain degree less than the other parts of the Muslim world but it is there. Oppression, brutality, rape, is an omnipresent fear in the women population.”

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Bangladesh founded by Hoque will provide a counternarrative, according to him, of proper information, where some of the inappropriate contents of the holy texts can be used to harm women. Some may disagree with the approach of Hoque. However, it provides one means by which to empower individuals.

“They know how to recite but do not know the meaning. Council intent is to get this information accessible to this demography and show them an example how women are treated differently in other parts of the world or other country where Islam is not prevalent,” Hoque stated.

On some of the unfortunate cases of bigotry from some Islamically-based thinkers, Hoque talked about the prime minister and the political party. Indeed, one party leader entitled the Bangaldesh national party is seen as one by Hoque.

With several women leaders within Bangladesh, the leadership comes from heredity rather than qualification. The most prominent bigot according to Hoque is Ahmed Sharif.

Hoque concluded, “International attention and criticism of the government and its policies regardless who is in power. Bangladesh receives a lot of foreign remittance from Middle East and a lot of these vile trickles down from there to Bangladesh. Because of their influence lot of people and prominent Bangladeshi actor and actress are turning to hijab and religious extremism.”

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 130(e) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/04/16

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

130. By Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination, regional and international organizations, as appropriate:

e. Develop educational and training programmes and policies and consider enacting legislation aimed at preventing sex tourism and trafficking, giving special emphasis to the protection of young women and children.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Among the more pervasive and historically prevalent forms of violence against women is in the act of trafficking, the ways in which can be objectified in ultra-conservative or ultra-permissible societies reflect other facets of our societies.

The ways in which women can live, essentially, slave lives while trafficked. It comes from a larger qualitative analysis of the complete covering of women based on the demands of the patriarchal structures and culture, or become in many ways coerced into the opposite based on other cultures.

In either case, the pressures on women to perform and behave, and dress, in specific ways becomes immense, far more than the men. Regardless, the elimination of trafficking in women and the assistance of the victims of victims due to prostitution and trafficking is of utmost importance.

When we look into the actions rather than simply the talk around the international issue and human rights violation of trafficking and prostitution, the development of “educational and training programmes” becomes a central piece of the arsenal in combatting trafficking of girls and women.

The world of politics and policymaking cannot be ignored, as the governments require enforcement of the policies and the legislation if passed.

When targeted at sex tourism and trafficking, in particular, there should be protections, as mentioned in the previous articles around the ways women and girls can undergo trauma and will require protection, e.g., the aforementioned privacy in healthcare can be one means by which to do it.

At the same time, we come into the situation requiring the top-down and bottom-up problem-solving methodology known as activism. If we look at the grassroots movements, there needs to be a sacrifice, a willingness to work across ideological lines, and form coalitions targeting specific and concrete aspects of the problem: of sexual trafficking and prostitution.

This, among many international issues, is not a complicated issue. The facts remain in front of us; the right violations should remain apparent to most with a conscience, and the next question becomes the best means to reach the solutions.

In the grassroots activism, this can be the basis, and has been, for the influence on the public for pressuring those in power, or those with the political and policymaking power to implement change on the books with further pressure for enacting said changes.

From the top-down, of course, it can come from the government itself; probably, the more reliable alternative is the international and regional institutions and organizations, including the UN, to pressure the governments of a region or the world to recognize and acknowledge a problem and then begin to act on it.

Within this, there can be work for the rights of women and girls, and some boys and men, in these arenas. Even in my own country, trafficking and sex trafficking can be an issue. Something that creates horrible sub-cultures of abuse and slavery for the women and the girls who happen to be caught in them.

The cultural shrug, in some regards, may reflect the larger international need to recognize this massive problem inflicted on millions.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 130(d) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/04/15

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

130. By Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination, regional and international organizations, as appropriate:

d. Allocate resources to provide comprehensive programmes designed to heal and rehabilitate into society victims of trafficking, including through job training, legal assistance and confidential health care, and take measures to cooperate with non-governmental organizations to provide for the social, medical and psychological care of the victims of trafficking;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

For the Beijing Declaration and the work for the advancement of human rights of women, sex trafficking remains a particularly egregious case as a crime against women. Sexual trafficking is one of the most rapidly growing crimes in the world. Bustle provided a decent rundown of some basic statistics.

That is to say, enslavement and rape, and sexual assault, are continuing to rise as a collective set of human rights violations. It becomes an international form of entrapment. When looking at those who are trapped in this form of sexual slavery, we see 24.9 million are in it, are trapped in it, based on 2017 data from the International Labor Organization.

71% of the victims of this massive human rights violation are women and girls. Over half are sexually exploited, because this is the nature of the violation of the rights here. Of those trafficked, by implication, or placed into this forced ‘labour,’ the vast majority are women and girls

By implication, the traffickers in the non-vast majority, or the super-minority, are women who traffick other girls and women, and some boys and men. In accordance with stipulation (d), the ways in which to help the women and girls is to allocate “comprehensive programmes” in order to “heal and rehabilitate” those who have been subject to these crimes.

And the recommendations are specific and concrete action items. They reference job training, legal assistance, and confidential health care. In job training, a girl or a woman took out of the job market for a long time because of being forced into sex trafficking can become a serious issue.

Reintegration and development of job skills become a significant hurdle or barrier for these women who may have not too long ago been girls. Another recommendation is legal assistance. This is a common recommendation. For those women who do not have the experience or legal expertise, or know-how, this assistance can be indispensable for the entry into a new life.

Confidential health care is important too. As with the fight for the abortion rights of women and girls, a level of confidentiality can be important, as a qualitative analysis, for the dignity respect of women and girls.

For women coming out of sexual trafficking, for example, this level of dignity and respect can be part of the healing process as they may not have been given much for the period in which their fundamental human rights and dignity were trampled upon as sex slaves.

The cooperation at the levels of analysis provided before become increasingly relevant, too. For example, if we look at the measures for cooperation between the non-governmental organizations and the aforementioned “regional and international organizations,” then the medical, psychological, and social care can be given in a more robust manner to those most in need of it.

These are serious human rights violations and, therefore, deserve the seriousness and due action that they deserve, internationally.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 130(b)-(c) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/04/14

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

130. By Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination, regional and international organizations, as appropriate:

b. Take appropriate measures to address the root factors, including external factors, that encourage trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and other forms of commercialized sex, forced marriages and forced labour in order to eliminate trafficking in women, including by strengthening existing legislation with a view to providing better protection of the rights of women and girls and to punishing the perpetrators, through both criminal and civil measures;

c. Step up cooperation and concerted action by all relevant law enforcement authorities and institutions with a view to dismantling national, regional and international networks in trafficking;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

When we examine the ways in which discrimination expands into the world of sex and sexuality, the differences between the treatment of the sexes and the genders become more stark and clear. In fact, when we examine the ways that the dynamics seem to work in the world of sex trafficking, sex work, prostitution, and the like, women tend to become an exaggerated form as before.

Women not only as objects of pleasure, but also objectified in a number of ways – probably for the most part. The questions arise around the actions that can be taken by governments. In a modern context, one of the things that can be done is the work to provide some institutional support for women subject to prostitution and sex trafficking, or trafficking in general.

Noting, of course, some nuances exist around the margins of the discussion with legal and consented-to sex work with safety protocols in place. However, if we take a moment to reflect, we may note the general context of the violation of women’s rights as the central issue of concern for now.

When actionables are brought forward, the main points of contact here are the governments relative to the victims’ status, the transit and ultimate destination, and then the regional and international organizations capable of providing some support.

To take those adequate measures for dealing with the root factors as well as the external correlates of the problem of trafficking of girls and women, one is dealing, at once, with future derivatives and the current issues of the problem of trafficking when dealing with the root issues.

The emphases in the second paragraph are sex for pay and forced marriages. In dealing with the elimination of the trafficking of women, we are dealing with these concerns, internationally as well.

The rights of girls and women are violated globally when these trafficking issues are not dealt with. Part of this requires proportional punishment of perpetrators of the trafficking of girls and women. The scales emphasized are criminal/legal and civil measures.

In order to do this, there will need to be an international effort based on mutual trust and cooperation between the parties of the world, including the aforementioned governments & and the regional and international organizations focused on dealing with these issues.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Incredible Politeness of Being: Women in the Secular Communities

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/04/07

By Way of Digression: Tip-Offs and Tips of the Hat

I stumbled across a discussion between Susan Jacoby and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (Center for Inquiry, 2016; Jacoby, 2018; Goldstein, 2018; Jacobsen, 2016a; Center for Inquiry, 2012; Center for Inquiry, 2013).

Jacoby has spoken articulately on Robert Ingersoll; indeed, she has spoken in an articulate and informed manner on the need for women to change their image of themselves, the dumbing down of the public within the education system, the further dumbing down of the general populace through language simplification, on the importance of the clear meaning of facts, and the need for more political clout amongst secular people including non-religious women (Jacoby, 2012; Jacoby, 2018; FORA TV, 2015; JamesRandiFoundation, 2014; FFRF, 2017; BSGSpeakers, 2015; cunytv75, 2017; LibertyPen, 2012).

If you would kindly please indulge some time today, I would like to take a winding journey from within the context of the dialogue between Jacoby and Goldstein, where this sparked a modest international conversation with some women in the secular community to be explored in the second part of this article.

After one commentary and presentation on the insightful dialogue between the two of them, this article will present qualitative and limited, though international and in-depth, commentary from interviews with secular women. The interviews from several regions of the world, where the complete interviews will be in the first footnoted reference to each individual interviewee.

“Secular” in this context means “non-religious” in some traditional meanings. That is, it means the rejection of the traditional religions here, though colloquial in interpretation, which is a weakness in a metric of precision of the qualitative research.

As many inside and outside of the non-religious community remarked about some modern atheists, it is mostly comprised of young white men in the following and older white men in the leadership.

“White” here meaning “Caucasian with a European heritage.” “Young” here meaning 18-to-35-year-olds. Not good or bad but a factual observation, a larger grouping of young Caucasian men looking for easy answers in an increasingly complicated, uncertain, diversifying, technologically advanced, and changing world.

The branch of atheism known for an impolite tone, tenor, even vernacular, and a peculiar, obvious, and understandable lack of awareness about the ways in which this appears to others within the secular communities and the communities of the religious. It remains palpable and a marker of some of the newer brand of atheism, or some of, in short, the New Atheism.

New Atheism experienced ascendance in the 2000s with a denouement, in most regards, in the 2010s. Similar arguments to the older atheism, but more assertive, sometimes aggressive, and certainly impolite argumentation and presentation at times, for example, alcohol increases aggression and disinhibits drinkers. One revered New Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, may have been an alcoholic.

Other movements grounded in mythology and centred on Christian narratives and implicit apologetics, and the imagery and life of Christ as penultimate, leech off the membership and the talking points, at this point, of New Atheism.

Its implicit or tacit endorsement within the movement remains Western flavours of Christianity linked to right-wing libertarianism from the social and economic values to the messaging to the language to the imagery to the literature considered central.

It is mostly in Western Europe and North America while gathering mutual followings from some of the New Atheist movement membership or has been throughout the latter 2010s.

Something akin to some ideological components of the New Atheist movement with the emergence in the second decade of the 21^st century. It may be properly titled the New Mythologist movement with a secular emphasis on myths and a centrality, in sum, of what they deem or see as the essence of Western civilization. Not so strangely, all with implicit Christian narratives, imagery, apologetics, and so on.

For the most part, it is comprised of white men aged 18-to-35-years-old in Western Europe and North America. Those with what seems like a Christian family and cultural heritage, who, without doubt, find interest in, and to no surprise, affirm the absolute orientation of the movement in the notion of Western traditions with Christianity alone as supreme.

Again, not as a judgment but an observation, older white men from the same advanced industrial economies appear to comprise most of the leadership of the New Mythologist movement if the descriptor seems accurate or may be permitted at this time.

Some can be observed. The individuals decrying the insistence of marginal individuals and peoples in society for their human rights to be implemented while also lambasting the violation of their own free speech rights as an individual. The former seen as collectivists; the latter seen as individualists. Both, whether knowingly or not, arguing for human rights and equality.

Human rights exist as individual rights by their nature with the inclusion of various forms of collective rights at an emergent level, e.g., individual rights of a Palestinian child to clean water and the collective right to self-determination of the Palestinians.

The apparent or tacitly asserted separation between individualism, collectivism, and fundamental human rights, freedoms, and responsibilities remain illusory.

This misapprehension or misunderstanding becomes the basis of some modern movements focusing either on rights solely, responsibilities solely, or one or the other mostly, und so weiter.

For one example, an implicit assumption as “pro-free speech rights, for us, and anti-human rights, for others,” where, of course, freedom of expression remains a human right. Not often used in this language; however, this remains the implication of the points.

In fact, the movements across the spectrum take the public platforms to speak on the right to “free speech” when outside of an American context, which seems factually and, even tactically, wrong. As a technicality, the human right remains right to freedom of expression with speech as part of it.

Whereas, the focus of the individuals travelling the lecture, debate, and panel circuit is “free speech” within a “free speech crisis” framework, which exists as a misnomer in a way. This means a misnomer within an entire social justice movement narrowly focused on free speech rights alone.

“Social justice” defined as “human rights and equality,” where freedom of expression remains a human right in numerous national contexts and, certainly, in an international one. They should mean freedom of expression in most countries and in an international context; only freedom of speech within an American context.

As with the ill-conceived and oxymoronic “Postmodern Neo-Marxist” epithet or descriptor, there will need to be backtracking to clear their names and terminology, such is the nature of ideologues unable to see their ideology, e.g., “I knew the meaning all along of Postmodern Neo-Marxist. Here’s what I meant after formal criticism,” and having been shown to be flatly wrong and ignorant. If one knew, as a safe assumption, one would not use the term; one would use a different word or set of them.

Anyhow, Jacoby and Goldstein brought forward some internal dialogue for me. The discussion between two of the most prominent and respected secular women within the Western world centred on the polite conduct of some women around the subject of religion and in the company of the religious in contrast to some men.

Some in observation of the religious institutions raise legitimate and valid questions about the place of women within the faiths. Where are the women in the positions of influence?

Where are the leaders and prominent figures in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, in the Islamic communities around the world – Shia, Sunni, Ahmadiyya, and otherwise, the Freemasons (leaving aside the issue of their “no atheists” policy too – no specification as to the flavour of atheism), and so on?

We can see the emphasized imagery in the Virgin Mary and Mother Mary, as one example. This simply provides an example of the two attributes most valued in the women within the faith, which, in turn, determines, and has determined, their value within the community of the faithful with the virginity, or chastity, of the woman and the motherhood of the woman as their most important capacities.

Many secularists adhere to the Utilitarian ethic expounded and propounded on by John Stuart Mill, in chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, where he explained:

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge… In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.[1](Mill, 1863)

Insofar as I can discern, if we want to employ an “ideal perfection” of the Utilitarian ethic or the Golden Rule in its fullest or truest sense, then the questions about the women leadership and representation within the churches, the mosques, the synagogues, the temples, and other places of worship, and in the general organizational structures of the religious institutions should extend to home turf of the secular.

Is this desired? Or, more properly, what would be a preferable expression of this ideal perfection in secular communities around the world on this specific question? Indeed, the answers will differ, and have differed.

In fact, the answers may reflect different emphases on the tacit question for communities within the framework of leadership, governance, the Golden Rule, high ranking of some secular and humanistic values, low ranking of other of the self-same values, removal of other values, or addition of novel ones, and so on.

Of course, individuals harbour the right to freedom of belief and freedom of religion. If they deem fit for their lives, then they can worship as they wish without qualms, as a human right.

Which implies, the same for the secular in nations killing them for existing or punishing them for questioning tenets of the faith, or, in the utilization of freedom of expression, punished with the fundamentalist religious crime of blasphemy.

Thus, the emphasis on the equality of women becomes social and legal equality or a sociological question about the equitable structuring or ordering of secular society for the benefit of the non-religious and the religious, especially as the benefits for women in a variety of contexts will benefit the men.

Women’s rights, as human rights and inseparable from one another, become beneficial on, at minimum, three levels: women, men, and societies.

Back to the dialogue enquiry formed by Goldstein and Jacoby, in one framing of the questions, where are the equal proportion of women leaders in the non-religious or secular in general communities and movements, especially the modern ones given the disproportionate representation of men in the membership and the leadership?

Sincerely, I ask this in an inquiring tone and in the most inviting terms possible, as I observed this as a sensitive and charged topic within the community of the secular (and the religious): the subject matter of equality. A legitimate and valid question as to why this is the case. Many women exist in or out of the non-religious movement working to instantiate equality in a variety of ways or working with the non-religious movements on topics of import to the irreligious community.

Aside from the few known dead, some of the living, from personal archives, who fight for secularism, women’s rights, medical assistance in dying and dying with dignity, sex positivity, evidence-based sexual education curricula, secular evidence-based recovery programs, and the equality of the formal non-religious exist around the world – and who may adhere to a faith but remain tolerant, accepting, and progressive regarding the non-religious.[2]

One of the early points from Jacoby came from the women without religion, reluctant to describe themselves as such to their children, family, and community out of terror. Fearful their children might get bullied because parents and even a single parent, not both, and potentially the kids, do not harbor the preferred faith of the neighborhood and the community possibly finding out about their disbelief.

As many have experienced in work and school, whether someone who is known to you or, indeed, yourself, this happens to be the case from kindergarten through postsecondary school right into the workplace, whether positions of menial labor or public influence. The non-religious women’s politeness, in this domain, emerges in the form of protection.

The care and concern by women for the well-being of their children in educational institutions and within community social networks because of the simple potential for bias, bullying, and generalized prejudice against children with non-religious parents or, potentially, kids who identify as the formal non-religious, too.

Goldstein remarked on the next subject: women being more religious. Why do some women identify as more religious than men, especially in religious activities including attendance at places of worship (Powell, 2017)? Indeed, even in the university system, women, to the detriment of professional progress, work in service to others more (Flaherty, 2017).

In the United States, Christian women are more religious (Fahmy, 2018; Carter, 2018). Nature and nurture explanations exist for attempts to explain the gender gap in religiosity (Pew Research Center, 2016a). The World Economic Forum reported on the higher religiosity of women in contrast to men around the entire globe, not simply a single nation (2016).

Some researchers claim the gap remains “clear and consistent” (Zuckerman, 2014). Indeed, the global phenomena into the present reflect the total population of the religious and the religious leaders and supposed holy figures (Pew Research Center, 2016b).

In Canadian society, even, women of all ages do more chores, e.g., housework and childcare (Hawkins, 2017; Tejada, 2017). Women head most single-parent families (OECD, 2016). In Canadian society, about ¼ of citizens totally agree or somewhat agree “men have a certain natural superiority over women, and nothing can change this” (CROP – PANORAMA, n.d.).

According to Ipsos MORI, in a survey of 24 countries, the research discovered 9 out of 10 men and women believe in equal opportunities, ¾ women believe inequality existed within their nation, ¼ men and women fear to speak of equal rights, and 1/5 men and women believe in the inherent inferiority of women with the number rising to ½ in Russia and India (Ipsos MORI, 2017).

Some women may, or may not, cling to this hope that there could be a better world as dictated by religion, administered by males, and in their acceptance that their personal actions have the power to bring about this nirvana, they take far more punishment and harsh treatment for the better good of all.

Some women come to these areas of life with different epistemologies in a way. Although, Jacoby considers the phrase “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) vomit-worthy. The comment earned applause. She clarified on the probable meaning of SBNR: someone without religious practice/belief but wanting to be a good person. Of course, other less often mentioned religions exist in the rubric of SBNR.

Of course, even on issues seen as unanimous such as pro-choice concerns in the secular community, the landscape remains complex; secular women hold pro-life positions too (Fetters, 2019). There is more discussion, too. Jacques Berlinerblau, Director of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University, talked about the representation of women in secular communities, decently (Berlinerblau, 2017).

Some positive trends exist. Some secular women are rising in Pakistan (Su, 2018). There is Secularism is a Women’s Issue (Secularism is a Women’s Issue, 2019). Women remain more tolerant of homosexuality (Pew Research Center, 2019).

These manifest, potentially, as aspects of feminism in the modern period; however, Elsa Roberts, Co-President of Secular Women, notes feminism in the current period does not differ substantially from feminism 100 years ago (United Coalition of Reason, n.d.).

Some ongoing negatives include impacts on the internal decision-tree of dating (Saxton, 2017). Some find the notion of secular white women as partners beyond the pale or within the dark (Judge, 2015). Secular Jewish women may retain senses of modesty, thus their covering hair (Pockrass, n.d.).

Why? It can be a personal choice. Also, it could be based on public and social reproval seen easily in public opinions, from the frame of many women, with the public expression of denigration based on religious authority (TOI Staff, 2017).

Jacoby continued to note the – with Goldstein affirming non-verbally – ways in which SBNR statements and declarations amounted to some women placating – read: some women being polite – about what they believe, think, and feel about some sensitive topics including religion, and spiritual beliefs and practices.

She continued to add nuance to the argument with the admixture – rather intellectually sloppy of people – of the concept “soul” and the idea “consciousness” with one another. When they say, “Soul,” they mean, “Consciousness,” and vice versa. A consistent flippancy with the meaning of terms or asserted interpretations of words.

Regarding the politeness of women in religious communities, women, according to Jacoby, with these terms and others remain polite and in good social favor, some women, in a way, say, “I am more than this body and brain. I have something eternal. I am spiritual but not religious. I am a good person.” My translation and words, not hers.

Goldstein extended the thought. Maybe, there exist belief structures behind them. In other words, a social acceptance argument from Jacoby plus an epistemology and ontology about the world, and the woman’s relation to the universe, behind them – from Goldstein, too.

Goldstein noted the belief in existing as more than an animal. Jacoby clarified; something beyond the genes and environment to produce the brain and its neural patterns and electrochemical activity.[3]

In Biblical terminology, this becomes something higher than, on another plane from, the “birds of the air and beasts of the field.”

Although, Goldstein noted the outlier men who think in dualistic ways, including Rene Descartes – as seen in one long rationalistic argument in Meditations on First Philosophy, in Which Is Proved the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul (Skirry, n.d.; Watson, 2018).

Goldstein makes an intuitive leap in the middle of the conversation with the connotation of the term “spiritual” used by some women meaning something more than the physical brain. Then this may explain the lower levels of women entering the “hard sciences” compared to the soft sciences (Center for Inquiry, 2016).

The hard sciences defined by astronomy, geosciences, functional biology, and cellular biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and logic, and so on. The soft science shown in social sciences including psychology and sociology, and associated fields. It seems instructive to note the surpassing of boys and young men at most educational levels now. Something short in the historical record. Now, we seem to harbour boys and young men with a motivational ceiling, as girls and women existed with a deliberate and derivative glass ceiling.

That is, a connection exists between the lack of belief in the complete scientific picture and the fields some women feel more drawn towards in professional life. Jacoby, intriguingly, spoke to the fewer numbers of women in surgery, but more in family medicine, obstetrics, gynecology, and so on.

This led to the next interesting question around sex as a factor. Jacoby thinks, women, whether old or young, “think, feel, and expect” sex to be more than the physical alone (Ibid.). She argues this relates to religiosity.

Jacoby talked about the roles imposed on them, to be women as females, where this creates strain and difficulty in leaving the faith. Goldstein cited the work of Jonathan Haidt on the want for purity and immortality, where the body represents impurity and mortality.

To have a body, to be having sex, we begin to identify intimately with ourselves as bodies, which makes the want to control this extended into the desire to, socially and communally – and religiously, control women – women’s bodies.

Thinking of control as a non-conscious aspect of modern theology and religious outreach is not necessarily the case, it can be extremely cynical and dangerous, in terms of reaching out to the men in order to control the families and the children with the religious institutions controlling the fathers in these families as, for example, heads of the household.

Let’s take the example of Pastor Mark Driscoll from the collapsed Mars’ Hill Church praised by Pastor Rick Warren, before, in Seattle, Washington who, after the implosion of the Mars’ Hill Church moved to Arizona to re-constitute the Driscoll ministry with the Trinity Church, if you get the men, you get everything.

As stated by Pastor Driscoll:

…You got around Paul when he was a young guy. You got around John the Baptist or Elijah, these dudes seemed pretty rough to me. They do not look like church-boys wearing sweater vests singing love songs to Jesus. I mean, guys like David are well-known for their ability to slaughter other men. I kind of think these guys were dudes, heterosexual, win a fight, punch you in the nose, dudes. The problem in the church today is it is just a bunch of nice, soft, chick-i-fied church boys. 60% of Christians are chicks. The 40% who are dudes are still sort of chicks. It is just sad. When you walk in, it is seafoam green, and fuschia, and lemon yellow. And the whole architecture and the whole aesthetic is feminine. The preacher is kind of feminine. The music is kind of emotional and feminine. We look around and [are] going, “How come we aren’t innovative?” Because all of the innovative dudes are home watching football, or out making money, or climbing a mountain, or shooting a gun, or working on their truck. They are going to get married, make money, and make babies, build companies, buy real estate. They are going to make the culture of the future. If you get the young men, you win the war. You get everything. The families, the women, the children, money, the business, everything. If you do not get the men, you get nothing. (Brody Harper, 2007)

Again, it can be extremely cynical and a conscious tactic among the more hyper-masculine religious movements with an emphasis on hyper-masculine male authority, magical thinking, and mystery. The male as the head of the household with reflection in the church leadership as male-only or male-dominated and God as the Father, where this becomes the hierarchical metaphysics of the movements.

The magical thinking in the purported efficacy and reality of sin and healings, and prayer, and immaculate conception, and the divine inspiration of writers of supposedly holy books, where these form a particular psychological torture chamber for many followers through, as the late Christopher Hitchens astutely noted, being created man from dust, and woman from Adam’s rib, unfixably or “incurably” sick and then commanded to be well (NIV, 2018a; NIV, 2018b).[4]^,[5]

The mystery about the workings of the world – usually insinuated – rather than the best-known and widely accepted by relevant experts’ considerations on the operations of the world, instead focus on these narratives and mythological authority figures purported to have existed in the past.

Modern movements reflect this, potentially as a similar conscious and cynical tactic seen in the hyper-masculine religious movements – of which Pastor Driscoll amounts to a derivative form in the Evangelical Christian sect or tradition of Christianity.

It affects the level of belief in evolution, too. Although, we can see the positive trends in the evidence for belief in evolution, in its proper definition within the modern framework of evolutionary theory with the unguided national selection (Archer, 2018; Masci, 2019; Pew Research Center, 2016c; Miller et al, 2006; Pew Research Center, 2019; Evolution News, 2018; IFLScience, n.d.; Erasmus, 2019).

Even on morals, where this amounts to a large focus for the Evangelical community, religion does not provide protection against pornography viewing. It merely adds to moral incongruence (Dolan, 2017).

As well, a belief in hell motivates leaders and, therefore, followers. As noted by Pastor Rick Warren in conversation with Pastor John Piper, “love compels us” or love compels them to prevent individuals from entrance into the fiery doom pit of torture and terror found through hell (pastorsdotcom, 2011).

Francis Chan states, “We’re talking about real people here. We can’t just have these theological discussions about a doctrine, when we’re talking about people’s eternal destinies here” (David C Cook, 2011). Hell is real, to Chan and Warren.

The manly man culture continues: Francis Chan argues against more modern standards for men (Keith Thompson, 2017; venetable, 2011). It comes in the form of crying, which gets the pejorative “sissy.” The men are told to “man up.”

Chan explicitly mentions what others insinuate or indicate; that he represents God. This provides a basis for excusing much behavior in history and right into the present. Pastor Brian Tome remains part of the “man up” culture in American Christianity as well (Northview Church, 2014).

As one of the most prominent pastors now, Chris Hodges, notes, Christians live in a world rejecting everything they believe (Christianbook.com, 2017). However, as with others, he makes a call to action rather than a live-and-let-live stance.

This is a common story and stance. Religious people seeing others not living to their lifestyle and then working to impose on them but not vice versa. And they talk with one another; they issue public warnings about the culture, from their point of view, but in the language of “the Enemy” (BRMinistries, 2018).

That is, this amounts to a battle between good and evil, the enemy around the corner working to thwart God’s Divine Plan (always 1.0, unchanged). His concerns are worship songs are not about God. Also, the belief in one thing not being possible in the Bible extending to others in the Biblical narratives.

As he further explains how Christians are not interested in their own culture as far as they are interested in the control of the whole culture, especially as the culture “shifts”: Hodges calls this the “Daniel Dilemma” (Crank Ministries, 2017).

Even if prominent pastors, such as Andy Stanley, come out in new interpretations around homosexuality, some Christian talk and radio will call him out, often speaking about the “Homosexual Agenda” (TM) (AFRTALK, 2014).

Others work within the context of a perspective of a “homosexual lifestyle” rather than homosexuals, which amounts to the denial of an individual’s self and replacement, based on theological and not scientific views, with the affirmation of an individual’s behaviour without the linkage with gay or lesbian person’s self as a homosexual (Brandon Branson, 2015).

There is a reason to never hear of a straight lifestyle, as this remains assumed as part of some Christian fundamentalist unscientific and mistaken belief.

Homosexuality, and gay marriage, become core social issues considered of the highest import within the community (Premier On Demand, 2013; Christ Community Chapel, 2015; Matt Robinson, 2014; DrOakley1689, 2013; Steve Yamaguchi, 2009; Seedbed, 2012; The Veritas Forum, 2011; Seedbed, 2017; Reveal, 2013; Desiring God, 2015; GlobalVisionBC, 2015).

Tony Campolo remains a marginal improvement, but noteworthy (Premier Christianity, 2016). Others see intellectual – or “intellect” – predators on campus coming to de-convert the faithful on university campuses (Clint Loveness, 2013). Pastor Robert Morris is bold and blunt in the assertion no atheists exist; or if they do, they hold a foolish position (Taylor Eckstrom, 2015).

Dr. Andy Bannister and others posit how best to share their faith with atheist friends on postsecondary institution campuses (RZIM Canada, 2012). Some argue for “witchcraft” as a problem and claim the Holy Spirit speaks to them, “Tell the Church, so far, Trump has been telling with Ahab, but Jezebel is fixin’ to step out from the shadows” (LocalRadioFrance, 2018).

A man who claims to be a prophet, in fact, who then went on to speak in tongues, to the perspective of the believers, or enacted glossolalia, to the view of the skeptics (Ibid.).

So it goes, these provide the basis of the issues talked about within some of the Christian community, which, in the end analysis, have real social, legal, and other impacts on the lives of the secular and others; same for secular women and the dialogues had within community exported to the general culture, explicitly or implicitly.

Continuing from the dialogue between Jacoby and Goldstein, Goldstein spoke to the tradition in family heritage with the Jewish tradition, where the men read Talmud and the women were modestly dressed and in the home. Jacoby spoke to many cultures where modesty is the only means by which women can protect their livelihoods.

Some cases involve honor cultures. In that, if the woman is raped, it is the woman’s fault; many times, it becomes a family dishonoring, extending Jacoby’s thoughts. Although, Jacoby knows religious feminists. She feels sorry for them.

As many have heard, and Jacoby relates, “That is not the real Islam.” An argument for some Platonic abstract notion of a perfect version of the religion applicable to any extant religion (RationalWiki, 2018).

Then Jacoby makes a central discovery or point within the dialogue with Goldstein. The degree to which moderated forms of religious faiths – e.g., Reformed Judaism, Unitarianism, Liberal Catholicism, and so on – are not dangerous to women is the degree to which they have been altered and reformed through the secular ideas coming from the outside into them, and not vice versa.

Goldstein continued the line of reasoning with the argument of this coming from the Enlightenment and continuing right into the present with, for example, few or no people truly wanting to stone others, based on purportedly holy scripture, or to keep slaves.

She continued to argue the secular values and secular reasons coming forward and then forcing religion to modernize, liberalize, and become progressive in orientation – to adapt to the modern industrialized world’s perspectives on the nature of the universe and human beings in relation to it. Our genomes remain, for the most part, the same.

Our environment changed drastically since the Industrial Revolution right into the present with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as observed in anthropogenic climate change or human-induced global warming.

As you know, our views come with deep time to the Earth and the universe, gradual development of human beings from prior species, and a decentering of both the Earth in the Solar System and the Solar System in the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Milky Way Galaxy in the cosmos, and then, even in the modern period of asserted enlightenment, things become even weirder and, in many respects, uncertain.

The reforms happen, apparently often, outside and then innervate the operations of the faiths for updates and changes. Secularism buffers fundamentalism. Jacoby notes the reforms took place in 19th century Protestantism within the United States and happened in dialogues, discussions, and debates, mostly, with men.

It amounted to a wide-ranging debate of men based on the advances of Charles Darwin with the Theory of Natural Selection posited in the 1859 text titled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Desmond, 2018).

By the way, if you get the chance, the strong form of the Watchmaker Argument/Analogy in the 19th century emerged from William Paley’s 1802 text entitled Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018a).

It provides one of the older sources to see the robust effort taken for the construction of a text and reason to believe in God. In particular, the text exists within a reasonable span of time, and had some influence, relative to the publication of Darwin’s most know publication, On the Origin of Species.

Also, not a trivial anchor point in the history of Western thought and dialogue, in an interview with Professor Francisco Ayala several years ago, he mentioned the 1802 book as one source of analogy-based-argument for God (Jacobsen, 2014).[6]

Jacoby seems correct. The 19th century remains a vigorous era of debate and subsequent reform. “Appearances of Nature” seems like the giveaway: something seems one way by observation and, therefore, implies not only a singular Deity but also the aspects or traits of its character.

The argument for centuries comes from peculiar perspectives on the nature of the world inculcated over generations and formed within the framework of the Abrahamic religion and theology.

Goldstein makes another plausible point about the 19th-century debates. Women were there. However, their voices were ignored. They may not have been recorded at all. Jacoby retorted with Elizabeth Cady Stanton (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018b).

Jacoby explained how Stanton was published while writing nothing about evolution. Same with Matilda Joslyn Gage (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018c). Gage wrote, was published, and said nothing about evolution.

Goldstein stated some women wrote about evolution in the 19th century without a specific statement as to the individuals who wrote and were published as women in this regard. Nonetheless, she fell back on the original position: women of the 19th century had more trouble getting published than the men.

This phenomenon may explain why women of the period had to publish under pseudonymous identities – male personas. In short, women published less, had more trouble publishing, published under pseudonyms often if published, and almost never on evolution.

To Jacoby, in the freethought literature of the time who got published, their attitudes and interests can be inferred through their written work. She also remarked on the greater interest in contraception, in an outspoken way, of Robert Ingersoll compared to Stanton.

Goldstein brought Margaret Fuller into the discussion. Fuller was a progressive-minded woman. However, when women come out, they undergo mockery and ridicule and dismissal, far more often compared to men. This may amount to another form of social control to make the women feel less secure in their thinking, in their actions, in their right to make statements of thought.

Jacoby then argued more atheist women exist today than indicated by the current statistics. Interjecting some personal research here, the statistics – some old and some new – on the belief in supernatural and non-scientific phenomena differ by nation.

For example, the belief in haunted houses, witches, astrology, purported communication with the dead, extraterrestrial visitations, and so on, are different depending on the nation in question (Lyons, 2005).

Furthermore, this differs via sex or gender. Someone’s identified sex associates with a disparity in the number of believers and disbelievers in supernatural and paranormal phenomena. (If interested, please see the second image in the Lyon article.)

Back to the dialogue, Goldstein remarked on being in conversation with a believer who “laid it all out on the line,” where she felt protective and thought, “Your poor person. I want to protect you” (Center for Inquiry, 2016).

Jacoby quipped, while laughing, nothing could be said to smash their beliefs anyway. She relayed a professional experience of a debate about the existence of God, where the debate is ridiculous and would not change anyone’s belief about the existence of a Theity or even a Deity.

Goldstein disagreed and considered debates useful, especially in potentially turning the marginal people – the fence-sitters. She raised the question about seeing polls taken before and after. The views when attendees entered and then when they left the debate.

This would most likely depend on the charisma of the speakers, the influence of their delivery of message and how they played the audience. How lasting would it be? Do people really keep the same intention of thought going or is it fluid and subject to constant revision?

As some or many of you know, the Intelligence Squared debates do this. It does function as an indicator of the willingness of a decent-sized audience to change its mind in real-time based on the back-and-forth of a debate format.

Jacoby recalled a personal story in 2004 after Freethinkers was published at the time. She was giving a lecture at a “historically Lutheran college,” Augustana College. It is a half-Catholic student population now. Parents send the kids there to protect them from secular education. However, they receive a secular education with a wide range of exposure to a variety of academic subject matter.

Jacoby encountered a student and began a conversation. The topic was a separation of church and state. The young man, a first-year student, wanted to be a minister and then switched into wanting to be a teacher.

He said, “I understand what you’re saying. That this is necessary in a democratic society. But how can I believe that that should be allowed when I know I have the truth?” (Ibid.) This amounted to someone with a firm upbringing in faith and not an “idiot,” according to Jacoby (Ibid.).

Jacoby recommended a few books to him. A young man only recently in life, at the time, being exposed to a series of latest ideas. The next query from the audience was about the subject of room for emotionalism in religion and secularism.

She interpreted the implicit idea in the question was that some women are more emotional. Emotional intelligence – or, more properly, emotional sensitivity – to a degree, is only now being recognized as a valued commodity.

Goldstein remarked on the possible veracity in interpreted implicit assumption about women’s more expressive and varied emotional states. However, she firmly disagreed with the premise of the question about religion providing a basis for more emotionalism than secularism or more expression of emotion compared to secularism.

Goldstein noted secular art, dance, music, and poetry in the world. Truly, if you miss the areas of culture – most – with non-religious expressions of the self and the community, and the ‘human spirit,’ then one may be aesthetically impaired, blind and unable to see the beauty of the world.

These forms of expressing emotion and more. Jacoby agreed with Goldstein. However, she affirmed the perception of secularists among many of the religious. The emotionless nature of the secularists. Jacoby even remarked on receiving many letters with the opinion, after writing a piece about Newtown, of the president only being able to comfort people via religion (Jacoby, 2013).

Jacoby argued another way as well. The non-religious parent who had a child die. The idea that parents could have comfort in human empathy only through Jesus Christ seems absurd to Jacoby, who thinks no one since Ingersoll in modern society among the prominent atheists conveyed the warmth and human passion seen in Ingersoll.

It is normal human sentiments, which means freethought as a positive ideal. Because women are not slaves to the home but free, as having “intellectual freedom and reason,” is the basis for relationships of “equality and sharing” rather than a master and slave dynamic (Center for Inquiry, 2016).

Goldstein took this as a reflection point, and pivot, into the feeling as if one matters. She recalled coming out as an atheist for the first time. She received letters asking about the motivation for getting out of the bed in the morning.

She explained how the idea never occurred to her because she had too much on the day’s plate. Goldstein felt taken aback by the query. Jacoby loved the similar comment, stated on American radio stations often as a trite trope and convenient negative insinuation, on not believing in God leading to committing murder.

That is, the assertion of religion as a bulwark against murderous tendencies and motivations and eventual actions. Of course, many with Christian upbringings or theological training may recount images in the Bible of horrific bloodletting, rapacious murdering and raping, and even the genocide of most animals and people on the planet at once.

Goldstein joked with a hypothetical witty repartee or raillery in response to needing God to prevent murder. Goldstein said, “Or at least, they could ask, ‘Why aren’t you spending all of your time in an orgy?’ That, at least, I can imagine.” Her comedy received an instant big laugh from the Center for Inquiry audience. An image of the Greco-Roman bacchanalia come to mind for me.

She continued the motivation behind the questioning about mattering in the world. People feel as if they do not matter in the world. They live lonely and meaningless lives, but they matter to the God of the Bible, of the universe, or otherwise. Goldstein considers this a possibility for the fundamental basis for the motivations of the questions about meaning in life without God.

Goldstein explained:

Obviously, I am going to pursue my life. I am going to pursue it with everything I have. But that, I get, and you get, and many of us who have the courage of living secular lives, get, a lot of reassurance that we matter, that we are doing work that matters. That we have relationships that matter. This is why I do feel the secular movement demands that we also address issues of social justice. That when there is this inequity among us. You know, some of us feeling, not giving it a moment thought; of course, we live lives that matter, and so many people not and turning to religion to fill that vacuum. I think that is a lot of the force for of the emotional support for religion. It demands social justice. (Center for Inquiry, 2016)

Jacoby posed the question from the audience about part of the problem for some women in atheist and humanist communities is the men relying on the religious involvement of women for a prominent social benefit. She continued the insight of the question. The reliance of some women to pass on the religion.

She relayed her personal experience with her brother. Jacoby’s brother sent his children to Catholic instruction, baptism, and so on. Jacoby could not be godparent as a non-Catholic. She asked about the inclusion of the kids in religious instruction and communal activities despite his (Jacoby’s brother) being an atheist.

He responded, “I didn’t feel that they should grow up without religion” (Ibid.). Jacoby remarked how her brother relied on his wife – “who I don’t think is any more religious than he is” – to decide for this (Ibid.). She then linked this to the earlier statements from some men in correspondence, “Women are stupider than men” (Ibid.).

Jacoby asked about what could be more stupid than thinking to bring kids up in something not believed by you. Then Jacoby’s brother caused surprise when his last wishes, after death, were for having no priest and to be cremated. The children did not know what their father thought about these religious issues.

The next question posed about women being potentially more masochistic and self-sacrificing. Both Jacoby and Goldstein did not like the question. However, Goldstein remarked on the possible truth of the claim.

Goldstein then posed other questions, “Why do women seem cross-culturally to be more religious than men, even though religion is often not good for them? Why are they politer when they are no longer believers? The other question is, ‘Why are they less likely to join freethinking, atheist, secular organizations?’”

Jacoby then followed with another question leaving the previous one open. The query posited the privilege to who becomes an atheist, especially in public, where the expectation imposed on women creates some dependency; whereas, for the men, there exists the good reason to assume, culturally speaking, for independence of them, simply for being males.

Jacoby commented on the “Village Atheist” in the folk, frontier stories (Ibid.). Goldstein noted the real lawlessness of the men “carousing, having a hell-of-a-good-time” (Ibid.).

The women, as they travelled from the East to the West, carried the religion and civilization with them. Jacoby remarked on the reason for social control by men because the men wanted access to these women. Goldstein concurred.

Jacoby concluded, “I want to say one thing. I was itching to say this morning when everyone was commenting on Male Genital Mutilation (MGM), which I call circumcision. I hate to disagree with Katha Pollitt, who, I admire enormously, but I don’t think women get a vote here” (Ibid.).

Evaluative Stories: Narratives and Valuations

Secular women retain the same rights and responsibilities as others, including freedom of speech or freedom of expression dependent on the bounded geography for, at least, one of the terms there.

Here, in Canadian society, we have Article 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with the phrase “freedom of expression.” In Article 10 of the United Kingdom Human Rights Act, we have “freedom of expression.”

In Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is “freedom of expression.” In the European Convention on Human Rights as well, it becomes Article 10 for “freedom of expression,” und so weiter.

Individuals may best direct efforts internal to the nation-state in which they inhabit to optimize efforts for human rights and equality, whether from a conservation of culture or a progression of civilization perspective. One should work within the culture, simply as a pragmatic or practical matter.

To gripe about crimes millennia ago or in another country without the clear purpose of the empowerment of the national populace, it can seem intrusive and not effective – even nothing other than grandstanding.

No value appears absolute by necessity, especially with the existence of numerous values competing with others in some instances. At the same time, a value in truth and logical consistency may remain two absolutes necessary for a foundational conversation of solutions and in conversation.

Freedom of expression with qualifications in Canada. Free speech via the First Amendment in the United States. Article 2(b) seems clear in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for Canada. The First Amendment seems clear in the United States Constitution. Article 19 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents the international framework. In America, more freedom of speech has been won.

No place is at an obligation to host someone. I heard an analogy of a radio, probably attributable to George Carlin. If a station is on, and if you do not like the music, and if it is in this sense non-coercive, then turn the dial to another station or turn the radio off.

It is like the UN in a way. Member States live and let live but with the freedoms for nontheists and the freedom of theists to believe and such, in theory.

For violations of those rights, the courts can help. But it will never be perfect. It can be approximated, the ideals. But the ideals are set, each vying for priority but each balancing one with the other past rhetoric.

It may be boiling down to values differences. One likes free speech more. Another likes social justice more. Although, if social justice gets defined as human rights and equality, and if the argument for freedom of expression is a human right and the equal protection of it for every Canadian citizen, then this would imply different streams of social justice at work in societies now. A simple emphasizing of different rights more. We may be witnessing a widespread misunderstanding.

Perhaps, a reasonable preliminary middle position with belief in the same right in this country – freedom of expression, or freedom of speech if American – and then the balance with other rights.

Something kin to religious, belief, and conscience objections to reproductive rights for women and the abortion rights for women – non-absolute, contingent upon one another, where this means not being left apart from the consequences of one’s expression or speech, not being automatically deserving of a platform or having a platform kept, and if something is not particularly interesting as a topic simply don’t go to the talk.

Freedom of expression and freedom of speech become important for these women in secular communities considerations. Within the overarching framework or structure provided within the dialogue between Jacoby and Goldstein, I reflected on the commentary and began to embark on the collection of some preliminary perspectives of women in secular communities in a position to make overview comments on the experiences and observations within the aforementioned community set.

What follows amounts to a representation of some of the narratives of secular women from different regions of the world working within different domains of the secular communities, if one looks at some of the narration on the religious communities around the world, then the stereotyping of a complete set of members self-identifying as a participant and believer of the faith due to bad leadership or immoral acts of individuals seems unfair to some extent.

Similarly, this analysis, by logical implication, should apply to the world of the secular. Some of these experiences expressed in the written word through interviews, commentary on figures and readings, and narratives of difficulties in lack of representation can be shared within religious communities by women, where this raises, as noted, the questions about secular women not only in a historical context of the intelligentsia of the West or the prominent American intellectuals, including Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Susan Jacoby.

The interviews were conducted through email, mostly, with a relatively standardized question set. The weaknesses of the research are the email basis for the interviews, the wordiness of the questions, the qualitative nature of the research, the limitations in the sample size, the asymmetry in places of the world represented, and the self-selection of participants to take part in the research.

Nonetheless, this can give glimpses into the community. The strengths will depend on the reader interpretation of the honest reports provided on a serious subject matter.

In a rational analysis, and without the intrusion of pejoratives or epithets in place of rational thought, the reportage here provides some modicum of windows into the experience of some women in secular communities from multiple regions and nations of the world.

The interviews, henceforth, will continue in a linear order with a description of experiences. One interviewee was the American Marissa Alexa Lennex-McCool, who is a Podcast Host of “The Inciting Incident Podcast” and “The Cis Are Getting Out of Hand” and the Co-Founder of The Trans Podcaster Visibility Initiative.[7]

When I asked about the expression of economic, political, and social concerns of women, McCool spoke to how many women feel tired of being talked over, not represented, being told they’re too emotional or to enter the kitchen and raise the children alone, or to serve the husband, even simple condescension.

McCool stated, “While many women may not agree with each other, a good percentage of them are sick of having things decided for them without a say, especially when men make decisions about women’s bodies without the faintest idea of what it’s like.”

Another set of questions asked about economic, political, and social domains in the secular communities. The first response from McCool centred on the increased awareness of a social pathology seen in sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace in addition to the mechanisms for reportage on sexual violence.

“Even with people being temporarily inconvenienced by allegations, they’re often free to come back whenever they want with few, if any, repercussions for their actions,” McCool said, “The political conditions see evangelicals returning to power and asserting their theocratic views over others under the guise of religious liberty, among many others. Making sure women’s healthcare is dictated by their specific religious beliefs and everything else puts an undue burden on them, not to mention the queer, trans, and women of color who are disproportionately affected by the religious right’s influence on the government.”

The #MeToo hashtag and Me Too movement is diverse, expands women and men, not women alone with a rejection of victimized men, and present a unique opportunity to express openly about the problem of sexual violence as a widespread social pathology needing opening discussion, dialogue, and ears on it.

As you will see in the presentation of the interviews in this second section of the article, the presentation represents the #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, and so on, sub-movements within the general work of Me Too started humbly by Tarana Burke.

On the main concerns of North American non-religious or secular women, McCool stated, “That this behavior has consequences, that it’s not just a temporary hiatus or vacation from the spotlight before they try to return like nothing happened. But, and more importantly, that it isn’t just celebrities who face any consequences for these allegations.”

McCool expressed the opinion that the individuals who may be worse are the “perpetual defenders” of the men credibly claimed to have sexually assaulted, who stand in defiance of the presented evidence and the allegations – “no matter how much evidence or credible allegations.” She notes how this can create a sense in many women or non-men within the secular community to remain silent or to leave it.

One of the reasons for leaving religion is to remove this mindset from their lives, according to McCool; however, within the community of the secular, many non-men or women continue to find this behaviour played out, which remains reflective of the mindset.

In the presentation of the overall conversation of secular values on the international scene, McCool remarked on how she, at the time, recently, spoke at a convention with eight women speakers, or a line-up comprised completely of women. The reason for the panel of women arose from the previous year being all men.

“Other voices in the community are often attacked, harassed, silenced, or bullied out of the movement, and when platforms are often given preferential treatment to white men, it can make it discouraging,” McCool said, “Marginalized communities need to be given the opportunity to speak, and given the chance to speak on more than just the experience of being marginalized.”

She continued to state women of color will have more authority to speak on race issues. In that, someone from a relevant and appropriate background can speak more properly and accurately from experience on the backdrop while, also, acknowledging the ways in which members of a specific demographic does not represent some homogeneous blob known as the demographic, the abstract.

McCool continued to mention queer and trans on queer and trans issues. The frustration in the inability to speak or the pigeonholing within an identity by the wider community or set of communities. She remarked on three degrees from Ivy League schools earned by here: “None of those three are degrees in Being Trans, Being Queer, Being a Woman, etc.”

Within this framework of issues or concerns for women in the non-religious or the secular communities, there may become a personal adaptation to the rejection by the wider community, whether inclusion in speaking engagements or the ability to speak more openly about experience within specific communities: the adaptation of secular women speaking to secular women more frankly about experiences and not to secular men.

McCool described, “I belong to a women’s-only Facebook group, because often the regular ones are intolerable. Women are harassed and spoken down to, queer and trans women are bullied, mocked, doxxed, and virtually treated like the religious communities treat them, but science and logic are the words of defense rather than God and Jesus. Often, we discuss things in those places because we are sick of being ignored, spoken over, or having to stop every six seconds and educate someone who might just be JAQing off (Just Asking Questions.) Often that comes from someone not actually interested in learning, but just disrupting, and it is hard to tell the difference. We don’t owe anyone an education.”

The final question within the interviews tended to focus on the actionables. Once the opinions and recollections and summarizations of experiences and observations have been presented, one next possible logical line of questioning revolves around recommendations or suggestions to the secular communities: for equality, things to be done.

This can range from women, people of color, individuals from a wider range of nations within the global non-religious or secular community, and in a variety of domains including community, literature, media, and the like. McCool opened with simply allowing others than whites and men the chance to have a platform, provide personal experience, relay personal views, and so on.

“People who aren’t given a certain level of privilege have perspectives, experience, and opinions that weren’t formed in a place that men, especially white men, can understand and empathize with. The experience is not the same for everyone, and we need to stop pretending the perspective of a white man is universal or speaks for everyone. Men can turn down opportunities to speak if others aren’t being represented, and some have made it a practice to do so,” McCool stated.

In that, with the most power within the community, the men may have more power to influence the trajectory of the community or to alter the conversations within the secular community for the betterment of secular women of color, queer and trans people, and others desiring individuals who reflect them and their backgrounds to represent them, who look like them, have their background, and so on, too.

“The white men of the movement have the power to change that by advocating for others, and not just checking off a list (see: have the person of color talk about being a person of color, a trans person talk about being trans, etc.) The secular movement is as diverse and complicated as the population itself; the experience of being an atheist goes beyond just white men speaking about it,” McCool concluded.

Another interviewee was the Founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa Thomas, who is American.[8] Black Nonbelievers, Inc. which may be the large African-American atheist and nonbeliever organization in the United States. Mandisa remarked on women being more assertive through the creation of organizations relevant to specific issues. For example, the organizing and work done around protests, marches, online media campaigns perhaps, and so on.

Mandisa remarked on how women have begun to get “more involved in the political process by voting and running for office. This is important because while being a woman doesn’t necessarily equal effective change, it does show that women are more likely to consider factors that will benefit the masses as opposed to special interests, especially when working together.”

To Thomas, the main concerns for women in America are subjection to harassment, complete objectification by men, lack of equal consideration in the creation of policies impacting their lives or in the workplace, and the access to contraceptives or birth control. When these related to the Me Too movement, Thomas had more to explain about it.

“The main concern IMO is the entitlement that men feel to say and do whatever they want without consequences, which has been the case for many years. Such entitlement and power have kept women silent and enduring harsh treatment, and now that more are speaking up, there’s a concern that there will be more backlash by men AND other women,” Thomas stated.

Thomas reflected on the domination of the conversations around the world by secular men, noting the historical production of this domination. The fact of men owning conversations with men assumed as the ultimate authority on secular matters.

Where this should be changed, according to Thomas, is looking at the record of what has worked and what has not, this historical perspective could gift a basis for change or reform.

On the question about things secular or non-religious women discuss with one another and men, Thomas explained, “Nonreligious women are definitely discussing their concerns with the men. Discussing and debating. The responses range from many men being supportive and changing their actions, to many others becoming combative and remaining obstinate. But they are hearing our concerns for sure.”

The inclusion of secular women in the conversations came with a singular answer from Thomas: “first and foremost – LISTEN.” The point of open ears plus an attentive to meaning mind. An act of listening to understand without dismissiveness, reactionary acts, connected with actions including more secular women in the discussions, in the events policymaking, and so on.

Thomas concluded, “…and it should be consistent. Not one-time initiatives, or when issues fade from the spotlight. Support the organizations that are working on these efforts, financially and with resources. And work with them too. That is where the difference is made, and where it counts.”

A further interviewee was Yasmine Mohammed, a Canadian author and the Founder of Free Hearts, Free Minds.[9] Mohammed spoke on the higher assertiveness of women in the present moment. Secular women pushing for their rights and further equality in more domains of life.

“It is important because there seems to be this prevailing fallacy that the work of feminism is done-that we have achieved equality. Unfortunately, this is an untrue statement. To varying degrees, there is still a lot more work to be done,” Mohammed, “In the West, women have fought and succeeded in achieving equality in many ways, but social changes do not occur at the flip of a switch. Just like in the fight against racism, winning civil rights battles did not ensure that there is no longer racism. Of course, there is.”

Mohammed observes the fights as having been fought and won, and admirably so, in fact; furthermore, she sees large strides made in Western societies on the advancement of rights and equality. She views some other societies in the Middle East and North Africa as never having made the strides seen in some Western societies.

“Women in Saudi Arabia have recently won limited permission to drive cars (they still need their male guardians’ permission to obtain the license, purchase a car, or even leave the house). It is important for people to understand that not only is the battle not over, in some places the battle has not even begun,” Mohammed stated.

For the economic, political, and social conditions of women, Mohammed spoke about Canadian women and North American women in general with the fight for equality with mal counterparts. In that, as a female or as a woman, she observes the attacks as “far more and far more” vicious.

Mohammed said, “A specific example would be when I was a co-host on Secular Jihadists podcast. In that podcast, one of my male peers made a controversial statement ‘Islam is worse than Nazism.’ My other male peered agreed and added ‘I think all religions are worse than Nazism.’ Although I was present, and agreed with my co-hosts, I said nothing. However, even though I never said a word, the resounding backlash on social media was entirely in my direction. It is easier for men and women to attack a woman for her views than it is to attack a man. We are still perceived as weaker – even by our non-religious community which purports to know better.”

She – Mohammed – began to comment on the economic aspect of the question. She noted the lack of an economic offering in terms of speaking engagements. Other times, no financial incentive or reward existed for speeches by Mohammed. She relayed a delayed set of talks by two other female speakers and herself. She felt summarily ignored and disrespected – in addition to the other two females – that this would not happen to a male, in the opinion of Mohammed.

On the Me Too movement, Mohammed stated, “I think all women, religious or not, have the same concerns. We just want to be regarded as equal human beings. We would love for people to treat men and women with equal respect.”

When the subject or topic matter of men dominating the global secular communities’ conversation, Mohammed started with an affirmation of the fact. By the historical record, too, men could become and remain atheists more easily than women, as atheism exists with the reputation of confrontation and controversy as its mode of being.

“Women are generally expected to be the caregivers and the social/community support of a religious group aids in family cohesion. There are many reasons why men far outnumber women in our community. And that is exactly why more women need to be given the opportunity to speak publicly. ‘You cannot be what you cannot see.’ If all our atheist talks are all male speakers, how will that encourage more women to see themselves as having the courage to be open about their atheism?” Mohammed asked.

The women in the secular communities, according to Mohammed, should see examples of women and mothers making the successful transition to inspire others. It becomes an aspect of liberation through observation; it becomes an act of freedom incarnating through the example of others. They need to see examples of women, of mothers, successfully making that transition. Then they will be inspired and will then they will know that it is possible.

On only speaking about some issues with women and not with the men, Mohammed spoke about religious patriarchy, in her terms, and the ways in which women police other women through religious environments. It becomes women oppressing other women. In her view, men made religions for men. Women have different experiences under religion compared to the men, by implication.

Mohammed stated, “It is not just an intellectual epiphany for us. As a woman, you have been bred to see yourself as lesser-than. The modesty and shame culture thrust upon you from an early age – all those poisons need to be cleansed from our bodies. Our experiences are more like that of LGBT people who have left their faiths. We were raised to think that we are dirty sinners and that our existence provokes more sin.”

On the actionables or the things-to-do, Mohammed relayed the difficulties and the failures as the same as in any other industry. In that, the solutions remain the same, where a vicious cycle can begin with male writers and speakers preferring to read and hear males. In this, women will fight an uphill battle for the right to be heard and read.

“Women need to fight for our seat at that table. Make ourselves heard. Make ourselves known. It is a battle we are accustomed to. We just should not be lulled into thinking that, as atheists, we are immune to the same social ills as all other human beings,” Mohammed stated, “Of course our issues are nowhere near to the same extent, and I am very grateful for that, but if we are unaware of the fact that women are fighting tooth and nail in our community, then we won’t be sensitive to reaching out a hand. Knowledge is key. I think if more men understood that it is a problem, then they would be more than willing to do what they can to change the landscape.”

An American director, feminist, novelist, and playwright is Sikivu Hutchinson.[10] Bear in mind, the prominent women involved in these investigative and coda statement serious interviews remain highly respected within their domain of expertise and nation. Sikivu remained crunched with other projects at the time of correspondence.

In this, she answered two of the main question sets: one on men dominating the global conversation for the secular; another on modes and limits in the conversations representation of secular women, secular people of color, and so on, in the leadership of the non-religious organizations.

On the ways in which men dominate the international conversations of secular, Hutchinson specified, directly, the demographic in question within men: white men. Those who continue to hold most of the cards in the international conversations around the secular communities in structure, and so function, to determine the course or trajectory of the communities around the world.

The simple reason for this comes from the marginalization of women in the atheist communities, in the humanist communities, and in the secular communities. Overall, the general trend for the history of the secular and freethought communities remains the ways in which men harbour the power and influence, and positions associated with said “power and influence,” for the guidance of community life.

Hutchinson stated, “Non-religious contexts share the same sexist, misogynist conventions, ideologies and hierarchies as religious contexts. Although recent sexual abuse ‘scandals’ involving high-powered white male secular leaders are the most egregious examples of this, these hierarchies have always existed in the non-religious sphere. Simply removing god-belief from the equation does not eliminate hierarchies based on the sexual objectification, commodification and occupation of women’s bodies and the devaluation of women’s work.”

Whether in fundamentalist religious contexts stewing in supernaturalistic assumptions and tribal conflict or in the white supremacist colonial notions held in the secular liberated West, the constants of men holding the deck comes back into the central observation, as a factual matter, where men have the most prominent positions, and more often work – even live and speak from – the more dominant decision-making stations.

“Moreover, women of color have traditionally been under-represented in non-religious discourse and leadership due to the ways Black and Latinx female morality/respectability is tethered to religiosity and god. In addition, women of color are more likely to be connected to religious institutions because of the social, economic and political resources that they provide in capitalist nations with minimal social safety nets,” Hutchinson explained.

The next arena of questions becomes the aspects of representation and some of the interrelated notions problems, and so solutions, for the secular communities. Hutchinson first spoke on the international success of the New Atheism with the “best-selling white atheist rock star authors” and the “cult of personality like the Four Horsemen.”

“Unfortunately, this kind of idolatry has eclipsed recognition of and attention to the ground work being laid by grassroots humanist organizations in their local communities. Progressive atheists organize around issues that go far beyond the usual church/state separation and ‘science and reason’ agenda,” Hutchinson stated, “You can’t fight for economic justice in communities of color without advocating for reproductive justice, unrestricted abortion rights and access to universal health care. You can’t preach ‘equality’ of genders without redressing the heterosexist lack of representation of queer and trans people of color in K-12 curricula.”

For the LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) enfranchisement, there, similarly, needs a confronting of the mechanisms criminalizing aspects of queer and trans youth of color, which places them at a greater range of risks in terms of health and wellness, incarceration, placement in foster care, and even becoming homeless.

“Coalitions that form around these intersectional issues should be actively promoted—especially those that cultivate ties with progressive believers and non-atheist secular community-based organizations. Further, non-believers who write about and organize around these issues should be tapped for leadership positions in humanist and atheist organizations,” Hutchinson said.

In that, few people of color exist in the executive-level managerial stations in the central atheist, humanist, and secular organizations, including AHA, AA, CFI, and so on. The lack of cultural responsiveness by humanist and associated secular institutions producing a lack of comfort in non-believer people of color; an inability to exist openly secular.

Hutchinson stated, “Where are the humanist institutions that support the realities of our lived experiences in a “Christian nation” based on capitalist, racist, sexist, heterosexist class power? When atheism is primarily associated with academic elites patronizingly condemning believers as primitive and backward—while systematically profiting from racial segregation and straight white male privilege—then many people of color will see no compelling reason to ally with atheist causes and organizations by coughing up hundreds of dollars to attend navel-gazing conferences.”

An American Founder of Minority Atheists of Michigan, the Detroit Affiliate of Black Nonbelievers (2013), and Operation Water For Flint (2016), Bridgett “Bree Crutchfield, spoke to me, too.[11]Her commentary focused, at first, on the increased assertiveness of women in three important domains: economics, social life, and the political world.

The initial commentary focused on oppression and the intolerance of the oppression over time. In that, eventually, and in any case, a voice or set of them will rise for women, where, in Crutchfield’s opinion, the greatest advocates for women have been and continue to be women.

Crutchfield stated, “Men have subjugated, oppressed, judged, demeaned, humiliated women since the dawn of time. Why would we as women expect men to have a long awaited, well overdue, epiphany and do right by women? Women have ALWAYS been vocal. We gain strength by watching others share similar truths as ourselves. We’re no longer ‘alone.’”

On North American women in general and American women, as the interview was conducted in 2018, Crutchfield remarked on women continuing to wait for a “Mr. Maybe Right.” A sense of incompleteness without a child or a man in their lives, or to share their lives. In addition, the right to have a vote in personal reproductive rights – that is to say, a fundamental, unquestioned, and autonomous decision regarding reproduction – can be limited or restricted, if not denied.

She also noted the fight for equal pay and non-religious women being fed up with their identity as women – their “womanhood” – questioned or judged if they do not attend church. This becomes particularly true for women of color in general, and African-American women in, in

On the concerns of secular women, “The concerns are the same as religious women. Misogyny, sexual predators and rape apologists have been the subjects of many a think piece. Initially, I was embarrassed as I assumed secular men were…different. I have learned since then, it could not be further from the truth,” Crutchfield stated, “We want to survive romantic relationships. We want to NOT be victims of domestic violence. We want to NOT fear for our lives when we turn down the advances of men. We want to not fear for our daughters and not force them to live a life in hopes of not getting raped. We WANT LAWS that protect women and PUNISH MEN and their brutality REGARDLESS of their socioeconomic status. Is that too much to ask?”

On the male domination of the international conversation, Crutchfield passed on the question, as her focus remains on the women’s conversations. As well, she described how the conversations of the secular women correspond or parallel the dialogues of the religious women. Wherein, the oppression of some subpopulations, on average, lead to the requirements of some areas, or safe spaces proper, to discuss interactions with men without the second-guessing or explained by men rather than women.

In terms of the solutions, Crutchfield posed the first premise of the slow development of secular culture. In that, some progressive organizations exist within the secular community; however, not all secular groups or organizations adhere to a progressive philosophical standpoint, where the mistreatment of secular women is well-documented.

Crutchfield concluded, “Suggestions, ideas and proposals have been presented in doses and the disenfranchised are STILL disenfranchised. The secular community is not as open and freethinking as it purports to be to the religious. The community is disproportionately white male, conservative and I don’t see that changing anytime soon especially in the roles of major leadership.”

Marquita Tucker, M.B.A., is a Senior IT Business Analyst and the Co-Founder of Black Nonbelievers of Detroit, spoke on the increasing political, social, and economic activism of women in the current moment.[12] Her first remark stated the basic fact of women being half of the world’s population.

“We have been hushed and dismissed for so long and look how things have turned out. It is important and it is time for us to be more assertive and vocal about our ideas on social, political and economic concerns. Our input should be valued and taken seriously. You can’t run a nation let alone any part of the world with just one half of the population’s view and say on everything,” Tucker said.

On the main concerns of American women and North American women, Tucker spoke about one idea brought forward through two words. Reproductive rights as the central issue as a combination of economic, political, and social conditions. On the political side, the conservative political class work to restrict women’s rights. In social life, the right-leaning religious work to prevent women the right to bodily autonomy.

Tucker stated, “Economically, if a woman does need an abortion, that woman has several barriers in place from transportation to paying for the procedure. A woman’s right to choose sometimes makes the difference between her and her child(ren) living a life of poverty and poor education with little upward mobility or her being able to make moves that will improve her life and thus the life of her future children.”

Then this leads rather smoothly into the Me Too movement connected to the hashtags. Tucker sees the issue across ethnicities, political stripes, social classes, and so on. Another consistent problem coming in the form of men thinking that they know everything best, not as a fact of nature but as nurturance of poor behaviour.

On the domination of men in the global or international conversation on secularism on a variety or most issues. Tucker sees one main reason for the dominance of the men coming through the acceptability of men speaking as they wish. Men are the philosophers and the sexes. There have been plenty of female philosophers, scientists, writers, and the like.

“I know in the black community, when you go to a black church, you will see the church filled with mostly women. When you think about it, there are a lot more rules and conditions when it comes to being a woman in religion than there are for men,” Tucker stated, “So I guess rules are socialized into women from birth and not so much into men, giving men more of a chance to freely think outside of the box and express their disagreements with sects or religion as a whole and act upon those disagreements than women. I mean, how many female religious sect founders or cult leaders can you think of?”

When women speak only to other women, Tucker exclaimed that, of course, women speak to one another about things without men present; items of dialogue, trialogue, or what have you, never or rarely discussed with the men. She notes the ways in which the family treats her. She receives differential treatment compared to others in the family.

One reason is not believing in Jesus. In the black community in America, one cannot wash their hands without thanking God Almighty. For a black woman to not rely on a blond-haired and blue-eyed white male for all things, she can be an “outcast” in several ways. Tucker finds this a common experience for the non-believing black women.

In contrast, Tucker remarks, “I’ve come across many black male non-believers who state that they simply just never believed. That they were never really forced to go to church or required to pray or anything like that. So, when I bring it up, black male non-believers kinda say things like, “well, I just wouldn’t have done it. I just wouldn’t have gone.” Like, you do not get it. Girls are not given the level of autonomy that boys are most of the time. I’ve yet to meet an American black woman who wasn’t conditioned to have to believe in god.”

On solutions, though, and arguably the most important section of each interview, Tucker recalled the ways in which openness to learn from others different than oneself, to be vulnerable, becomes an important part of life. This can mean a basis for listening to understand the other person on a variety of topics.

Tucker mused, “It’s funny how the non-religious proclaim to be the opposite of those ‘closed minded religious people’ when there are parts of the non-religious community who are just as closed minded in different areas. Non-religious men can start by having a seat sometimes and not always having something to say about everything. Sometimes you learn more by listening to others.”

The different perspectives and ranges of knowledge were not heard in the light of the historical trend of a dominant group not hearing others out. Tucker believes the era of not listening to women in the secular community should end, and the sooner the better.

Another American was Samantha A. Christian.[13] As an individual woman speaking for herself, as she makes clear in the interview, Christian believes more women feel empowered to speak in an honest, confident, and unapologetic manner. Within this culture or set of cultures in which gender roles or sex-defined roles become restricting in some manner, Christian finds this form of freer expression of women, now, as much more liberating, as if a cool glass of water on a hot summer day or an open window in a stuffy apartment.

Christian stated, “It takes even greater courage to do that! This also means that more women are finally realizing they deserve to be treated better and with respect for a change. So, when I see someone not allowing themselves to be ‘mansplained away,’ bullied and taken advantage of, it gives me hope for humanity.”

Speaking for herself on the concerns of American women and North American women, Christian does not participate in the formal secular or non-religious community or communities as a rule while sharing the concern for the attempts to normalize rape in America, North America, and other parts of the world.

Another grave concern based on the observations of Christian was the attempts to make individual citizens as ignorant and fearful as possible. Where there exist distinct and perpetual attempts to make the general populace hate the truth, despise facts, retreat in repulsion from knowledge, and fear education, she finds this highly scary.

“The psychological community is doing nothing about this while simultaneously enabling toxic majorities (religious people, god gullibles, bigots of all kinds) and ignoring the toxic influences that make them that way in the first place,” Christian stated, “There is this idea that if a lot of people say or believe something it must be true or even respected. I do not want a democracy I want a meritocracy. In the last question it was mentioned that women are becoming more empowered all over the world. I have noticed that there is one group of women that seem to feel less empowered as time goes on: white women.”

Christian described how this demographic – white women – voted for “abusive husbands and candidates” in the recent election. She thinks something needs to be done about this. A place where white women can fee empowered, safe, and supported. As far as Christian analyzes the situation in the United States of America, most of the domestic terrorism in the USA comes from the white men while those self-same individuals via the demographic retain positions of power.

On Me Too as a movement, Christian admitted, “I wasn’t aware that these other movements existed. Again, I can only speak for myself but sexism towards women and men is a fundamental problem. I think the sexism against men can be more suffocating which leads so many guys to fear being honest or being themselves. This means that, whether it is in cult communities or non-religious ones, you will have the same toxic behaviors.”

A concern for Christian comes from the non-religious communities with “many men” developing a certain hatred and distrust of women. It shows in the ways in which rape and abuse claims become not believing the women and then blaming the victim. She gets responses equivocating with not believing in gods blindly and, therefore, not believing women in rape claims blindly.

“This is absolutely ridiculous. People are supposed to recognize gods are fictional. If you do not believe, then the consequences a minor. You can easily pretend that you do as a survival tactic if you must,” Christian stated, “In terms of rape and abuse it is so important to believe the victim. If you do not, then horrid acts of humanity go unpunished. There is no justice. So, many people’s lives are literally destroyed while it enables the rapist/abuser to keep raping/abusing other people, because they were not properly punished and held accountable. People do not really lie about rape/abuse. Maybe 4% tops. So, they should be taken seriously.”

In other words, when someone makes a claim of abuse towards them, the overarching probability is the individual telling the truth than not; this does not imply a disrespect for due process or a naïve believe the victim, but a strong probability as the basis for the outreach phrase of “believe the victim.” The consequences of not believing in a god tend to be mild. However, the consequences of simply being rejected offhand for claims of rape become “far worse,” in the opinion of Christian.

Next came the subject matter of the en dominating the international conversation of the non-religious or the secular, Christian said, “I do not think it is a problem, but it depends on the guys speaking. Have they internalized sexism on such a deep level? Do they feel they can be themselves 100%? Or do they feel they must act a certain role to survive in society? That is the problem. Whether the community is religious or not, we need to do something about this.”

Christian believes a positive general contribution would be the rejection of the false notion of the opposite sex, as men and women have far more in common than not. Here, most of the differences between the 2 common sexes – male and female – “are minor at best.” The genitalia remain homologous too.

“If we have a lot of men abused by sexism in society representing the atheist community, that is not good. If we have men who have overcome it and feel empowered enough to be their authentic selves, then it would not matter if there are a lot of men talking or a lot of women talking. People like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris make the non-religious community look bad while people like Daniel Dennett, Neil Carter and Darrel Ray do so much to help the non-religious and anti-religious communities,” Christian said.

Christian went back to the ways in which white women apart from other women, in general, tend to feel less empowered; whereas, other secular women, and women generally, feel empowered more than before. She notes this in the secular communities, too, where white men dominate the discussion.

She feels more diverse faces for atheism would be a plus. In that, in an interconnected and globalized world, there are black men atheists, Latin men atheists, white women atheists, black women atheists, Asian women atheists, and so on, where no singular demographic best represents atheism as atheism inhabits all cultures to various degrees.

Speaking for herself once more, on the issue of isolated conversational groups via sex or gender, Christian does not have this experience because, as an individual, she remains upfront and direct.

“I am upfront with everyone no matter their sex or if they are a cult addict (religious) or not. I cannot think of anytime when I was not upfront or honest about a subject, especially online. I am really the only non-religious, anti-religious, atheist person in my family, friends and daily life. My mom and BGF (boy-girlfriend, my lover was born intersexed. We use this nickname to protect her identity online.) are not into religion but have not called themselves ‘non-religious’ or ‘atheist’ officially. My point being, I really do not have many in person conversations about religion,” Christian stated.

In the internet-based or online conversations, Christian remains frank and upfront with them. Sex or gender does not restrict the expression and the conversation for her. She mused on the fact of more men reaching out than women to her. They reach out to Christian about the sexist expectations placed on men including around sexual orientation, desires, and identity.

Christian said, “Religion usually comes up because that is what is pushing those sexist ideas and destroying their lives to begin with. As mentioned earlier, at lot of women (except white women) feel empowered but the sexism against men is still very strong (at least in the USA). It is still on the same level. It is so important to help people realize that women are men are the same (with only minor differences). Thus, we should be treated the same way.”

Christian proposed a change in the expectations of the culture from gender expectations or roles to age expectations or roles. If someone, including oneself, is at a specific age, then there should be some role expectations of the age. When someone is less comfortable in honesty with someone because of their sex, she wonders why this becomes the case in the first place.

“I get the same thing from the guys I have spoken too saying they feel they cannot be honest or open with the women in their lives. Why the disconnect when we (women and men) have so much in common? Feel free to read about the gender similarities hypothesis and the persistent disconnect with the high level of sexism in society,” Christian said.

On the solutions to the problems, Christian sees this as the easy part of it. It would be the divisive labels as the problem. That is, one can label oneself in one way or another; however, it becomes important to become educated about demographics to comprehend the statistical trends in various populations of a society.

Christian described how research over time shows the vast number of commonalities compared to differences, where the differences between people remain “minor and insignificant.” It becomes akin to the commentary, by Christian, on the issues of the biological sex categorizations of male and female – at least 2.

“…homosexuality and heterosexuality (monosexuality) are both the same thing. Gay men = straight women. They are both androsexual, the proper term to describe those attracted to men. Lesbians = straight guys. They are both gynesexual, those attracted to women. Same thing,” Christian stated, “Another thing people obsess about and cause trouble over when the reality is, they are the same. Even more research shows that monosexuality is a myth and that humans are either part of the bisexual spectrum or asexual spectrum. What is my point? The quick spread of misinformation about race, sex, human sexuality and humanity in general is what is preventing a more inclusive system or community. Not just for non-religious groups but ALL groups.”

The focus should not be on more people of color or women. The emphasis should be more agnostics, atheists, humanists, and secular people together for a natural unity. That is one problem. A larger problem comes in the form of the misinformation abounding around secular people. The lies about God and religion; the lies about race; the lies about sex. There should be more educational opportunities to combat this.

In addition, there should be a stoppage to the shaming because of a demographic, where there should be an allowance – open permission – for individuals to feel comfortable as themselves. One of the biggest dangers, according to Christian is the deep need among human beings to feel needed, to fit in, and desired in some social way.

“That is why people join religions, create toxic group, do not stand up to bullies, bigots, etc. Therefore, we get the bystander effect, why so many men (especially white men) are just brutal to women and each other. To fit in, to be accepted. If humanity evolved past the need for such things, we would be more moral, happier, healthier and better friends to each other,” Christian concluded.

Judy Saint is the Founder and President of the Sacramento Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.[14] She remarked on the general nature of women becoming more involved and assertive with one another. For example, the fight for universal suffrage in place of suffrage to make women legal persons in a democratic society; as in, women harbour the right to vote.

Following this, things died down. Women began to focus on resembling the men in “clothing, competition and executive function.” The women began to stop talking to one another. Until sexual harassment took a crucial point among the numerous foci of concern for women, “women again found each other as mutual combatants.” She sees this work of women asserting themselves as fundamentally important because women’s rights are fundamentally important, simple as that.

To American women, Saint stated, “American women are not all concerned with their rights in any of these domains. We only see a portion of women out there advocating in these spheres. The concerns of those not fighting for rights seems to be to ‘fit in’ and fulfil society’s mandate of being a quiet servant to men. As for those who are out there fighting for women’s rights, their concerns are that women have all the advantages men are routinely given, and the ability to change society to a more cooperative world, away from the testosterone-laden competitive world men created for us.”

Saint provided the example of a survey of women. Women voted against women’s rights by voting for the presidential candidate – at the time – Trump, who is now President Trump. In Saint’s analysis of the situation, the women voted in the favour of the husbands, the “husbands’ needs.”

She also directed attention to the sponsoring of local businesses by Bill and Melinda Gates with the differences between the men and the women. It creates a statistically stark difference in the investment patterns, conducive to the health, or not, of the community. On the side of investing in the men who start local businesses, they tend to “take all the money with them away to larger cities so they can make more”; for the women, when they succeed, they invest in the local communities and one another.

Saint had thoughts on the Me Too movement, too, stating, “Secular women want responsibility to be placed on perpetrators of aggression toward women, rather than abusing women’s rights as a cover for poor behavior. Responsibility and early training of little boys are the main concerns.”

On the domination of the international conversation by the men, Saint described how atheism remains trivial as an issue, until the communities of the religious pose a threat. In these circumstances, men rise to become protective and combative – reflecting the out and vocal atheists, where she sees this type more common in the men than in the women.

Secular women may become subliminally influenced through a man asking the questions of the secular women. As Saint stated, “I could say the obvious: we can’t tell you because you are a man. Seriously, being a male asking this question could subliminally influence the answers you get from women. But, let me try, anyway. Mainly it would be about cooperative and supportive efforts that men don’t want to help with.”

The notion of “women’s work,” including the provision of food for a meeting, garments in post-disaster, or assistance in leaving an abusive partner. Saint views this in the difference with women as cooperative and men as competitive. In this, men are not included in some of the conversations for women, because, for the women, it is, fundamentally speaking, not about the competition or the winner-take-all mentality. like providing food for a meeting or gathering clothing for disaster survivors or helping other women leave abusive husbands who are religious. Women are cooperative; men are competitive. That has why men are not included in women’s discussions – it is not about competing or winning, and therefore of little interest.

On the actionables, Saint said, “We have in Sacramento a Black Humanist Group. They want their own secular organization because their discussions and concerns are not addressed in groups where they are in the minority. So, supporting more smaller groups that address unique subgroups of interests could give more people a home where they feel understood and listened to. Publicity of their unique problems could keep them energized and supportive of those groups.”

In the African region, one member of the Atheist Society of Nigeria – and recalling the preliminary data points in the commentary here – was Jummai Mohammed, who had some time to provide some basic comments or statements, or observations and experiences, with a different question set, though.[15]

In the description of the family background for her, Mohammed said, “I am a Hausa lady from the northern part of Nigeria. I was born into a muslim home but in a predominantly Christian society. I was born and bread in the southern part of Nigeria which is mostly dominated by Christians.”

This upbringing and background had some interesting impacts on her. She was born in a Muslims home within a Christian majority nation. In Mohammed’s view, this has impacted person views of atheism right into the present day. In addition, she was able tot, potentially, some of the starker distinctions and contradictions in the different religions on offer. Nigeria is a diverse and interesting nation – dynamic.

“I never love Islam schools since the ustaz in those schools always look and act mean. The way in which children are beaten up, young boys tied into poles while being flogged mercilessly in the name of punishment made me hate going to Islamic schools; on the other hand,” Mohammed stated, “whenever I have the opportunity of following my Christian friends to church, I tend to enjoy the less tensed environment, the songs, the dance and everyone smiling faces and that paved my way into converting to Christianity in the later years. So, I have practised and experienced the two most popular Abrahamic religion.”

Yet, for the earliest moments of life or the early school times, Mohammed enjoyed the private nursery and the primary school. Religion, naturally given the prior facts, was part of the educational system. Then, into high school, there was more religion, as the high school was privately owned and religious. She, understandably, converted to Christianity in secondary school or high school. Not as an open Christianity, she was a “closet one.”

In questioning religion, Mohammed said, “I have always question religion right from primary school, I always question bible/Quran stories right from time, because the stories don’t add up. I ask questions like why God created us, why placing an apple tree in the garden when he doesn’t want humans eating from it.”

She found some solace in going into the online world. It is entitled nairaland, which influenced the decision to become an atheist. Now, as many with the privilege of an earlier life access to the internet, one of the common statements by atheists, agnostics, and such, about the formation of the non-religious beliefs came from the internet. On one level, it was the access to new perspective, added information. On another level, the ability to interact with others as per Mohammed’s interactions with others in the Nigerian online forums of nairaland. Both become important to relinquishing fundamentalist strains of faith.

On women in religion, Mohammed stated, “Yes, it is a glaring fact that religion preaches subjugation of women and it is very evident in the Nigeria society. Women are being treated more like a semi human or should I say slaves in Nigeria, most especially in the northern part of the country which I come from.”

She experiences this in personal and professional life. Religious fanatics will not make friends or do business with her or get close to her. She lives in a bit of a haven, in Lago. However, as she reports, if she were to live in the north, Mohammed would face death threats. When asked about some prominent female atheists, she listed Jummai Pearl, Neshama, Dorris, and others; on prominent atheist Nigeria men, she noted Mubarak Balah, Azaya, Calistus, Juwon, Dr. Leo Igwe, and so on. In other words, there are some, but few prominent male or female atheists in Nigeria.

On further treatment, “Discriminations varies, depending on the atheist environment. In the southern and eastern parts, the discriminations are; family and friends rejecting one, people not wanting to make friends or involve in any sort of business with one, relationship/marriage breakups…” Mohammed said, “In the northern part which is predominant by Muslims, atheist faces death threats, lynching and co, together with what I listed up there faces by southern atheist.”

Over in the Philippines, Marissa Torres Langseth, the Founder of the Humanist Alliance Philippines International, took the time to speak, too.[16] (Please note links exist in the footnote for Langseth with further information through the responses or interspersed in the responses of the straight question-and-answer interview.)

On the opening salvo about the equality of women as a more assertive push than before, Langseth commented on the importance of women seen as equals and partners, not only in an intimate setting but in a societal perspective. Within this perspective, we can come to the economic, political, and social enfranchisement of women in general.

Langseth said, “Misogyny is common in the Philippines because of patriarchal orientation, and upbringing. We were brought up thinking that a male is more dominant in any household and women should just stay home and take care of the children. Women are treated like baby factories in the Phils with the RH or Planned Parenthood on hold due to the religious nature of the Philippines, these women succumb to high morbidity and mortality rates.”

According to Langseth, who is a professionally trained Post-Master’s Adult Nurse Practitioner, South East Asian or SEA women, such as Indonesia, have a large Islamic population and place women “lowest in the totem pole” of the society. She notes the ways in which Islamic nations subject women to arranged marriages, gender discrimination of various forms, honor killings, and mutilation of sex organs.

Equality in the contexts described by Langseth become a distant goal, especially with the death penalty for apostasy. SEA women, Langseth reports, who travel to another country become subject to rape or abuse if working as maids or other service personnel based on “the belief of others that women n the third world countries will do anything to put food on their table including prostitution.”

Langseth lamented the women who do not acquire an education, or have the privilege of the opportunity, will become prostitutes and then get used and abused in this manner, even the most careful women can be raped or killed, or both. She recollected reading many stories about it.

On Me Too, it is an international story. It is a global movement. Interestingly, Langseth noted the lack of this movement for equality in social and professional life in SEA, “quite frankly.” In fact, she notes, directly, the SEA secular or non-religious women will not resist the men due to early indoctrination and fear. She stopped commentary on Me Too in SEA at that point.

For the comments or remarks on the domination of the non-religious conversation by the men, Langseth stated, “More and more women nowadays are empowered and unafraid of coming out as nonreligious. The stigma is waning and fading away. My take is that, if they can see us women as successful without gods, we can be notable examples of how to live decently and practice clean living with high ethical values. Documentation and the advent of social media are just examples of how we can show to the religious world that we are equal to those who profess ‘good moral compass.’”

Akin, also, to some of the speaking on the issues of the isolation of some secular women in dialogue with some secular women apart from some secular men, the secular women who tend to feel able to speak more openly simply adhere to a principle of open discussion and saying what’s on their mind, regardless of the individual in the conversation with them.

“I am not afraid to divulge to anyone that I am nonreligious. I even said that to the church members where my husband and I go to occasionally. I have even said that to my husband’s male friends who are Italian, and Jewish. I did not care what their opinions are,” Langseth said, “and who cares anyway about their opinions. I know who I am. If my husband values me and sees me as an equal. That is enough for me. My husband is even ready to leave his church, if the church members will ostracize me, truth be told. He is a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP).”

On the greater inclusion, or the solutions for the disparate representation or lack of representation of secular women in a variety of ways, and others, within the secular communities, Langseth pointed to more awareness and education about equality. Perhaps, with an assumption of goodwill, education can solve part of the issue observed by many secular women and some secular men.

Langseth proposed more social media coverage, more coverage from young women and old women, fewer men in the spotlight – “maybe,” and an emphasis on women leaders holding “higher and better positions in nonreligious societies.” Some of the problems come in the interpersonal and sociopolitical dynamics of the secular communities with the backstabbing, infighting, and attempts to outsmart others “due to immaturity and vanity and self-aggrandizement.”

In conclusion, Langseth described how some men backstab due to insecurities and low self-esteem. Another Filipina was Alexus Jean Black [17] Given some limitations, she provided some short commentary, which can supplement some of the more extensive and authoritative remarks and observations of Langseth.

Black, on the more outspoken times for women, stated, “I think that women especially now a days have been very vocal about those subjects it’s because we have more freedom than what we used to have. Although, in some parts of Asia, the Middle East, for example, have still some kind of discrimination towards the women. It is important for women to be included… as we also are a part of the nation. I don’t really know a lot of people who are non religious in my country as Philippines is one of the most religious countries in the world.”

She – Black – noted how the Christian subjects remained mandatory within the elementary schools, how some laws take their cue from religion, and the ways in which, for example, divorce in the Philippines remains illegal, which becomes something anathema to some new generations in other nations.

On the dominance of secular men in the international secular conversations, Black described, in her opinion, that the dominance of men in the non-religious or secular conversations does not come from more secular men, but, instead, from the ways in which women are more conservative in their thoughts.

Black noted not talking too much about the subject of religion, as the surrounding culture remains highly religious. The note about a highly religious culture does not come from a place of denigration; she does not mean to “disrespect” members of the Philippines citizenry with the descriptor. Nonetheless, she identifies as an atheist – no mention of the flavor of atheism there. When asked about being an atheist, most of them are men asking the questions.

On some brief thoughts about the ways in which to bring more women into the secular fold, she simply suggested or recommended engaging women more, allowing them to become engaged more, as she does not feel oppression is helpful in discussion on topics sensitive to people.

Another America, Alisha Ann, from Pennsylvania.[18] On the reasons for the increasing prominence of women’s voices in the public sphere, Ann stated the level of safety women feel now; women felt too unsafe, before, to speak out. With an increased level of safety, women feel more confident to speak on negative experiences and observations in terms of the treatment of secular women and, in turn, to articulate their thoughts in the public sphere with lesser physical, social, professional, and intimate-setting reprisals.

Ann stated, “We’re no where near as safe as we should be. We have fought long and hard for the right to vote, earn a living outside the home and control our own reproduction. Those rights are not secure and are constantly threatened. As usual, we stand on the shoulders of the giants before us. We have the bravery of the feminist activists in generations prior and feminist voices today to build on. We are stronger together. And when one stands up, we tend to stand with them. Their fight is our fight.”

She noted how this was only in the United States and North America. Other countries in the world keep women highly repressed and oppressed in many ways, whether by law, by custom, by family, or other forms of force. Ann has noted the progress, though. The more progressive countries can serve as a “contrast to regressive ones.”

On Me Too and other aspects of social life, Ann said, “I’m concerned about male violence against non-males. From clergy raping children, to intimate partner violence, to attacks against the transgender community. Men have a problem. And only men can fix it. So, far, we have stuck band-aids on a mortal wound by asking women and children to take steps to not get raped and killed. Which is to say, ‘Make sure he rapes them instead of you.’”

This becomes a men’s issue, as they are the majority perpetrators. The responsibility of the abuser is to stop abusing, not on the abused to appease them, and on us to prevent the continued abuse and garner justice for the abused. As stated by UN Women, around the world, 35% of women endured “either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. However, some national studies show that up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime” (UN Women, 2018).

650 million women and girls, currently alive, have been married prior to their 18th birthday, which is stating the 9-figure numbers of women undergoing child marriage – partnership prior to the age of consent (UNICEF, 2018). About 200 million women have been subject to female genital mutilation (UNICEF, 2016). For ages 15 to 19, 15 million girls around the world have endured either forced intercourse or forced sexual acts (UNICEF, 2017). Women and girls are 71% of the human trafficking victims (UNODC, 2016). 82% of women parliamentarians “who participated in a study conducted by the Inter-parliamentary Union in 39 countries across 5 regions reported having experienced some form of psychological violence while serving their terms” (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2016).

Ann continued to explain the main issue in the social domain is rooted in male violence. Furthermore, on the political angle, Ann explained how “patriarchy lives on in the old white men” who run the country. In her opinion, they fear being treat the way women and minorities have been treated in the past. Therefore, they will resist progress in various forms.

Even worse, according to Ann, the blindness to injustices and inequalities, where simple equality can feel as if oppression from a privileged placement in society. This becomes the basis for resistance to the equal treatment for women, minorities, and themselves, e.g., the denial of reproductive freedom, voter suppression, poverty wages, and so on.

“Economic – poverty. We have consolidated power to a few, which disenfranchises us all. The economic system we have in place will fail. And the people who will suffer the most are not the 1%, they will just be the loudest,” Ann explained, “That they will not be better in my lifetime. That the standard bearer of meaningful change will not be retired with my generation and will require passage to my children to complete. If we cannot convince men to be better, we not only pass the responsibilities of progress to them, but the dangers of our failings.”

In terms of the domination of the men within the international conversations and discourses of the secular, Ann was firm on the position of the need for a change in the diversification of the landscape of opening, where the more diverse pinion set in a community becomes better rather than worse. The ability to relay one’s own experience in a community of others provides a democratic basis for allegiances and a form of genuine community-building the secular movements desperately need in a modern period shaken by the infusions of communications technology.

“Unless we only care about improving the experiences of white men, then we must include women and minorities. The way we do that is by checking ourselves and our privilege. We actively overlook an ethnic sounding name when hiring. We do not assume a woman cannot speak on a topic. We seek out and value the opinions of those not like us. We listen to each other and validate,” Ann said.

For those things that the secular women will speak about with one another, or not, Ann spoke about things existing not as whisper networks in a precise manner, but, rather, a certain comfort in common sub-community experiences. Women can feel more comfortable speaking with women on subject matter of common experience.

These can include abuse, inequality, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and violence. Many do not believe the level of the mistreatment within the secular community, as with other communities. There exists a denialism, where soft ball concerns of skepticism can be homeopathy; the hard ball questions become internal issues within the community.

There is a tendency to blame the victims for what happened to them rather than place responsibility on perpetrators, or highly likely perpetrators, where this, in a sense, necessitates whisper networks for secular women – and, potentially, women in general – to protect themselves from the problems associated to some extent with the in-community secular men. It becomes a whisper warning network, in a manner of speaking, about “repeat or egregious offenders” for secular women to protect themselves.

On the questions about inclusion, Ann described the social failures as indicative of larger social failures of inclusion. Some come from the mostly male appointment to leadership with overlooking of women and minorities while also assuming women are less knowledgeable on topics, where this can become seen the lack of speaking gigs and resources for women.

“Assuming a man is better able and tasking him with more high-profile gigs – like public speaking or media events. Assuming women and minorities just do not want to be in certain fields, like science or philosophy, and therefore not seeking out those candidates,” Ann stated, “However, the secular community suffers from a lack of diversity for a unique reason in my opinion. It is been an older white man’s club because older white has historically retained their social, political, economic, and religious privileges regardless of their allegiances. Their survival does not depend on their adherences to certain groups.”

A Ugandan woman, and the Managing Director and Programmes Coordinator of Malcolm Children’s Initiative, Susan Nambejja, explained how the increased assertiveness of women comes from the continued struggle for women to act independently in the world with or without men.[19] She noted the efforts of single mothers determined to raise their children alone.

Nambejja stated, “Politically women have engaged into leadership positions, at various levels, they are now community leaders, presidents, ministers and so on, for example our Kampala capital city authority Director is a woman. (Jennifer Musisi) Economically: women are now entrepreneurs nationally and internationally; they now operate big businesses worldwide. Importance of this is that: the time when women were considered as domestic slaves is now over, women are now enjoying liberty than in accent days hence boosting their esteem and lack of respect.”

On the concerns of Ugandan and African women, Nambejja relayed how many challenges still confront women in general. As a non-religious person, in Uganda, this becomes the basis of being “evil, immoral, inhuman.” This can create real-life impacts damaging to both personal and professional spheres of life for the woman.

For example, the knowledge of a woman as a non-religious or secular person can limit the ability of a woman to become a minister – secular minister exists in numerous religious traditions at this point – or a community leader, too. Individuals may vote for someone; however, religion becomes a large basis upon which to vote for this person.

“Socially marriage may not be a success for a non religious woman, and, but economically if a non religious woman sets up for example a business, most strict religions may find it hard to support such a business for example the Muslims have a tendency of supporting fellow Moslems on a belief that any thing from a non Moslem is considered unclean (haraam),” Nambejja stated, “This makes it difficult for operate well businesses. All this means there is a lot of segregation in Uganda between the religious and non religious, this is because Uganda is a highly religious populated country. Non religious are still very few.”

The Me Too movement, as noted earlier, about being one global phenomenon, but not necessarily hitting every region as much or equally – as per the insightful commentary of Langseth about SEA. Nambejja described how the men in Africa cherish the African cultural practices, where some put women as inferior. Even among the more educated classes of men, many still consider themselves as something akin to kings.

Nambejja said, “Most cultures men are still dominating, leadership is still for men in most cultures in African traditions. Women are still lacking self esteem due to the fear of how the society will interpret their actions, few women have come up to speak for others in our countries.”

Then there was the near-unanimous factual observation and agreement of men dominating the secular conversation. Secular men, according to Nambejja, remain more open to different issues. The secular men do not have to fear speaking out about who they are, what their values are, and the women tend to remain hidden to a certain extent in which self-protection becomes more paramount for the secular women because of the potential negative impacts on them.

“For example, speaking about being non religious in Uganda is not safe unless if you have enough ways to protect your self. Men have no fear for segregation, women mind about it a lot. This should be changed, by giving more chance to women more than men, by supporting their causes, invite women as speakers at conferences, those who get a chance to speak will end up becoming more confident of their non religious beliefs. And hence others will get inspired, and do the same way,” Nambejja stated.

On the isolation or siloing of some conversations more than others, Nambejja described how, in a social setting, a woman married to a religious man may speak about some of the problems with the non-religious woman friend rather than a man. The main reason is fear of judgment from the men.

“If it is an initiative, like projects on girl child, menstrual education, a non religious woman will feel more speak to fellow non religious woman more comfortably than woman to man. We have a tendency of thinking that this should be told to fellow woman. Yet, in a non religious way, I think this should stop. That is according to my thinking please it is just according to my assumption,” Nambejja stated.

On the all-important question of actionables or action items as a global community, Nambejja, spoke about giving women more of an audience, e.g., work to provide an equal representation in the panels, in the speakers, in the hosts, in the topics of interest to community, and so on. The empowerment of women through causes of more interest to them, too.

Nambejja stated women can feel inferior without an inclusive initiative. Without this balance, women can lose hope. The spirit of togetherness, of communal solidarity, does not exist in a global context for the secular; Nambejja nailed this concern. Part of the problem there lies in the fact of women simply not incorporated into the discussions and the groups.

“…if we can’t support ourselves, invite women by showing them the benefits of public talks, include them in media discussions, if a mistake is made by a woman, correct her silently, don’t criticize, educate women in different areas,” Nambejja said, “for example NGO management, business, leadership among others. In our non religious communities encourage women to get involved and aspire for or stand for leadership positions.”

Non-religious or secular communities “have failed” in giving this sense of brotherhood and sisterhood and community. There should be gatherings bringing everyone together in a single umbrella. These could “transform us into more useful citizens,” where can help those most in danger in a true spirit of humanism.

Nambejja concluded the interview by saying, “Our non religious communities have failed to initiate universities for non religious, have failed to have institutions which support the non religious in different areas for example banks for non religious where people can acquire loans and so on, scholarships for non religious, among others just to mention but a few.”

In the discourses provided, and the analyses – albeit qualitative in many regards, the secular community appears to present a unique opportunity with a singular problem of full inclusion and equality of approximately half of its constituency.

—

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Evolution News. (2018, November 27). To Bolster Belief in Evolution, Study Recommends Celebrity Endorsements. Retrieved from https://evolutionnews.org/2018/11/to-bolster-belief-in-evolution-study-recommends-celebrity-endorsements/.

Fahmy, D. (2018, April 6). Christian women in the U.S. are more religious than their male counterparts. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/06/christian-women-in-the-u-s-are-more-religious-than-their-male-counterparts/.

Fetters, A. (2019, Januay 19). What It is Like for Secular, Liberal Pro-lifers at the March for Life. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/march-life-secular-liberal-pro-lifers-feel-welcome/580837/.

Flaherty, C. (2017, April 12). Relying on Women, Not Rewarding Them. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/12/study-finds-female-professors-outperform-men-service-their-possible-professional.

FORA TV. (2015). Susan Jacoby on the Dumbing-Down of Language. Retrieved from https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2du6yy.

Goldstein, R.N. (2018). Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Retrieved from https://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/.

Hawkins, E. (2017, September 26). Household chores: women still do more. Retrieved from https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/household-chores–women-still-do-more-/15086994.

Human Rights Watch. (n.d.). Abortion. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/legacy/women/abortion.html.

IFLScience. (n.d.). Just 1/3 of Americans “believe” in the theory of evolution by natural selection. Retrieved from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/just-13-americans-believe-theory-evolution-natural-selection/.

Inter-Parliamentary Union (2016). Sexism, harassment and violence against women parliamentarians. Retrieved from www.archive.ipu.org/pdf/publications/issuesbrief-e.pdf.

Ipsos MORI. (2017, March 7). Three in four women around the world believe there are unequal rights in their country. Retrieved from https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/three-four-women-around-world-believe-there-are-unequal-rights-their-country.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017i, October 14). Alberta Sex Positive Centre’s Angel Sumka on Alberta. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/10/angel-sumka/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017l, May 1). An Interview with Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku – Founder and Executive Director of the Cameroon Association for the Protection and Education of the Child. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-ajomuzu-collette-bekaku-founder-executive-director-cameroon-association-protection-education-child/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018t, July 22). An Interview with Anissa Helou (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2018/07/22/helou-one/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017o, April 24). An Interview with Amanda Poppei. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-amanda-poppei/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019h, February 23). Interview with Anne Landman – Founder & Board Member at Large, Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/landman-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017t, July 9). Interview with Annie Laurie Gaylor on Religion’s Battle on Women’s Rights. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-gaylor-religion-battle-women/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017j, October 22). An Interview with Anya Overmann, Communications Officer of IHEYO. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/10/anya-overmann/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ae, September 11). An Interview with Carla Rodriguez — Executive, University of West Florida Secular Student Alliance. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-carla-rodriguez-executive-university-of-west-florida-secular-student-alliance-549704799743.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ac, September 18). An Interview with Christel — DINNoedhjaelp. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-christel-dinnoedhjaelp-189303b47d4d.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ad, October 22). An Interview with Dr. Madeline Weld (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2018/10/22/weld-one/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bh, April 1). An Interview with Elizabeth Loethen — Executive Member, SSA at St. Louis Community College (Meramec Campus). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/04/elizabeth-loethen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017c, September 15). An Interview with Emily Newman — Communications Coordinator at American Ethical Union. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/emily-newman/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017m, December 26). An Interview with Houzan Mahmoud — Co-Founder, Culture Project. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/12/houzan-mahmoud/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017n, April 28). An Interview with Julia Julstrom-Agoyo — Secretary & Treasurer of Americas Working Group of IHEYO. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-julia-julstrom-agoyo%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8asecretary-treasurer-americas-working-group-iheyo/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ag, July 29). An Interview with Kaeleigh Pontif — President, Yuba Community College SSA. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-kaeleigh-pontif-president-yuba-community-college-ssa-18606a4a893a.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bi, March 30). An Interview with Karen Loethen — Previous Member, Meramec Secular Student Alliance — Part 1. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/karen-loethen-1/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017af, December 27). An Interview with Karma Alvey — Internal Relation Officer, SSA at Southeast Missouri State University. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/12/karma-alvey%e2%80%8a/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bm, February 1). An Interview with Kayla Bowen — President, SSA at Morehead State University. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/kayla-bowen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017v, March 1). An Interview with Kelly Marie Carlin-McCall (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2017/03/01/an-interview-with-kelly-marie-carlin-mccall-part-one/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017p, April 24). An Interview with Kim Gibson – President of Mississippi Humanist Association. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-kim-gibson-president-mississippi-humanist-association/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017q, March 31). An Interview with Marieme Helie Lucas – Activist & Founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-marieme-helie-lucas-secularism/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018v, January 1). An Interview with Marissa Torres Langseth, B.S.N., M.S.N. (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2018/01/01/langseth-one/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ab, October 11). An Interview with Mary Farrell — Previous Executive, Secular Student Organization. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-mary-farrell-previous-executive-secular-student-organization-7fd52b0aa453.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017u, June 22). An Interview with Michelle Shortt (Chapter Head) and Stuart “Stu” de Haan (Spokesperson): The Satanic Temple (Arizona Chapter). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2017/06/22/an-interview-with-michelle-shortt-chapter-head-and-stuart-stu-de-haan-spokesperson-the-satanic-temple-arizona-chapter/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017u, October 1). An Interview with Morgan Wienberg, M.S.C. (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2017/09/01/morgan-wienberg-part-one/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bg, March 14). An Interview with Nabina Maharjan — Secretary/Youth Advisor, Society for Humanism Nepal. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/nabina-maharjan/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016j, October 8). An Interview with Nicola Young Jackson – Past President, International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organisation. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-nicola-young-jackson-past-president-international-humanist-ethical-youth-organisation/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ah, December 28). An Interview with Patricia Flanagan — President, Secular Student Fellowship. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/12/patricia-flanagan%e2%80%8a/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018q, January 5). An Interview with Shari Allwood — Executive Director of SMART Recovery. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/shari-allwood%e2%80%8a/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017z, November 27). An Interview with Valérie Dubé — Board Member, Humanist Association of Ottawa. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/an-interview-with-valérie-dubé-board-member-humanist-association-of-ottawa-3183241174ee.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018n, January 22). An Interview with Wendy Webber. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/wendy-webber/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019e, April 6). Ask Autumn 1 – Abortion Doula: A Canadian Option. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/ask-autumn-1-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ax, November 1). Ask Catherine 1 — Culture Sensitivity and the Unseen. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-catherine-1-culture-sensitivity-and-the-unseen-9ae5a0ab2d8.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bc, October 4). Ask Emily 1 — Entrance Into Civic and Political Life. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-emily-1-entrance-into-civic-and-political-life-467a7ecf2521.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ay, October 25). Ask Gayleen 1 — South African Progressivism. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-gayleen-1-south-african-progressivism-40b6bc655442.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019d, March 31). Ask Gretta (and Denise) 6 – Atheists and Humanists at the Pulpit: A Tale of Two Freethinkers. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/ask-gretta-and-denise-7-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018av, December 2). Ask Kavin 1 — The Demarcation Problem in Food. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-kavin-1-the-demarcation-problem-in-food-c40d9edd46f5.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019al, January 6). Ask Sally 1 — Drawing the Lines for Progressivism in 2019. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-sally-1-drawing-the-lines-for-progressivism-in-2019-3985c7842b44.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bb, October 12). Ask Sarah 1 — The New Media. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-sarah-1-the-new-media-bcad12c82eab.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018aw, November 10). Ask Shireen 1 — Reformers. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-shireen-1-reformers-b6ef85ccfd55.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ba, October 17). Ask Tara 1 — The Crossroads of Thailand, Iran, America, Journalism, and Women’s Rights. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/ask-tara-1-the-crossroads-of-thailand-iran-america-journalism-and-womens-rights-2328f674dc15.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bo, January 28). Charlotte Frances Littlewood on Radicalization, Extremism, and Counter-Extremism. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/littlewood/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ai, May 5). Chat with Angelique Anne Villa — Member, Humanist Alliance Philippines, International. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/chat-with-angelique-anne-villa-member-humanist-alliance-philippines-international-bd81f59c81df.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017al, September 30). Chat with British Christian Suzie Mason, Ph.D. Candidate, on Christianity and Atheism. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/suzie-mason/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018d, August 1). Claire Klingenberg on Education and Atheism – President, European Council of Skeptic Organizations. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/08/klingenberg-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017h, October 2). Conversation with Cheri Frazer – Winnipeg Chapter Co-Coordinator, Dying With Dignity. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/10/cheri-frazer/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018y, October 5). Conversation with Felicia Cravens – Founder, Unfakery. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/10/cravens-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017f, September 24). Conversation with Professor Tina Block on the Secular Northwest. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/tina-block/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017aj, November 20). Conversation with Reva Landau – Co-Founder, Open Public Education Now. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/11/landau/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017k, November 15). Conversation with Sophie Shulman, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sci. – Director, CFI-Victoria. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/11/shulman/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017e, September 18). Conversation with Terry Murray on Sexual Minorities, Religion, and the UK. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/conversation-with-terry-murray-on-sexual-minorities-religion-and-the-uk/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ag, December 22). Critical Thinking About New Age Spiritualism With Jessica Schab. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/12/schab/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017w, August 22). Danielle Blau, Process, Poetry, Aloneness and Fear, Weeping, and Philosophy. Retrieved from https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/danielle-blau-2-sjbn/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bj, March 14). Diana Bucur on Leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/diana-bucur/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ag, January 8). Dr. Azra Raza, M.D.: Professor and Director of MDS Center, at Columbia University. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/dr-azra-raza-m-d-professor-and-director-of-mds-center-at-columbia-university-c190e564d047.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ad, September 15). Dr. Barbara Forrest: Philosophy Professor, Southeastern Louisiana University & Member, NCSE Board of Directors. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/dr-barbara-forrest-philosophy-professor-southeastern-louisiana-university-member-ncse-board-99218108a9ae.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ah, January 20). Dr. Carol Tavris: Social Psychologist, Writer, Lecturer; Fellow, Center for Inquiry. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/dr-carol-tavris-social-psychologist-writer-lecturer-fellow-center-for-inquiry-30d0a7f4315e.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017v, August 20). Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Expert Witness, Unlimited Funding and Research, and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Retrieved from https://goodmenproject.com/uncategorized/loftus-2-sjbn/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2014, June 15). Dr. Francisco Ayala: Donald Bren Professor, Biological Sciences; Professor of Philosophy; and Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science, University of California, Irvine (Part One). Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2014/06/15/dr-francisco-ayala-donald-bren-professor-biological-sciences-professor-of-philosophy-and-professor-of-logic-and-the-philosophy-of-science-university-of-california-irvine/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ag, January 15). Dr. Maryanne Garry: Psychology Professor, Victoria University of Wellington; Fellow, Center for Inquiry. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/dr-maryanne-garry-psychology-professor-victoria-university-of-wellington-fellow-center-for-209cdb9b414d.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ak, February 1). Dr. Susan Blackmore: Visiting Professor, University of Plymouth; Fellow, Center for Inquiry. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/dr-susan-blackmore-visiting-professor-university-of-plymouth-fellow-center-for-inquiry-4aec8d2c17d5.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017f, September 22). Exclusive Interview with Stephanie Guttormson - Operations Director for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/stephanie-guttormson/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018k, January 26). Exclusive Interview with Writer and Producer Leslea Mair. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/mair/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016h, October 24). Extended Interview with Maryam Namazie. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/extended-interview-maryam-namazie-2/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018s, July 13). Ghada Ibrahim: Sharia is a Threat to Human Rights and Democracy.. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/ghada-ibrahim-sharia-threat-human-rights-democracy/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017u, August 14). Helen Pluckrose, Windows and Mirrors – Views from the Outside In. Retrieved from https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/helen-pluckrose-sjbn/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018m, January 28). In Conversation with Angie Johnson – Executive Director, Salt Lake City Oasis. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/johnson/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018a, January 12). In Conversation with Atheist Minister Gretta Vosper – Current Context. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/vosper/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018x, September 9). In Conversation with Diane Burkholder – Co-Founder, One Struggle KC. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/09/burkholder-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018m, January 31). In Conversation with Dr. Ellen Wiebe – Physicians Advisory Council, Dying With Dignity Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/wiebe/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018l, January 26). In Conversation with Helen Austen – Executive Director, Kansas City Oasis. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/austen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018e, February 16). In Conversation with Joyce Arthur – Founder and Executive Director, Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/arthur/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bn, January 24). In Conversation with Lita Bablitz on a Two-Tier Education System. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/01/bablitz/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018h, March 10). In Conversation with Melissa Krawczyk – Atheist, Secular Humanist, and Skeptic. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/krawczyk/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018f, February 23). In Conversation with Professor Colleen MacQuarrie, Ph.D. on Abortion Rights Activism. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/macquarrie/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018i, March 27). In Conversation with Professor Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme on Secularism, Religion, and Atheism. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/in-conversation-with-professor-sarah-wilkins-laflamme-on-secularism-religion-and-atheism/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018r, February 6). In Conversation with Tammy Pham – Founder and Former Co-President, Dying With Dignity Canada (U of Ottawa). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/pham/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bd, May 18). In Conversation with Vidita Priyadarshini – MA in Political Science Student, Central European University. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/05/priyadarshini/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ak, October 24). In the Heart of the Catholic Education Trans Controversy – Anonymous Interview with Trans Child Mother. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/10/trans/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ao, September 11). Interview with Agnes Vishnevkin, MBA — Co-Founder & Vice President of Intentional Insights and Pro-Truth Pledge. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-agnes-vishnevkin-mba-co-founder-vice-president-of-intentional-insights-and-730db8e1d244.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ak, January 9). Interview with Ann Reid – Executive Director, National Center for Science Education. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/interview-with-ann-reid-executive-director-national-center-for-science-education/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ab, October 22). Interview with Aradhiya Khan — Pakistani Transgender Activist. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-aradhiya-khan-pakistani-transgender-activist-48e3e9afb082.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018z, August 13). Interview with Arya Parsipur – Author, Limu Shirin, The Bitter Story of Life After the Iranian Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/08/limu-shirin-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ae, February 18). Interview with Asuncion Alvarez del Río – Advisory Council Member, DMD Mexico. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/alvarez-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019o, March 15). Interview with August Berkshire – State Director, Minnesota American Atheists. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/berkshire-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018aj, February 23). Interview with Brenda Germain — President, MASH Ft. Bragg. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-brenda-germain-president-mash-ft-bragg-f3c3936dc224.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019x, January 31). Interview with Carly Gardner – State Director, American Atheists Nevada. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/gardner-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019t, January 27). Interview with Carmenza Ochoa Uribe – Executive Director, Fundación Pro Derecho a Morir Dignamente. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/uribe-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018g, February 24). Interview with Catherine Dunphy – Author & Former Executive Director, The Clergy Project. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/dunphy/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ah, February 21). Interview with Claudette St. Pierre – President, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Metro Denver Chapter. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/pierre-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017af, September 3). Interview with Cleopatra Yvonne S. Nyahe — Co-Cordinator, Humanist Services Corps. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-cleopatra-yvonne-s-nyahe-co-cordinator-humanist-services-corps-bf7773f1f817.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017s, September 17). Interview with Cynthia Todd Quam – President of ‘End of the Line Humanists’. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-cynthia-todd-quam/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019i, March 14). Interview with Dorothy Hays – President, Atheists, Skeptics, Humanists Association (ASHA). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/hays-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ad, February 8). Interview with Dr. Meredith Doig, OAM – President, Rationalist Society of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/doig-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019w, February 1). Interview with Faye Girsh – An Activist for the Right to a Peaceful Death. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/girsh-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019p, January 19). Interview with Frances Coombe – President, South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Society. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/coombe-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bk, March 4). Interview with Frances Garner – Member, Central Ontario Humanists. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/frances-garner/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bl, March 2). Interview with Gauri Hopkins on Cult Upbringing and Contemporary Feminism. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/hopkins/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ai, January 6). Interview with Gayle Jordan – Executive Director, Recovering from Religion. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/jordan-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018al, November 3). Interview with Gissou Nia on Becoming Involved in Human Rights Work. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-gissou-nia-on-becoming-involved-in-human-rights-work-3e568bdd96bd.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019n, March 19). Interview with Haafizah Bhamjee – Executive-Administrator, “Ex-Muslims of South Africa”. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/bhamjee-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019aj, January 5). Interview with Heather Pentler – Committee Member, Edinburgh Skeptics. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/pentler-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019m, March 22). Interview with Hope Knutsson – Former President, Founding Member, and Board Member, Siðmennt (Félag Siðrænna Húmanista). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/knutsson-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018as, May 12). Interview with Jean Karla M. Tapao — Member, Humanist Alliance Philippines, International. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-jean-karla-m-tapao-member-humanist-alliance-philippines-international-816bdb95564e.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019k, March 10). Interview with Jeanne Arthur – President, Dying with Dignity ACT. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/arthur-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016b, February 16). Interview with Jennifer C. Gutierrez Baltazar – Executive Director of Humanist Alliance Philippines, International (HAPI)-. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-%E2%80%8Bjennifer-c-gutierrez-baltazar-executive-director-humanist-alliance-philippines-international-hapi/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019y, February 7). Interview with Judith Daley – Board Member, Dying with Dignity NSW. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/daley-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018c, July 25). Interview with Karen Garst – Founder, Faithless Feminist. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/07/karen-garst-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019v, February 2). Interview with Karis Burkowski – President, Society of Ontario Freethinkers. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/burkowski-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016g, October 25). Interview with Kate Smurthwaite. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-%E2%80%8Bkate-smurthwaite/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019f, April 7). Interview with Kelly – Brights Community Clusters (BCCs) Coordinator, The Brights’ Net. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/brights-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, 2019u, January 30). Interview for Kim Newton, M.Litt. – Executive Director, Camp Quest, Inc. (National Support Center). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/newton-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019q, January 14). Interview with Kristine Klopp – Assistant State Director, American Atheists Alabama. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/klopp-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018af, January 11). Interview with Lee Sakura — Administrator, Atheist Republic Manila Consulate. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-lee-sakura-administrator-atheist-republic-manila-consulate-d2953395bedb.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016c, December 5). Interview with Linda LaScola – Editor of Rational Doubt, Clinical Social Worker, Psychotherapist, & Qualitative Researcher. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-linda-lascola-editor-rational-doubt-clinical-social-worker-psychotherapist-qualitative-researcher/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019g, February 24). Interview with Lucie Jobin – President, Mouvement Laïque Québécois. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/jobin-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017y, December 16). Interview with Lucille V. Hoersten. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-lucille-v-hoersten-9b07bef9d96d.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018j, April 22). Interview with Mandisa Thomas – Founder, Black Nonbelievers, Inc.. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/04/thomas/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ab, February 11). Interview with Margaret Downey – Founder & President, Freethought Society. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/interview-with-margaret-downey-founder-president-freethought-society/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ap, August 28). Interview with Marianne De Guzman Tucay — Member, Humanist Alliance Philippines International. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-marianne-de-guzman-tucay-member-humanist-alliance-philippines-international-a892482525bd.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ar, May 14). Marieme Helie Lucas on Noura Hussein Hammad. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/marieme-helie-lucas-on-noura-hussein-hammad-61510cf2b115.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019s, January 25). Interview with Marquita Tucker, M.B.A. – Co-Organizer, Black Nonbelievers of Detroit. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/tucker-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019r, January 23). Interview with Megan Denman – Assistant State Director, American Atheists Ohio. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/01/denman-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018aq, July 31). Interview with Melanie Wilderman — Author, Faithiest. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-melanie-wilderman-author-faithiest-571e3f410750.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ag, February 13). Interview with Merja Soisaari-Turriago – Secretary, EXITUS ry. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/turriago-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019a, April 6). Interview with Miriam de Bontridder – Board Member, Foundation The Einder. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/bontridder-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018be, May 10). Interview with Molly Hanson – Editorial Assistant, Freedom From Religion Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/05/hanson/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017l, November 26). Interview with Monica Miller – Senior Counsel, AHA Appignani Humanist Legal Center. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/11/miller/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018am, October 24). Interview with Muriel McGregor — Former President, SSA (Utah State University). Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-muriel-mcgregor-former-president-ssa-utah-state-university-1f2d142c57af.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019c, April 1). Interview with Ngaire McCarthy – Past President and Trustee, New Zealand Association of Rationalists & Humanists (Inc.). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/mccarthy-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019b, April 3). Interview with Nicole Infinity – Camp Coordinator, Camp Quest North. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/infinity-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017r, February 16). Interview with Nicole Orr - Branch Manager at CFI-Portland. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-%E2%80%8Bnicole-orr-%E2%80%8Bbranch-manager-cfi-portland/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016, November 2). Interview with Professor Rebecca Goldstein — Novelist, Philosopher, and Public Intellectual. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-professor-%E2%80%8Brebecca-goldstein%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Anovelist-philosopher-public-intellectual/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018an, October 21). Interview with Raghen Lucy — President, Minnesota State University, Mankato SSA & Council Member, National Leadership Council (SSA). Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-raghen-lucy-president-minnesota-state-university-mankato-ssa-council-member-b79e3e3ff7db.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016i, October 21). Interview with Reba Boyd Wooden -Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry-Indiana. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-reba-boyd-wooden-%E2%80%8B-executive-director-center-inquiry-indiana/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016d, November 11). Interview with Rebecca Hale – President of The American Humanist Association. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-rebecca-hale-president-american-humanist-association/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018aa, July 30). Interview with Rizalina Guilatco Carr on Humanism. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-rizalina-guilatco-carr-on-humanism-2f85343f4f5c.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019aa, February 4). Interview with Robyn E. Blumner, J.D. – President & CEO, Center for Inquiry & Executive Director, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/blumner-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016e, November 2). Interview with Roslyn Mould - President of the Humanist Association of Ghana; Chair of the African working group (IHEYO). Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-roslyn-mould-%E2%80%8B-president-humanist-association-ghana-chair-african-working-group-iheyo/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019ac, February 10). Interview with Ruth von Fuchs – President, Right to Die Society of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/interview-with-ruth-von-fuchs-president-right-to-die-society-of-canada/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019af, February 17). Interview with Sandra Z. Zellick – Secretary, Humanists of Sarasota Bay. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/zellick-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018b, August 14). Interview with Shanaaz Gokool – CEO, Dying With Dignity Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/08/gokool-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018at, June 3). Interview with Shif Gadamsetti – Former President, SAMRU; Support Staff, Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/06/gadamsetti-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018i, March 28). Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson-Feminist, Humanist, Novelist, Author. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/03/sikivu-hutchinson/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019z, February 5). Interview with Silvia Park – State Director, American Atheists Virginia. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/02/park-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018bf, May 9). Sodfa Daaji on the Urgent Case of Noura Hussein Hammad. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/05/hammad/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019j, March 13). Interview with Susan Nambejja on Malcolm Childrens’ Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/nambejja-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2016f, October 26). Interview with Tara Abhasakun on the Baha’i Faith. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/interview-tara-abhasakun-bahai-faith/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017x, March 21). Interview with Tehmina Kazi. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/interview-with-tehmina-kazi-de839b823d62.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2019l, March 4). Interview with Zenaido Quintana – Chair & Acting Executive Director, Secular Coalition for Arizona & Secular Communities for Arizona. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/03/quintana-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017ai, November 24). Janet French on the Catholic Education System. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/11/french/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ae, January 18). Kathy Dawson — Board Member, Alberta Pro-Choice Coalition and Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/kathy-dawson-board-member-alberta-pro-choice-coalition-and-abortion-rights-coalition-of-canada-e9d9a8bf60d1.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018w, July 3). LGBTQ2IA+ and the Undergraduate Postsecondary Learning Environment with Aria Burrell. Retrieved from https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/aria-burrell-sjbn/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018r, April 13). Liberal Islam and Migrant Integration with Seyran Ateş. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/seyran-ates-faith-feminism-law/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018au, June 18). Loss is Love Suffered: An Ode to Marie Alena Castle. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/06/castle-jacobsen/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018ac, November 9). Maryam Namazie on activism and ex-Muslims. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@scott.d.jacobsen/maryam-namazie-on-activism-and-ex-muslims-c5298c89fb28.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018q, March 11). Mina Ahadi: Abuse of Women’s Rights in Iran Calls for a New Revolution. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/mina-ahadi-womens-rights-revolution/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017a, August 28). Q&A on International Youth Humanism with Marieke Prien — Session 1. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/08/international-humanism/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017m, April 29). Q&A on Life in London with Pamela Machado. Retrieved from https://conatusnews.com/qa-life-london-pamela-machado/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017aa, October 19). Question with Patricia Grell, B.Sc., M.Div.: Trustee, Edmonton Catholic School Board (Ward 71). Retrieved from https://medium.com/humanist-voices/question-with-patricia-grell-b-sc-m-div-trustee-edmonton-catholic-school-board-ward-71-76ffb4700d1b.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018az, October 17). Sara Al Iraqiya on Bad and Good Writing. Retrieved from https://medium.com/question-time/sara-al-iraqiya-on-bad-and-good-writing-f469adada5d7.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017am, September 25). Short Chat with Pirate Jen Takahashi – Administrative Coordinator, Lethbridge Public Interest Research Group (LPIRG). Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/pirate-jen-takahashi/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017b, January 5). Short Chat with Violine Namyalo – HALEA and UHASSO. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/violin-namyalo/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017d, September 18). Talk With Sarah Mills – Assistant Editor and Contributor, Conatus News. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/sarah-mills/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2017g, September 30). The Calgary Pride Parade with Christine M. Shellska. Retrieved from https://www.canadianatheist.com/2017/09/the-calgary-pride-parade-with-christine-m-shellska/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2018u, July 15). Three Administrations of Humanist Student Leaders Dialogue About Humanism: Hari Parekh, Hannah Lucy Timson, and Angelos Sofocleous. Retrieved from https://in-sightjournal.com/2018/07/15/parekh-timson-sofocleous/.

Jacoby, S. (2012, August 16). A Woman’s Place? The Dearth of Women in the Secular Movement. Retrieved from https://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2012/features/a-womans-place-the-dearth-of-women-in-the-secular-movement.

Jacoby, S. (2018). Susan Jacoby. Retrieved from http://www.susanjacoby.co/.

Jacoby, S. (2013, January 5). The Blessings of Atheism. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/the-blessings-of-atheism.html.

Judge, M. (2015, April 6). Why I Won’t Date Secular White Women. Retrieved from https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2015/04/07/why_i_wont_date_secular_white_women.html.

Masci, D. (2019, February 11). For Darwin Day, 6 facts about the evolution debate. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/11/darwin-day/.

Mill, J.S. (1863). Utilitarianism: Chapter 2 What Utilitarianism Is. Retrieved from https://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm.

Miller, J.D., Scott, E.C., & Okamoto, S. (2006, August 11). Public Acceptance of Evolution. Retrieved from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/765.full.

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Pew Research Center. (2016a, March 22). The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World: 7. Theories explaining gender differences in religion. Retrieved from http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/22/theories-explaining-gender-differences-in-religion/.

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Pockrass, A. (n.d.). Why These Secular Jewish Women Are Covering Their Hair. Retrieved from https://www.heyalma.com/secular-jewish-women-covering-hair/.

Powell, R. (2017, August 2). Fact: More women go to church than men. Retrieved from https://www.eternitynews.com.au/australia/fact-more-women-go-to-church-than-men/.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com.

[1] Utilitarianism: Chapter 2 What Utilitarianism Is (1863) states:

I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human being’s sentient existence. If the, impugners of the utilitarian morality represented it to their own minds in this its, true character, I know not what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly affirm to be wanting to it; what more beautiful or more exalted developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.

Mill, J.S. (1863). Utilitarianism: Chapter 2 What Utilitarianism Is. Retrieved from https://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm.

[2] These include Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Rev. Gretta Vosper, Shanaaz Gokool, Allie Jackson, Karen Garst, Claire Klingenberg, Joyce Arthur, Colleen MacQuarrie, Catherine Dunphy, Melissa Krawczyk, Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme, Sikivu Hutchinson, Mandisa Lateefah Thomas, Leslea Mair, Helen Austen, Angie Johnson, Ellen Wiebe, Wendy Webber, Marieke Prien, Shari Allwood, Violine Namyalo, Emily Newman, Sarah Mills, Terry Murray, Stephanie Guttormson, Tina Block, Christine M. Shellska, Cheri Frazer, Anya Overmann, Sophie Shulman, Monica Miller, Houzan Mahmoud, Tammy Pham, Ajomuzu Collette Bekaku, Pamela Machado, Julia Julstrom-Agoyo, Amanda Poppei, Kim Gibson, Marieme Helie Lucas, Nicole Orr, Jennifer C. Gutierrez Baltazar, Linda LaScola, Rebecca Hale, Roslyn Mould, Tara Abhasakun, Kate Smurthwaite, Maryam Namazie, Reba Boyd Wooden, Cynthia Todd Quam, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Morgan Wienberg, Anissa Helou, Marissa Torres Langseth, Hannah Lucy Timson, and others, including, and some repetition, Marissa Alexa Lennex-McCool, Mandisa Thomas, Yasmine Mohammed, Sikivu Hutchinson, Bridgett “Bree” Crutchfield, Marquita Tucker, Samantha A. Christian, Judy Saint, Jummai Mohammed, Marissa Torres Langseth, Alexus Jean Black, Alisha Ann, and Susan Nambejja from this article (Jacoby, 2018; Jacobsen, 2016a; Jacobsen, 2018a; Jacobsen, 2018b; Jacobsen, 2018c; Jacobsen, 2018d; Jacobsen, 2018e; Jacobsen, 2018f; Jacobsen, 2018g; Jacobsen, 2018h; Jacobsen, 2018i; Jacobsen, 2018j; Jacobsen, 2018k; Jacobsen, 2018l; Jacobsen, 2018m; Jacobsen, 2018n; Jacobsen, 2018o; Jacobsen, 2018p; Jacobsen, 2017a; Jacobsen, 2018q; Jacobsen, 2017b; Jacobsen, 2017c; Jacobsen, 2017d; Jacobsen, 2017f; Jacobsen, 2017g; Jacobsen, 2017h; Jacobsen, 2017i; Jacobsen, 2017j; Jacobsen, 2017k; Jacobsen, 2017l; Jacobsen, 2017m; Jacobsen, 2017n; Jacobsen, 2017o; Jacobsen, 2017p; Jacobsen, 2017q; Jacobsen, 2017r; Jacobsen, 2016b; Jacobsen, 2016c; Jacobsen, 2016d; Jacobsen, 2016e; Jacobsen, 2016f; Jacobsen, 2017s; Jacobsen, 2017t; Jacobsen, 2018q; Jacobsen, 2018r; Jacobsen, 2018s; Jacobsen, 2018t; Jacobsen, 2018u; Jacobsen, 2018v; Jacobsen, 2017u; Jacobsen, 2017v; Jacobsen, 2018w; Jacobsen, 2017w; Jacobsen, 2019a; Jacobsen, 2019b; Jacobsen, 2019c; Jacobsen, 2019d; Jacobsen, 2019e; Jacobsen, 2019f; Jacobsen, 2019g; Jacobsen, 2019h; Jacobsen, 2019i; Jacobsen, 2019j; Jacobsen, 2019k; Jacobsen, 2019l; Jacobsen, 2019m; Jacobsen, 2019n; Jacobsen, 2019o; Jacobsen, 2019p; Jacobsen, 2019q; Jacobsen, 2019r; Jacobsen, 2019s; Jacobsen, 2019t; Jacobsen, 2019u; Jacobsen, 2019v; Jacobsen, 2019w; Jacobsen, 2019x; Jacobsen, 2019y; Jacobsen, 2019z; Jacobsen, 2019aa; Jacobsen, 2019ab; Jacobsen, 2019ac; Jacobsen, 2019ad; Jacobsen, 2019ae; Jacobsen, 2019af; Jacobsen, 2019ag; Jacobsen, 2019ah; Jacobsen, 2019ai; Jacobsen, 2019aj; Jacobsen, 2019ak; Jacobsen, 2018x; Jacobsen, 2018y; Jacobsen, 2018z; Jacobsen, 2018aa; Jacobsen, 2018ab; Jacobsen, 2018ac; Jacobsen, 2017x; Jacobsen, 2018ad; Jacobsen, 2018ae; Jacobsen, 2018af; Jacobsen, 2018ag; Jacobsen, 2017y; Jacobsen, 2017z; Jacobsen, 2017aa; Jacobsen, 2017ab; Jacobsen, 2017ac; Jacobsen, 2017ad; Jacobsen, 2017ae; Jacobsen, 2018ag; Jacobsen, 2018ah; Jacobsen, 2018ai; Jacobsen, 2018aj; Jacobsen, 2018ak; Jacobsen, 2018al; Jacobsen, 2018am; Jacobsen, 2018an; Jacobsen, 2018ao; Jacobsen, 2018ap; Jacobsen, 2018aq; Jacobsen, 2018ar; Jacobsen, 2018as; Jacobsen, 2018at; Jacobsen, 2018au; Jacobsen, 2018av; Jacobsen, 2018aw; Jacobsen, 2018ax; Jacobsen, 2018ay; Jacobsen, 2018az; Jacobsen, 2018ba; Jacobsen, 2019al; Jacobsen, 2018bb; Jacobsen, 2018bc; Jacobsen, 2018bd; Jacobsen, 2018be; Jacobsen, 2018bf; Jacobsen, 2018bg; Jacobsen, 2018bh; Jacobsen, 2018bi; Jacobsen, 2018bj; Jacobsen, 2018bk; Jacobsen, 2018bl; Jacobsen, 2018bm; Jacobsen, 2018bn; Jacobsen, 2018bo; Jacobsen, 2017af; Jacobsen, 2017ag; Jacobsen, 2017ah; Jacobsen, 2017ai; Jacobsen, 2017aj; Jacobsen, 2017ak; Jacobsen, 2017al; Jacobsen, 2017am).

[3] Now, this stands apart from theories of consciousness and conscious mental activity found with, for one instance, Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff with the Orch-OR Model of Consciousness or Orchestrated Objective Reduction Model of Consciousness, where Penrose remains one of the more prominent and respectable individuals positing stretches in the scientific methodologies and epistemologies for explanation of a difficult phenomena (some say epiphenomena) – consciousness – and did receive a tip-of-the-hat from Edward Witten (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018d; Артём Журавель, 2016). Penrose argues the comprehension of non-computable facets of the basic operations of the universe by the human mind in the case of being capable of knowing the truth of the Godel Incompleteness Theorems, and their relationship between axioms & the truths of mathematical formal structures and the computations of the human mind, creates the basis for the expanded model of space-time and physics to include consciousness and space-time geometry as fundamentally interrelated with one another. This creates the basis for models of the universe & consciousness, and the brain and so the mind, with non-computable aspects because of the implications, within the perspective of Penrose, of the realization of some human operators being capable of understanding the Godel Incompleteness Theorems. Something which should not be possible if human computation involved only systems with formalized axiomatic mathematical structures and systems. The mind does; so, new models needed, argues Penrose. He posits isolated collapse of a quantum wave function superposition into a single state in a closed system as not simply a reduction of the system or a collapse of the wave function – as is seen in open systems – but as an Objective Reduction or OR. In complex closed systems or isolated systems, this may become an orchestrated phenomenon as in, for example, consciousness and, therefore, the Orchestrated (Orch) OR or Orch-OR (sorry for that one) Model of Consciousness becomes the possible bridge. The potential state selected from the superposition links to spacetime geometry as non-random and non-algorithmic and non-computable. You see the idea there. To Penrose et al, the span of time until the quantum wave function collapses/the quantum superposition of states reduces to one/objective reduction or OR occurs approximately equates to the simple division function with the gravitational self-energy of the space-time object as the denominator and the reduced Planck constant as the numerator, where the implication of the eventual computation amounts to the bigger the object or the more self-energy then the faster the gravitational self-collapse or the smaller then the slower the rate of the process through time. Important things have more energy; small things have less; thus, big thing OR faster than small thing OR. OR needs isolation. That is, an isolated system for OR. The brain and even neurons are too big and non-isolated for OR in Orch-OR. However, the neuronal microtubules have the approximate correct size and system isolation for OR. They may orchestrate massive OR. That is Orch-OR. Witten believes consciousness will remain a difficult problem despite the advances in the coming decades in knowledge about the detailed structure and function of the brain with modern neuroscience and other disciplines in brain science. Witten remains skeptical of purported forthcoming solutions to the problem of consciousness, taking the position, probably, of consciousness not being a problem with a potential answer but as a mystery with no solution given the structure of the human mind and sciences used to discover the basic nature of the cosmos. Most professional researchers hold skepticism about Orch-OR. With the assumption of a discrete rather a continuous fundamental state of the universe, the proposition in Orch-OR equates to the quantity of self-energy in a given spacetime volume necessary to collapse a quantum superposition – a set of associated states co-occurring or mutually existent; the collapse would occur within a reasonable amount of time into a single new state with smaller objects taking longer and bigger objects taking shorter to self-collapse for a collapse to connect the non-computational aspects of decision-making [read: Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, where “all consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions” (Weisstein, 2018)] to associate with the experiences – let’s say qualia and other facets – somehow embedded into the fundamental substructure or even superstructure of the universe – in some Platonic theory about the lowest possible rung of the existent (makes sense as Penrose is a Platonist or a Neo-Platonist), where the neurons of the brain for this form of consciousness would be too large but the microtubules within each neuron – thousands in each neuron – would suffice in scale for sufficient self-energy and also isolation from potential decoherence effects impacting the functional quantum superposition collapse. As far as I know, no or very few minor evidences support, and no major evidence supports, this Orch-OR Model of Consciousness.

[4] NIV (2018a) Genesis 2:7 states:

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

NIV. (2018a). Genesis 2:7. Retrieved from https://biblehub.com/genesis/2-7.htm.

[5] NIV (2018b) Genesis 2:22 states:

Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

NIV. (2018b). Genesis 2:22. Retrieved from https://biblehub.com/genesis/2-22.htm.

[6] Dr. Francisco Ayala: Donald Bren Professor, Biological Sciences; Professor of Philosophy; and Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science, University of California, Irvine (Part One), in part, states:

Prior to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Priest William Paley in the 19^thcentury argued in his book, Natural Theology (1802), he provided an analogy of the watch and watchmaker to reason by analogy for the existence of a designer. In your book from 2007, Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, you discuss some of the larger theological aspects related to some modern biological debates, especially those relating to modern creationist and intelligent design theory. In it, you argue against creationism and intelligent design as scientific explanations. Dobzhansky makes note of this in his 1973 essay. He argues science and theology do not conflict. In that, science on the one half; theology on the other half. They deal with different subject-matter. Could you discuss some of the larger, brief historical aspects of the design arguments that have come around? In particular, how did they come to the fore?

Yes, the sign of design in nature. Obviously, I have the eyes to see, hands can manipulate, and leaves can photosynthesize, and on and on. Organisms give evidence of being designed. That tended to be explored in classical Greece among the great philosophers of the 5^th and 4^th century BCE. They were looking at the signs this way. These signs were attributed to the gods, but not in the modern sense of a modern God – not a universal god. This was very much taken up in the Greek tradition. That organisms were designed because there seemed no other way you explain such design. Thomas Aquinas, a great Christian theologian in the opinion of many people, he used this as one of five arguments that God exists. Since the organism is designed, animals and plants, only a universal creator could explain it. That tradition continues. There are very important works including books written about it. The most complete elaboration of the argument was written by William Paley, published in 1802. He was an author of several books of Christian theology. Also, he was known in the latter part of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. You may have read this in the book. He was known mostly as a public speaker for abolitionism. He was fighting against slavery. He had to give up his public speaking career. Instead, he decided to study biology. He produced his book Natural Theology, which is the most complete book on the argument for design. He provides the most complete argument about design in organisms in nature such as plants and animals. It is a beautiful book, 350 pages or so. There was no other argument until Darwin came with the Origins of Species (1859). Well, first of all with the two earlier long essays written by him. However, the 1859 book was the greatest contribution to science and one of the most important discoveries of science was being able to provide a scientific explanation of the design of organisms. Because everything else, we have the Copernican revolution with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and others in chemistry, but the design of organisms seemed impossible to explain in terms of science. In terms of natural causes, the great contribution of Darwin was to provide the scientific explanations of design, which makes it one of the great scientific revolutions of all-time.

[7] Interview with Marissa Alexa Lennex-McCool:

Marissa Alexa Lennex-McCool: This has happened because women in many of them are affected by the social, political, and economic conditions and are tired of not being represented and spoken over. In many instances, if we are not told we are being too emotional, told to get back in the kitchen or focus on raising children, or serving a husband, we’re condescended to or pushed aside for the good ol’ boys clubs. While many women may not agree with each other, a good percentage of them are sick of having things decided for them without a say, especially when men make decisions about women’s bodies without the faintest idea of what it is like.

Lennex-McCool: All those domains, and the women within them, are as diverse as the populations themselves. I think it is fair to say one of the biggest and most prevalent in recent memory is sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, not to mention the processes by which one can report those things, both at work and in general. Even with people being temporarily inconvenienced by allegations, they are often free to come back whenever they want with few, if any, repercussions for their actions.

The political conditions see evangelicals returning to power and asserting their theocratic views over others under the guise of religious liberty, among many others. Making sure women’s healthcare is dictated by their specific religious beliefs and everything else puts an undue burden on them, not to mention the queer, trans, and women of color who are disproportionately affected by the religious right’s influence on the government.

Jacobsen: #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of North American non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

Lennex-McCool: That this behavior has consequences, that it is not just a temporary hiatus or vacation from the spotlight before they try to return like nothing happened. But, and more importantly, that it is not just celebrities who face any consequences for these allegations. Perhaps even worse are the perpetual defenders of these men who defend the perpetrators no matter how much evidence or credible the allegations are, and that alone causes many women/non-men in the secular movement to either stay silent or leave it. Part of the reason we left religion was to get away from that mindset, but many seemingly have not left it behind.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Lennex-McCool: I just spoke at a convention that had eight women speakers, an all-women lineup. This convention booked it that way in response to the previous year’s lineup being all white men. Other voices in the community are often attacked, harassed, silenced, or bullied out of the movement, and when platforms are often given preferential treatment to white men, it can make it discourage. Marginalized communities need to be given the opportunity to speak and given the chance to speak on more than just the experience of being marginalized. Women of color can speak on more than race issues. Queer and trans people can speak on more than being queer and trans. The frustration comes from not having the chance to speak, but also being pigeon-holed as to only being invited to speak on your identity. I have three degrees from an Ivy League school. None of those three are degrees in Being Trans, Being Queer, Being a Woman, etc.

Jacobsen: Are there some things non-religious women simply only talk about with other non-religious women that non-religious men just do not hear? If so, what are these experiences? If so, what are these things? If so, why only the discussions like those happening woman-to-woman rather than woman-to-man?

McCool: I belong to a women’s-only facebook group, because often the regular ones are intolerable. Women are harassed and spoken down to, queer and trans women are bullied, mocked, doxxed, and virtually treated like the religious communities treat them, but science and logic are the words of defense rather than God and Jesus. Often, we discuss things in those places because we are sick of being ignored, spoken over, or having to stop every six seconds and educate someone who might just be JAQing off (Just Asking Questions.) Often that comes from someone not actually interested in learning, but just disrupting, and it is hard to tell the difference. We do not owe anyone an education.

Jacobsen: What can the non-religious communities do to include more women, people of color, and people from a wider variety of nations in the global non-religious community? What can we do to include more women’s voices in the mainstream dialogues, discourses, and discussions? What are the ways in which the non-religious community and men can help these efforts? What have been historic failures of the non-religious, and of men, to include women in the talks, the community, the literature, the media, and the important philosophical, scientific, and ethical discussions of the non-religious community?

Lennex-McCool: Give more than just the white men a chance to speak and be heard and give them a chance to speak on more than just their identity. Book more women, women of color, queer women, trans people, non-binary folx, indigenous activists… People who are not given a certain level of privilege have perspectives, experience, and opinions that were not formed in a place that men, especially white men, can understand and empathize with. The experience is not the same for everyone, and we need to stop pretending the perspective of a white man is universal or speaks for everyone. Men can turn down opportunities to speak if others are not being represented, and some have made it a practice to do so. If they are given the most credence within a community, they also have the power to change it. There are plenty of secular women of color, queer people, trans people, and others who are not religious, but many actively avoid the community because they are sick of seeing only white men represent them. The white men of the movement have the power to change that by advocating for others, and not just checking off a list (see: have the person of color talk about being a person of color, a trans person talk about being trans, etc.) The secular movement is as diverse and complicated as the population itself; the experience of being an atheist goes beyond just white men speaking about it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Marissa.

Marissa Alexa Lennex-McCool

www.rismccool.com

University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2017, LPS, Cum Laude

English/Cinema and Media Studies/Anthropology

Podcast Host

The Inciting Incident Podcast

The Cis Are Getting Out of Hand

Co-Founder

The Trans Podcaster Visibility Initiative

Author

The PC Lie: How American Voters Decided I Don’t Matter

False Start

Silent Dreams

Voice in the Dark

Passing Cars: The Internal Monologue of a Neurodivergent Trans Girl

Once Unspoken: A Series of Monologues From The Previously Unheard

The PC Lie: Can We Stop Giving Him A Chance Yet?

[8] Interview with Mandisa Thomas:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Women have been increasingly assertive about their concerns about the social, political, and economic conditions within their own part of a country, in their respective nations, and, indeed, regions of the world and on the international scene. How? Why is this important?

Mandisa Thomas: Women are being more assertive by creating organizations that address relevant issues, organizing protests, marches, as well as getting more involved in the political process by voting and running for office. This is important because while being a woman does not necessarily equal effective change, it does show that women are more likely to consider factors that will benefit the masses as opposed to special interests, especially when working together.

Thomas: Concerns include access to birth control, equal consideration in the workplace and policy making, complete objectification by men, and subjection to harassment.

Thomas: The main concern IMO is the entitlement that men feel to say and do whatever they want without consequences, which has been the case for many years. Such entitlement and power have kept women silent and enduring harsh treatment, and now that more are speaking up, there is a concern that there will be more backlash by men AND other women.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Thomas: This is a product of historical male domination, and the thought that men are the final authority. It absolutely should be changed, which can be done by everyone reconsidering what has been done previously, what has worked and what has not, and then work towards reform.

Thomas: Nonreligious women are discussing their concerns with the men. Discussing and debating. The responses range from many men being supportive and changing their actions, to many others becoming combative and remaining obstinate. But they are hearing our concerns for sure.

Thomas: First and foremost – LISTEN. Do not just hear what we are saying, listen. Do not be dismissive or reactionary when we bring up legitimate concerns. Do include more of us in discussions, events policy making, etc, and it should be consistent. Not one-time initiatives, or when issues fade from the spotlight. Support the organizations that are working on these efforts, financially and with resources. And work with them too.

That is where the difference is made, and where it counts.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

[9] Interview with Yasmine Mohammed:

Yasmine Mohammed: It is important because there seems to be this prevailing fallacy that the work of feminism is done-that we have achieved equality. Unfortunately, this is an untrue statement. To varying degrees, there is still a lot more work to be done.
In the West, women have fought and succeeded in achieving equality in many ways, but social changes do not occur at the flip of a switch. Just like in the fight against racism, winning civil rights battles did not ensure that there is no longer racism. Of course, there is. Though those battles that have been fought and admirably won have undoubtedly made huge strides in our Western societies, there are other societies, like in the Middle East and North Africa, where those strides are virtually unheard of. Women in Saudi Arabia have recently won limited permission to drive cars (they still need their male guardians’ permission to obtain the license, purchase a car, or even leave the house).

It is important for people to understand that not only is the battle not over, in some places the battle has not even begun.

Jacobsen: In each of those domains – social, political and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of Canadian women? What about women in North America? Please give examples or reasoning.

Mohammed: In a general sense, for Canadian women, and for all women in North America, the fight is for equalitywith our male counterparts. For a social example, as a female, I am attacked on social media far more and far more viciously than my male peers. A specific example would be when I was a cohost on Secular Jihadists podcast. In that podcast, one of my male peers made a controversial statement “Islam is worse than Nazism”. My other male peered agreed and added “I think all religions are worse than Nazism”. Although I was present, and agreed with my co-hosts, I said nothing. However, even though I never said a word, the resounding backlash on social media was entirely in my direction. It is easier for men and women to attack a woman for her views than it is to attack a man. We are still perceived as weaker – even by our non-religious community which purports to know better.

For an economic example, as a female, I am quite often not offered any speaking fee at all or I am offered significantly less than my male counterparts. As well, when I had a talk scheduled with two other female speakers that unfortunately had to be postponed, the three of us were so disrespected and summarily ignored in a way that would never happen if we were male.

Jacobsen: #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of Canadian non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

Mohammed: I think all women, religious or not, have the same concerns. We just want to be regarded as equal human beings. We would love for people to treat men and women with equal respect.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Mohammed: Yes, this is true. It is historically easier for men to be atheists as it is considered a confrontational or at least controversial stance by most people. Women are generally expected to be the caregivers and the social/community support of a religious group aids in family cohesion. There are many reasons why men far outnumber women in our community.

And that is exactly why more women need to be given the opportunity to speak publicly. “You cannot be what you cannot see”. If all our atheist talks are all male speakers, how will that encourage more women to see themselves as having the courage to be open about their atheism? They need to see examples of women, of mothers, successfully making that transition. Then they will be inspired and will then they will know that it is possible.

Mohammed: Yes, I think we talk about our experiences with religious patriarchy. Our experiences with women policing other women in religious contexts-and worse, women oppressing other women. Because religions are made by men for men, it is obvious that women would have very different experiences under religion. It is not just an intellectual epiphany for us. As a woman, you have been bred to see yourself as lesser-than. The modesty and shame culture thrust upon you from an early age – all those poisons need to be cleansed from our bodies. Our experiences are more like that of LGBT people who have left their faiths. We were raised to think that we are dirty sinners and that our existence provokes more sin.

Mohammed: I think the failures and the uphill battle is no different than that of any other male-dominated industry. And the solutions are the same. We are stuck in a vicious cycle where people only know of the dominant male speakers/writers, so they only want to hear from the dominant male speakers/writers. Women need to fight for our seat at that table. Make ourselves heard. Make ourselves known. It is a battle we are accustomed to. We just should not be lulled into thinking that, as atheists, we are immune to the same social ills as all other human beings. Of course, our issues are nowhere near to the same extent, and I am very grateful for that, but if we are unaware of the fact that women are fighting tooth and nail in our community, then we will not be sensitive to reaching out a hand. Knowledge is key. I think if more men understood that it is a problem, then they would be more than willing to do what they can to change the landscape.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Yasmine.

[10] Interview with Sikivu Hutchinson:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Scott Douglas Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Sikivu Hutchinson: More men, specifically, white men, dominate secular conversation because women have historically been marginalized in secular/atheist/humanist power circles and organizations. Non-religious contexts share the same sexist, misogynist conventions, ideologies and hierarchies as religious contexts. Although recent sexual abuse “scandals” involving high-powered white male secular leaders are the most egregious examples of this, these hierarchies have always existed in the non-religious sphere. Simply removing god-belief from the equation does not eliminate hierarchies based on the sexual objectification, commodification and occupation of women’s bodies and the devaluation of women’s work. And it certainly does not disrupt white supremacist, colonialist notions of the liberated secular West versus “backward” “third world” cultures steeped in superstition and tribalism. Moreover, women of color have traditionally been under-represented in non-religious discourse and leadership due to the ways Black and Latinx female morality/respectability is tethered to religiosity and god. In addition, women of color are more likely to be connected to religious institutions because of the social, economic and political resources that they provide in capitalist nations with minimal social safety nets.

See my comments below on how this could be changed.

Hutchinson: Part of the global success of New Atheism has been best-selling white atheist rock star authors and the popularization of cults of personality like the Four Horsemen. Unfortunately, this kind of idolatry has eclipsed recognition of and attention to the ground work being laid by grassroots humanist organizations in their local communities. Progressive atheists organize around issues that go far beyond the usual church/state separation and “science and reason” agenda. You cannot fight for economic justice in communities of color without advocating for reproductive justice, unrestricted abortion rights and access to universal health care. You cannot preach “equality” of genders without redressing the heterosexist lack of representation of queer and trans people of color in K-12 curricula. You cannot advocate for LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) enfranchisement without confronting all the mechanisms that criminalize queer and trans youth of color and make them at greater risk for being incarcerated, placed in foster care and/or becoming homeless. Coalitions that form around these intersectional issues should be actively promoted—especially those that cultivate ties with progressive believers and non-atheist secular community-based organizations. Further, non-believers who write about and organize around these issues should be tapped for leadership positions in humanist and atheist organizations. There are currently little to no people of color in executive management positions in the major secular/humanist/atheist organizations (i.e., CFI, American Atheists, American Humanist Association, etc.). As a result, it is precisely because of the lack of culturally responsive humanist organizations and institutions that most non-believers of color do not feel comfortable openly identifying as atheist. Where are the humanist institutions that support the realities of our lived experiences in a “Christian nation” based on capitalist, racist, sexist, heterosexist class power? When atheism is primarily associated with academic elites patronizingly condemning believers as primitive and backward—while systematically profiting from racial segregation and straight white male privilege—then many people of color will see no compelling reason to ally with atheist causes and organizations by coughing up hundreds of dollars to attend navel-gazing conferences.

[11] Interview for Bridgett “Bree” Crutchfield:

Bridgett “Bree” Crutch: ‘Sooner or later when oppression can no longer be tolerated a voice or chorus of voices will rise up. This has ALWAYS been important. I cannot think of greater advocates for women other than…women. Men have subjugated, oppressed, judged, demeaned, humiliated women since the dawn of time. Why would we as women expect men to have a long awaited, well overdue, epiphany and do right by women? Women have ALWAYS been vocal. We gain strength by watching others share similar truths as ourselves. We are no longer ‘alone.’

In each of those domains – social, political, and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of American women? What about women in North America? Please give examples or reasoning.

‘FREEDOM AND FAIRNESS.

In 2018, women are still awaiting their “Mr. Maybe Right.” They are still led to believe they are incomplete if their child-free and/or manless. Our womb, our reproductive rights continue to be put to a vote. We’re still fighting for equal pay and nonreligious women are tired of our womanhood being judged if we don’t attend church.’

Crutch: ‘The concerns are the same as religious women. Misogyny, sexual predators and rape apologists have been the subjects of many a think piece. Initially, I was embarrassed as I assumed secular men were…different. I have learned since then; it could not be further from the truth.

‘We want to survive romantic relationships. We want to NOT be victims of domestic violence. We want to NOT fear for our lives when we turn down the advances of men. We want to not fear for our daughters and not force them to live a life in hopes of not getting raped. We WANT LAWS that protect women and PUNISH MEN and their brutality REGARDLESS of their socioeconomic status. Is that too much to ask?’

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Crutch: ‘I have no thoughts regarding the male dominated conversations, as my focus is on the women-centered conversations.’

Crutch: ‘These conversations parallel those of religious women. Like most oppressed groups, women require safe spaces. A space where we can discuss our interactions with men and not have our statements second guessed or worse explained to us by men.

Crutch: ‘The secular community is slow to change. While there a couple of organizations that are progressive, the community is not. The treatment or rather the mistreatment of oppressed groups, women and people of color within the secular community is well documented. Suggestions, ideas and proposals have been presented in doses and the disenfranchised are STILL disenfranchised. The secular community is not as open and freethinking as it purports to be to the religious. The community is disproportionately white male, conservative and I do not see that changing anytime soon especially in the roles of major leadership.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Bree.

[12] Interview with Marquita Tucker, M.B.A.:

Marquita Tucker: Women are half of this planet’s population. We have been hushed and dismissed for so long and look how things have turned out. It is important and it is time for us to be more assertive and vocal about our ideas on social, political and economic concerns. Our input should be valued and taken seriously. You cannot run a nation let alone any part of the world with just one half of the population’s view and say on everything.

Tucker: Two words: reproductive rights. This one issue is an amalgam of social, political, and economic conditions concerns. Socially, we still have the religious right attacking a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. Politically, conservative politicians are still confusing birth control pills with actual abortions. Economically, if a woman does need an abortion, that woman has several barriers in place from transportation to paying for the procedure. A woman’s right to choose sometimes makes the difference between her and her child(ren) living a life of poverty and poor education with little upward mobility or her being able to make moves that will improve her life and thus the life of her future children.

Tucker: Isn’t it the same issue across any and all countries, religions, races, politics, etc.? One consistent thing: men think they know everything; and I do not think it is a nature thing, I think it is a nurture thing. Men often take up more space, men often talk over women when, men disregard women when they have an idea or suggestion. Its conditioning. That does not change no matter where you are from or what you believe or do not believe.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Tucker: I think that more men dominate the non-religious conversation because it is more acceptable for men to do what they want. Men are perceived as the thinkers, philosophers of the sexes (funny, because there have been female thinkers and philosophers, but they have been dismissed or disregarded because they were… female). I know in the black community, when you go to a black church, you will see the church filled with mostly women. When you think about it, there are a lot more rules and conditions when it comes to be a woman in religion than there are for men. So, I guess rules are socialized into women from birth and not so much into men, giving men more of a chance to freely think outside of the box and express their disagreements with sects or religion and act upon those disagreements than women. I mean, how many female religious sect founders or cult leaders can you think of?

Tucker: Of course, there are! I cannot tell you about it because then you will know our secrets. Just kidding. As a non-believing black woman, I talk all the time about how my family treats me differently because I do not believe in Jesus. In the black community, we cannot wash our hands without thanking god. So, for a black woman to not rely on a blond haired, blue eyed white male for everything… I am a bit of an outcast. And this is a common situation with other non-believing black women I have conversed with. I have come across many black male non-believers who state that they simply just never believed. That they were never really forced to go to church or required to pray or anything like that. So, when I bring it up, black male non-believers kinda say things like, “well, I just wouldn’t have done it. I just wouldn’t have gone.” Like, you do not get it. Girls are not given the level of autonomy that boys are most of the time. I’ve yet to meet an American black woman who was not conditioned to have to believe in god.

Tucker: I think that an openness to want to learn about people different from yourself without judging is a good start to more inclusion in the global non-religious community. If we do that, then we are open to hearing what they have to say in various discussions. It has funny how the non-religious proclaim to be the opposite of those “closed minded religious people” when there are parts of the non-religious community who are just as closed minded in different areas. Non-religious men can start by having a seat sometimes and not always having something to say about everything. Sometimes you learn more by listening to others. We have missed so many opportunities to hear great perspectives and vast knowledge from non-believers simply because they were female and thus never given a chance to be heard. It is time that that stops.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Marquita Tucker.

[13] Interview with Samantha A. Christian:

Samantha A. Christian: I think more women are feeling empowered and have become apologetically honest and confident. Which I think is amazing, especially in countries where sexism/gender roles are so suffocating. It takes even greater courage to do that! This also means that more women are finally realizing they deserve to be treated better and with respect for a change. So, when I see someone not allowing themselves to be “mansplained away”, bullied and taken advantage of, it gives me hope for humanity. ^^

Christian: I honestly have no idea and can only speak for myself. I purposely do not join non-religious communities or any community for that matter. The things I am worried about is the creepy attempts to normalize rape here and other parts of the world. Then trying to make people as ignorant and fearful as possible. Making them hate truth, facts, research, knowledge and education. That is extremely scary. The psychological community is doing nothing about this while simultaneously enabling toxic majorities (religious people, god gullibles, bigots of all kinds) and ignoring the toxic influences that make them that way in the first place. There is this idea that if a lot of people say or believe something it must be true or even respected. I do not want a democracy I want a meritocracy. In the last question it was mentioned that women re becoming more empowered all over the world. I have noticed that there is one group of women that seem to fee less empowered as time goes on: white women. They even voted for their abusive husbands and candidates in the election recently. I think we need to do something about that. Have a place where white women can feel safe, supported and empowered, especially since their husbands (white men) are the ones who commit the most domestic terrorism in the USA and yet still are in positions of power.

Christian: I was not aware that these other movements existed. Again, I can only speak for myself but sexism towards women and men is a fundamental problem. I think the sexism against men can be more suffocating which leads so many guys to fear being honest or being themselves. This means that, whether it is in cult communities or non-religious ones, you will have the same toxic behaviors. The thing that worries me from what I have observed in non-religious communities is how many men have a deep hatred and distrust of women. So, much so that when a woman reports being raped or abused, they do not believe her, and victim blame her. I get a lot, “Well, people shouldn’t blindly believe gods are real, so why should I believe women when they talk about rape?” This is ridiculous. People are supposed to recognize gods are fictional. If you do not believe, then the consequences a minor. You can easily pretend that you do as a survival tactic if you must. In terms of rape and abuse it is so important to believe the victim. If you do not, then horrid acts of humanity go unpunished. There is no justice. So, many people’s lives are literally destroyed while it enables the rapist/abuser to keep raping/abusing other people, because they were not properly punished and held accountable. People do not really lie about rape/abuse. Maybe 4% tops. So, they should be taken seriously. When someone comes to you saying they are bullied, abused, or raped, the moral and humanitarian thing to do is to believe them and support them. The consequences if you do not are far worse than anything religious or god belief related.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Christian: I do not think it is a problem, but it depends on the guys speaking. Have they internalized sexism on such a deep level? Do they feel they can be themselves 100%? Or do they feel they must act a certain role to survive in society? That is the problem. Whether the community is religious or not, we need to do something about this. Help educate people that there is no such thing as an “opposite sex” because women and men have far more in common than differences. Any differences between these 2 common sexes (female and male) are minor at best. Even our genitals are homologous. If we have a lot of men abused by sexism in society representing the atheist community, that is not good. If we have men who have overcome it and feel empowered enough to be their authentic selves, then it would not matter if there are a lot of men talking or a lot of women talking. People like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris make the non-religious community look bad while people like Daniel Dennett, Neil Carter and Darrel Ray do so much to help the non-religious and anti-religious communities. Once again, I go back to how white women seem to be the one woman in the world who feel less empowered. It is the same in the non-religious community too. Which is also dominated by white men. It would be great if we had more people as a face of atheism. It would humanize us more in the world. See more black men, Latin men, white women, black women, Asian women. All of us. That there is no one demographic that is dominant in our communities.

Christian: In my case, nope. I am upfront with everyone no matter their sex or if they are a cult addict (religious) or not. I cannot think of anytime when I was not upfront or honest about a subject, especially online. I am really the only non-religious, anti-religious, atheist person in my family, friends and daily life. My mom and BGF (boy-girlfriend, my lover was born intersexed. We use this nickname to protect her identity online. ) are not into religion but have not called themselves “non-religious” or “atheist” officially. My point being, I really do not have many in person conversations about religion. My online ones, I have with everyone and am upfront/honest with everyone regardless of their sex. The funny thing in my case more men reach out to me than women do. About sexist expectations on men, their sexual orientation, desires and identity. Religion usually comes up because that is what is pushing those sexist ideas and destroying their lives to begin with. As mentioned earlier, at lot of women (except white women) feel empowered but the sexism against men is still very strong (at least in the USA). It is still on the same level. It is so important to help people realize that women are men are the same (with only minor differences). Thus, we should be treated the same way. There should be age expectations/roles not gender expectations/roles. If people feel uncomfortable about being honest with someone because of their sex, I am more inclined to wonder why that is. I get the same thing from the guys I have spoken too saying they feel they cannot be honest or open with the women in their lives. Why the disconnect when we (women and men) have so much in common? Feel free to read about the gender similarities hypothesis and the persistent disconnect with the elevated level of sexism in society. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-606581.pdf

Christian: That’s easy, the divisive labels. It is all right to label yourself in a way, but it is also important to educate yourself about each of our demographics. Research over time keeps showing we have vastly more in common and that any differences are minor and insignificant. Same mentioned above about biological sex. The 2 common ones (female and male) have so much in common that it is beyond ridiculous for sexism to exist or for anyone to think there is an “opposite sex.” homosexuality and heterosexuality (monosexuality) are both the same thing. Gay men = straight women. They are both androsexual, the proper term to describe those attracted to men. Lesbians = straight guys. They are both gynesexual, those attracted to women. Same thing. Another thing people obsess about and cause trouble over when the reality is, they are the same. Even more research shows that monosexuality is a myth and that humans are either part of the bisexual spectrum or asexual spectrum. What is my point? The quick spread of misinformation about race, sex, human sexuality and humanity in general is what is preventing a more inclusive system or community. Not just for non-religious groups but ALL groups. Don’t’ focus on getting more POC or women into the fold. Focus on getting more non-religious people, humanist, agnostics, atheists into the fold and naturally people will unite. The bigger problem is the misinformation going around. That is what we need to focus on. Putting an end to all the lies we are forced fed since birth, not just the religion/god lies but the ones about race and sex. Create more educational opportunities. Stop shaming people for being a demographic, this will allow them to feel more comfortable being themselves. The biggest danger that poses a threat to all of humanity is the need to fit in or be accept. That is why people join religions, create toxic group, do not stand up to bullies, bigots, etc. Therefore, we get the bystander effect, why so many men (especially white men) are just brutal to women and each other. To fit in, to be accepted. If humanity evolved past the need for such things, we would be more moral, happier, healthier and better friends to each other.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Samantha.

[14] Interview with Judy Saint:

Judy Saint: How: Women are more assertive by talking with each other, as women did in the USA when fighting for the right to vote. That died down as women focused on resembling men, in clothing, competition and executive function. They stopped talking with each other until sexual harassment took center stage. Women again found each other as mutual combatants. Why it is important: I cannot imagine a woman ever asking why asserting women’s rights is important.

Jacobsen: In each of those domains – social, political, and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of American women? What about women in North America? Please give examples or reasoning.

Saint: American women are not all concerned with their rights in any of these domains. We only see a portion of women out there advocating in these spheres. The concerns of those not fighting for rights seems to be to “fit in” and fulfil society’s mandate of being a quiet servant to men. As for those who are out there fighting for women’s rights, their concerns are that women have all the advantages men are routinely given, and the ability to change society to a more cooperative world, away from the testosterone-laden competitive world men created for us. One example, a survey of women who voted against women’s rights (and for Trump) said they voted in ways that supported their husbands’ needs. Another example, Bill and Melinda Gates sponsor helping women start local businesses because they found that when men succeed, they take all the money with them away to larger cities so they can make more, but when women succeed they invest in their local communities and in each other.

Jacobsen: #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of North American non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

Saint: Secular women want responsibility to be placed on perpetrators of aggression toward women, rather than abusing women’s rights as a cover for poor behavior. Responsibility and early training of little boys are the main concerns.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Saint: Atheism is a non-issue unless the religious community becomes a threat. In that case, it is men who rise to combat and protect, which is reflected in the makeup of out and vocal atheists. Being out and vocal is combative, more natural to men.

Jacobsen: Are there some things non-religious women simply only talk about with other non-religious women that non-religious men just do not hear? If so, what are these experiences? If so, what are these things? If so, why only the discussions like those happening woman-to-woman rather than woman-to-man?

Saint: I could say the obvious: we cannot tell you because you are a man. Seriously, being a male asking this question could subliminally influence the answers you get from women. But, let me try, anyway. Mainly it would be about cooperative and supportive efforts that men do not want to help with. “Women’s work” like providing food for a meeting or gathering clothing for disaster survivors or helping other women leave abusive husbands who are religious. Women are cooperative; men are competitive. That has why men are not included in women’s discussions – it is not about competing or winning, and therefore of little interest.

Jacobsen: What can the non-religious communities do to include more women, people of color, and people from a wider variety of nations in the global non-religious community? What can we do to include more women’s voices in the mainstream dialogues, discourses, and discussions? What are the ways in which the non-religious community and men can help these efforts? What have been historic failures of the non-religious, and of men, to include women in the talks, the community, the literature, the media, and the important philosophical, scientific, and ethical discussions of the non-religious community?

Saint: We have in Sacramento a Black Humanist Group. They want their own secular organization because their discussions and concerns are not addressed in groups where they are in the minority. So, supporting more smaller groups that address unique subgroups of interests could give more people a home where they feel understood and listened to. Publicity of their unique problems could keep them energized and supportive of those groups.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Judy.

[15] Interview with Jummai Mohammed:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was family and personal background regarding geography, culture, religion, and language?

Mohammed: Good evening.

My name is Jummai Mohammed. I am a Hausa lady from the northern part of Nigeria. I was born into a muslim home but in a predominantly Christian society. I was born and bread in the southern part of Nigeria which is mostly dominated by Christians.
Jacobsen: How did this impact early life? What was early education like for you? Was religion a part of that education?
Mohammed: I will say being born in a Muslim home in a Christian dominated society tend to shape my being an atheist this day. As a young girl, I was practically confused on the contradictions in both religions, yet they both claim to serve the supreme God. I never love Islam schools since the ustaz in those schools always look and act mean. The way in which children are beaten up, young boys tied into poles while being flogged mercilessly in the name of punishment made me hate going to Islamic schools; on the other hand, whenever I have the opportunity of following my Christian friends to church, I tend to enjoy the less tensed environment, the songs, the dance and everyone smiling faces and that paved my way into converting to Christianity in the later years. So, I have practised and experienced the two most popular Abrahamic religion.

Early education for me was fun. I attended a private nursery and primary school. Yes, religion was part of the education. I later proceed to a church owned private high school for secondary education. I converted to Christianity while in secondary school, but a closet one.
Jacobsen: When did you first start to begin questioning religion, or were you always an atheist?
Mohammed: I have always question religion right from primary school, I always question bible/Quran stories right from time, because the stories don’t add up. I ask questions like why did God created us, why placing an apple tree in the garden when he does not want humans eating from it.
Jacobsen: Are women treated differently than men and religions? How is this difference manifested in Nigeria?
Mohammed: However, joining a popular Nigeria online forum known as nairaland influenced and fasting my decision of becoming an atheist.
Jacobsen: What has been your experience as an adult atheist in Nigeria?
Mohammed: Yes, it is a glaring fact that religion preaches subjugation of women and it is very evident in the Nigeria society. Women are being treated more like a semi human or should I say slaves in Nigeria, most especially in the northern part of the country which I come from.
Jacobsen: Who are some prominent male atheists in Nigeria? Who are some prominent women atheists in Nigeria?
Mohammed: My experience as adult atheist is just religious fanatics unwillingness to get close, make friends or do business with me. I do not live in the north where most atheist are likely to face death threat; I reside in Lagos.
Jacobsen: Can you recommend any books on atheism that are popular within Nigeria? Those that are written by non-Nigerians. Also, those that are written by Nigerians, or a Nigerian.
Mohammed: Prominent female atheist:

Jummai pearl, Neshama, Dorris etc

Mubarak Balah, Azaya, Calistus, Juwon, Dr Leo. Etc

No.
Jacobsen: What are the main forms of discrimination against atheists, especially open ones, in Nigeria?
Mohammed: Discriminations varies, depending on the atheist environment. In the southern and eastern parts, the discriminations are; family and friends rejecting one, people not wanting to make friends or involve in any sort of business with one, relationship/marriage breakups. etc..
Jacobsen: How can people become involved in the atheist movement or community in Nigeria? If outside Nigeria, how can people support those that are atheists inside of Nigeria?
Mohammed: In the northern part which is predominant by Muslims, atheist faces death threats, lynching and co, together with what I listed up there faces by southern atheist.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Pearl.

[16] Interview with Marissa Torres Langseth:

In each of those domains – social, political and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of Filipina women? What about women in Southeast Asia? Please give examples or reasoning.

Marissa Torres Langseth: ***It is important that women be partners and equal in any societal norm, be it economic, political or social, because women population is about half or the population in this world. Population, female (% of total) | Data).

Population, female (% of total) | DataPopulation, female (% of total) from The World Bank: Data

Misogyny is common in the Philippines because of patriarchal orientation, and upbringing. We were brought up thinking that a male is more dominant in any household and women should just stay home and take care of the children. Women are treated like baby factories in the Phils with the RH or Planned Parenthood on hold due to the religious nature of the Philippines, these women succumb to high morbidity and mortality rates. : Maternal Mortality in the Philippines – The Borgen Project

Maternal Mortality in the Philippines – The Borgen ProjectFor the Philippines, improving maternal health was an extremely important MDG since the maternal mortality rate …

SEA women like Indonesia has the biggest Muslim population, therefore, women are subjected to being the lowest in the totem pole and Sharia law.http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/indonesia-population/

Women in Islamic nations are subject to honor killings and gender discrimination, arranged marriages and mutilation of sex organs. Equality is a far cry due to religious implications, whereby death is the punishment to apostasy (Gender Discrimination in Southeast Asia – BORGEN

Gender Discrimination in Southeast Asia – BORGENGender Discrimination in Southeast Asia impacts women’s health, psychologically and physically

Women from SEA who go to other countries as service personnel or house cleaners are at risk of being raped and abused due to the belief of others that women in the third world countries will do anything to put food on their table including prostitution. Unfortunately, a lot of these uneducated women end up as prostitutes and taken advantaged of. Even the most careful women end up raped and dead. I have read a lot of horror stories about this. Maid in Saudi Arabia ‘died of rape’

Maid in Saudi Arabia ‘died of rape’Woman reportedly pointed at employer when asked who abused her

Arrests made in Kuwait murder of Filipina house cleaner

Arrests made in Kuwait murder of Filipina house cleanerBoth two main suspects in case of house cleaner whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in Kuwait have been held

Jacobsen: #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of Southeast Asian non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

**This Me Too movement became an international outcry, however, I have not seen it in SEA quite frankly.

The nonreligious women in SEA will not resist to whatever men would do to them due to fear and early indoctrination. (I cannot comment more regarding this Me Too movement in SEA)

More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how

Langseth: increased women nowadays are empowered and unafraid of coming out as nonreligious. The stigma is waning and fading away.

My take is that, if they can see us women as successful without gods, we can be notable examples of how to live decently and practice clean living with high ethical values. Documentation and the advent of social media are just examples of how we can show to the religious world that we are equal to those who profess “good moral compass”.

Langseth: am not afraid to divulge to anyone that I am nonreligious. I even said that to the church members where my husband and I go to occasionally.

I have even said that to my husband’s male friends who are Italian, and Jewish. I did not care what their opinions and who cares anyway about their opinions. I know who I am. If my husband values me and sees me as an equal. that is enough for me. My husband is even ready to leave his church, if the church members will ostracize me, truth be told. He is a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP).

Langseth: **More awareness and more education about equality. More social media coverage, more inputs from women old and young alike.

**Maybe less men to be at the spot light and emphasize more women leaders to hold higher and better positions in nonreligious societies.

Failures are the usual backstabbing from groups, infighting and trying to outsmart the others due to immaturity and vanity and self-aggrandizement.

Some men also back stab women due to their insecurities and low self-esteem.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Marissa.

Langseth: Thank you for this opportunity, Scott.

[17] Interview with Alexus Jean Black – Philippines:

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Women have been increasingly assertive about their concerns about the social, political and economic conditions within their own part of a country, in their respective nations, and, indeed, regions of the world and on the international scene. How? Why is this important? In each of those domains – social, political and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of Filipina women? What about women in Southeast Asia? Please give examples or reasoning. #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of Southeast Asian non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men? More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how? Are there some things non-religious women simply only talk about with other non-religious women that non-religious men just do not hear? If so, what are these experiences? If so, what are these things? If so, why only the discussions like those happening woman-to-woman rather than woman-to-man? What can the non-religious communities do to include more women, people of color, and people from a wider variety of nations in the global non-religious community? What can we do to include more women’s voices in the mainstream dialogues, discourses, and discussions? What are the ways in which the non-religious community and men can help these efforts? What have been historic failures of the non-religious, and of men, to include women in the talks, the community, the literature, the media, and the important philosophical, scientific, and ethical discussions of the non-religious community?

Alexus Jean Black: I think that women especially now a days have been very vocal about those subjects it is because we have more freedom than what we used to have. Although, in some parts of Asia, middle east for example have still some kind of discrimination towards the women. It is important for women to be included in all sort as we also are a part of the nation. I do not really know a lot of ppl who are non religious in my country as Philippines is one of the most religious countries in the world. But there are some concerns I want to address like «christian subjects» are mandatory in elementary schools, some laws are based on religion, ex: divorce is still illegal.

Having men dominate the non religious community does not mean there are more non religious men but shows that mostly women are very conservative about their thoughts which I will explain in a bit. I do not talk a lot about religion or being a non-religious in the Philippines. As I said they are very religious, and I do not want to disrespect them, so I just do not simply talk about it. Although there are lots of people who would ask me about being an atheist , most of them are men. I think that the non religious community, to engage the women more, is to just let them. I do not think we should oppress anyone about topics that are sensitive for them.

[18] Interview with Alisha Ann:

Alisha Ann: Because we feel safe enough to. We are no where near as safe as we should be. We have fought long and hard for the right to vote, earn a living outside the home and control our own reproduction. Those rights are not secure and are constantly threatened. As usual, we stand on the shoulders of the giants before us. We have the bravery of the feminist activists in generations prior and feminist voices today to build on. We are stronger together. And when one stands up, we tend to stand with them. Their fight is our fight.

And that is just here. Many women in other countries are still heavily oppressed. We help them by progressing. Progressive countries serve as a contrast to regressive ones.

Jacobsen: In each of those domains – social, political, and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of American women? What about women in North America? Please give examples or reasoning. #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of North American non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

Ann: Social – life. I am concerned about male violence against non-males. From clergy raping children, to intimate partner violence, to attacks against the transgender community. Men have a problem. And only men can fix it. So, far, we have stuck Band-Aids on a mortal wound by asking women and children to take steps to not get raped and killed. Which is to say, “Make sure he rapes them instead of you.” Because we have not solved the root issue: male violence. Political – rights. The patriarchy lives on in the old white men who run our government. And they are so afraid of being treated the way they’ve historically treated women and minorities, that they resist progress. Or worse, are blind to injustice all together. Equality feels like oppression to the privileged. So, they resist everything women and minorities do to level the playing field. From denying reproductive freedom, to voter suppression, to poverty wages. Economic – poverty. We have consolidated power to a few, which disenfranchises us all. The economic system we have in place will fail. And the people who will suffer the most are not the 1%, they will just be the loudest.

That they will not be better in my lifetime. That the standard bearer of meaningful change will not be retired with my generation and will require passage to my children to complete. If we cannot convince men to be better, we not only pass the responsibilities of progress to them, but the dangers of our failings.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Ann: It absolutely must change. Diversity of opinion has always been better. We can only speak to our own experiences. Unless we only care about improving the experiences of white men, then we must include women and minorities. The way we do that is by checking ourselves and our privilege. We actively overlook an ethnic sounding name when hiring. We do not assume a woman cannot speak on a topic. We seek out and value the opinions of those not like us. We listen to each other and validate.

Ann: Not necessarily whisper networks, but things women are more comfortable discussing amongst and between themselves rather than with men. Anything involving sexual harassment, sexual assault, abuse, violence and inequality. Because, as a block, they do not see it or believe it happens. Those that do, are still routinely shocked by the extent of it. And all of them tend to default to victim blaming and responsibility shifting. It is why we have whisper networks. We cannot depend on men to protect us from themselves or believe our stories. So, we warn each other about repeat or egregious offenders behind the scenes to protect ourselves.

Ann: The failures have been the same overall social failures we see on a larger scale. Appointing men to leadership and overlooking women/minorities. Assuming women are less knowledgeable on certain topics and overlooking them for speaking gigs or as resources. Assuming a man is better able and tasking him with more high-profile gigs – like public speaking or media events. Assuming women and minorities just do not want to be in certain fields, like science or philosophy, and therefore not seeking out those candidates. However, the secular community suffers from a lack of diversity for a unique reason in my opinion. It is been an older white man’s club because older white has historically retained their social, political, economic, and religious privileges regardless of their allegiances. Their survival does not depend on their adherences to certain groups.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Alisha.

[19] Interview with Susan Nambejja:

Susan Nambejja: Women have been more assertive by getting involved into different activities, socially women have struggled to act independently or combine efforts with men for those who are married, and single mothers have more determined to bring up their children meeting all needs alone. Politically women have engaged into leadership positions, at various levels, they are now community leaders, presidents, ministers and so on, for example our Kampala capital city authority Director is a woman. (Jennifer Musisi) Economically: women are now entrepreneurs nationally and internationally; they now operate big businesses worldwide. Importance of this is that: the time when women were considered as domestic slaves is now over, women are now enjoying liberty than in accent days hence boosting their esteem and lack of respect. Jacobsen: In each of those domains – social, political, and economic conditions, in the non-religious communities, what are the concerns of Ugandan women? What about women in Africa? Please give examples or reasoning. Susan: much as I have explained in different domains, non religious women in Uganda are still facing a lot of challenges. Being non religious in Uganda is considered evil, immoral, inhuman, that may hinder a woman’s chance to become a minister, community leader and so on, people may not cast a vote for such a person. Leadership is highly based on religion.

Socially marriage may not be a success for a non religious woman, and, but economically if a non religious woman sets up for example a business, most strict religions may find it hard to support such a business for example the Muslims have a tendency of supporting fellow Moslems on a belief that any thing from a non Moslem is considered unclean (haraam). This makes it difficult for operate well businesses. All this means there is a lot of segregation in Uganda between the religious and non religious, this is because Uganda is a highly religious populated country. Non religious are still very few.

Jacobsen: #MeToo led to #ChurchToo, #MeccaToo, #MosqueToo, #SynagogueToo, and so on; these have been replicated in consequences and call-outs of poor behavior by men in the non-religious communities. What are the main concerns of African non-religious women as regarding the behavior of the men?

Nambejja: Men in Africa are still cherishing African cultural practices, and some put a woman as inferior, much as many are educated, they still consider them selves as (kings). Most cultures men are still dominating, leadership is still for men in most cultures in African traditions. Women are still lacking self esteem due to the fear of how the society will interpret their actions, few women have come up to speak for others in our countries.

Jacobsen: More men dominate the non-religious conversation, globally. What are your thoughts on this? Should it be changed? If so, how?

Nambejja: Yes, it is because men are more open towards different issues, they have no fear to speak out who they are and what they stand for, women tend to protect themselves silently thinking more of the out comes of the effects. For example, speaking about being non religious in Uganda is not safe unless if you have enough ways to protect your self. Men have no fear for segregation, women mind about it a lot. This should be changed, by giving more chance to women more than men, by supporting their causes, invite women as speakers at conferences, those who get a chance to speak will end up becoming more confident of their non religious beliefs. And hence others will get inspired and do the same way.

Jacobsen: Are there some things non-religious women simply only talk about with other nonreligious women that non-religious men just do not hear? If so, what are these experiences? If so, what are these things? If so, why only the discussions like those happening woman-to-woman rather than woman-to-man?

Nambejja: I will put this more on social setting, for example if a woman is married to a religious man, she will talk about this with a non religious woman probably facing same challenge than talking about it with a man. Why? Due to fear of judgement she speaks to fellow woman. If it is an initiative, like projects on girl child, menstrual education, a non religious woman will feel more speak to person non religious woman more comfortably than woman to man. We have a tendency of thinking that this should be told to fellow woman. Yet, in a non religious way, I think this should stop. That is according to my thinking please it is just according to my assumption.

Nambejja: I think women should be given more audience, for example, if it is an event try to balance the number according to sex of speakers, empower women by supporting their causes. Women feel inferior if their initiative s are not supported hence loose hope. Our non religious communities still lack a spirit of togetherness, if we can’t support ourselves, invite women by showing them the benefits of public talks, include them in media discussions, if a mistake is made by a woman, correct her silently, don’t criticize, educate women in different areas, for example NGO management, business, leadership among others. In our non religious communities encourage women to get involved and aspire for or stand for leadership positions. Our non religious communities have failed to work as sisters and brothers of same spirit, we should have gatherings that can transform us into more useful citizens, we should support those who are seriously in great danger, an earnest heart of humanism means acting not t

Our non religious communities have failed to initiate universities for non religious, have failed to have institutions which support the non religious in different areas for example banks for non religious where people can acquire loans and so on, scholarships for non religious, among others just to mention but a few.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Susan.

Nambejja: Thanks for giving me a chance to be interviewed.

Susan Nambejja

Managing director and programmes coordinator

Malcolm Childrens Foundation Uganda.

https://malcolmchildrensfoundation.wordpress.com

Email: snambejja@gmail.com

Malcolm Childrens’ Foundation

Saving little lives

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2022-04-26

Ask Terrah 2 — The Core of Customer Service

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/18

Terrah Short earned a Bachelor’s in Philosophy (Analytic) with a Minor in Disaster Risk Reduction from Western Washington University in March 2017. She is a product of a working single father and the Puget Sound area of Western Washington in the United States of America. Here we talk about customer service.

One of the main jobs of the individual who is working with each customer is keeping them happy. This is not an easy task. Indeed, it is highly difficult. Although, retail work is considered lowly and menial work, and can be in many instances; the skill-set required for the proper delivery of retail customer service is high-level sociability and affable interaction with a wide smattering of customers who may be coming to the store with a variety of issues.

Short said, “You must take into account the individual, with each customer. When I really think about it, it does seem quite exhausting! Like in all facets of life, it’s important to remember that they are each an individual person, just like every retail worker. To get more in-depth, how I manage each customer is going to depend on what shift I’m working, what time of day it is, how busy it is, and sometimes it comes down to my own mood or what’s going on in my life, though I do my best not to let that affect my quality of service.”

She makes an explicit and concerted effort to meet the customers where they’re at, so Short can be provided for their need relative to the role and mandate of the role for her retail position. Some need meat. Others need soap. Still others, they may need bags; whereas, others may not care so much.

Short stated, “I recall a customer who appeared able-bodied, but when I asked if they needed their bags light (they had brought a large amount of them), they lit up and were grateful I asked as they had recently had surgery and couldn’t lift more than 10lbs. At the end of the day, I think we all appreciate someone taking an interest in the big or small needs that we as a customer may forget to ask or just appreciate even if we weren’t in need of the accommodation.”

There can be problems of a customer who is wrong. This is one problem. However, if the customer is amiable and willing to cooperate and converse with the retail service worker, then this can expedite corrections to the issue. The real issue is a customer who is both wrong and belligerent. This can create a stressful and nigh impossible task of de-escalation.

Short puts in the effort to hear them, to see where they are sincerely come from; nonetheless, as you might imagine, this can be a difficult task at times. One solution is simply getting the transaction done and then offering whatever is needed to soothe and manage the situation most amicably. As with other areas of work, if something rises to a rather unmanageable level, then there can be escalation to higher levels of authority. Those with more responsibilities within the mandate of their roles.

“The biggest challenges have come up when I personally was working our swing/night shift (generally 8pm-3:30am), and I have other co-workers who work this shift and have had similar experiences. At night, since there can be anywhere from myself (the cashier) and four others (our grocery night stockers) to just myself and the night PIC,” Short explained, “Generally, I would try to triage the situation myself, tolerate what could be described as abusive behavior from customers, because if I wasn’t in danger or if it wasn’t becoming too much of an issue, there was no reason to bring the PIC into it.”

Those who come into retail stores will, quite predictably, come from a wide range of the population of America. Within this population sampling, Short will experience a wide set of the total population of the United States, including the mentally ill, the deranged, high school and college students, professors, tourists from Europe, and others.

Certainly, one problem can the issue of helping the lower-level employees deal with a problem that has been escalated to the level of Short. If the lower-ranked employee can manage, then this isn’t an issue. However, in other contexts, it can be an issue. That is when there is a need for an escalation to a higher level of the issue, to the supervisors for example.

Short concluded, “I think it relates to all of it. Do your best to provide a positive experience for the customer, but make sure you adhere to, or even defer to, company policy. That is one way we are encouraged to protect ourselves or to explain decisions made, especially when selling alcohol or tobacco, that it is company policy and there is nothing we can really do. I think it is important that we as retail service folks start to stand up with the power that is being afforded us through our Unions and support from our supervisors. Taking care of ourselves needs to be the priority, but far too often, we just need to pay the bills and sometimes that means putting up with unpleasantness.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Sally 2— Feedback on AIPAC: ‘Vitriol’ and Israel

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/18

Sally Buxbaum Hunt is a Sexual Education, Sex-Positive, Separation of Church and State Activist and Organizer, and a Progressive. Here we talk about AIPAC and Israel.

Some media items can be overblown by both the Left and the Right. Especially true in the instances of individuals who simply speak the truth in a direct way about the problems of aspects of foreign policy, there can be excuse-making, as should be expected, by apologists for state violence; one’s own state violence and rights violations around the world, even internally, too.

Hunt and I had the chance to talk about the mainstream media narrative around Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been branded as an antisemite. The real question here is if this is the case. If it is not the case, then the issue of the claim to antisemitism, or the charge to the epithet becomes another concern, because this would appear to be an invective intended to blast the individual making the claim so as to make the claim seem undeniably insane or immoral.

Hunt, in response to the claims of antisemitism about Ilhan Omar, stated, “It has been difficult seeing the mainstream media narrative that Ilhan Omar has been antisemitic based on her remarks. It has been the main messaging from most of our politicians. That is unacceptable because it’s not true. Ilhan Omar did not say anything antisemitic.”

Hunt is Jewish. She is secular and non-practicing, but ethnically within the heritage Jewish. She went on to explain the basic claims made by Omar. That is to say, AIPAC is a lobbying group and lobbying groups can be a problem. In this case, IAPAC is a pro-Israeli lobbying group that gives money to politicians in the United States in order for those politicians, in return, to support Israel, probably often unwaveringly.

Hunt said, “That is the whole point of AIPAC. They are a pro-Israel lobbying group. AIPAC raises money, gives this money to politicians, and then those politicians should give unwavering support to Israel and special privileges to Israel. That this lobbying group, AIPAC, is giving extra tax dollars — US tax dollars — to Israel’s government. This is true. This is absolutely true [Laughing]. Ilhan Omar was pointing this out. Then many people freaked out and said this was antisemitic.”

Then within the forcefulness of the Democratic leadership, Omar was pressured or coerced into retracting or watering down the statements. In the apology, though, Hunt appreciated how she still made an important or salient point about the problem with the lobbying groups and their impact on the political contexts in the United States.

Hunt considers the pressure from the Democratic party wrong. She thinks that the pressure or coercion for an apology by Omar never should have happened in the first place. Indeed, even with the statement or with the apology, in fact, Omar said nothing intrinsically wrong or factually incorrect.

“She was pressured to make the apology. She definitely shouldn’t have been pressured to apologize at all. Because she said absolutely nothing wrong. Part of this fake controversy is just because she’s a Muslim. A big problem is the extreme bigotry against Muslims, and also that she is black,” Hunt stated, “That makes her a bigger target. I think racism is another reason here. She is a target for being a Muslim woman and a black woman, especially [Laughing] being both of those at the same time. But this idea that no one can criticize AIPAC or can ever criticize Israel is irrational and illogical.”

Hunt was moderately flabbergasted with the notion of Israel representing all Jewish peoples, as Jews are not a monolith and Israel is the Israeli state – not the Jewish state. Therefore, it cannot, in any way, speak for all Jews or Jewish people. If it was a solely Jewish state, then this may leave Arab Israeli citizens as second class to say the least.

Hunt said, “Not every Jewish person supports the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. That is what this issue is about. No one should support the occupation. That is the bottom line. Palestinians who live in the occupied territories are trying to live their lives. Their home communities are constantly under military occupation. They are constantly being terrorized, brutalized, harassed, and oppressed. They don’t even have voting rights regarding the government that rules over them every day.”

The inability to live a free life, free of poverty, away from an utter sense of hopelessness, and so on, is a problem for the Palestinians and much less so for Israelis. Hunt states unequivocally that the Palestinians are rightfully anngry at the Israeli government.

“The government of Israel is an occupying force of a government. They are a warmongering and oppressive government to Palestinian civilians living in these occupied territories. That is the point right there. Ilhan Omar is right to point out AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, has one mission. That is to raise money for politicians, so they give unwavering support from US taxpayer funds that are supporting this occupation,” Hunt concluded.

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2022-04-26

Ask Mark 3— Peeves, to Nones, and Back Again: A Tale of Marko Gibbons

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/17

Mark Gibbs is an independently educated nonbeliever, who has some interesting and precise thoughts about the terminology in the survey data presented to the unbelieving community over the years. Here, in this series, we will explore some of the content, starting with the term “Nones.” Two prior sessions here: Ask Mark 1 — Somethin’ About Nothin’: The Nones Ain’t Nothin’ and Ask Mark 2 — Squeezing More Some Things from Nothings.

The surveys and the analysis of the surveys can be another level of issue or concern for Gibbs. The conversation, to conclude for this topic, shifted into the issues of statisticians, analysis of experts in the relevant areas of studying the non-religious, and more.When asked about some hypothetical do-overs for surveying and analyzing the belief landscape of the unbelievers by Pew Research, Gibbs described the technicalities and precision required for proper surveys and analysis. This may be truer in a population, probably, not studied as much as they could be, but Gibbs’s complaints remain valid.

“There’s a very good reason why they keep using affiliation as a metric: it’s so easy and cheap. It’s a single question, it’s easy for survey respondents to understand, and it’s trivial to group data by. It also allows your data to be easily compared with just about every other survey out there. And, honestly, there are times when affiliation is a useful metric,” Gibbs said.

His example was the higher proportion of Catholics who hold a “disgusting opinion,” which can be important if one wants to know this fact about some Catholics. It may lead to lines of inquiry about them.

Gibbs stated, “However… it is true that using affiliation as a metric just doesn’t work for finding out about nonbelievers. And nonbelievers are my people; I want to know more about them. So with respect to the experts, I’ll just brainstorm some possibilities. And I want to stress this is really only aimed at people doing opinion surveys, not actual social scientists. This may already be a solved problem in social science; I don’t keep up with the field closely enough to know.”

His main concern was on the emphasis on affiliation at present. He believes there should be more focus on beliefs and the intensity of belief. Gibbs provided an example, in a modest & humble-Shire tone:

Which of the following best reflect your beliefs (choose all that apply):· ☐ I believe that God exists.· ☐ I believe that there is life after death.· ☐ I believe in reincarnation.· ☐ I believe that psychic powers (precognition, telekinesis, remote viewing, etc.) exist.· ☐ (and so on…)His issues with typology or the terminology & interpretation set become the need to provide a new one based on the aforementioned re-emphasis on beliefs and intensity of beliefs, and a de-emphasis on “affiliation.Gibbs concluded, “Is that actually practical? You’d have to ask experts in the field. Certainly it would be more complicated (and thus, more expensive) than a simple affiliation/identification test. But I think that’s justifiable given that religion is such a complicated topic. And we really need more research done about actual beliefs — not mere affiliation — not least because you can’t really learn anything about nonbelievers if all you ask is mere affiliation.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Weld 3 — The Demographic Rap: Terms and Definitions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/17

Madeline Weld, B.Sc., M.S., Ph.D., is the President of the Population Institute Canada. She worked for and has retired from Health Canada. She is a Director of Canadian Humanist Publications and an editor of Humanist Perspectives.In the work of interviewing a professional demographer, the importance of precision in the terminology of the field becomes of utmost importance. Weld provided a summary listing at the outset, as follows:Abortion rate: The number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15–44 or 15–49 in a given year.Abortion ratio: The number of abortions per 1,000 live births in a given year.Birth control: Practices that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of conception and birth. Abortion is included in the definition of birth control.Carrying capacity: This is an ecological term that you won’t find in a glossary of demography although it is relevant to humans. Carrying capacity refers to the number of organisms of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a given environment. (See also Overshoot.)Cohort: A group of people sharing a common temporal demographic experience who are observed through time.Contraception: Practices that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of conception. Modern methods include the pill, injectable hormones (such as Depo-Provera), implants (small hormone-releasing rods implanted in the upper arm), intra-uterine devices or IUDs, condoms, and sterilization.Contraceptive prevalence: Percentage of couples currently using a contraceptive method.Crude birth rate: Births per 1000 population.Crude death rate: Deaths per 1000 population.Demographic transition: The historical shift of birth and death rates from high to low levels in a population. The mortality decline usually precedes the fertility decline, resulting in rapid population growth during the transition period.Demography: The scientific study of human populations, including their sizes, compositions, distributions, densities, growth, and other characteristics, as well as the causes and consequences of changes in these factors.Doubling time: The number of years required for the population of an area to double its present size, given the current rate of population growth.Emigration rate: The number of emigrants departing an area of origin per 1,000 population in that area of origin in a given year.Family planning: The conscious effort of couples to regulate the number and spacing of births through artificial and natural methods of contraception. Family planning connotes conception control to avoid pregnancy and abortion, but it also includes efforts of couples to induce pregnancy.Fecundity: The physiological capacity of a woman to produce a child.Fertility: The actual reproductive performance of an individual, a couple, a group, or a population. See general fertility rate.General fertility rate: The number of live births per 1,000 women ages 15–44 or 15–49 years in a given year.Growth rate (or population growth rate): The annual rate of change in the size of a population. This change includes the increase (or decrease) from births over deaths and the net migration (immigration minus emigration), expressed as a percentage of the population at the beginning of the time period.Immigration rate: The number of immigrants arriving at a destination per 1,000 population at that destination in a given year.Infant mortality ratio: The number of deaths of infants under age 1 per 1,000 live births in a given year.Life expectancy: The average number of additional years a person could expect to live if current mortality trends were to continue for the rest of that person’s life. Most commonly cited as life expectancy at birth.Maternal mortality ratio: The number of women who die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth complications per 100,000 live births in a given year.Migration: The movement of people across a specified boundary for the purpose of establishing a new or semi-permanent residence. Migration can be international (between countries) or internal (within a country).Net migration: The estimated rate of net migration (immigration minus emigration) per 1,000 population. For some countries, data are derived as a residual from estimated birth, death, and population growth rates.Net migration rate: The net effect of immigration and emigration on an area’s population, expressed as an increase or decrease per 1,000 population of the area in a given year.Overshoot: This is not a term that you are likely to find in a glossary of demography, although it should be there. In population ecology, overshoot occurs when a population temporarily exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of its environment. This situation arises when a species or population encounters a rich and previously unexploited stock of resources that promotes its increase. When the stock is exhausted, the species faces a precipitous population decline or crash. Many ecologists think that the age of oil has sent the human population into overshoot.Population: The total number of persons inhabiting a country, city, or any district or area.Population control: A broad concept that addresses the relationship between fertility, mortality, and migration, but is most commonly used to refer to efforts to slow population growth through action to lower fertility.Population density: Population per unit of land area; for example, people per square mile or people per square kilometer of arable land.Population increase (or population growth): The total population increase resulting from the interaction of births, deaths, and migration in a population in a given period of time.Population momentum: The tendency for population growth to continue beyond the time that replacement-level fertility has been achieved because of the relatively high concentration of people in the childbearing years.Population projections: Computation of future changes in population numbers, given certain assumptions about future trends in the rates of fertility, mortality, and migration. Demographers often issue low, medium, and high projections of the same population, based on different assumptions of how these rates will change in the future.Replacement level fertility: The level of fertility at which a couple has only enough children to replace themselves, or about two children per couple.Rule of 70: You aren’t likely to find this term in a demography glossary but it’s very useful to determine the approximate doubling time of a population based on the annual growth rate. To get the doubling time, divide 70 by the annual growth rate. For example, populations growing at 1, 2, and 3% annually have respective doubling times of 70, 35, and 23 years.Total fertility rate (TFR): The average number of children that would be born alive to a woman (or group of women) during her lifetime if she were to pass through her childbearing years conforming to the age-specific fertility rates of a given year. This rate is sometimes stated as the number of children women are having today.Unmet need: Women with unmet need for spacing births are those who are able to become pregnant and sexually active but are not using any method of contraception (modern or traditional), and report wanting to delay the next child or limit their number of births.Zero population growth: A population in equilibrium, with a growth rate of zero, achieved when births plus immigration equal deaths plus emigration.You can get more information about terminology at these and many other sites:https://www.prb.org/glossary/https://population.un.org/wpp/General/GlossaryDemographicTerms.aspxhttp://www.iiep.unesco.org/sites/default/files/glossary_demographic_terms.pdfhttp://www.bestlibrary.org/ss11/files/glossary_of_demography_and_population.docWith this glossary, I would highly recommend continuing to it, whether for this current in-depth educational article or prior, or future, ones in this educational series on demography. The terms for fields can amount to jargon; however, within the disciplines, these can increase speed of communication and clarity in the productions of the discipline to the experts.Weld noted the ways in which the consequentiality of the increase in the global human population, its growth, is vastly understated as an impactful factor on the outcomes of the future world.

She said, “How many people know that Syria’s population quadrupled from 5 million to 20 million between 1950 and 2010? Once self-sufficient in wheat, Syria has become increasingly dependent on more expensive imported wheat. The 2007–2010 drought was the worst in modern history its water resources dropped by 50% between 2002 and 2008.”

The subsequent or even concomitant crop failures led to hundreds of thousands or mostly Sunni populations moving from rural areas into the coastal cities.Those dominated by the Alawite minority. This may be one of many correlates, or even causes, of exacerbations in the conflicts in the region.

Weld believes the situation may have been better with a more stable population, at the time, of 5 million compared to the 20 million seen in 2010. Or, let’s take the ways in which there is reportage on the problem of underpopulation and overpopulation, a city, region, or country having a population loss is stated in positive terms.”More fuss has been made in the media about Japan’s shrinking population than about the out-of-control growth in many sub-Saharan countries, Syria, Gaza and some others. Yet Japan is coping much better with its decreasing population than the others are with their growing populations,” Weld stated, “As for the use of demographic terms, many people probably couldn’t give dictionary-perfect definitions of a lot of them and many may confuse such terms as fecundity and fertility (both defined above). Nevertheless, the gist of some terms can be intuitively grasped. For example, the definition of total fertility rate (TFR) given above may sound a bit convoluted, but in a nutshell it is the average number of children that women of a given country or region have in their lifetime. Most people would probably get some sense of that from the term itself.”

She covered 6 areas in this session in-depth. The first is population density. This is simply the number of people in a given unit land area. Tokyo, Japan, is more densely populated than probably any area of Canada. That is, Tokyo has a higher population density than Edmonton, Toronto, or the numerous small towns through Canada.

Weld dispensed of the myth that Canada has infinite space for the inclusion of more and more people. Newcomers tend to congregate in the cities rather than attempting to make a living within the spaces on the outskirts of the societies, or in the tundra. This is a fact of the outcomes of the immigration policies in Canada.With the rapid increases in the growth of the population, cities in Canadian society continue to experience stresses on both infrastructure and social services while losing biodiversity, wildlife, and farmland. The second topic was population growth and population growth rate. It is the increase or the decrease in the total numbers of the population.

It is a modestly more complicated calculation, but, nonetheless, it comes to a reasonably straightforward calculation of the births minus the deaths and the immigration minus the emigration. Canada’s fertility rate is 1.6. The replacement rate of the population is 2.1. That means Canadian citizens, on the whole, are not replacing themselves.

The population of Canada can retain its size due to the face that there is a significant amount of immigration into Canada to maintain the population size.Weld said, “A population can be growing in absolute numbers even if its rate of growth is slowing down. The growth rate of the global population has in fact slowed down a lot in the past several decades. This has led to a perception among many (including in the media) that the problem is solving itself. But the absolute number of people being added annually has gone up, because the size of the population is bigger. This is illustrated in the table below. It is the absolute number of people that puts pressure on the environment. Yet many people seem to think that a decreasing growth rate solves the problem.”

The third section was the Total fertility rate or the TFR. Weld talked about the average number of women per child in a country or region throughout said woman’s lifetime. The TFR was 2.5 in 2018 based on UNFPA’s State of the World Population. There is a ‘plummet’ of the TFR over the last decades. According to Weld, this is a good thing.

It is indicative of the overpopulation problem, or 0.4 above 2.1, solving itself. This is all part and parcel of a continuing problem of the decrease in the number of people in the world per year compared to if the TFR was increasing or maintained itself from the previous year. The growth rate, not the total population, of the world is on the decrease.

However, this is not the whole story, Weld said. Because this is simply a coarse metric not taking into account the global population and the population differences when comparing regions or countries.

“For example, the countries defined by the UNFPA as ‘more developed regions’ have a TFR of 1.7, while those in the ‘less developed regions’ have a TFR of 2.6, and the ‘least developed countries’ have an average TFR of 4.0. The TFR of Somalia is 6.1 and of Niger 7.1,” Weld explained, “Many, probably most, or the countries with very high TFRs are failed or failing states, with emigration pressures that are already huge and that will likely only worsen with time. Africa’s population is projected to explode from 1.2 billion today to 2 billion by 2050 and over 4 billion by 2100.”

The fourth part was contraceptive prevalence versus unmet need. Contraceptive prevalence is the percentage of couples who are actively and properly using a contraceptive method (actively and properly, hopefully). Unmet need are women who remain capable of pregnancy and are sexually active but do not want to become pregnant and are not using contraceptives.

Sometimes, there is a correlation between contraceptive prevalence and unmet need. Although, there are times when the want of a large family does not reflect lack of access to contraceptives.

Weld stated, “That is why the completely hands-off approach taken at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo conference) with regard to promoting small families represents a huge failure, in my opinion. People were to ‘freely and responsibly’ decide on the number and spacing of their children, but this idealistic thinking did not take into consideration the strong influence of cultural norms, religion, and tradition on desired family size. The UN developed no programs to educate people about the impact of population growth and to promote smaller families. (Unlike, for example, programs to promote and implement child immunization that were developed right after the World Health Organization was created.)”

A stark example given by Weld is Kenya, where there was an understanding of married women (96%) and their husbands (98%) of modern contraceptive methods. 40% of the women did not intend to use contraception ever. 8% of the non-married women gave the reason for their not wanting to use contraception, which was, quite simply, to have more children.

“Among the reasons given for not using contraception by women who were not pregnant and did not want to become pregnant, only 0.8% cited lack of availability of contraceptives, and 0.4% cited cost. The top four reasons among those who are still fecund: (1) concern with the medical side effects of contraceptives (31%); 2) religious prohibition (9%); (3) personal opposition (8%); and (4) opposition from the husbands (6%). (The information on the DHS survey is from a December 2012 paper by William Ryerson of the Population Media Center.) In a 2015 presentation by Dr. Ryerson summarizing the major reasons given for non-use of contraceptives in over 30 rapidly growing countries, lack of access was the main reason in only 1% (a single country) or below of the people surveyed in every country,” Weld said.

The big reason being fear of side effects. This was followed to varying degrees depending on the opposition of the spouse, the health concerns, the religious prohibition, and the lack of knowledge. The changing of fertility rates, especially the high ones, will have to take more into account than the simple notion of contraceptive knowledge leading to an increase in the use of the contraceptives

The fifth section was the population projections based on the assumptions of fertility, migration, and mortality. The fecundity of the population; the transfers into and out of the population in a specified bounded geography; and the deaths of the population.

The projections or the estimates of the population only become so good as the assumptions plugged into the calculations and the terms used in order to gather the data according to the definitional constraints. Research is tough. This explains the reasons for the differentials in the lower, moderate, and higher projections as to the future population of the world.

Weld said, “…there was optimism that the world population would peak at 9 billion before 2100 and then decline, but current projections are for a still-growing population of over 11 billion in 2100. Almost all of the increase in the projected global population is because fertility rates did not fall as quickly in sub-Saharan Africa as had been assumed. In 2004, the United Nations projected a population for Africa in 2100 of 2 billion, but by 2015 had upped its projection for 2100 to 4 billion. The increase in the projected population of sub-Saharan Africa accounted for almost all of the increase in the projected global population.”

The decrease in the TFR is one consideration. But this is one among many different considerations in the world. One of the assumptions was that there would be a transition of the demographics for the developing countries. Those that would automatically happen around the world as a matter of natural science or inevitable history. It did not happen in sub-Saharan Africa and some other countries.

“One thing that population projections do not take into account is the depletion of resources. The human population may not undergo the gradual decline that demographers foresee based on their assumptions of fertility decline, but a rather more abrupt crash based on resource shortages, starvation, war, the outbreak of diseases resistant to antibiotics, and other dystopian factors,” Weld said.

The sixth section of the interview with Weld was the demographic transition or the demographic transition theory (DTT)/model (DTM). Weld see the DTM or the DTT as the main reason for individual global citizens becoming complacent about the mostpressing problem of our era, which is the laziness towards too many people and too little resources.

Weld stated, “The demographic transition theory posits that societies will transition from having high fertility and high mortality to low fertility and low mortality as a natural consequence of socioeconomic modernization. The transition is usually divided into four stages. In the first stage, the population of a society is fairly stable because the high birth rate is balanced by a high death rate. In the second stage, as the society develops and health and hygiene improve, the death rate falls but the birth rate remains high, leading to rapid population growth. In stage 3, population growth starts to decrease as the birth rate falls due to better economic conditions, more education and an improvement in the status of women, and more access to contraception. In stage 4, both the birth rate and the death rate are low, and population growth is negligible or even declining.”

It isn’t based on inaccuracies if taken in the abstract, as there was important developments in the work towards transitions for the demographics of a nation or region seen in Europe from the middle ages to the more modern technological and industrial societies. The ongoing and damaging mistake in the reasoning is the application of the conditions of middle age Europe to the contexts of other regions in the modern world now.

Weld pointed out that the “DTT was embraced by the 1987 Brundtland Commission on sustainable development. Sustainable development would be achieved through economic growth in developing countries, social equity, and environmental protection. But how would these be achieved without controlling population growth? The demographic transition would take care of it because people would have fewer children as they became richer. The same thinking guided the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994.”

Since 1994, the global population has grown from 5 billion to 7.6 billion. The hoped-for continued developments have stalled to with increases in the population and the subsequent damage to both the natural world the biodiversity of the natural world. This is where we find ourselves at the crossroads of theory and reality with reality repeatedly standing right in front of our faces awaiting an acknowledgement.

“Much emphasis has been placed on things like education for girls and economic development to indirectly address population growth. There is indeed a negative correlation between the level of female education and the TFR, and education and equal opportunities for girls and women are desirable in their own right. But, as Dr. Jane O’Sullivan has shown, expecting an increase in wealth to lead to a reduction in fertility is putting the cart before the horse,” Weld stated.

The fertility decline is associated with increases in wealth and with an increase in per capita wealth comes when the birth per women hits between 2 and 3 children. Girls’ education was “neither a pre-requisite nor a sufficient measure” to set forth the decline in the levels of global or local fertility. However, fertility decline was important for sustained economic growth. O’Sullivan explained how the best contraception is not development, as per the adage.

Weld firmly stated, “There is an urgent need to make population growth an issue in its own right. Some countries, such as Bangladesh and Thailand, have done so. But most have not, nor has the United Nations made population growth a central part of its Millennium Development Goals (launched in 2000) or its Sustainable Development Goals (launched in 2016). The American population activist Rob Harding has proposed a UN Framework Convention on Population Growth, in which every country would take responsibility to bring its own population to a sustainable level. Other countries could help rapidly growing countries to achieve a sustainable population, but would not be expected to take in their surplus population (which appears to be the objective of the UN’s Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration).”

The DTT simply received too much credit for insufficient reasons. The seventh and final section in the responses by Weld were the Overshoot. It was based on William Catton’s book entitled Overshoot. It was published in 1980 while still remaining relevant. In it, the basic argument that every decision-maker who believes in infinite growth within an infinite planet are making a catastrophic mistake because the world exists with limited resources on a finite planet, or, more appropriately framed as a counter to the framing before, an infinite growth within an infinite planet can lead to catastrophic conclusions in argument and in reality. This echoes the sentiment of Malthus, not as extreme but, simply put, in spirit and result if not taken seriously to some degree.

“The gist of Catton’s book is that oil provided the energy for humans to draw down the world’s resources, which has allowed the human population to greatly exceed the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth (i.e., to go into overshoot). When resources become scarce or run out, there won’t be enough to support the human population, which is likely to undergo a steep decline or a crash. The world is an ecosystem with limits to growth and nature will have the last word,” Weld stated, “It took until 1804 for the human population to reach one billion. It increased to 2 billion by 1927, and 3 billion by 1960. The next three billion were in 1974, 1987, and 1999. In 2011, the human population reached 7 billion, and is now over 7.6 billion. Our population increases by 1,000,000,000 every dozen or so years. There is an eerie parallel of this spectacular increase in the growth of the reindeer population on St. Matthew Island, a remote outcrop in the Bering Sea, 300 km from Alaska.”

As noted about the reindeer on St. Matthew Island, the end-result can be troublesome for both the human population and the ecosystems on which human beings and other fauna and flora need to survive. The food supply, the lichen, by the reindeer was consumed in a short time, only a matter of a couple decades or so, and then when the researchers visited the island once more; they found the island littered with reindeer skeletons. The health of the reindeer was worse. These are the dynamics of growth of an organism population in a finite area of land with a finite amount of resources.

Weld concluded, “It’s true that the Earth is bigger than an island, and humans are smarter than reindeer, but we are exploiting resources globally on a colossal scale and the negative impacts of this drawdown of resources are becoming ever more evident. We would be wise to take heed.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Gayleen 3 — Negative What Ifs

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/16

Gayleen Cornelius is a South African human rights activist from Willowmore; a tiny town in the Eastern Cape province. She grew up a coloured (the most ethnically diverse group in the world with Dutch, Khoisan, Griqua, Zulu, Xhosa Indian, and East Asian ancestry). Despite being a large Demographic from Cape Town to Durban along the coast, the group is usually left out of the racial politics that plague the nation. She has spoken out against identity politics, racism, workplace harassment, religious bigotry and different forms of abuse. She is also passionate about emotional health and identifies as an empath/ humanist. Here we talk about South Africa and progressivism.

The context for South Africa simply comes out as one of the most progressive countries in the world. Without the progressive movement, South Africa would be in a terrible mess due to the human problem at the source of many societal issues in many countries.

The problem of racism and its outpourings through the generations. It is, simply put, an illusion with real implications and disastrous consequences for the lives of individual citizens, for groups, and, indeed, for the health and wellness & wealth of societies around the world.

Cornelius stated, “South Africa is a very diverse country with 14 national languages. Historically rival ethnic groups like the Zulu and the Xhosa would have continued with the tribalist violence that almost got out of hand before the reconciliation programs in 1994. Xenophobia against other African nationalities would have been violent and gruesome. Racism wouldn’t have progressed at all since the Apartheid era and boiled out to a civil war. The LGBTQ community wouldn’t have come out of hiding fearing for their lives. These are situations that many people considered inevitable when Nelson Mandela assumed power in 1994 but he did a great job implementing a culture of progressivism and averting all the tribalism, racism and bigotry.”

One perennial threat to progressive shifts to a more peaceful and just society, especially in terms of race relations, is towards animosity or antipathy with one another. Even with th knowledge of the tree of life and the terminology of species, there can still be instances of problems for all peoples coming into the world. It can be problems of the race as too embedded in the social networks and the social fabric.

“The race issue is the most volatile fir as long as I can remember. We still have a large number of white supremacists from the who weren’t very happy about the end of Apartheid because they benefited a lot from it,” Cornelius said, “There have been many cases of white farmers killing their black workers for sport and various surveys have shown that a great number of farm workers are sexually abused by these farmers.”

There has been retaliation by black workers with murders of white farmers. Neither situation helps with the peace and just desired by most South Africans. Racisms threatens the fabric of South African society. However, it does not mean all hope is or should be lost.

“Racism has threatened a lot of aspects affecting South African civil society and that has led to the rise of a far left wing of black nationalists and an alt right wing of white nationalists. The populist sentiments that have risen through Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters and the Afrikaner community’s Afriforum can possibly worsen identity politics and if any one of them get into power in 2019, it would be a newer version of Apartheid all over again. That is the single and most imminent threat to progressivism in South Africa and a lot has to be done to prevent the worst from happening,” Cornelius opined.

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2022-04-26

Ask Mark 2 — Squeezing More Some Things from Nothings

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/16

Mark Gibbs is an independently educated nonbeliever, who has some interesting and precise thoughts about the terminology in the survey data presented to the unbelieving community over the years. Here, in this series, we will explore some of the content, starting with the term “Nones” in an extended conversation continuing from Ask Mark 1 — Somethin’ About Nothin’: The Nones Ain’t Nothin’.

We started on some definitional issues. Those focused on the proper definitions for terms. Gibbs, astutely, identified the need to target the specific population. That is, the sub-population ones to research, for example.

Gibbs stated, “You see, Professor Kosmin wasn’t wrong. ARIS is the American Religious Identification Survey; the whole point of it is which religion you identify with… not what you believe. Kosmin knew exactly what he was talking about: he was talking about people who don’t identify with any religions… he was not talking about nonbelievers; they’re not the same thing. The problem isn’t the term itself.”

Thus, the problem was not the word use, but the misuse and subsequent – or, maybe, presequent – reflected a deep problem in two other words. Two other terms reflecting operations-of-mind. On the one hand, the affiliation with a religion. On the other hand, the belief in a religion. These can overlap in a Venn diagram. However, these do not necessarily have to fit snugly one into the other.

“That’s always a problem — for example, Islamophobic bigots make a point of not differentiating between believers in extremist Islamic ideologies and literally everybody who calls themselves ‘Muslim’,” Gibbs explained, “But it becomes particularly acute when you start talking about the lack of a religion: are you talking about the lack of affiliation, or the lack of belief? Or both? If your goal is actually specifically to talk about people who are not affiliated with any religions, then ‘None’ is exactly the right term.”

There is a “But…” there, though. The trouble with “None” comes from the synonymous interpretations of “None,” “nonreligious,” “atheist,” and the like. He continues to describe the ways in which reality is a messy affair, apart from the abstract descriptions of terms more interesting in the isolation of a linguistics or a philology class.

To make the point, Gibbs described how the idiosyncrasies of extremist ideological stances or fundamentalist religious views create an interesting situation, as follows: someone holds the same beliefs of a religion and does not claim to follow the faith.

“And most of the time, affiliation is useless as a categorization anyway. There’s lots of evidence out there that fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and so on have more in common with each other than they do with the moderate, casual, or progressive members of their own religions,” Gibbs said.

With the percentage of Christians who may hole “some awful belief,” the label “Christians” becomes difficult for proper interpretation and may, in fact, blur the lines of the true diverse categories of Christian believers.

Gibbs stated, “I’d be far more interested in learning how prevalent the awful belief is among casual religious believers — and it doesn’t really matter whether they’re Christian or something else; that would better tell me whether it’s something to be concerned about or not. That would be more useful in assessing whether the problem is only extreme religion, or if even moderate religion is a concern.”

Gibbs summarized the position for him. He thinks None can be used, but he believes “None”, as a term, should be used in the proper context. A context in which None makes sense or appropriately applies. With the confusion, though, Gibbs argues against the use of the term, as a practical matter.

Even further, the situation becomes more complicated, according to Gibbs. The entire “typology” of the terms will become new, in meaning and addition of words. Apparently, last year, Pew Research worked to came up with a new typology to help understand religiosity.

Gibbs stated seven categories arose with two new non-religious ones. One for the spiritual but not religious and the others for those who do not believer in supernaturalism. Shown in the image below:

Gibbs explained, “Pew’s new grouping actually illustrates how useless the ‘None’ grouping is (unless all you care about is specifically affiliation, and not beliefs). The ‘Solidly Secular’ are pretty much synonymous with ‘nonbelievers’… yet 24% of them identify with a religion. The ‘Nones’ include most of the ‘Solidly Secular’ and ‘Religion Resisters’… but it also includes 30% of the ‘Spiritually Awake’ and 17% of the ‘Relaxed Religious’, and even 22% of the ‘Diversely Devout’. So ‘Nones’ doesn’t just include a lot of people who aren’t nonreligious, it also excludes at least a quarter of those who are!”

Affiliation in Pew’s new religious typology

Gibbs appreciates the Pew a grouping. While, at the same time, the main criticism remains the focus on Christianity and on the United States. The emphasis can skew the outcomes of the research, unfortunately. The questions arise about the nature of terms in relation to other faiths or faith groupings, and adherents.

“I think I would do something very similar to what Pew did, though less US/Christianity-focused; so asking about belief God or a god generally, not specifically ‘God as described in the Bible’. But I’m not a fan of the name ‘Solidly Secular’. ‘Secular’ already has too many other meanings, and this is just guaranteed to sow more confusion. For example: technically, devout Catholics who aren’t clergy are secular. But don’t get me started on all the problems with the word ‘secular,'” Gibbs concluded, “I think a better term for that group would be ‘unbelievers’, because these are people who don’t believe in the tenets of religion — whether they still identify with a religion or not — and also don’t believe in other woo that isn’t normally called ‘religious’, like psychics and pyramid power. So I think I’d use a more generic variant of Pew’s typology, but with ‘Solidly Secular’ renamed to ‘[something] Unbelievers’; I’ll leave it up to Pew to come up with a cute alliteration.”

Image Credits: Pew Research Center.

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2022-04-26

Ask Mark 1 — Somethin’ About Nothin’: The Nones Ain’t Nothin’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/15

With the general conversation on the nature of the terminology within the secular community, Gibbs remarked on the independent research into the demographics of atheism in Canada. He notes several studies and surveys indicate modest trends in the atheist beliefs or characteristics in Canada, as in flavours of atheism within a Canadian conceptual landscape.

On the term the “Nones,” Gibbs stated, “As near as I’ve been able to trace its origins, it seems to have literally started out as a joke. The story I’ve heard is that in 2001, while doing the second American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), Professor Barry Kosmin noted the massive growth in the number of people who did not affiliate with any religion — they’d almost doubled in size since the previous survey from 1990 (8.2% to 14.1%; these are US numbers). He realized there wasn’t really a term for this group — they were the ‘No religion’ category, but what would you call them? ‘No-religionists’?”

He quotes the article, which states:

“Nonreligious” was a possibility. So was “non-faith” and “non-affiliated.”

But Kosmin rejected all of these. The “non” part bothered him. “Non-affiliated” would be like calling people “non-white,” he said. “We didn’t want to suggest that ‘affiliated’ was the norm, and every one else was an ‘other.’”

“Nomenclature,” he added, “is quite important in these things.”

Gibbs notes how the intention was, in fact, positive. However, the term “none” arose out of the mishmash of “none of the above,” as a truncated version of it. The base reasoning was the following: if someone did not have a religious denomination presented, then they would choose “none of the above” or “none.” It started as a joke and then created a life of its own.

“It’s really important that we clarify what ‘None’ actually means, because there is a lot of confusion about it. ‘None’ does not mean ‘not religious’, or ‘having no religion’. ‘None’ means specifically having no religious affiliation,” Gibbs explained, “Surveys like ARIS and population censuses usually don’t ask about your beliefs; they usually ask a question that looks something like this: ‘Which religion or denomination do you identify with?’ Note that the question is about affiliation, not belief.”

Gibbs remarked on the definition of religion based on the definition of religion provided by Statistics Canada. In fact, it was used for the 2011 National Housing Survey. As far as Gibbs found through independent research, this was the last time the census asked about religion, where the next time will be 2021. He quotes the documentation’s definition:

Religion refers to the person’s self-identification as having a connection or affiliation with any religious denomination, group, body, sect, cult or other religiously defined community or system of belief. Religion is not limited to formal membership in a religious organization or group. Persons without a religious connection or affiliation can self-identify as atheist, agnostic or humanist, or can provide another applicable response

Gibbs states the definition of religion does not amount to what you believe in particular; however, it does relate the faith one feels a personal connection. Gibbs makes a distinction between the 2011 National Housing Survey and the 2011 census.

As he states, “In 2010, the Harper government scrapped the mandatory long-form census and replaced it with an optional survey. They justified it as answering calls from a tiny minority of people who objected to the government collecting personal data. The move sparked outcry from just about everyone who cared about social research and evidence-based governance, and, as predicted, was a disaster. The mandatory long-form census was restored by the Trudeau government in time for the 2016 census, but unfortunately we won’t actually get religion data until 2021. Until then, the dodgy 2011 National Housing Survey data is all we have, other than data from the 2001 census.”

Gibbs explains, firmly, a “None” does not equate to an individual without a religion. A “None” is someone who simply does not affiliate with a religion or a religious group – full stop. Gibbs points to the extreme cases, in the extremely religious individuals.

He notes those with extreme religious beliefs become particular. A situation in which the belief system becomes idiosyncratic and weird, no doubt. He described the syncretism within the extreme religious community or the mixing of beliefs of the extant religious traditions. Extremely religious people far more often affirm rather than deny their religiosity than deny it.

Via an example, Gibbs stated, “For example, a person might believe literally every single part of the Catholic dogma except that they reject dyophysitism (Jesus has two natures: divine and human) in favour of miaphysitism (Jesus has one nature that is both divine and human), and feel so strongly about it that it’s enough for them to reject any affiliation with Catholicism.”

Then he noted the ways in which “religion” has become a bad word. It gets lumped with a denial of the natural world discovered through empirical methodologies and scientific tools. Individual may hold to core beliefs of traditional religions while also working to never proclaim identification with the title of a traditional religion. Words matter, but so does the content of beliefs implied by the words.

Gibbs talked about spiritual but not religious or SBNR. however, was unsure as to the StatCan filing of this terminology. Based on a graphic from recent Pew surveys of US adults, most of the “Nones” are within this category:

Gibbs further explained, “The situation may be even more extreme in Canada. A 2014 Angus Reid survey found that a plurality of Canadians are SBNR, and even if you single out the people who reject religion, 41% of those are SBNR.”

Gibbs, as articulate and intelligent as he is, emphasizes the importance of precision, as he is here, when using the terms. We may slip in the future. However, this can be a note to be mindful of the utilization of the terms “None,” “nonreligious,” and “atheist.” If one mixes these, they make “huge mistakes.”

Gibbs provided a favourite example from The Atlantic: “Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians”. The admixture is between atheists and Nones for the entirety of the article. He quotes the article:

Second, the researchers found that American “nones” — those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular — are more religious than European nones. The notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.

The third finding reported in the study is by far the most striking. As it turns out, “American ‘nones’ are as religious as — or even more religious than — Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.”

“That was a surprise,” Neha Sahgal, the lead researcher on the study, told me. “That’s the comparison that’s fascinating to me.” She highlighted the fact that whereas only 23 percent of European Christians say they believe in God with absolute certainty, 27 percent of American nones say this.

In the utility of surveys and censuses, and in the usefulness of classifications of the population for demographic analyses, bad terms can slant the reality shown by the research on the nonreligious. Gibbs continued to emphasise the “None” category as a census and survey category. He lamented the “tragic dearth” of science on nonreligious people, real scientific and social scientific research on secular people. He made a recommendation to see Professor Melanie Brewster’s 2014 talk at Skepticon 7.

In his framing, the current researchers are not appropriately collecting data because the terms are misleading, and so lead to misleading conclusions about the nonreligious.

Gibbs summarized, as follows:

It doesn’t mean what most people think it means. It has nothing to do with being nonreligious. It’s only about affiliation; it’s only about identifying with a religion, not believing in that religion’s tenets.
The category is actually dominated by the “wrong” people. By “wrong” I mean: not the people “Nones” are generally assumed to be. Most people assume “Nones” are nonreligious. In fact, most “Nones” are very religious, and in some ways even more religious than the average person that affiliates with a mainstream religion.
The categorization has already negatively impacted science. In the talk linked above, Professor Brewster explains how lumping atheists in with the “unaffiliated” distorted psychological research for almost two decades, and led to false notions about the mental health and social success of atheists.
The categorization has already negatively impacted atheists. Following from the point above, those false notions about the mental health of atheists led to actual discrimination. To this day, you don’t have to look too far to find people repeating myths that “science” has proven that atheists are psychologically unhealthy.

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Robertson 5 — Self-Actualization, Boys, and Young Males: Solution:Problem::Hammer:Nail

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/15

Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is a Registered Doctoral Psychologist with expertise in Counselling Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Human Resource Development. He earned qualifications in Social Work too.

His research interests include memes as applied to self-knowledge, the evolution of religion and spirituality, the Aboriginal self’s structure, residential school syndrome, prior learning recognition and assessment, and the treatment of attention deficit disorder and suicide ideation.

In addition, he works in anxiety and trauma, addictions, and psycho-educational assessment, and relationship, family, and group counseling. Please see Ask Dr. Robertson 1 — Counselling and Psychology, Ask Dr. Robertson 2 — Psychotherapy, Ask Dr. Robertson 3 — Social and Psychological Sciences Gone Wrong, and Ask Dr. Robertson 4 — Just You and Me, One-on-One Counselling, as these are the previous sessions in this educational series. Here we talk about self-actualization.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Famously, so famous, in fact, as to become a common phrase indicative of common sense wisdom — which, as one may joke about ‘common sense,’ may be uncommon sometimes and other times not-so-wise, the late Abraham Maslow, American Psychologist, remarked on the existence of problems and tools to solve them:

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and others — including Dr. Warren Farrell, who speaks in a pace and tone so as not to offend even the fly on the wall, for content reasons, obviously — continue to focus on some overlooked issues for males, young males and boys in particular; where as a collective, interrelated culture, these become issues for us, too. Maslow constructed the hierarchy of needs in the 1943 paper entitled A Theory of Human Motivation.

Zimbardo, who specializes in the psychology of evil (Stanford Prison Experiment in experiment and Abu Ghraib in reality, though this experiment came under more critical scrutiny, recently) and time perspective (e.g., living, mentally speaking, in the past, the present, or future), spoke on young men and boys since the early 2010s right into the present.

In particular, Zimbardo spoke on the failure of some boys and young men in multiple domains of life, where mainstream cultures — multinationally speaking — demand certain levels of performance and expect achievement of specific milestones by culturally affirmed ages for social approval. If not, then cue the epithets and societal reproval.

It is not an all-or-nothing evaluation, but it is a change in the ratio of the boys and young men succeeding compared to previous generations on average — and, especially, in contrast to the wonderful rise of girls and women. It becomes a dual-facet phenomenon of decline for boys and young men and incline for girls and young women with higher-order analysis implications, in time and in persistence of culture in bounded geography. Zimbardo reflected on the failures, by his estimation, as indicative of a hijacking or hacking of the hierarchy of needs by pornography, video games, and fatherlessness/(male-)mentorlessness — in part.

That is to say, with the self-fulfillment and psychological needs removed from the hierarchy of needs or ignored by the boys and young men, this left, at least, pornography, video games, and mentorlessness as central pillars in the decline of self-actualization and psychological needs, in boys and young men.

In the end, Zimbardo argues the result becomes a context in which young men and boys find themselves fulfilled as purely safety-and-physiological-needs-based beings, while also creating, in his research and assertions, i.e., not formally accepted by the academic psychological community in the DSM-5, “arousal addictions”: a psychological mode of a move towards pleasure and drift, or shift, away from pain in every life dynamic with a consistent need for novelty, which is an addiction for similar hyperstimuli with perpetual novelty, e.g., pornography and video games, as opposed to the same hyperstimuli, e.g., cocaine and gambling.

Of course, as a side remark, Dr. Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., American Psychologist and Physician, describes endocrine disruptors and educational system changes as additional factors in this.

No planning, no contingencies, no notions of the future, no orientation towards larger life goals, and little or no incentive to move out of this hedonistic, presentist mental state. Did Maslow predict this psychological orientation of young men and boys? If so, how? Did anyone (else)?

Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson: Your pre-amble certainly covers a lot of ground, Scott! The short answer as to whether Maslow predicted the current psychological orientation of young men and boys is “no.” He was interested in individual as opposed to collective psychological development. On the other hand, his hierarchy of needs may be applied to such developments.

There is a lot of evidence that males in modern Euro-American cultures are not doing well. Males, on average, die younger. Male unemployment is increasing with large numbers of younger males considered virtually unemployable, yet 97% of workplace deaths are men. Seventy percent of graduates in Canadian universities are women. Male suicide rates are four times that of women. Men are more likely to suffer from addictions, be incarcerated and be victims of violent crime. Eighty percent of homeless are men. Things have gotten worse for men since ex-feminist Warren Farrell wrote his book two and a half decades ago. From a Maslow hierarchy of needs perspective, things have not been going well, and part of that can be attributed to the influence of feminism.

Sax, whom you also referenced, in a brilliant analysis of kindergarten curricula in the United States, said that the curricula had been changed in preceding decades to conform to girl’s normative development. Specifically, he said that kindergartens had come to emphasize verbal skills which developmentally favour girls at that age. Had kindergartens emphasized spatial skills then boys would have been favoured. The result of this gynocentric curricula is that boys are more likely to experience frustration in their early schools, like school less, and more frequently experience failure. If female normative development and behaviour is set as normative across society, then boys and men will be disadvantaged. But that is only part of the story.

Using qualitative methods, I was able to demonstrate that a diverse sample of Canadian men have experienced harsh stigma as a result of their sex. Stigma is the imputation of characteristics to a class of people that renders them unfit for certain social roles. The men were viewed as a threat to others or irresponsible with respect to family responsibilities simply because they were men. As a result, they were judged as unfit, or less fit, in their roles as parents or as employees in specific occupations despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing. We see this stigma in society with notions of “toxic masculinity” where guilt does not have to be proven, it is assumed. Thus, even when men overcome disadvantages built into education, they remain at a disadvantage. The alienation of fathers from their families, in large part because of stigma, compounds the problem because boys, raised by single parent mothers, are less likely to have effective role models matching their gender and they are more likely to experience addictions, incarceration and suicide.

So, as Zimbardo has argued, many young men are dropping out. They are not competing for careers. They are not establishing families. They are not contributing meaningfully to society. They are occupying themselves with short term gratification. Maslow argued that until self-esteem needs are met, people are more preoccupied with meeting those needs than pursuing self-actualization. If a group of people are disadvantaged in education and suffer stigma for being a member of their group, it could be expected that in accepting the dominant society’s normative view, they suffer low genderized self-esteem. Zimbardo’s famous prison experiment showed definitively that people tend to become the roles societies set for them. The scary implication of this is that many of these young men could become the “toxic masculine” stereotype feminists have set for them. But I think there is another way of looking at this.

About three decades before Maslow built his famous pyramid, Alfred Adler said that all humans are born with a “striving for perfection” which is similar to Maslow’s idea of self-actualization. Those who give up this striving are people who are discouraged and this describes those young men who are dropping out. We need to combat society’s message to boys that they are both bad and failures and we need to reintroduce the striving for goodness.

Robertson’s article on Male Stigma can be found at: https://www.hawkeyeassociates.ca/images/pdf/academic/Male_Stigma.pdf

Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, what therapeutic methods, in a professional setting — group and one-on-one, work with the young men and boys, who, by standard cultural expectations, continue to fail at, probably, increasing rates?

Robertson: In 2012 I attended a workshop on how to counsel men at a Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association annual convention. The presenters were both women one of whom asked, with wide eyed innocence, how many of the attendees, who were overwhelmingly women, had actually counselled a man. Fewer than half the workshop participants raised their hands. The workshop then proceeded with a review of statistics on how few men seek psychotherapy, how men experience depression and suicide ideation less but nonetheless commit suicide at higher rates, and how men sublimate their mental health needs through alcohol, anger, and violence. The prescription of the presenters was that men need to learn how to admit their failings and seek help; they need to be in touch with their feelings more and make themselves “vulnerable” by discussing those feelings; and they need to find allies and build support systems. In short, they need to become more like women.

The suggestions of these female facilitators are not totally wrong. Many men benefit from honing these skills; but I would argue that many women would benefit from learning skills in which men tend to more easily excel. The problem with the paradigm that was presented at this workshop is exactly the problem Sax found with gynocentric kindergarten curricula — it sets up female developmental experience as normative to which both sexes should aspire.

The dominant themes in psychotherapy have always been gyno-normative, even when most of the practitioners were male. For example, Freud’s patients were all female (and rich females at that), and it was on his experience with them that he based his theories. It is probably no coincidence that the psychoanalysis he developed consists of symbolism, dream interpretation, random thoughts, free associations and fantasies in a process that can take years. In contrast, the male approach is to define a problem and solve it. Sometimes this involves setting aside one’s emotions so that rational processes are better able to take charge. My experience with men is that they do not want to be in therapy for a long time. Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy makes sense for many men although women may equally benefit from this approach.

I don’t mean to recapitulate John Grey’s Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus thesis. A non-sexist psychotherapy will treat each person as a culture of one with the therapist setting out to learn that culture; however, we need to recognize that there are certain tendencies that may be culturally or genetically driven. Sexist psychotherapy occurs when the normative experience of one sex is set as the norm for both. For example, the presenters at the “How to Counsel Men” workshop I just cited were mystified as to how it was that men were far more likely to commit suicide than women but were far less likely to suffer from depression. It did not occur to them that the American Psychological Association defines depression using the female normative experience. Male symptoms that differ from the female expression are not recognized, and I submit this is one reason why men are under diagnosed with this condition.

It is not at all clear that men’s mental health needs will receive serious attention any time soon. The APA Guidelines for the Psychological Practice with Men and Boys released last year, attempts to link traditional masculinity to racism, ageism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism, and this, we are told, results in “personal restriction, devaluation, or violation of others or self.” The unsubstantiated suggestion is made that men commit higher levels of intimate partner violence and are estranged from their children because they lack the will or ability to have positive involvement in healthy family relationships. Psychologists are cautioned about believing their male clients who protest their innocence because, in the words of the APA, “Male privilege tends to be invisible to men.”

I think we should consider the possibility that men do not seek counselling or therapy because they do not see counsellors and therapists as sympathetic to their experiences and the APA guidelines fail to dispel this perception. This should not be seen as an indictment against all therapists. Jordan Peterson’s “Twelve Steps” are based on practices that are common to Rational Emotive and Cognitive Behavioural therapies, and he expressed surprise that his approach has been overwhelmingly endorsed by young men because those approaches are gender neutral. I think his experience demonstrates that men are willing to seek help for their mental health issues if the helpers are seen to be sympathetic to their lived experience.

My advice to men who are interested in psychotherapy is to interview a number of psychotherapists before settling on one. Ensure that the therapist you choose is sympathetic to your needs and has an approach with which you feel comfortable. I think most therapists would feel comfortable answering such questions, and if they do not, you do not want to use the services of that therapist.

Jacobsen: Recalling a remark by Sax, he noted, after the age of 30, no reliable intervention — inasmuch as his research and professional practice work are concerned — for the aforementioned failure, in terms of steerage back onto the high seas of normal cultural life. He states, according to recent research on the architecture of the brain, an adult female is aged 22 and an adult male is aged 30.

Robertson: Neuropsychology is not my field; however this sounds like an old idea that girls mature faster than boys. I will rely on Susan Harter on this who did a meta-analysis and concluded that the frontal lobes normally complete their development around age 25 for both sexes. She published this in her 2012 book, and there may be subsequent research of which I am not aware. On the other hand, Sax is on solid ground in contending that there are inherited sex-linked differences with respect to personalities, drives and certain aptitudes although it should be remembered that when discussing such differences we are talking about averages and that knowing a person’s sex will not reliably tell us anything about any individual person’s personality or aptitudes. In any case, we are not born with a blank slate as Steven Pinker classically articulated in his book of that name, and on that point I think Sax is on very solid ground scientifically.

The 1950s and 60s popular notion that girls mature faster than boys was grounded in a number of observations that included girls verbal and social development, and the fact that young women were often ready to settle down and raise a family by their late teens. Young men, on the other hand, were often more interested in things than people and would rather explore and experiment than settle down and raise a family. The related conclusions regarding maturity was again grounded in a gynonormative perspective. We now know that different lifestyles and experiences can affect the brain’s structure such that male curiosity, if allowed expression, will result in a strengthening of relevant parts of the brain. Neo-natal scarcity can also lead to phenotypical gene expression that may be adaptive in a world of grinding poverty but are maladaptive in the modern context. Sax may have been thinking of this research in putting limits on when profitable interventions may be undertaken. Recent research has debunked the idea that the brain loses all plasticity by age 30, and in any case, I have helped many adults past middle age to lead satisfying lives after having had a career of dysfunctionality.

Jacobsen: Looking at the last two questions, if we look at the short, medium, and long term futures of men and, thus, in part, societies, what will be the outcomes for those who begin to succeed, and those who continue to fail, by the standard cultural expectations in Canada? What will be the outcomes for the Canadian culture if the trends lean towards further failure or further success — as defined before? For example, Sax reflects on the work by Professor David D. Gilmore, Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, with the likely dissipation and replacement, as an assessment and not a judgment of Gilmore, of secular English-speaking culture in North America, and, in fact, elsewhere, because of the lack of strong bonds across generations and the current cultures with young men and boys on one failure, and girls and young women on another standard success, trajectory, where these sub-cultures in larger Canadian society will not reproduce themselves for a variety of reasons and, therefore, will undergo steady replacement by other sub-cultures enacting the behavioral, communal, familial, and mating patterns indicative of those who have endured in previous generations for millennia, e.g., the Navajo, the Chinese, the Jewish, and so on.

Robertson: Again, there is a lot packed into your question. I would predict that some men will continue to succeed and they will assume the position of alpha males. I predict that large numbers of men will continue to fail, in part due to societal structures that lead to this result, and in part due to their own state of personal anomy flowing from a breakdown in the intergenerational transmission of values. I would argue, however, that reproduction below replacement levels is occurring worldwide and cannot be attributed solely or even primarily to events unique to Euro-American cultures but seem to be correlated with higher levels of educational opportunity available to women that allow for alternate avenues to self-actualization besides the mother archetype. I don’t think a low birth rate is necessarily a bad thing, but I am concerned about male roles in this new culture.

With the words “alpha male” my mind went immediately to the Canadian prime minister who may or may not be prototypical. Alpha males operate by different rules than are available to ordinary males. Feminists in Trudeau’s cabinet like Chrystia Freeland and Jane Philpott gave Mr. Trudeau a pass on substantiated allegations of a past sexual assault while applauding the expulsion from the Liberal caucus backbench members who faced unproven allegations of sexual assault. This would be an example of how rules between classes of men differ in the new society. The problems men who are not alpha face are either invisible or ignored. Even though three times as many male aboriginal men are missing or murdered as compared to aboriginal women, a Canadian inquiry into the problem excluded consideration of the men. When the government announced that Syrian refugees would be admitted, single males were specifically excluded from refugee status. When foreign aid increases were announced, agencies receiving the aid had to agree that none of it would go to men. I do not think the majority of men can expect much consideration from such feminized alpha males.

One problem faced by the majority of men is we do not normally confide in and support other men. I have been part of that problem. In 1969 I marched with Women’s Liberation to protest the “Saskatoon Club.” This was a club for well-to-do men in the city of Saskatoon. Men got to relax, play pool, discuss business and politics, and enter into mentoring relationships without the perceived distraction of women. We succeeded in opening it up to women. About three years later a succession of women rose at a meeting of Women’s Liberation to state that there were women present who felt intimidated by the presence of men. They politely asked the men present, who numbered about a quarter of the group, to leave, and we did so without protest. The result is that there was no net gain in inter-sex cooperation. The difference involved a shifting of gender specific networking and mentoring capacity. Ordinary men to this day remain largely unorganized.

The lack positive male self-identity can be traced to an intergenerational fail in the transmission of values. This fail began long before the advent of feminism. With the Industrial revolution men were forced to work in factories for 12 to 16 hours per day six days per week. Men became absentee parents whose contribution to the family was largely as a “good provider.” Mothers raised their children but necessarily gave them a woman’s perspective. This division of labour became a cultural norm, maintained long after working hours were reduced. Most men still measured their self-worth by their ability to be that good provider for their families differing to women in matters of child-rearing. But now, if men work hard and achieve financial success they are told that they are the recipients of unearned male privilege. Some men are saying, “Why bother?” I think the appeal of people like Peterson is that he has given them a reason to bother that transcends current ideological constraints, and that reason has to do with the development of personal integrity. In a sense, he is reaching out intergenerationally, filling a need in building positive male identities, as I also hope to do in this interview. Thank you for the opportunity.

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Weld 2 — These are That Which Malthusian Dreams, or Nightmares, are Made

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/13

Madeline Weld, B.Sc., M.S., Ph.D., is the President of the Population Institute Canada. She worked for and has retired from Health Canada. She is a Director of Canadian Humanist Publications and an editor of Humanist Perspectives.

Malthus is the source of the term “Malthusian.” He has been seen as a controversial figure throughout the history of the study of demographics. Nonetheless, this became a point of import to me, to bring Malthus to the fore.

Weld pointed out one of the main purposes of identifying Malthus, many times, simply comes in the form of using a derogatory term “Malthusian,” mentioned before. She noted Google doodle did not mention his 250th anniversary on Fbebruary 13, 2016, either.

Weld said “Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was English Anglican cleric and academic who is most famous for his book An Essay on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798 and re-published in a greatly expanded second edition in 1803. This was followed by four more editions with minor changes from the second edition, the last published in 1826.”

The main argument within the text was the growth of the human population in exponential ways. The ways in which the food supply and the human population become important for consideration in their mutual interplay.

“The crux of Principle of Population is that the human population can grow exponentially, while the food supply can only grow arithmetically. Therefore, Malthus reasoned, whenever the food supply is increased (through improvements in agriculture or the opening of new lands), human numbers will always increase until the abundance is eliminated and the poor are once again clinging to the edge of existence, on the borderline between survival and famine,” Weld explained in more detail.

There are, as Malthus stated, “positive checks” on the mortality that increase it, including disease, starvation, and other things leading to – let’s say – premature death. Then there are things called “preventive checks” that reduce fertility, including late marriage and contraception.

He saw birth control as a vice. Malthus published the first version of the text based on the urging of his father. Those ideas discussed of William Godwin and the Marquis de Concorcet, and others.

Weld stated “Malthus did not share their optimism about the inevitability of human progress. His views were informed by his own observations of his impoverished parishioners (at Oakwood Chapel in Surrey), whose diet consisted mostly of bread and whose children developed late and were stunted in growth. But despite the misery, the number of births Malthus recorded in the parish registry greatly exceeded the number of deaths.”

He – Malthus – argued that science and human progress could be eaten by the growth of the population. There was, in a sense, an upper limit increase with a rapid gain on the upper limit by the ongoing growth of the human population.

With more food, more children of poor backgrounds or families would not survive and the share of each family, in terms of general food or nutritious caloric intake, would be decreased per family, per individual.

“Malthus is criticized for being indifferent to the suffering of the poor because he proposed the gradual abolition of the ‘poor laws’ (i.e., state welfare) by reducing the number of persons qualifying for it, and thought a private charity could help those in dire distress. He thought the poor laws tended to ‘create the poor which they maintain,'” Weld said.

Weld reported on a statement by John Meyer who spoke about Malthus. Meyer stated Malthus was making a call for an end to growth with higher real wages, a reduction in inequality with an emphasis on economics for the provision of the necessities of life for the poor, as opposed to the “luxury goods for the rich.”

Malthus was arguing for more power and influence to the middle class and a reduction in poverty for the poor. This would tie to removal of the means by which the rich accumulate wealth, i.e., cheap labour and asset inflation.

Weld said, “Malthus also thought the rich were morally obliged to produce fewer children because if they had large families, the poor would disproportionately suffer material shortages. He questioned the morality of colonization and anticipated and deplored the fate he foresaw for the inhabitants of the New World as settlers claimed their lands. In short, Malthus wanted a better life for people and greater social equality.”

Malthus was a historian. He looked at historical events from the analysis or referent frame of logic and mathematics. Within the first and second editions of the book, he travelled a fair bit.

Within this travel, he worked hard to provide detailed accounts of the European explorers and gathered data from a variety of societies of the time. He described the ways in which societies were “replete with population surges and collapses.” Indeed, he was, according to Weld, the first person to describe population cycles.

“Malthus was limited by the data that was available to him 200 years ago. We now have far more detailed data that stretches back thousands of years and this data supports his concept of population cycles. Given the rate at which we are consuming and depleting resources, while our population is still growing by one billion every 12 years or so, it would be imprudent for us to assume that we are not in a global population cycle,” Weld said.

Weld mused about the reason for Malthus not being a popular or a prominent name now. She described how Meyer talked about Darwin, da Vinci, Aristotle, and others, who opened minds to the wonder of the natural and abstract worlds. Malthus talked about societies dying or decaying. Truly, and to quote Weld, “Who likes a party pooper?”

Malthus had and has a bad reputation because of the elites of the day. Those who saw the ideas produced as threats to power and prosperity for them. Even those without the ascent in the social and economic worlds, the socialists dismissed Malthus as offensive. Then there are the techno-optimists, who believe technology will solve all problems and, therefore, dismiss Malthus.

Weld said, “Since Malthus’ time, the world’s population has increased almost 8-fold, from about one billion to over 7.6 billion today. This is often used as evidence that he was wrong. However, the fact that close to one billion people are hungry and about three billion suffer from nutritional deficiencies that affects the physical and mental development of many supports Malthus’ argument that the human population will grow to meet the food supply such that some people remain impoverished. In fact, it is precisely the countries with the most rapid population growth that are unable to pull themselves out of poverty.”

She noted two limitations in the vision of Malthus. One is the massive increase in the number of humans via the intervention of oil into the energy life of the world. It has powered economies for the last 150 years. The next is the green revolution connected to the developments in agriculture.

Weld also noted a 19-fold increase of the global economy, which is remarkable, since 1950. Within this framework, the global population has simply grown significantly in a short period of time. Reflect, without an international economy with the imports of foods from around the world, how many populations, at a local level, would simply collapse along the lines of decaying and defunct societies tracked by Malthus.

Weld described how the expansion of the human population has left many other animals, non-human animals, to die to a large extent because of the funnelling of the fruits of the planet, artificially induced and natural, into the coffers, bellies, and infrastructure of humans and human societies.

“There is a crucial concept outside of Malthus’ ken – overshoot. Many informed people believe that humanity is in overshoot. Overshoot occurs when a species greatly exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of its environment,” Weld explained “This can happen when a species encounters a rich and previously unexploited stock of resources (think oil in our case) that promotes its reproduction. Without significant predation or disease (think advances in hygiene and medicine), while large amounts of the stock remain available (“age of oil”), the population of the species can grow many-fold.”

When the stock begins to decrease, lower quality versions of the resource become the transition point, e.g., tar sands in Alberta or deep-sea drilling off the coast of North America. Without the resources, the population can die when the resources run out. This is called a “population crash or die off” in the parlance of ecologists.

Humanity is taking oil as the be-all and end-all of their energy resources, for the most part, now. This inevitably will lead to ecological catastrophe without alteration of our collective course, seems like the implication to me.

On an interesting note, Weld stated, “Malthus thought that the human population would approach a sustainable limit and then hover there, with many people living in poverty and misery. The crash of a human population in overshoot will bring about the death and misery of billions: a catastrophe on a scale far beyond anything that Malthus could have imagined. Therefore, in the words of the late David Delaney, ‘Malthus was an optimist.'”

She provided an example of St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. Reindeer are not native to the island. 24 female and 5 male reindeer were released into the island in 1944 by the US Coast Guard. The purpose was to provide a possible food source for the employees stationed.

As things developed, there wasn’t a predator for the reindeers on the island to keep the population in check. There was a lot of food for them, lichen. By 1957, 1,350 reindeer were present; 1963, 6,000 were present. The vegetation on the island had been altered by the time of the 1963 survey.

“…the vegetation on the island had been significantly altered and the condition of the reindeer showed major deterioration and there was a greatly reduced percentage of young animals. At the next survey, in 1966, the population had crashed to 42 reindeer with no fawns or yearlings. The curve of the population growth of the reindeer on St. Matthew Island leading up to the crash is eerily similar to that of the human population since Malthus’ time,” Weld said.

The conversation veered into fears, legitimate and illegitimate, around overpopulation. Weld provided an opening remark on the difficulty to find any illegitimate fears around overpopulation. In other words, to a professional and nearly adult-lifelong demographer, overpopulation is a serious issue with far more legitimate fears surround the issue than not.

Weld stated, “No one can predict the future, the best we can do is make educated guesses. But our impact on the environment — both the physical environment and its biodiversity — is undeniable. It has been so dramatic that scientists are calling the times we live in the Anthropocene. The techno-optimists point out that we’re wealthier and longer-lived than we ever have been, and they argue that things will only get better.”

She also noted the ignoring of the costs of a more crowded and stressful world with many individual human beings impoverished and malnourished. With the extermination of other natural life, this is not stated as a loss. That is concern to Weld or, t a minimum, an oversight, especially within one major concern of a depleted planet.

Weld said, “Climate change receives the lion’s share of the coverage of our depredations on Earth, in terms of its potential to acidify the oceans, raise sea levels and flood coastal communities, and change rainfall patterns in many areas, including in our vital breadbaskets. But humans have also taken over about one-third of the Earth’s land surface for their own use (and over half the land surface that is habitable).”

Furthermore, 3/4 of the land on Earth is covered by human activities and affected by them to some degree, even “significantly.” Major fisheries are depleted, where others are beyond the capacity to replenish themselves. This is the problem of overpopulation, of too many people.

In a recent study from the World Wildlife Fund, 60% of birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles have been “wiped out” by human beings. This is widespread extinction due to human activity. We are a deadly species by many reasonable interpretations of this data.

“In the words of Rose Bird, the late former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court: ‘We have probed the earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it, chopped down its forests, leveled its hills, muddied its waters, and dirtied its air. That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-month basis, we would have been evicted long ago,'” Weld explained.

We do not have to destroy the ecosystem and ecological balances of the Earth. However, the current dogmas of the economies and political systems around the world remain tied to the unsustainable aspects of the world. We are adding more than 80 million new people to the population of the Earth per annum. There is a wider understanding of proper contraceptive use and the importance of family planning.

We should set a limit on the number of children with the threats of global warming before us. In addition, on an opining note, Weld disagrees with Malthus that birth control is a vice. However, his arguments about the severity of the real limits to growth of the human population forever are valid.

Weld concluded, “Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, is almost universally honored, while Thomas Malthus is more often than not dismissed and even vilified. But when Borlaug was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1970 for his achievements, he said in his acceptance speech: ‘There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.’ Thomas Robert Malthus would have agreed.”

Sources used:

Avery, John Scales. Thomas Robert Malthus, We Need Your Voice Today! Countercurrents. 11 June 2017. https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/11/thomas-robert-malthus-we-need-your-voice-today/

Delaney, David. Overshoot in a nutshell. http://davidmdelaney.com/overshoot-in-a-nutshell.html

Klein, David R. The introduction, increase and crash of reindeer on St. Matthew Island. Journal of Wildlife management, Vol. 32 (2): 350–367, 1968. http://dieoff.org/page80.htm

Meyer, John Erik. Why Malthus is Not a Social Hero Like Darwin. Humanist Perspectives, Issue 198: 16–19, Autumn 2016. https://www.humanistperspectives.org/issue198/05-Article_Meyer-34_pp_16-19.pdf . (Disclosure: I am a co-editor of Humanist Perspectives magazine.)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain. World Poverty and Birth Control: Malthus Was Wrong. November 2018. https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-792-august-1970/world-poverty-and-birth-control-malthus-was-wrong/

University of Cambridge. The man we love to hate: it’s time to reappraise Thomas Robert Malthus. May 18, 2016. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-man-we-love-to-hate-its-time-to-reappraise-thomas-robert-malthus

Weld, Madeline. Sadly, Malthus Was Right — Now What? Montreal Gazette, February 15, 2016. Reprinted in Free Inquiry, June/July 2016, p. 42. https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-sadly-malthus-was-right-now-what

Wikipedia. Gross World Product (accessed Nov. 7, 2018). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

Wikipedia. Thomas Robert Malthus (accessed Nov. 5, 2018). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

World Wildlife Fund. A Warning Sign From Our Planet: Nature Needs Life Support. October 30, 2018. https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018 See also The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds

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2022-04-26

Is There a Link between Islam and Terrorism?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/12

Professor Mir Faizal is an Adjunct Professor in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Lethbridge. Here we talk about terrorism and Islam.

The conversation started on the idea of global terrorism and the forms of religion in the world. It began, in other words, on the definitions of things. Dr. Faizal or Faizal sees the problem in its complications due, in part, to the proliferation of terms and the plethora of meanings intended by each of the words, often more than one meaning per word.

Faizal stated, “Let us start from the simplest definition of terrorism, a terrorist organization as an organization that deliberately kills civilians to achieve an ideological purpose. To be more precise, let us add that, an origination can be called a terrorist organization only if at least two democratic countries (on two different continents, e.g., North America, Africa, and so on, or in two different recognized regions, e.g., Middle East-North Africa, and so on) recognize it as such.”

The other form of restriction can limit the level of abuse of the word. For example, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the definition of atheism is a criminal offense, i.e., a terrorist offense or terrorism. In this, we can see the emphasis of Faizal.

“This definition of terrorism is also important, as it helps us identify the real practical problem when dealing with real issues rather than, possibly, invented legalisms. This is the terrorism that governments have to be careful about when they are considering a visa application, or when they are checking someone for security reasons,” Faizal noted.

In terms of the relationship of Islam to terrorism, the situation is simple on some facts, but also complicated in some other means of analysis. The positive correlation between Islam and terrorism is true. It is a fact of the world.

“To say all Muslims are terrorists is clearly unreasonable and incorrect, and to say all terrorists are Muslims is also wrong (as there are many non-Muslim terrorists too); on the other hand, to say that Muslims are like any other religious group is also not correct,” Faizal explained, “the number of violent events from Muslims seems to be far more than non-Muslims (if we again neglect the wars between nation states for the moment, as that is beyond the present definition of terrorism).”

When Faizal looked at the number of terrorist attacks in the month of December in 2018, he found about 170 attacks, internationally speaking. From this set of terrorist incidences, there were about 20 of the 170 were done outside of an Islamic ideological framework. In other words, a real correlation, in December of 2018 alone, exists between Islam and terrorism. The questions then arise about the roots or the sources of it.

Faizal posed, “We need to first accept this problem, scientifically analyze its causes, and finally come to a proper, rational solution. It could be interesting to carry out this analysis further and observe the variation of this probability with different sects of Islam.The first observation is that some sects of Islam are more violent than others. In fact, there are sects of Islam, which have almost zero histories of violence.”

These sect differences in the rates of violence are incredibly important in the advancement of peace, dialogue, and the work for the reduction in terrorist incidences in the world. If someone belongs to one branch of Islam, then they may be more likely to commit acts of violence than others. These denominations, as with Catholics and Protestants in Christianity, may live within different geographic and cultural areas, in which the violence rate may not be completely or entirely attributable to religion; and if so, then the issue is which ideological stances are the issue.

Faizal clarifies, “This means the if someone belongs to those sects of Islam, then there is almost a certainty he/she will not commit any act of terrorism. For example, Ahmadi Muslims (both Qadiani and Lahori Ahmadis) or Quranist Muslims (Muslims who follow only Quran) have a zero history of violence. In fact, they have been the targets of violent attacks and have never responded violently. On the other hand, most of the global terrorist moments come from Sunni Islam. Some sects of Shia Islam have been involved with many forms of violence at the state level, but using our definition consistently, we cannot classify it as terrorism.”

Indeed, Faizal was unable to find an act of terror done by Shia Muslims in December of 2018. Think about that, as a simple factual account, the issue of violence and religion becomes complicated and, therefore, should be not taken within a context of simple violence to religion correlation.

As Faizal observed, “The Shias are also focused on Israel and the Middle East, and do not commit violent acts against other countries. On the other hand, it is Sunni Islam, which seems to have a monopoly on global terrorism.”

Then this led to some further analysis of the directions of the violence within the sects or denominations of Sunni Islam based on the preliminary analysis of the data on terrorism and Islam by Faizal. He found only three sects or denominations associated with terrorism or terrorist acts: Salafi, Deobandi, and Barelvi.

“The Barelvi and Deobandi are Sufis, and so, it is incorrect to say all Sufis are non-violent. Barelvis are only obsessed with blasphemy and tend to limit the violence to those, who they think have insulted Muhammad,” Faizal stated, “The person who killed the Salman Taseer (governor in Pakistan) was a Barelvi. The Taliban are Deobandi. However, both Barelvi and Deobandi have almost no influence beyond the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan), and are only concerned with local issues. So, the only group which has international global influence are the Salafis.”

Not the Shia, only the Sunni and simply a minority within the Sunni, the Salafi, appear to commit the majority of the violent terrorist acts in the world, in December of 2018. After the name of the founder of the movement, and within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Salafis can be called Wahhabis. Some may hyphenate the title into Salafi-Wahhabi. Thus, we come to Salafi-Wahhabi Islam within the Sunni tradition as the narrowed-down definition of Islam within the correlation found between terrorism and Islam.

Faizal reiterates, “It may be noted Salafis are called Wahhabis (named after their founder, who is closely related to the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). I could not again find any act of terrorism done by Barelvis in December 2018, and around forty terrorist attacks done by Deobandis. However, most of these attacks done by Deobandis were limited to the Indian subcontinent. This leaves more than one hundred international terrorist attacks, which were done by Salafis. However, Salafis make up less than one percent of the total Muslim population, and even in Saudi Arabia, they are a minority, and only form twenty-three percentage population. Furthermore, not all Salafis are violent.”

Faizal described how the official sect or denomination of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabi bans protests against the government. Those who simply blindly follow the government are called the Madkhalis. That is to say, those are who Salafis and government-oriented fundamentalists are Madkhali Salafis. However, others exist who are the non-violent ones, who are non-Madkhali Salafis.

“As they form a small population of the total Muslim population, this correction becomes a more direct one. It may be noted that like the Shias, the violence promoted by Barelvi and Deobandi is circumstantial, and not intrinsic. However, the violence by certain Salafi sects (such as the ISIS) is intrinsic, and not circumstantial. Even with this difference, it may be noted that there are some deep common features between Salafi, Deobandi, and Barelvi. In fact, as the main concern of different governments is that they want to reduce the probability of someone blowing himself/herself up,” Faizal stated.

Faizal central point was that you cannot make this number or probability zero. However, the number can be brought down to a low level. So low in fact, you can simply ignore it. The work that needs to be done is around the source of the problem and the comprehension of some of the derivative effects too.

When we look into the global news, Faizal states, “For example, if a country is in global news about remakes on blasphemy they need to be careful of Salafis and Barelvi, and if a country is involved in Afghanistan, they need to be careful about Salafis and Deobandi. However, as both Barelvi and Deobandi are not concerned with international news, they need to only warn their citizens visiting Indian subcontinent. So, internationally, they only need to worry about the Salafis. As Salafis form a very small portion of the Muslim population, and Salafis can also be from peaceful sects (like Madkhalis), it is only a specific kind of Salafis that any government has to be worried about when it comes to terrorism.”

As the conversation developed, the level of specificity of the type and geographic locale of Islam and its association with terrorism, in this preliminary analysis, continued onward. Islamic scriptures can be a juncture of conversation for some. In that, if the purported holy texts of the religion of Islam relate to the full and theological foundation as a grounds for war, for terrorist incidences, then this should be dealt with in a theological manner. But there may be a more effective means by which to see a relation between religion and violence, and religion and peace.

Faizal, as a mathematician, deals with the issue “mathematically and statistically here. He notes the totally peaceful interpretations of Islam with the Ahmadis and the Quranists. Then he also described the “totally violent” ones with the Barelvis, Deobandis, and Salafis. Most Muslims, Faizal argues, are within the range of these two sets of extremes of the totally peaceful and the totally violent.

“So, instead of getting involved in an academic theologically discussion, we can analyze this problem mathematically, by simply identifying the common features of peaceful Muslims and violent Muslims. This way we can get a better more accurate practical understanding of the problem. It may be noted here that even though not all Salafis, Deobandis, and Barelvis are violent,” Faizal stated, “but all acts of violence, with a Sunni Islamic justification, comes from these groups. On the other hand, no act of violence with an Islamic justification has ever been conducted by the people in the first group, such as Ahmadis and Quranists.”

This can lead to some analysis, of the features of those who would be peaceful Muslims and violent Muslim sects – or interpretations of Islam with the possibility of leading to more peacefulness and more violence. By implication, this can be applied to other political, social, religious, and secular ideologies.

“There is an interesting correlation between what peaceful and violent Muslims sects believe, and this holds for most sects in the two groups. To understand that we need to first understand that apart from Quran and Mutawatir practices (collective practices which most Muslims perform, like prayers), theirs is a huge body of ahad Hadith literature, which describes what Muhammad did, and it was written some two hundred years after Muhammad,” Faizal explained, “The idea of Muhammad marries a six-year-old girl comes from this literature, the idea that apostates should be killed also come from them, the idea that homosexuals (as well as people who commit adultery) should be killed also come from them.”

The ahad Hadith literature is filled with both peaceful and violent passages based on the interpretation, where these ahad Hadith pieces of literature were written about 200 years after Muhammad. Most or all terrorist organizations have a common belief in some of the verses from the Quran abrogated from these ahad narrations.

Thus, the ahad narrations rather than the Quran in this context becomes the basis for the violent interpretations. Faizal argues that the peaceful verses of the Quran, for the terrorist organizations, were abrogated for violent purposes. For those who do not adhere to the abrogation theory of the narrations, they can be see in their own outcomes, which, apparently, are far more often mostly or completely non-violent, as in the Ahamdi Muslims and the Quranist Muslims.

That is to say, the Ahmadi and Quranist interpretations of Islam do not adhere to the ahad narrations and, by implication, can be seen as less violent or completely non-violent compared to those who believe in this theory of abrogation with the ahad narrations.

Faizal continued, “Even Sunni Muslim scholars, such as Adnan Ibrahim and Javed Ghamidi, who actively preach against violence, do not hold to this theory of abrogation, and base their belief on the Quran rather than ahad Hadith. In their theory, the violence in any verse is contextual (and those verses only refer to war), and has to be read in the light of general more peaceful verses of the Quran. So, we can again establish a mathematical relation between Muslims who not hold to a textual discontinuity in Quran (the discontinuity between a Meccan and Medinan verses), and peacefulness.”

Such is the working of a mathematical mind, there is the basis for some means of hope and reasonable discourse, especially for much of the West that does not seem to know much about Islam or the ways in which various sects or denominations function in the terms that seem to matter to most Westerners: violence and the relation to textual-theological discourse on the Quran, Hadith, and the life of Muhammad.

” In fact, there is a direct statistical correction between those Muslims who base their belief on the Quran (rejecting the theory of abrogation) and peacefulness. Furthermore, there is also a direct statistical correction between those Muslims who base their beliefs on ahad Hadith (accepting the theory of abrogation) and violence. It is important to realize that not all Muslims, who hold to textual discontinuity in Quran are violent, but all Islamic terrorists, believe in the existence of a textual discontinuity in the Quran,” Faizal said.

Faizal asserts, based on this analysis, that no terrorist incident has occurred within the framework of textual continuity rather than textural discontinuity or, for example, the theory of abrogation proposed with such interpretations as the ahad narrations applied to the Quran within many terrorist organizations. Therefore, individuals who claim to be Muslim and take a textual continuity approach will not be a terrorist.

Faizal explained, “In fact, there has never been a terrorist, who holds to the textual continuity in Quran. So, the probability of anyone who believes in textual continuity of Quran, and basis his beliefs on it, to commit acts of terrorism is zero. In other words, it is almost certain that any Muslim who bases his beliefs on the Quran, rejecting the theory of abrogation cannot be a terrorist.”

Then the questioning comes to the issue of having the government involved to prevent and stop terrorism for the good of the general population. Faizal claims, based on the above analysis, that the there should be a scientific approach by the governments in order to deal with the problems of terrorism and terrorist attacks.

“For example, they can identify the right kind of questions that are being asked during a visa application, or other application. If you ask a person about his sect, and come to know he is an Ahmadi or a Quranist, then you can be certain he will not commit any act of violence. Furthermore, any person who is a potential terrorist will never identify himself/herself as such,” Faizal proposed, “In fact, for a Sunni Muslim, a good test could be a question (hidden in lots of other questions), where he/she is asked if they think that Ahmadis should be allowed to pray like other Muslims, and consider themselves as Muslim.”

With an affirmation or a “Yes” answer, this can indicate the possibility of this individual being a terrorist. Faizal proposes governments gathering and database of terrorist attacks that have happened into the present. Then there should be a mathematical and statistical analysis. From these, we can see if common features exist in the total population, e.g., education, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sect, and so on.

This would not be a basis for discrimination with the data but a foundation for discriminating within specific probabilities. For example, there can be specific statistical weights given to the demographic characteristics within the general population.

Faisal stated, “They can weight each aspect of a person, give them a statistical weight, and then subject them to different levels of security checks. As this will be done scientifically, no one will feel discriminated by scientific data (discrimination is a human attribute, and mathematics cannot discriminate). It is also important to realize that whether Islam is a peaceful or violent religion, is an academic question, and it is not important for dealing with terrorism.”

He – Faizal – was firm on the argument that the perception of Islam preaching violence as a serious issue, where the perception can lead to real acts of violence by individuals who follow the religion of Islam. He notes the discontinuity interpretation exists in Muslims and non-Muslims who perceive the ahad narrations of the Quran.

“In fact, we can easily state one statistical fact, that it is this belief in textual discontinuity in Quran that is directly proportional to the intrinsic (not circumstantial) acts of violence by violent terrorists (like the ISIS), and everything that can be done to counter it (with the constraint that it does not violate the freedom of speech), should be done, to minimize the probability of terrorist attacks,” Faizal concluded.

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Weld 1 - Demography 101

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/12

Some of the basic premises of the world of demographics and demography as a field of study is the statistical outlook of the field dealing with births, deaths, diseases, marriages, and so on, of the population(s).

Weld’s interest is in the areas of the growth of the population and the ways in which continually growth-oriented humanity may or may not be having a negative outcome on the biosphere. The net migration of a country, such as Canada or the United States, will reflect this, where net migration is defined as both immigration and emigration – and also linked to the number of births and the number of deaths to define “population growth” of any country, or population.

Weld, in describing how she became interested in the field, stated, “As far as being concerned about population growth goes, I can say all of my life — at least as soon as I started to consciously think about things. I can’t remember too much from my very early years. But when I was two months short of five, my dad, who was in the foreign service, was posted to Brazil (November 1959 — June 1962), and I became acutely aware of the extreme differences in wealth in that country and the sprawling favelas.”

Weld also was recognizing the way in which the separation between the poor and the rich could, at times, be completely arbitrary. Why do some live in rich areas while others live in potential squalor? This is a young inquisitive and ethical mind.

At the time while living in Pakistan, Weld noted the population was only about 60 million, circa 1965-67. Now, the population is about 200 million. When she was younger, the teacher would talk about the “vast” forests and oceans including the resources available to humans in them.

“As far as being officially active in the area of population, that didn’t start until 1992, when Population Institute Canada was founded under the name “The Ottawa Family Planning Project” by the late Dr. Whitman Wright (a professional engineer who also founded Planned Parenthood Ottawa). I was the vice-president and then in 1995 became president,” Weld said.

The Ottawa Family Planning Project became the Global Population Concerns Ottawa, and then the Global Population Concerns Ottawa became Population Institute Canada, which is its current incarnation. Weld has been active and petitioning the government to support family planning for a long time, especially in its international assistance programs. Weld also argues for the protection of the biology and agriculture of Canada. The world is neither an infinite resource holder or bottomless trash can.

Weld earned a B.Sc. in Zoology from the University of Guelph, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Physiology from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In her time as an academic-in-training, her main focus of course work that could somewhat relate to the demographic career was in Ecology. The research into how animal populations can expand and then get knocked down as they rise because of predators, disease, and the like.

“The topic of human population was my own ‘extra-curricular’ interest. Whenever I would read newspaper articles or hear news reports about conflicts iis dealing with Ecology. In particular regions or about some environmental problem (erosion, deforestation, depleted water supplies, pollution), I’d note how the population growth aspect of the problem was either completely overlooked or, very occasionally, mentioned in passing as something inevitable,” Weld stated.

Some of the basics of demography within a Canadian context, as laid out by Weld, came with the caveat that the internert, not, makes the life of any independent research much easier. One can find out about the net population growth in Canada, and, in turn, the number of emigrants, immigrants, and the rate of births and deaths. It is a wonderful achievement and testament to the technological age in which we find ourselves.

Weld explained, “It’s noteworthy that Canada’s population increased over 5-fold over the 20th Century. It was almost 5.4 million in the 1901 census, and almost 30.7 million in 2000 (a 5.7-fold increase). The current population is almost 37 million. But our population could have stabilized a long time ago at well under 30 million because our total fertility rate has been near or below 2 children per woman since 1970. We have been driving Canada’s rapid population growth with high levels of immigration.”

One problem is the ability to find some critical analysis of the policies set out by the government with direct, or even indirect for that matter, impacts on the status of the population, in the short-term and the long-term. There is no official policy around population in Canada. However, other policies throughout the governments, federal and otherwise, do impact the eventual population of Canadian society.

“Canada’s immigration policy as of 1990 has increased Canada’s population by about 1% a year, and under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, our intake is being upped even more. But there is no public discussion about the costs of those policies — the loss of wildlife habitat and greenspace in cities,” Weld stated, “the congestion and ever-increasing amounts of time that people spend stuck in traffic, the stresses on social services (such as health care) and on infrastructure, and on those seeking jobs. Our immigration policy benefits the few (developers, bankers, businesses that benefit from cheap labor, some politicians courting the ethnic vote) but the costs are borne by everyone.”

The “de facto policy” of Canadian society and, in particular, the Canadian federal government functions against the scientific evidence, according to Weld. In that, in 1976, the Science Council of Canada in Report #25 entitled “Population, Technology, and Resources” recommended or suggested, or “advised,” the Canadian government to implement and the Canadian public to support a restriction on the level of immigration, as this would conserve the limited resources of the nation-state in addition to stabilizing the population.

Remembering, of course, this was way back in 1976. For younger cohorts, it is important to develop a sensibility of a timeline of decades and centuries to comprehend the current social and political, and so policy, landscape of the nation, not simply in Canadian society but elsewhere too.

Weld explained further, “In 1991, the Intelligence Advisory Committee with input from Environment Canada, the Defence Department, and External Affairs, produced a confidential document for the Privy Council, called ‘The environment: marriage between Earth and mankind.’ It states that ‘Controlling population growth is crucial to addressing most environmental problems, including global warming.’ It notes that while Canada’s population is not large in world terms, its concentration in various areas has already put a lot of stress upon regional environments in many ways.”

There was research by Fraser Basin Ecosystem Study done by Michael Healey and others through The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was published in 1997. They found that the rapid growth in the urban centre in British Columbia, Canada, would overwhelm – eventually – and degrade the environment, where this was beginning to be seen at the time. Once more, this is more than two decades ago. Prior generations have been warning and working on these issues. However, there has not been sufficient governmental and public pressure and activism on it.

“When the study was released, Michael Healey said, ‘The lower Fraser basin exemplifies all the social, environmental, and economic problems of modern industrial nations. These problems are not going away and it is high time that we faced up to them,'” Weld stated, “Some people have written critically about Canada’s immigration policies. The late Martin Collacott wrote extensively about the need for reform, and economists Herb Grubel and Patrick Grady estimated that recent immigrants cost the government $30 billion more in services than they pay in taxes each year.”

She – Weld – spoke about Who gets in, a book by Daniel Stoffman from 2002, which talked at length about the immigration policy of Canadian society. Same with Immigration: the Economic Case by Diane Francis, also from 2002. The basic stipulations within the texts are debunking or dismantling the economic arguments made for the growing of the Canadian populace with Canadian society not necessarily becoming richer with immigration and immigration not changing the fundamental structure of Canadian culture either. In that, immigrants get old too; while, at the same time, the truth of the matter is a growing population is having a negative impact on the environment.

Weld stated, “But the media — and most environmentalists for that matter — do not discuss let alone promote the concept of stabilizing and reducing Canada’s population as an environmental measure. Instead, we do hear about ideas like the Century Initiative, which aims to grow Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100. If this were to come about, it would be to the detriment both of working Canadians and the environment.”

With the continual growth of the human population by more than 80 million people per year and one billion per 12 years now, this is a highly sobering statistics about the rapid growth of human societies and the need to be sober in the evaluation and analysis of the scientific, probably, consensus on immigration and the populations of countries for sustainable living with the surrounding ecosystems that, in turn, sustain and permit human life in the first place. As we’re seeing more and more, the poorer and lesser developed nations of the world tend to having the highest birth rates and the larger negative impacts with the unsustainable growth trajectories of their populations, which can lead to significant issues for the health and wellness, and happiness, and, in fact, wealth on average, of their populations.

“This rapid population growth in poor countries is leading to resource scarcity, unemployment, and conflict, and driving people to risk their lives to immigrate elsewhere, where their welcome is increasingly wearing thin,” Weld concluded, “Witness what is happening in Europe. And for anyone who cares about life on Earth, it is sad to see the devastation of wildlife on land and in the oceans, rivers, and lakes. We should ask ourselves whether we really want to turn the Earth into a feedlot for humanity or preserve some of its natural beauty.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Shireen 1 — Reformers

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/12

Shireen Qudosi was named one of the top 10 Muslim reformers in North America in 2011. She works to further the progressive movement within Islam. Qudosi earned a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Political Science from University of California, Irvine.

She attended California Western School of Law, but left to build a foundation for her work as a Muslim Reformer. Here we start this educational series off on reformers.

On the work with Qudosi, an important distinction should be made between individuals who leave Islam and others who reform the faith from within it. Her focus has been on the work of reform. In which, she sees this facet of the faith as something happening since its inception into the present day.

Qudosi said, “We see it in the way Islam waxed and waned during Prophet Muhammad’s time, starting out as peaceful and later emerging as a more warring religion when early Muslims were at risk of annihilation. We saw it in the first hundred years after the prophet’s death, as Muslims tried to flesh out the faith, as the faith adapted to local regions and branched into niche interpretations of Islam. And of course, there has been a consistent involvement of scholars (now imams and celebrity community activists) who try to shape Islam based on reasoning or propaganda depending on the character of the individual. For better or worse, Islam is not a static faith. It is better understood if it’s seen as an organism, or an evolving consciousness.”

The new wave of the thought leaders within some of the Islamic communities are the reformers. Women, as a result, have begun to gain more of a voice. Qudosi sees this rise of women as an inevitable aspect of modernity, especially with the prior grooming of some women into silence and even “groomed by voodoo.”

She spoke about the idea of external influences preventing acting as one’s true self. These restrictions can be particularly damaging to girls who become women. This form of “cultural rot” becomes a basis of enjoying an immortality of repressive values for women, in some interpretations of religion.

Qudosi said, “Privately, we are many voices. Publicly, you only see a few handfuls. All of us carry a rich heritage of philosophy and inquiry, and I can’t think of a greater act of faith than to ensure that right is exercised and that legacy is protected for future generations.”

As she founded Muslim Reformers, she wanted to highlight the continuum or reformer beliefs on hand in the modern period. The idea of the injustice and seeking to rectify those injustices in some way. She saw and experienced “small cruelties,” which were during her formative years.

“When I was four-years-old, I used to listen to the story of A Little Match Girl, over and over again, pulled into the narrative and empathizing with her before I could even read properly, before I even knew what empathy was, and before I realized that it’s perhaps not so ‘normal’ to feel another’s pain so intimately,” Qudosi stated.

While growing into an adult, she developed some of the capacities of adulthood, as in becoming “more self-aware and confident”; wherein, a sense of purpose can begin to take more root and flourish. Over 15 years, her sense of love for human potential and a way in which humanity can grow with a sense of dignity drives her, and has developed over time.

Qudosi explained, “That’s essentially why I do what I do. Muslim reform for me started with a question, a possibility. Over time I’ve learned so much and I’ve gotten to know so many incredible people and their stories, that it’s not something I can just put down and walk away from at this point. In some way or another, this will always be a touchstone in the work I do. How much I’m able to do will always depend on the resources and funding available.”

The modern media and communications landscape can be important in this progressive work, especially as the technology becomes cheaper over time. In fact, it can provide freedom in speaking one’s mind, being oneself, and without the direct fear of retribution.

“Technology gives us the ability to get our message across, to connect with each other, to keep educating ourselves so we’re more refined in our message. However, technology dependency is crippling and dances on the perimeter of dehumanization,” Qudosi stated, “Media, however, is an entirely other matter. You have to be a sort of gladiator if you want to be successful in media — and that’s not necessarily to anyone’s benefit, including the gladiator.”

Qudosi does not see a value in much of the soundbite-based ‘dialogue’ and ‘conversation’ of the modern media with the canned responses and the cant remain the norm rather than the outlier. Part of the problem is the ideological camp-based polarization of the media.

She sees meaningful dialogue exemplified in a 1977 interview with Patrick McGoohan. She does see, though, positive developments in the media, in terms of meaningful and in-depth dialogues on the issues of the day in all kinds of media. But, probably, not on the larger, mainstream basis in general.

“As a dear friend recently shared, this sort of coming together involves the kindling of a rapport, which he described as ‘creating a connection in and through our communication…People who are in good rapport with each other start to breathe, talk, and move in the same rhythm,'” Qudosi said, “I was recently reading John O’Donohue’s Beauty, in which he spoke of timing and patience — two things I confess I’m still a bit wobbly in at times.”

Qudosi quoted “Towards a Reverence of Approach”:

“What you encounter, or recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation and often involved a carefully phased journey of approach. Attention, respect and worthiness belonged to the event of nearing and disclosure…Our culture [now] has little respect for privacy; we no longer recognize the sacred zone around each person. We feel like we have a right to blunder unannounced into any area we wish. Because we have lost reverence of approach, we should not be too surprised at the lack of quality and beauty in our experience…We have become more interested in ‘connection’ rather than communion.”

Qudosi sees reverence outside of the realm of the gladiators. We, as human beings, should not fight, but should work for communion through reverence. She wants to write a variety of subject matter, but feels distracted by the disease of the early 21st century of needing an opinion on everything the internet provides to us, incompletely.

She wanted to take on a form of sabbbatical, so to speak, in order to collect her thoughts and find her voice once more; her true voice, not the cant provided by the constant chatter of the internet. A voice found in silence, reflection, apart from the everyday world of social media and distraction.

“Because of my work I cannot disconnect completely but I do still shelter myself as much as possible from these things and hope to more so in the years to come. One simply cannot think and create if they’re fed a steady supply of other people’s thoughts,” Qudosi stated.

Qudosi sees the media, in the current period, feeding some of the culture of vanity. With 9/11 happening 18 years ago, there is a push to sensationalize grievance of 9/11, a tragedy, rather than emphasize the progressive work of reformers within the Muslim world.

The only outlets who seem to highlight the reformers come at times of convenience for them. She feels this “sometimes” plays “into the myth of the noble savage.”

With the rise of the empowerment and advancement of women, the next questions reverted to the international rights issues important to women and the ways in which their rights can be violated in a modern context to some degree.

Qudosi was short or to the point. She wants the media to stop caricaturing Muslim women in the world. She sees the liberal media sitting too closely, at times, with figures who simply may not represent the general outlook and perspective of most Muslim women. Qudosi continued to talk about the issues around the rhetoric of figures who do not represent the views of many Muslim women and may reflect regressive political and social outlooks.

“And there is rage, a powerful component of the female psyche — but rage is a process. It is not the solution,” Qudosi stated, “The other thing the media can do is lose the trope of sad Muslim woman. This has been going on before reformer was even a buzz word. Around mid-2000’s, I pieced together a totally rubbish book (if we can even call it a book), with uninformed, uncultivated hodgepodge of ideas about faith, identity and belonging.”

She thinks this should have been thrown directly into the trash, but this was picked up in the UK with a manuscript bid between three publishers. According to Qudosi, the condition was the necessity to write on “being a sad Muslim woman.”

Qudosi refused. She read a similar story around that time and did not want to replicate the narrative there. To her, the narratives can be too-self-indulgent. Also, she noted that she was too young and did not know some of the other facts of life at that time.

On things to look out for now, Qudosi stated, “We’re looking forward to bringing some new names on. Elliot Friedland and I co-founded Toke for Tolerance, a radically honest interfaith festival we hope to launch in 2019. Our vision includes using this space to nurture newer voices, both men and women, in a sacred space that honors the art of approach.”

Now, Qudosi is working on a book entitled Islam’s Origin Story.

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2022-04-26

Ask Kavin 1 — The Demarcation Problem in Food

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/09

Kavin Senapathy is a writer covering science, health, medicine, parenting, and the intersection of these topics. Her work appears in Slate, SELF Magazine, Forbes, Skeptical Inquirer, SciMoms, and other outlets. She’s a proud “Science Mom” to a 7-year-old and 5-year-old. Here we talk about science and pseudoscience.

The conversation focused on science and pseudoscience in food, and in diet and health and, in turn, the common fads that can continually pop up within recent memory. Of course, to set the stage of the conversation with the wonderful Senapathy is to set the ground, the first stage to set is the difference between science and pseudoscience.

“Pseudoscience can be a powerful weapon in the hands of those who know how to exploit it, primarily because it can sound so credible (and because the demarcation between pseudoscience and science isn’t as black and white as some would like to believe). That’s especially true for food, and unfortunately, it’s not always as clear-cut as separating ‘science’ from ‘pseudoscience,'” Senapathy explained, “Take, for example, the concept of ‘clean’ eating. It doesn’t really mean a whole lot — the FDA only talks about ‘clean’ with regard to sanitation and food safety, and neither the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics nor the Dietary Guidelines for Americans define ‘clean’ eating.”

Senapathy continued to discuss those who are proponents of the clean food movement. The notion is the avoidance of foods or diets containing synthetic or artificial food additives. However, their fundamental scientific, medical, and dietary claims are base pseudoscience and filled with numerous misrepresentations of the true nature of science, of medicine, and at the interplay between the two with proper health science seen in normal recommendations for diets.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people who avoid common clean eating “nonos” (I’m not kidding, major food companies like Panera have “no no lists”) are fundamentally misguided. It turns out that these concepts are often more about values than science. Several nebulous food concepts, like “clean” and “GMO”, have become proxies for perceived and real ills of the food system,” Senapathy stated.

There are common values. There are common circumstances. With similar values and circumstances, communities can come together and form non-science or misinformed and misguided movements. This seems to have happened within the health fad movements. They may talk about corporate control of food, real rises in disease or not, environmentalism, irrational or rational fears about particular chemicals, the health wellness of the young and the general population, and so on.

Senapathy, while remarking she shares some of the values, said, “So, instead of demarcating “science” vs. “pseudoscience,” I’ve come to realize that the most important step we can take is to really define our concerns so that we can truly address them rather than blame dietary scapegoats. For one example, I wrote about the social consequences of the GMO debate with the other SciMoms here.”

On common fads and myths, Senapathy exclaimed that there are several books on the subject. But that the common ones are that somehow non-GMO is better for the environment or those working in the agricultural industry.

Nonetheless, there may be one area in which there could be substantial progress. That is the area of the microbiome and its health, and then its health’s relation to the health of the entire body and the mind. The research appears to be preliminary. But, in fact, some research seems to indicate a relationship between the microbiome and mental health in a materialistic, biological, non-magical and real correlative sense.

On the nature of campaigns and becoming more involved in activism, Senapathy opined:

The proposed solutions to pseudoscience susceptibility are complex, but one of the biggest missing pieces is that far too many people don’t know the basics of evaluating the credibility of information on the internet, which is where these waves proliferate fastest. I’m also a firm believer that the media’s breakneck pace in the internet age is a problem. An example that comes to mind is the recent, widely-covered study concluding that layers of the body that exist between connective tissue and organs are actually a newly discovered “organ,” called the interstitium, described as “a highway of moving fluid.” Several news outlets breathlessly reported that the discovery of this “organ” could explain how acupuncture works because one of the study authors said so. Turns out that this study doesn’t explain acupuncture at all, and that this specific author has long promoted pseudoscientific ideas about health. I covered the whole thing for Slate back in April.

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Robertson 4 — Just You and Me, One-on-One Counselling

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/09

Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is a Registered Doctoral Psychologist with expertise in Counselling Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Human Resource Development. He earned qualifications in Social Work too.

In addition, he works in anxiety and trauma, addictions, and psycho-educational assessment, and relationship, family, and group counseling. Here we talk about the clientele.

Some of the first steps, even non-verbal ones, for the client to counselor relationship is the construction of trust and rapport. Robertson stated that half of the variance in therapeutic outcomes relates to the rapport in the client-counselor relationship.

Some psychologists, generally speaking, have concluded on the ways in which the school or the methodology of the counselor may, in fact, be unimportant, or, at least, not that important in the larger scheme. Indeed, data from studies show rapport as an important factor in the positive outcomes of the patient regardless of the school of thought in counseling psychology.

Robertson stated, “Probably the easiest way to build rapport is to identify commonalities between therapist and client. This could include gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social status, and so on. Once the client has revealed the problem or issue that has brought him or her to therapy, the therapist may share that he has faced a similar issue, and this too has the effect of establishing rapport, but there are risks associated with this approach.”

But as with the artistic nature of the endeavor, there are a variety of risks and dangers. Some of those can undermine the therapeutic process in its entirety. If we take a look into the issue of the volitional self, as one can see in the research work of Robertson, this tends to form a post-behaviorist and modernist sensibility of the self. One with the ability to will something; an organism with freedom of the will, volition, or, at a minimum, the appearance of it, and the internalized self-justification of it, whether or not freedom of the will exists.

These unique volitional selves comprising human families, human communities, and human societies. Robertson talked about the possible risk in the over-emphasizing the external common traits, as this can deny some of the more self-empowering aspects or facets of the therapeutic process.

“The clearest example I can think of occurred when I was Director of Mental Health for Northern Saskatchewan. Concerned with the lack of effectiveness of its alcohol and drug addiction program, the province brought its addiction program under the authority of the mental health program. I discovered that addictions workers had been hired,” Robertson opined, “not on the basis of their competence in psychotherapy, but on the basis of their status as “recovered” alcoholics. These workers had maintained sobriety for years, and they thought they could use their own experience as a template for others. They gave advice based on their own experiences and they thought they were doing therapy. Such an approach denies the individual experiences and cognitions of the client.”

Robertson went into another problem with the finding of common identity with the client in the possibility of a confirmation of a “dysfunctional worldview.” He noted psychotherapy is simply about the transformation from one range of mental states to another. Thus, if a patient continues onward into a dysfunctional range of mental states through the affirmation of the worldview by the counselor or the psychotherapist, and if this is happening because of the rapport built with the client or the patient, then the therapist or the counsellor may be liable and, as importantly, the client or the patient may fail in their desired ends – to become more functional in their range of mental states in the context in which they live, in contrast to their current way of life. We’re talking about a reduction in human suffering. It seems like a serious issue to me, in this light.

Robertson relayed an example stating, “If a man comes to me having been abused by women, and I reveal to him that I also have been abused by women, then we could commiserate and blame while avoiding dealing with the changes the man will need to make to have healthy transsexual relationships. Similarly, Feminist Psychotherapy adds an ideological perspective to the field and that perspective could keep female clients from undergoing beneficial self-change.”

The key word in the quotation, truly, is the phrase “self-change,” in which the client or patient, ultimately, needs to own their decisions, their tools for dealing with life, and, in turn, their tools for dealing with their decisions in life, whether happenstance trauma including abuse by a man or a woman, or life tragedies that come everyone’s way.

Robertson was right to point out: this is not a discounting of the therapist and client commonalities in the construction of rapport. However, it is important, especially in dealing with individuals not functioning at 100% capacity – so to speak, to work with a knowledge of the ponds, the sandboxes, and the rough (if you will pardon a golf metaphor) in order to work within a healthy range of treatments for the benefit of the client and within professional ethics in the field of counselling (and psychotherapy).

“There is another way of building the therapeutic alliance. Adler viewed the client or patient as an expert in himself and therapy as a collaboration between two experts. Another way of picturing this approach is to view the therapist as a kind of consultant. The client identifies the issues he or she wishes to tackle, and I offer alternative therapies the client may use to reach agreed upon goals. We then co-construct a treatment plan,” Robertson explained.

This alternative. This form of treatment can be useful. With the provision of a variety of techniques and sussing out the strengths and, indeed, weaknesses of the client, the counselor/psychotherapist can help with the creation of never-had or better self-monitoring and self-assessment skills of the client or patient.

Another thing for counselors to keep in mind is the issue of timelines. How long will the client need before more intensive help if at all? How much time will this take for the sessions? What is the overall projected timeline based on the explicit goals of the client or the patient?

Robertson said, “In most cases, the client comes to me with an issue or issues on which they wish to work. We don’t necessarily stay with the same issue. In one example, the client came to me with the complaint that she was too sensitive to criticism. Following a couple of sessions, it became apparent that she was the recipient of emotional abuse, so this shifted the strategies we used.”

A new client came to Robertson complaining about an inability to maintain long-term attention. He subsequently noted how she had difficulty focussing because of the depression. This then involved a re-negotiation of the treatment planning. He likes to project possible sessions into the future in order to develop a treatment plan, where Robertson and the client/patient can then see how many of the targeted objectives were achieved (or not). This evaluation could lead to ending the sessions, continuing on course, or trying a new one negotiated together, und so weiter.

Now, there is the final issue discussed in this session dealing with the possibility of a traumatic experience victim client or patient and a counselor having the transference of the trauma to themselves, or simply the problem of the reactivity of the counselor. If a counselor had similar negative life experiences, then this can create a problem for them. A man who is a professional, licensed, and respected counseling psychologist within the community of professional counseling psychologists may have witnessed the abuse of one parent by another in their youth and, in turn, hearing the recounting, by a patient or client, of their own traumatic experiences in a similar context can work them up.

“Hopefully the counselor has dealt with his or her related traumas before they attempt to help someone who has had a similar traumatic experience. If the counselor has not successfully dealt with that trauma then he or she should not accept such clients,” Robertson explained, “On the other hand, if the counselor has successfully dealt with a similar event, that counselor may be able to offer unique helpful insights. The person who experiences a trauma is not necessarily forever wounded by it. The issue of transference was first noted by Freud who viewed the client or patient’s attribution of emotions and motivations to the therapist as an opportunity to generate positive insight.”

Robertson narrowed in on the concern, of mine, in terms of the client or patient relationship with the counselor or therapist. In that, they may take on the emotions of the patient or client. There is a certain intimacy that develops in the sessions with the counselor or the therapist. He remarked on Karl Rogers and the stance that unconditional positive regard is important as a therapeutic stance.

Alfred Adler stated that one needs to get inside the skin of the client, to see the world as others see it – as the patient sees it. The possible danger in this instance is the possibility of facets of the worldview and trauma of the patient being taken on by the counselor.

Robertson concluded, “By maintaining this cognitive distance from the client’s emotions and behavior, the therapist is actually modeling those skills the client will need to gain control of problematic emotionally laden behaviors. Some people equate cognitive distance as a lack of empathy, but this is a misunderstanding of the concept. The therapist practicing cognitive distancing is empathetic enough to understand that the client, to gain control of his or her emotions and behaviors, must be able to sufficiently objectify them to understand them and thereby gain control.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Gayleen 1 — South African Progressivism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/08

Gayleen Cornelius is a South African human rights activist from Willowmore; a tiny town in the Eastern Cape province. She grew up a colored (the most ethnically diverse group in the world with Dutch, Khoisan, Griqua, Zulu, Xhosa Indian, and East Asian ancestry). Despite being a large Demographic from Cape Town to Durban along the coast, the group is usually left out of the racial politics that plague the nation. She has spoken out against identity politics, racism, workplace harassment, religious bigotry and different forms of abuse. She is also passionate about emotional health and identifies as an empath/ humanist. Here we talk about South African progressivism.

Starting on the points about forming the first progressive publication in South Africa, of which I was privileged to take part, Cornelius spoke about the story of the construction and growth of Cornelius Press.

Cornelius stated, “We live in a very Afrikaner (Dutch) area known as the Garden Route. Local newspapers and media outlets aim to preserve the culture and never brings up progressive concerns unlike bigger cities like Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg or Durban that have progressed out of apartheid norms. News publications in these major cities are not dedicated to progressive issues either because they do not find the need to; their diverse communities are already liberal.”

The purpose of the publication was to counter some of the racism in South Africa. In particular, since the apartheid regimes, Garden Route has not progressed, as it remains white dominated with a hiddenness inside of wine and hop farms and forests. Those forests overlooking some of the Southern parts of the Indian Ocean.

Cornelius’s partner, Takudzwa Mazwienduna, chose to develop the publication for the complete set of progressive African concerns in order to balance the not necessarily progressive media seen by some South Africans.

“Social trivia (with a lot of reports on speculations about witchcraft allegations), political propaganda and tourism journals summarizes everything there is to know about Southern African media. We tried our best to juggle our livelihoods with this new initiative, but our barriers by far outweighed anything we could handle at that time,” Cornelius stated, “South Africa is undoubtedly the most progressive country in Africa. It was the first to recognize LGBTQ rights on the continent, did away with most repressive laws (especially from Apartheid), pushed for secularism in public schools and recently legalized cannabis for recreational purposes. A lot of people will attest to the fact that South Africa is a lot more liberal than most first world countries.”

These are important statements from individuals living in a somewhat demonized area of the world, except for the legacy of the late Nelson Mandela and others. Cornelius spoke on a variety of rather terrible atrocities including the purportedly ‘corrective’ rape of lesbians. In fact, this is common, not rare.

Cornelius said, “A lot of the demographics that make up the population still uphold inhumane cultural norms like how domestic violence is considered normal in African communities, arranged marriages in Indian groups and racism in white communities. These unhealthy social vices that people overlook slackens our progressive legislation.”

She went on to describe the workplace too. It is a bad place for undocumented African immigrants. Those who lack rights and can be abused, then the abuse or violence against them is not reported in any way. She explained parts of this as the reason for the extreme crime rate and violent strikes within the country. There are progressive policies. However, there needs to be follow-up.

“Inhumane cultural norms, racism and a low regard for worker’s rights are the three main impediments holding the country back in terms of progressivism. There is need for cultural reform. Cultural practices that infringe on human rights should be ruled out. There is need for race relations to improve too. There has been cases of white farmers who kill their black and coloured workers for sport, black workers who retaliate; repaying violence with violence,” Cornelius concluded, “When the news comes out from the white owned publications, it is just the black workers who are pointed out as murderers. The media and politicians should give a non racialist view when dealing with problems affecting South Africa to encourage all the citizens to work together with a common goal. Worker’s rights should also be addressed discouraging the culture of exploiting workers.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Robertson 3 — Social and Psychological Sciences Gone Wrong

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/06

In addition, he works in anxiety and trauma, addictions, and psycho-educational assessment, and relationship, family, and group counseling. Here we talk about different notions of empirical and ethical wrongness (and rightness) in science in general and then in psychological and social sciences in particular.

The interview started on the issue of when the sciences, in general, go wrong. Robertson’s answer was simply “all the time,” in terms of a preliminary answer. Remarking, of course, that proper care in observation, attention to detail, and precision are part and parcel of the scientific process, where, even with imperfections in observation, the proper perspective is that science is tentative, provisional, and perpetually incomplete.

“Therefore, scientists will always acknowledge that their knowledge claims are provisional, dependent on further evidence. This is why, in modern science, replication and peer review are so important in identifying any biases that may have affected interpretations placed on research,” Robertson explained, “You may have been referring to Thomas Kuhn with respect to the second part of your question on hidden premises. Kuhn said that for a discipline to become a science it had to be united by a paradigm which he defined as a body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief.”

Way back in the 1970s, there was a declaration that psychology exists as something like a proto-science, an inchoate science, or, perhaps, in some ways, pre-scientific in the modern sense. The reason for this is the incompleteness of the world explained by the scientific processes adhered to, within psychology. It does not have the unifying framework of plate tectonics and continental drift linked to gradualism within geological sciences, evolution by natural selection in biological sciences, the germ theory of disease in medical sciences, Quantum Mechanics and General & Special Relativity of modern physics with – at least – standard Big Bang cosmogony, the Table of Elements of Mendeleev for chemistry, the information theoretic and communication theoretic foundation in the modern world of mass communications and information technologies – including Moore’s Law for decades, and so on.

Psychology remains an epistemologically and, therefore, almost entirely, ontologically disjunct endeavor. Some will state freedom of the will, consciousness, and qualia – or the traits of experience (e.g., some may of have heard the oft-said and always-now boring phrase, “The redness of red,” akin to the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” of the late astrophysicist Dr. Carl Sagan and variations found in Simone LaPlace, David Hume, and Marcello Truzzi) – as base level problems in psychology without clear solutions. Part of the lack of clarity is the lack of a unified theory, or paradigm rather, in psychology.

Robertson stated, “A quarter of a century later Pat Duffy Hutcheon examined three possible paradigmic formulations in psychology — the psychoanalysis of Freud, the developmentalism of Piaget, and the classical behaviorism of Skinner — and she found all had failed to establish themselves as the dominant paradigm in psychology for various reasons. I believe that since then a fourth paradigm has implicitly taken root in the field and that is the subject of the final chapter in a book I am writing about the evolution of the self. That paradigm is based on our self-definition as a species that includes our selves as discreet, relatively stable, volitional, reflective and rational beings.”

The title of the upcoming book was not given within the context of the interview. However, we can look forward to updates on it. But if we look into the furtherance of the conversation between Robertson and I, the former paradigm of psychotherapy – probably within some remnants floating around in their community – was the cognitivist paradigm. This paradigm was, simply put, a reaction to behaviorism’s limitations in a lack of a coherent explanation of the internal operations of the mind for a simple reason: behaviorists just rejected serious attempts at explications of the inside mechanics of the human mind from early life to late life and death.

“At this time results within the field of psychotherapy are overwhelmingly interpreted from this cognitivist paradigm. Consistently obtained scientific results that cannot be understood within this paradigm would force a scientific revolution replacing this paradigm with another more inclusive one,” Robertson explained, “I suppose you could say the research and interpretations of findings are ‘poisoned’ by the assumptions built into the more primitive paradigm. The classical example of this would be the pre-Copernican notion that Earth was the center of the universe. Using this paradigm, the planets exhibited complicated orbits around Earth, sometime speeding up or slowing down, performing strange loops and so on until the paradigm shifted placing our sun in the center of the solar system.”

In some interesting writing on freedom of the will, Robertson made an argument for an emergent psychological paradigm within the studies of the mind with volition and rational choice as fundamental in the species-wide self-definition. Some, in response, see this as a construct of individualism while, also, poisoning individuals against what some deem collectivism. He does not share this critique, but views this as, at root, an academic debate for the time.

Robertson considers the public not seeing the slow, incomplete progress of science and, in particular, its own correcting methodology built into itself. Science does not create knowledge or assert wisdom as in the case of various ideologies and religions, but, instead, harbors a tentativeness without an assumption of absolute knowledge.

“An example of this would be the attack on the theory of evolution by people who want to believe Earth is only 6,000 years old. A second example would be people who believe environmental scientists are part of a great conspiracy to fake evidence related to global warming. A third example would be people who wish to think that evidence debunking notions that our minds are a “blank slate” when we are born are part of a patriarchal backlash,” Robertson stated.

He recalled an interview with the late Dr. Carl Sagan, of Cosmos fame, and the Dalai Lama, of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. In it, the Dalai Lama stated that if there was an impossibility of reincarnation, then the belief in reincarnation within Buddhism would need to alter to the more accurate scientific view at that time. Robertson considered this an important aspect of remaining tentative in conclusions so as not to be servants of belief systems, whatever the source.

Within the contexts of the Canadian story, the narrative of Canada, we come to the issues of dark patches – long ones – in the historical record with the Residential School system or the residential schools and the associated problems of enforcement of one religious culture with the sanction of the government, and then the abuse, the intergenerational impacts of the abuse, the imposition of a bureaucratic developmental model rather than a community development model, and the needs of the community being ignored for long periods of time – right into the present.

Robertson, in reflection on work as the Director of Health and Social Development for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations in the 1980s, stated, “…many chiefs repeated the refrain that they had been ‘studied to death.’ They were, of course, not claiming that they had been physically harmed. They were claiming that there had been numerous studies and they had not seen any positive results. In some cases, studies were conducted but the results were not communicated back to the communities in question. I believe that knowledge should be ‘open access’ and shared between all stakeholders.”

Robertson then made a distinction and transitioned into a conversation on the ways in which the psychological knowledge acquired has been utilized in the past and in the current period with the emergent fourth paradigm. For example, while the Director of Health and Social Development, a band education authority hired a psychometrician for a reserve in northern Saskatchewan. The psychometrician was Albertan and from Edmonton in particular.

This Edmontonian psychometrician tested the intelligence of the elementary pupils on the reserve, where 60% of those students were labeled mentally handicapped or were found to be mentally handicapped based on the results of the psychometric testing. Robertson noted the cultural bias in intelligence testing. In fact, Robertson knows the northern Saskatchewan community from the testing.

“…I can tell you that the psychometrician must not have followed test protocol with respect to testing children whose second language is English and who come from cultural traditions do not favor speeded, timed tests. At first, the band education committee was happy with these results as they received considerable extra funding for special needs children,” Robertson explained, “But this was, in my opinion, a false economy with a negative impact. You see, educational programming for mentally handicapped is quite different from what was needed.”

Robertson in further reflection on former professional capacities as the Director of Life Skills for the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. He described how he educated students from a variety of remote communities in the forms of habits and skills required for academic success. The program added one year to the university education of the students, but the initiative with the adaptations was incredibly successful.” Robertson found an important part of the educational process where the education in cross-cultural skills necessary for academic success, especially in the context of modern industrialized society and the global economy.

The conversation moved to a closing section on the alleviation of the impacts of RSS or residential school syndrome. Robertson separated the task of scientists to study the natural world and then the work for the greater good. In this sense, science is good for knowledge about the world. The question about a greater good is another question, which can mean those in power – the “power-brokers” – can abuse their influence and control and, in fact, limit research into things, including climate change – as happened in Canada under the leadership of former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.

“Decisions by authorities on what constitutes the greater good are often ideologically based. That being said, research into ways to alleviate human suffering interests me, and as you have alluded, residential school syndrome has been one of my interests. As a kid who stayed with the families of friends on reserve in the 60s, I knew something about the dark history of Indian residential schools,” Robertson stated, “So, I was surprised when chiefs in Saskatchewan commissioned me, along with my colleague Perry Redman, to do research into keeping one of these schools open after they had been closed elsewhere in the country.”

The world is complex and rarely black and white. In this gray example, Robertson was hired as a youth suicide prevention expert, as a school psychologist, in a different Indian Residential School. Under Amerindian administration, the school remained open. Robertson continued to explain how he was “commissioned” by Indian Child and Family Services in Lac La Ronge in order to have a better look at the students in “one of the last remaining residential schools in the country.”

Robertson stated, “Then, at the turn of the millennium, I accepted a contract with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation to provide psychological support to various projects aimed at alleviating the effects of residential schools in northern Saskatchewan. I have published articles on residential school syndrome and the related concept of historic trauma.”

RSS has been identified as one form of PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder affecting some minority of individuals who have attended the residential schools in Canada. The symptomatology includes “extreme rage, lack of emotional connection with one [who] has children, and aggressive alcohol and drug abuse in addition to those symptoms that are normally associated with PTSD.”

In the work of Robertson, which has its own noble underpinning, in my opinion, includes a combination of CBT or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy – probably one of the most common and widely used forms of therapy – alongside Narrative Therapy. The purpose is to use a form of traditional Aboriginal storytelling as one way in which to construct meaning. One view in the psychological community is that human beings are meaning-making beings. Narrative Therapy follows in this tradition.

Robertson emphasized the import of individualization of the treatment for the clients, as in an individual assessment and treatment per client or patient. He described how some have had benefits from the practices and learning experiences about Turtle Island or “North American” Aboriginal traditions and spirituality and, in turn, ways of looking at the world. In an article by Robertson, he noted how some elders feel attempted introduction of Aboriginal Spirituality, by the band health administration, is somewhat or simply oppressive.

“A concern I have is the tendency of some to essentialize and universalize experience. One woman approached me worried that she might be ‘in denial.’ She had good memories of her residential school experience and was leading a happy and productive life, but the negative media reports about these schools had led her to question her remembered experiences,” Robertson concluded, “Not all residential schools were the same and not all students at such schools suffered or witnessed abuse. Even worse, in my opinion, is the concept of historic trauma, where a whole race of people is said to suffer from a psychological condition irrespective of when, where and under what conditions colonization occurred. In my mind, undo psychologising is destructive of peoples’ mental health.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Charlotte 3— Training Grassroots Activists in Palestine

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/02

Charlotte Littlewood is the Founding Director of Become The Voice CIC. A grass roots youth centred community interest company that she has built in response to the need to tackle hate, extremism and radicalisation within communities and online.

When I asked Charlotte about the social media training for the grassroots activists in Palestine, she talked about the full program set out for them. They may have the motivation. But the Palestinian youth may not have the appropriate training with everything.

Alongside the social media training, Littlewood worked on the creation of various levels of awareness. For example, this included women’s groups looking at domestic violence, abortion rights, early marriage, in addition to the well-known stigma surrounding divorce.

“They could put forward their reflections and positive message on social media. Some had large social media followings. They all had Instagram, Facebook accounts, Twitter was new to them. We started with basic training around Twitter,” Littlewood explained, “Because they weren’t using that as much. Then skills like making sure the hashtag you’re using is the most popular hashtag of its type. The use of hashtags on Instagram and not on Facebook (because there is no point). @ing at people who have followers, so you can have more exposure and people in the conversation.”

Littlewood went into more of the specifics of the training for the social media in terms of the ways in which to optimally utilize the boldness of colors, the captions in the Instagram posts, and then, also, the faces are used. Presumably, this would include active and intelligent, and so discretionary, use of emojis and so on.

However, with the current culture in Hebron, Littlewood remarked on how some activists did not want to show their faces, while, at the same time, others did.

“Then there are certain times in the day for Facebook and Instagram posts. Instagram is pretty much active all day. facebook has peak times. We try to make sure everything is optimized. We then had everyone join a group, so they would like and share with each other to be a platform for one another,” Littlewood stated.

The activist will choose a topic. They will focus on it. Then this will be the basis for garnering more awareness. The work in the groups who were traning ended on how to know if you’re a victim and if someone is a victim.

“The things around posts, how and what to post and the tone of the posts and making sure to use hashtags and include organizations with large followings; Twitter was taught, how to set it up. They were very competent on Facebook. They are using social media a lot already,” Littlewood concluded, “But there are some cultural issues around images and images of people, interpretations of Islam that women should not be doing social media themselves. There are mixed approaches to social media posts with girls around that.”

Please see the project report: https://becomethevoice.org/news-insights/

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2022-04-26

Ask Tara 3 — Changing Gender Dynamics in the Workplace

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/04

Tara Abhasakun is a colleague. We have written together before. I reached out because of the good journalism by her. I wanted to get some expert opinion on women’s rights, journalism, and so on. I proposed a series. She accepted. Abahasakun studied history at The College of Wooster. Much of her coursework was in Middle East history.

After graduating Tara started blogging about the rights of women, LGBT, and minorities in MENA. She is currently a freelance writer. She is of Thai, Iranian, and European descent. She has lived in Bangkok and San Francisco. Here we talk about updating gender dynamics in the workplace.

When I opened on the conversation on the newer open channels of talking about sexual misconduct, in not only work and but almost all situations – personal and professional, I wanted to get Abhasakun’s opinion on the ways in which this, specifically, would impact the workplace dynamics of the genders.

Abhasakun stated, “I think that in the beginning, things may be a bit rocky because many people are afraid about false accusations and the idea that anything they do will be read as misconduct. I think that in light of the #MeToo movement, we are seeing some of the frustrations over this issue fizzle out.”

Abhasakun views much of the expressed frustration is, basically, from men who are real misogynists. Those men who feel as if every interaction with women can be seen as harassment or potentially branded as such.

“I don’t have all the answers. But I think the beauty of the #MeToo movement is that we are HAVING these conversations. This is only the beginning, and I think the reason we see this type of tension, awkwardness, and frustration is BECAUSE we are finally addressing issues that, for a long time, have been swept under the rug,” Abhasakun opined, “We are seeing the birth pangs of the movement, now that men and women are thinking about these issues. We are starting to answer questions such as, ‘How much touching is appropriate in X situation?'”

Abhasakun finds these frustrating and, indeed, hard. Because this is simply, not merely, the beginning stages of these forms of discussions. She estimates another generation before clearer answers begin to come forward on these questions.

“But I think that as we continue trying to answer these questions, things will settle down, and hopefully one day we can have a world free of all sexual violence and misconduct, though that day is probably far off in the future… I believe that we need to be careful in prescribing one exact “remedy” for sexual misconduct,” Abhasakun concluded.

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2022-04-26

Ask Gayleen 2 — Publishing Progressive Voices

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/04

I should preface this with the proclamation that Cornelius is, in fact, my boss, as she is the main person running the, at present, down Cornelius Press. That progressive, not common, publication and voice within South Africa and, in turn, southern Africa.

Her work, along with Takudzwa Mazwienduna, is rare. Cornelius Press went through some difficulties with the publications because of the transition of the website.

Cornelius stated, “The Cornelius Press website was hosted by a huge German tech company in South Africa. We had more than one website hosted by the company but they restricted ads for some content which was considered not favorable for advertisers. This had a serious implication on the website’s potential for revenue and as a result, we ended up indebted to the company with Cornelius Press being suspended.”

Following this, obvious, concern, I looked into the next steps for the publication given the current rebooting issues. Cornelius stated that they are on the lookout for more “wallet-friendly” services at the moment.

I asked about some progressive voices within South Africa. She mentioned the important fact that South Africa is, probably, among the most progressive countries in Africa. This is important and indicative of the non-accidental development of progressive publications such as Cornelius Press there compared to other places in Africa.

“The government alone has been implementing progressive policies since 1994 with same-sex marriage being legalized years before most first world countries caught up. There hasn’t been much cause for activism on a broader scale except for the problem of racism,” Cornelius explained, “Most activists in South Africa today fight against racism and income inequality, our two biggest problems that the end of apartheid didn’t take with it.”

The farther left movements including the Economic Freedom Fighters and the alt-right activists are in the mainstream of the civil discourse and so the civil society within South Africa. There is a huge “rage” of identity-based politics there, too.

Cornelius, on the identity politics, concluded, “… the progress we South Africans take for granted is lost. There is a need for progressive activists to make it in the mainstream and protect whatever liberties are under threat.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Robertson 2 – Psychotherapy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/03

In addition, he works in anxiety and trauma, addictions, and psycho-educational assessment, and relationship, family, and group counseling. Here we talk about the psychotherapy.

In some previous interviews for the Athabasca University student magazine, The Voice Magazine, Robertson and I discussed some of the background and work of Robertson in addition to some material on psychotherapy and then some of the prominent figures within it.

We continued to discuss the definition of psychotherapy, especially what the therapeutic process involves for the individual student too. To Robertson, as a certified and qualified, and highly intelligent, practitioner, described psychotherapy as a process – no mention as to the specific speed – of effectuating change in the individual who voluntarily enters into a relationship with the patient or client (and vice versa), this implies a lot, and requires significant unpacking.

“The change is psychological in that it is intended to impact positively on the client’s cognitive and emotional functioning. The therapist acts as a facilitator of such change in keeping with the client’s goals. There is a consensus across the schools of psychotherapy that the therapeutic process is not advice giving,” Robertson stated, “To give advice is to presume that the advice-giver knows the client better than the client does. To give advice is disempowering because, if the advice works, it leaves the client dependent on the advice-giver the next time there is a problem.”

The central purpose of the psychotherapeutic methodology is for the development of the individual, as a client or patient, who is seen as a person of worth and volition. There are differences between schools of thought in psychotherapy.

Some incorporate advise giving. Others do not, and, instead, focus on the issue of solving problems. Thus, we come to the general field of the practice known as psychotherapy and then the individuated schools of thought within psychotherapy. Still more, some will mix and match the terminology of psychotherapy and counseling together, which was covered, in brief, in the first of this series.

Two of the main thinkers known to the public are Freud and Jung. Both, according to Robertson, brought attention to the phylogenetic factors within the work of studying the human psyche, in the broadest terms possible. Bearing in mind, of course, the two of them did not have the advanced technological means for comprehension of the physical structure of the organ producing the mind at the time.

It seems akin to the ancient Greeks with the Milesian school, and others, where we can see tremendous amounts of metaphysics without much physics; this created a number of issues in theorization about the bottom rung of the world in terms of magnitude and constituents. They talked about the Apeiron or the infinite, water, and air. But they did not have the physics to get at the fundamental notion of a basic structure and set of constituents of the universe.

It may have been cognitive limits. It may have been philosophical conceptual limits. At the same time, certainly, it was a limit in the ways of knowing the world through their tools. These individuals and societies had a limitation in their ability to know the world around them, in a natural sense. But they had lots of fancy thoughts about it: sophisticated, intuitive, and, wrong, metaphysics.

Robertson continued on Freud and Jung, “By suggesting that archetypes are encoded, instinctive, preconfigured patterns of action, Jung was, in effect, taking a deterministic stance. Similarly, in Freud’s tripartite division the poor ego is left frantically balancing the instinctual drives of the id with the dictatorial culturally determined superego. Although I am not a determinist, I count the recognition of genetic and environmental constraints as an important contribution. I think Freud’s greatest contribution is that he popularized the idea that psychology is a science.”

Robertson considered another important contribution of Freud the bringing out of the closet – so to speak – the limitations on the sexuality of the Victorian era. He thinks Freud got the notion of penis envy wrong. Alfred Adler described how women can be envious of men in the early 20th century, not because of penis envy but, because of a great deal of social inequality.

“Jung’s conceptualization of archetypes from which we create meaning has application to cultural and self studies, but he dabbled in mysticism and his notion that there exists a collective unconscious has bolstered the beliefs of some religionists. This can have dangerous consequences,” Robertson cautioned.

According to Robertson, Jung claimed the so-called Aryan race was somehow was rooted in the land; whereas, the Jewish peoples were a rootless people – nomadic almost, or even in actuality. This belief contributed to the awful rise of Nazism that led to all sorts of horrors and catastrophes. Jung looked at the ideas of Freud and Adler as okay for the Jewish peoples, but claimed his psychology was more suitable for the German “Volk.”

The conversation went into figures of similar notoriety but, unfortunately, without more public recognition within the general consciousness. Robertson’s opinion is that Adler never received, even to the present day, sufficient recognition for contributions to the intellectual life of the psychologists in the history of psychology and right into the present.

Robertson also mentioned Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers in terms of leading the charge of Humanist Psychotherapy. Duly note, Robertson is the Vice-President of Humanist Canada. This may be biased, but, certainly, not an unjustified or uninformed opinion.

Intriguingly, he described how, in fact, Adler was given insufficient recognition by these two giants – Maslow and Rogers – of Humanistic Psychotherapy, especially with Adler as a precursor to their ideas and theories. The concepts of self-actualization and client-centered therapy, in particular.

Adler concluded, on self-actualization, that this is – in the words of Adler – a “striving for perfection.” Indeed, he provided a basis an anticipatory psychological basis, or psychotherapeutic foundation – of sorts, for the client centered therapy with the declaration of “the patient or client was expert in his or her self with psychotherapy defined as a collaboration between experts, ” Robertson stated.

Adler set foot within behaviorism, too. He had, apparently, “homework assignments” intended for the reinforcement and reshaping of the behavior of clients or patients. However, Robertson speculated that, perhaps, the behaviorists of the time may have been irked, maybe, with the notion of mankind having consciousness and freedom of the will of some form. Any form – compatibilist, incompatibilist, and so on – freedom of the will becomes a problem for the fundamental substructure of the theories of behaviorists.

In this manner, Robertson proposed, rather naturally, the anticipation, once more of another field, of Cognitive-Behaviorism. Albert Ellis, who founded Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (these are all the biggest theories and methodologies, even in the current period), credited Adler with an influence on the development of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. His basic aim was the recognition or suggestion of clients as they went about revision of their worldviews. Meaning-making is a modern view of human beings. We evolved to make meaning in the world. This is a view of some or many modern psychotherapists.

Robertson concluded, “Today we have a plethora of schools of psychological practice with the founders of each emphasizing some feature or technique that makes their school distinctive. I argued in https://www.hawkeyeassociates.ca/images/pdf/academic/Free_Will.pdf that these schools are united by a theory of human potentiality and that the project of psychotherapy is to teach people to reach the potential implied by that theory. I think Adler tapped into this vision of what it means to be human over a century ago and he addressed it holistically.”

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2022-04-26

Ask Dr. Robertson 1 — Counselling and Therapy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/03

In addition, he works in anxiety and trauma, addictions, and psycho-educational assessment, and relationship, family, and group counseling. Here we talk about the psychotherapy, and standard terms and definitions.

I started the conversation with an obvious acknowledgment of a large number of postsecondary qualifications acquired by Dr. Robertson. But this quickly shifted into the central content to begin to the educational series., which is setting the definitional tone and tenor with psychotherapy and counseling. What are they? How are they defined in a modern sense?

Robertson stated, “Psychotherapy is concerned with the process of change at the level of the individual. If the discomfort a client feels is due to external events, that individual must still choose to respond to those events in some way. An element of free will is thus built into the core practice of the discipline. There is much evidence to indicate that we are not born with free will and that it is never entirely unencumbered.”

He – Robertson – argued for the teaching of clients how to self-actualize based on a specified mental model. A model in which there is an explanation with defined premises as to which it is to be a human being.

This would incorporate a social and volitional self with objective beliefs having a form of internal self-consistency. Robertson makes the case that this is an idealized notion of self: with “uniqueness, constancy, and volitionality as a product of changes in culture. In this, the modern sense of self is cross-cultural, which links to the work in psychotherapy and counseling.

“The terms ‘counseling’ and ‘psychotherapy’ are often used interchangeably; however the former can be applied to anyone who gives advice or ‘counsel.’ ‘Psychotherapy’ is a narrower term that refers to applied psychology,” Robertson explained, “although it has also been appropriated by social workers and others who do not necessarily receive training specific to psychology. This term, at least within the field of psychology, does not generally refer to advice-giving but to self-change, that is, change to the self of the individual.”

Robertson views the Adlerians, or the school of thought emerging from Alfred Adler, as having the cleanest or clearest definition between the work of psychotherapy and counseling. Neither involves the giving of advice.

“Therapy is what is done when a change to the structure of the self is required. Counseling assumes an intact self but that circumstances, such environmental or societal constraints, require the development of problem-solving and perception checking skills. In both modes of intervention, counseling and psychotherapy, Adlerians would refrain from giving advise but would invite the client to select a plan from a variety of co-constructed possibilities,” Robertson described.

He also went into the definition of “theory.” Robertson described how psychology “misappropriated” the word from the harder sciences and then used them in the softer sciences. This transitioned into the work of Thomas Kuhn, who wrote a famous text entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The labels of the wide smattering of psychotherapy schools as simply different theories may be a misreading of Thomas Kuhn and, in fact, “retarded psychology’s evolution into a true science,” Robertson explained.

Robertson concluded, “As Korhonen brilliantly argued in her dissertation research, these schools, along with the counseling of Inuit elders, and the practice of multicultural psychotherapy share the same basic assumptions as to the structure of the self, and these assumptions include the importance of individual choice, the understanding of client difference, and the importance of context. These assumptions constitute a unified theory of what it means to be human.”

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2022-04-26

A New Nigerian Humanist Event with Dr. Leo Igwe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/03/02

Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is among the most prominent African non-religious people from the African continent. When he speaks, many people listen in a serious way.

He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at theUniversity of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Here we talk about a new humanist event that took place.

Looking at the landscape of belief and nonbelief, in terms of the traditional religions on offer around the world, we come to the perspective of the nonbelief or the secular regarding the standard religious answers provided in a number of contexts.

One of those is the general way in which the nonreligious or the secular carve themselves into groups. Some may see themselves as representatives of Richard Dawkins and memes, while making what seem like externalized phrenological investigations: meme maps of the self.

Others look simply for the separation of church and state, mosque and government, or otherwise. There is a general notion of ways of life as well, including humanists and ethical culture people, or in worldviews, including skeptics and Brights.

Nigerians have been gathered through the founder of the humanist movement in Nigeria Dr. Leo Igwe. He has been an incredibly important figure in this.

He, prior to the event in an interview, stated, “This event is important in several respects. First, it is the first of its kind because, at this event, humanists, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers in Nigeria are meeting to discuss an unusual topic: Leaving Religion. Humanists are convening to share their stories and experiences. Too often, people who are persecuted for leaving a religion or for renouncing religious beliefs suffer physical attacks and psychological abuses.”

Noting, of course, the, obvious, reasons for some leaving formal religion found in, for example, those who have been abused by a religious family or community, or the communal and familial practitioners of the religion.

Even being critical in public, whole societies may react negatively to the more prominent cases with threats, harassment, and intimidation. This, in Nigeria, is particularly bad, because many, many people simply lack the access to a space built for and by the non-religious, the non-believers.

“Thus, many non-believers live in fear. They suffer silently. Those who doubt or disbelieve religious claims think that they are alone and that their persecution is normal because those who persecute non-believers do so with impunity,” Igwe explained, “This convention provides a rare and historic platform to break the silence and give the doubters and disbelievers a space to share their stories and register their concerns.”

This event, set for January 12 in Abuja, sets an important tone as to those Nigerians who may doubt and even reject the fundamentalist religious certainties of much of the society, even wanting a more secular Nigerian state.

Igwe said, “In addition, the dominant impression is that the religious public treated others kindly and compassionately including non-believers. In fact, there is seldom the case. This event draws attention to religious cruelties, to the various ways that the religious maltreat those who exit religion.”

But coming from all this, it is intended to build on the previous meetings of rationalists and humanists in their fight against “witchcraft related abuses, Osu caste system, religious extremism, and related human rights abuses etc.”

These programs and initiatives exist within Nigeria, but these can create havoc in the lives of those who organize them or attend them. It, simply as a matter of course, is much more difficult for Nigerians to find their way within the society than others.

“The program will highlight the stories and experiences of those who have abandoned religion and those who are trying to do so. There will be testimonies from those who left the Christian, Islamic and traditional religion,” Igwe, commenting on highlights, said, “They will recount their struggles with their families, friends and the community at large. At this event, those who have exited religion will explain the reasons and justifications for their actions. They will also get to meet other apostates in a friendly and welcoming environment.”

The central purpose, according to Igwe, for the creation and attendance of this event in Nigeria for the non-religious is to help them know that there are others just like them and that the non-religious demographic has a history. There is a backdrop for them; there is a place for them; this is a situation in which they can feel understood.

The rights, lives, and ideas of the nonbelievers matter in this context, especially for those who have been left out of society and, thus, feel alone in a number of ways – even rejected in a number of others.

“A community is a necessity for humanists because one potent mechanism that religious believers use to undermine humanism is ostracization. They sanction those who exit religion or those who live as non-religious persons. Religious believers cut off family and community ties. They treat non-believers as social outcasts. Building a community is critical in beating back the tide of persecution and abuse that humanists suffer in Nigeria,” Igwe explained.

The capital of Nigeria – Abuja – as mentioned was the place for it. This is an especially important event for the nonbelievers because, in this context, they can finally find some community with those who simply see “clashes between Islamic jihadists, herdsmen and Christians.”

Igwe lamented, “People who leave religion or who question religious beliefs live in constant fear of their lives, their jobs, businesses, and family relationships. This is because sanctioning, sometimes violently those who renounce religions or those who criticize religious claims have been part of the religious tradition. Religion is so visible in Africa mainly because the religious do everything overtly and covertly to suppress, oppress, undermine, exclude and make invisible irreligious and non-religious persons and perspectives.”

I thanked him for his time. Then he concluded on the pleasure of being interviewed for reportage on this event.

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2022-04-26

Ask Terrah 1— Retail and Customer Service

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/22

The interview started on a large number of North Americans who work in the retail business, where a wide smattering of brands will attract poor and rich customers alike.

The first question was oriented around the basic function of the retail industry to provide a fundamental backdrop for the conversation. Short described the basic function, in her terms, one of the middlemen who keep a steady flow of the demand and the supply of the store.

The roles can include a manager, an assistant manager, or simply cashiering, stocking, and cleaning the store. Shorts background has been as a cashier and an assistant to the customers. It is about customer relations, customer service, and having consumers leave with positive affect at the end of the transaction.

Then, of course, there are negative aspects of the work. Short relayed how she experienced, while on shift, being yelled and cursed at, even having items thrown at her. These did not happen all the time. But they do happen and this can be an upsetting aspect of the life experience for her.

She noted how some customers feel the right to grab or touch her. Those individuals tend to be older and white men.

When I asked about the positives, Short opined, “Working my first job, which was in retail, an older woman came into my work and myself and another coworker helped her find the things she needed. We were an office supply store, and she was so grateful for our demonstrated commitment to helping her, when she had many questions about the products, she made her purchase but told us to wait a minute. She went out to her car and brought in two hand-made teddy bears. She said she made them and loved to give them to people who deserved them. We were so warmed by this gesture.”

She continued to note that those experiences of providing genuine service to people can be extremely rewarding moments on the job. Those are times in which she feels happy for the happiness of the customers, as this is a moment of genuine recognition of service to the community.

On the whole, the customers end to treat others with civility and respect. Then, sometimes, consumers may simply be having a bad experience or a bad day. That is where experienced retail staff come into situations and work to mitigate them.

Short, on code of conduct and ethics, explained, “Basically, be courteous, follow company policy, try to provide genuine service, and make it a positive experience to the best of our abilities. One thing I have noticed as a trend is giving more authority to retail workers to stand up to the abuse we can sometimes have from customers, especially women and minorities.”

As the retail is done, I asked about some of the minimum tasks and responsibilities of the new employees. She described how there is a general being thrown in with a minimal amount of hands-on training.

She continued, “An orientation that packs a lot of information in a short amount of time, cheesy corporate videos we have to watch, and maybe a couple hours of training and shadowing, depending on the time of year and how busy we are. At times new folks are just bodies when there’s going to be a busy time and availability is minimal. But most often, rookies/newbies are given the responsibilities listed in the job description right off the bat. This leads to a sink or swim environment, in my opinion.”

To close the interview, Short spoke to the transition from basic skills building to more advanced ones. Part of this is becoming more efficiency an productive in the work. Another is simply maintaining a positive and consistent response or feedback from the customers. These can be noticed by managers who then, may, promote the individual with the, at the present, lower rank.

“A lot of the time, you can be excellent at your current position but your availability isn’t right for moving up. There is upward mobility in many retail jobs, but often it means little pay or benefits increases for quite a significant amount more work. It really depends on the corporation or business, as well. However, I find that retail workers build an incredible amount of skills that can bleed over to other types of jobs or future schooling opportunities,” Short concluded.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

–Human Rights
Wednesdays 7 pm EST / 4 pm PST
Call-In Details: (701) 801-1220
Meeting ID: 934-317-242
Lead Page: https://goodmenproject.lpages.co/conscious-intersectionality/
Led by: Scott Douglas JacobsenTo the socio-political Right, a disclaimer; to the socio-political Left, a trigger warning: the subject matter may be disturbing or triggering for some listeners, speakers, or call members. The statistics on international violence against women is disproportionately more than violence against men. In turn, there is violence against women committed by women against women but more often by men against women. It is the statistical difference, which is the basis for the international emphasis on violence against women in multiple spheres rather than localized differences. Wednesday morning, we will speak on violence against women for one hour or so.

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2022-04-26

Ask Sally 1 — Drawing the Lines for Progressivism in 2019

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/22

Sally Buxbaum Hunt is a Sexual Education, Sex-Positive, Separation of Church and State Activist and Organizer, and a Progressive. Here we talk about demarcating the lines between progressive and non-progressive for 2019.

When we opened the conversation, the main purpose was to focus on progressives and the definition of modern progressivism. Hunt stated how, to her, this meant advocating for the most overly burdened, marginalized, and struggling citizens.

Some of whom would including the poor, the minority populations, the middle class, and the working class. The point is to be willing to advocate for policy change better suited to those populations of the country.

Hunt stated, “I think this is the difference between progressives and moderate Democrats who would not necessarily identify as progressives. I think we have to be both. I think we have to be a progressive and liberal democrat. But the progressive part is the most important part.”

The advocacy for the changes in the society at those needed levels characterizes the fundamental basis of modern progressivism to Hunt. Because the current status quo benefits the rich while also haring the poor, the working class, and the middle class, and simply overburdening them even more.

When I asked about some specific policy changes now, Hunt remarked, certainly, on the increase in taxes on the rich. Other items that came to mind were Medicare for all and universal healthcare.

She notes that the United States as a very wealthy country could afford it.

It means that we are advocating for changes in policy that will benefit people who need changes, who are hurt and suffering because of the status quo. The status quo favors the richest people in the nation.

It causes more suffering in the working class, the middle class, and the poor; it makes them poorer and even more burdened.

“It would not be too difficult. It would be like every other developed nation in the world. It has to happen. People are sicker and more in debt, poorer than they have to be, which burdens employers as well,” Hunt said, “It is the employers having to cover healthcare for their employees. It makes the employees feel as if they have to be employed and not be able to leave a job that they do not like. They feel as if they cannot become self-employed and entrepreneurs because they’ll lose their healthcare.”

Hunt re-emphasized the need to raise the taxes on the rich in addition to the legalization of marijuana and the cessation of the “War on Drugs.” All these are “destroying lives” while universal healthcare and universal mental healthcare could help the nation a great deal. In addition, these could include rehabilitation programs as well.

Hunt concluded, “It needs to include drug rehabilitation programs. If we were to end this war on drugs and legalize drugs, instead of treating it as criminal activities, we would, actually, treat people and help them to get past their addictions and mental health issues leading to the drug use in the first place. The education inequality, education should be federally funded and equally. It should not depend on property taxes.”

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Ask Catherine 2 — Meeting Youth Where They’re At

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/18

Catherine Broomfield is the Executive Director of iHuman Youth Society. She loves the challenge and excitement of the job, especially with the diversity of the workplace and the people with non-profits. She has worked, in fact, in both the public and the private sectors. Here we talk about Indigenous troubled youth.

Indigenous youth tend to experience more difficulties in Canadian society than others. One orientation may be to meet those most troubled Indigenous youth where they’re at, as this, probably, can apply to other populations as well.

“This principle of ‘meeting youth where they’re at’ or as we like to refer to as ‘keeping it real’ is fundamental to iHuman’s youth work practice and the overall operation of the agency. Working from this perspective means that our approach is based on relationship,” Broomfield explained, “Being able to appreciate the place a youth is coming from requires creating a space that is safe and non judgmental. When we attune to what a young person needs there is no ego or expectation of the staff person involved — it isn’t about what we might think an appropriate response, action or solution might be, rather what does that young person think needs to be done now.”

The orientation of meeting youth where they’re at simply reflects the needs of troubled young, not pushing too hard and using due diligence to work with them while honoring their background.

Broomfield described some of the methodological orientation. One is asking what happened with the young people in order to garner acceptance of the youth. It is finding out who the young person is and where they’re at, in other words.

“That getting help is sometimes less about the person in need of help and more about the motivation of the person offering it. To act with the ‘keeping it real’ principle, iHuman staff are consistently asking themselves: am I helping because I want to be ‘the hero’; is my help enabling that person; or am I supporting that person to honor their own internal need,” Broomfield described.

It is an approach to help a vulnerable youth population. The use of sensitivity and understanding of the unique contexts of the Indigenous communities within our collective communities.

Broomfield continued, “This approach is a communal approach to helping which is reflective of Indigenous ways of community. Therefore, because we have put the young person in the driver’s seat, the effectiveness of the programs is ultimately in their control.”

She noted how these solutions those built from the ground, i.e., by and for the youth populations who are undergoing their own difficulties. Broomfield proposes this as the source of the success of the efforts.

The interview moved into the prototypical trends of some young people. While, at the same time, I bore in mind the unique experiences of each child or young person.

“At the core of the issues iHuman youth experience is the erasure of identity. I’ve mentioned this previously — that the finding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the genocide of Indigenous culture by the Government of Canada and/or its agents — can trace the systemic issues of trauma that manifest in the present day reality of young people,” Broomfield stated.

The issues are addiction, homelessness, isolation, mental health, and violence. In unison or alone, these, as factors in the life script or history of a young, impact the lifelong trajectory, often for the worse. These can, in turn, exclude people from society.

Broomfield noted that the stories can be both painful and raw. Some of the common narratives are the lack of self-knowledge leading to a void in making a path in life. These are the cases Broomfield honorably deals with and framework that she builds young people’s sense of self once more.

Broomfield concluded, “I was recently at a workshop where the following quote was posted on the wall. I do not know the author, his story or what he might do, however, it was attributed to William Pirar: ‘We are what we know. We are… also what we do not know. If what we know about ourselves — our history, our culture, our national identity — is deformed by absences, denials and incompleteness, then our identity is fragmented. Such a self lacks access both to itself and to the world.'”–Human Rights
Wednesdays 7 pm EST / 4 pm PST
Call-In Details: (701) 801-1220
Meeting ID: 934-317-242
Lead Page: https://goodmenproject.lpages.co/conscious-intersectionality/
Led by: Scott Douglas JacobsenTo the socio-political Right, a disclaimer; to the socio-political Left, a trigger warning: the subject matter may be disturbing or triggering for some listeners, speakers, or call members. The statistics on international violence against women is disproportionately more than violence against men. In turn, there is violence against women committed by women against women but more often by men against women. It is the statistical difference, which is the basis for the international emphasis on violence against women in multiple spheres rather than localized differences. Wednesday morning, we will speak on violence against women for one hour or so.

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2022-04-26

Ask Catherine 1 — Culture Sensitivity and the Unseen

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/18

The interview opened on the work through iHuman Youth Society by Broomfield. She remarked on the Executive Director position with the standard leadership and administrative tasks that come with the station.

She also commented on the budget monitoring and forecasting, the grant writing, and the strategic planning as well. It amounts to the standard set of tasks for an executive director. But not so normal, her role requires another set of specific tasks, too.

“Atypically, but normal for a smaller organization, I also do front-line work with the youth such as responding to crises and critical incidents within our building or connecting with them about opportunities they want to pursue and seeing how iHuman can support those ideas. I’ve also been known to clean toilets, shovel snow. Basically whatever might need doing to support the agency I’m at the ready,” Broomfield stated.

When I asked about the need to build cultural sensitivity into the work with a diverse group of young people who need help, she noted that this was, indeed, an important question while also making a distinction between cultural sensitivity and cultural safety.

Where the former is sometimes used and the latter is intended or necessary, cultural sensitivity being the awareness of the interaction with others in a cultural context. The cultural safety being something of a recognition of a positionality in relation to others and then working to create a space for safe and healthy communication.

“Inherently then, you can appreciate that trauma awareness is embedded in practice that is cultural safe. I believe the term evolved from nursing practice in New Zealand and has been recognized for its value especially as it relates to working with Indigenous peoples and others who have experienced systemic trauma,” Broomfield explained, “Therefore, cultural safety, is a key element of the relational approach iHuman takes when we work with marginalized and traumatized young people. Our youth practice, then, involves creating safe and trusting interactions that build into relationships where the young person can describe the barriers they face, express what they need, and how they’d like that support provided.”

Those approaches with a young person help them feel valued and witnessed, where the ultimate goal is an improvement in the young person feeling a sense of belonging, identity, self-worth, and sense of purpose.

Broomfield continued to describe the subpopulations of those who are, in essence, the commonly unseen members of the general population, by definition as they do not fit within the normalized structure of the society.

Broomfield stated, “For people who experience erasure, I would suggest this is a profoundly fundamental question about equity, justice and privilege. For myself, I believe this discrimination stems from human societies tend to privilege one class of people above others. It’s a way to distribute abundance and resources to those deemed worthy of these means and control and withhold the same from those identified as the ‘nots’. Why this is the case is truly beyond my understanding.”

She concluded stating that iHuman Youth Society is built around the building of relationships with young people that they value. It is honoring what is built there and helping include those who have been feeling excluded, through the provision of a sense of community.

—

Human Rights
Wednesdays 7 pm EST / 4 pm PST
Call-In Details: (701) 801-1220
Meeting ID: 934-317-242
Lead Page: https://goodmenproject.lpages.co/conscious-intersectionality/
Led by: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 130(b)-(c) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/14

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

130. By Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination, regional and international organizations, as appropriate:

c. Step up cooperation and concerted action by all relevant law enforcement authorities and institutions with a view to dismantling national, regional and international networks in trafficking;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in this particular section deals with the significant rights violation of the trafficking of women and the assistance of victims of violence due to either prostitution or trafficking. As stipulated, it is about dealing with the governments where this is originating.

But it is also dealing with the issues of transit and the destinations, as in girls and women being trafficked from other countries into, for example, Canada for the extreme violence against women to be perpetrated.

Then there is the case of the larger-than-national organizations that can help deal with this problem. Ethics in any situation involving the relations between conscious beings remains a consistent fact of the world. As a subdiscipline in philosophy, it is an unavoidable context: when dealing with others, one or another ethic is operative. An inescapable quandary; either an act is good, bad, or neutral within the referent frame of the ethical system or operating moral framework at play in any given moment between conscious entities.

What ethics do you choose? Is it to optimize pain? Is it simply to self-define an ethical matrix and then ignore all others? Is it work towards some idealized platform of specific injunctions for thou shalts and thou shalt nots? Is it sourced from the heavenly realms bursting forth through the choirs of angelic voices singing life into the cosmos? Or is it simply coming from the mucky evolved cognitions of conscious, to varying degrees, beings? What about nihilism, or no ethical grounding or acting? That, too, is an ethic; it’s an ethic of inaction or a-consideration of others, or of oneself at times. Ethical and value questions remain instantiated in a universe with consciousnesses; universes arise. Some may have consciousnesses. Of those that do, those consciousnesses, inevitably, will be dealing with one another, whether artificial and constructed, natural and evolved, or otherwise. Cosmology and physics are inevitable; ethics, in a universe with conscious entities, is inevitable. One derives another.

The issue of trafficking is no less pertinent or important on this issue. The dealing with the root of problems is much easier if they are dealt with through identification and parsing of the “root factors.” This simply makes a problem ease to work through.

Next, there are external factors that innervate the considerations here. Those that “encourage trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and other forms of commercialized sex, forced marriages and forced labor in order to eliminate trafficking in women.”

The fundamental ethical considerations here are the ways in which simply ignoring the rights and freedoms of women and girls can lead to disastrous consequences, due to our collective unwillingness to have a mass and directed response to this “extreme” form of violence against women, and girls, and violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of women, and girls.

Some of the means by which to deal with the problem can be working with the frameworks already available to us. Those can help provide some protections of the rights of women and girls. In addition, the standard legislation in place, at least in those places that have it, can be a solid basis for the punishment of perpetrators of the extreme violence against women, whether by acts, by trafficking, and so on.

The criminal courts and civil society can be a good means to do it. The final stipulation deals with the law enforcement agencies and other forces working together to be able to deal a blow against the networks at the national, regional, and international levels to effectively combat sex trafficking of girls and women.

Because, at the end of the day, the one side is individual women being violated in a number of aforementioned ways; the other side of the collective networks needed for the criminals to commit their atrocious behaviors and crimes against women and girls.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women: Paragraph 130(a)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/14

Strategic objective D.3.

Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking

Actions to be taken

130. By Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination, regional and international organizations, as appropriate:

Consider the ratification and enforcement of international conventions on trafficking in persons and on slavery;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The specific stipulations here deal with some of the more gruesome cases of violence against women with trafficking and prostitution. The questions about choice are not the consideration here, as these women will often have none – and this may be a significant majority of the cases. Thus, the questions, often only in libertarian social outlooks amongst 18-to-35-year-old men, simply skip over the considerations of legalized work or not.

Here, we have the serious issue of a massive crime against women and girls as individuals en masse, and, thus, as a grouping or sub-demographic in the world. The Canadian Women’s Foundation notes that forced prostitution and the sexual exploitation of girls and women is a problem around the world and in Canadian society as well.

The trafficking is illegal, a human rights violation, and described as an “extreme form of violence against women.” When we try to skim over this issue when we’re thinking of pornography, a pornified society, or legal sex work, it is, conveniently, leaving aside the serious issue to do with the human rights violations around this.

The particular stipulation here, in the Beijing Declaration, is as relevant now as in 1995 when it was first formulated. Here, we can look into the ways that girls and women, as, basically, slaves, are – literally – bought and sold and then trafficked in Canada and around the world.

The international community is clear on this subject matter. It, apparently, only becomes an issue when mostly young males in Western societies who seem to ignore the obvious ethical implications of the situation here.

To be absolutely clear, this is labeled an extreme form of violence against women and, therefore, should rank high on the priority list of consideration; whereas, we have a select demographic focusing on the opposite case of legal prostitution, which does seem to indicate an inversion of the consideration of what is salient as an ethical consideration and what is not. The myopia of consideration is not fooling anyone; it is happening around the world in cases of rights violations and abuses of girls and women, then the question is about legality?

There is trafficking and forced prostitution inside of Canadian society and across borders. Girls and women who are bought and sold, where the marginalized sectors of the society, e.g., Aboriginal, racialized, immigrant, and abuse survivors, are the far more likely to be the ones to be trafficked than others.

With the development of communications technologies, as has been noted recently via in memoriams of the humanist and homosexual Alan Turing, the internet has provided a wide range of benefits to much of the planet’s population with accessibility to the entirety of human knowledge for potential use in educational curricula or the possible utility in the improvement of communal life somehow.

In addition to this, we can see minuses via the various facets of the fourth edge of technological warfare with the cybersecurity concerns and such, but also this has been a negative with the anonymity too.

That is to say, it is providing a basis for the trafficking efforts that are the basis of evil acts and black market industries to flourish, thrive, and continue to further their machinations, of the, in essence, dehumanization of girls and women.

In fact, the traffickers, in Canada, can gain about 280,000CAD per annum for each girl or woman that trafficked or forced into prostitution. If under the age of 18, then there is a higher return on investment for the traffickers. This is the language that may well be used within the community of traffickers: clinical, calculating, and dehumanizing, where girls and women are not individuals with rights and privileges, responsibilities and obligations, hopes and dreams, and community and familial bonds and connections. They are tools of the trade and items to be traded on the black market of trafficking, make no mistake about it.

Based on reports and consultations with 250 organizations and 150 survivors of sex trafficking, the Canadian Women’s Foundation found that “many girls in Canada are first trafficked into forced prostitution when they are 13-years-old.”

Sex trafficking has been properly termed “modern day slavery” by many and, in fact, this is a precise and powerful image about the ways in which sex trafficking can produce a variety of rights violations, bodily abuses, and long-term damage and, potentially, lost lives akin to slavery during the height of the industry of cotton. In fact, the statement or phrase may not go far enough; it is not simply an image. It is a visceral reality for thousands and thousands of girls and women around the world; it should be felt.

Some questions may arise about the statistics of the modern day slavery of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. 78% of Canadians, based on a National Angus Reid public opinion poll, agree that girls under the age of 16 are not in prostitution by choice; 67% of Canadians consider girls in Canada under the age of 16 are being recruited or trafficked into prostitution against their will; another 70% see women brought to Canada from other countries as forced into prostitution against their will.

The national consciousness is there. It is the incipient consciousness; one that simply needs a little push for some mass activism on this huge rights violation happening in our doorstep, or to other nationalities brought into our own corridors. This is a case for pause and reflection.

If we look into the various international conventions, which, as you may surmise, is a lot of them. The basic emphasis is the need not only to have them as symbols of international consensus or consideration of what is the problem – its parameters – but also what to do about it. It is, once more, an ethically elementary position; the world got together, talked it over, wrote down the ideas, signed some documents with the concepts and solutions on them, and then… simply need to instantiate and implement the proposed solutions for the reduction and eventual elimination of (extreme) violence against women.

That’s it. This stipulation is built within this framework. The international community got together and agreed; now, act on it.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 129(c)-(d) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/11

Strategic objective D.2.

Study the causes and consequences of violence against women and the effectiveness of preventive measures

Actions to be taken

129. By Governments, regional organizations, the United Nations, other international organizations, research institutions, women’s and youth organizations and non-governmental organizations, as appropriate:

c. Support and initiate research on the impact of violence, such as rape, on women and girl children, and make the resulting information and statistics available to the public;

d. Encourage the media to examine the impact of gender role stereotypes, including those perpetuated by commercial advertisements which foster gender-based violence and inequalities, and how they are transmitted during the life cycle, and take measures to eliminate these negative images with a view to promoting a violence-free society.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This section follows from the former about the necessity of research and analysis to provide informed recommendations on dealing with violence against women. In particular, and here, the emphasis is the support and initiation of said research into violence against women.

Insofar as the international documents provide some form of indication as to the direction and widespread acceptance of the ethical principles, and the data on the prevalence and severity of the issues facing women, and girls for that matter, around the world, the next steps are to work towards the provision of this information and statistical set of information to the public.

These are necessary for any mass mobilization for political and social change. It is the same with combatting the excesses of various facets of societies. In this, the media, and in general the mass media, can be important assistance if informed and controlled, and guided, by the general public – not only in the will but in actuality.

The combatting of, for example, the various gender stereotypes that abound about women is one issue. But then, there is, also, the issue to do with the ways in which a variety of commercial agencies and industries are buying into these and – we – the public continue to bolster it unduly and burden future generations with these stereotypes, as prior generations did to us.

Those advertisements and marketing campaigns with the tacit endorsement of gender-based violence and inequality stereotypes. These give an implicit culture force to these. The import is to work to eliminate the negative images that come into the minds and eyes of the next generations, in order to create the desired “violence-free society” that so many of us desire.

But it won’t come from holy text; it won’t come from the heavens; the gods will not deliver us from ourselves; mighty Lady Justice will not reign in glory over us, to give us the glorified just and ideal society; our solutions to our problems will come from us if they come from anyone, as the evils of the past infect and perpetuate through, and because of, us. We can do better; however, first, we have to expect better of ourselves.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 127-128 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/11

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

127. By the Secretary-General of the United Nations:

Provide the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women with all necessary assistance, in particular the staff and resources required to perform all mandated functions, especially in carrying out and following up on missions undertaken either separately or jointly with other special rapporteurs and working groups, and adequate assistance for periodic consultations with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and all treaty bodies.

128. By Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations:

Encourage the dissemination and implementation of the UNHCR Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women and the UNHCR Guidelines on the Prevention of and Response to Sexual Violence against Refugees.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraphs 127 and 128 of the Beijing Declaration deal with some of the more rote aspects of the United Nations, boring bureaucratic aspects of the UN. But if we’re looking at some of the stipulations here, we can see the obvious important in the work to provide “integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women” from the levels of the Secretary-General of the UN – the highest office in the UN – in addition to the national and internatonal levels of helping deal with the issue of violence against women.

All of this is, yes, bureaucratic while, at the same time, an important note as to the ways in which the highest offices and authorities can be important enforcers of the rights of women. The Secretary-General is bound, herein, to support the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women.

The support is not even partial. As a close reading indicates, it is “all necessary assistance.” The questions before us, then, is for the work to improve the status of women in the domain of violence against women: how may we increase the pressure on these levers of power, and on the individuals in power and influence, to enact the measures needed for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women?

The carrying through on the stipulations within multiple documents available and produced until 1995 and since 1995 into 2019. These are easy questions. It is simply elementary. The documents were produced internationally, signed on to or ratified, and, thus, should be enacted throughout the world with the force of any other rights or legal document. But it takes pressure, and so work: continuous effort and persistent work.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women: Paragraph 126(c)-(d)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/10

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

126. By Governments, employers, trade unions, community and youth organizations and non-governmental organizations, as appropriate:

c. Develop counselling, healing and support programmes for girls, adolescents and young women who have been or are involved in abusive relationships, particularly those who live in homes or institutions where abuse occurs;

d. Take special measures to eliminate violence against women, particularly those in vulnerable situations, such as young women, refugee, displaced and internally displaced women, women with disabilities and women migrant workers, including enforcing any existing legislation and developing, as appropriate, new legislation for women migrant workers in both sending and receiving countries.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The proper levels of administration and advocacy work, in many or even each of these cases, comes from the preliminary statements prior to the stipulations, in which, as an example, in this case, the governments, employers, trade unions, and others, are emphasized as the scales of the advocacy.

In terms of the stipulation specifications here, the counseling, healing and support programs for girls, adolescent girls, and young women are important for the after-the-violence that women experience. There may be some preparatory educational materials to be aware of the prevalence and various safety measures, and then, also, providing some knowledge about the resources available to them.

But this is so on the surface, so marginal in many ways, where this does not deal with the root evil; the root evil of men’s violence against women. It is not that all men are bad; that men are simply to be shot down and demonized, or dismissed as abusers in training. This would be to completely misunderstand much of the purpose of The Good Men Project and of this casual commentary on human rights documents relevant to the human rights of women.

Proper articulation of our values comes in the form of realizing the statistics standing before us. Then it is working within the context of the obvious consequences to the lives of women in these contexts.

It is the abuse that follows from a variety of correlates coming together in common instances, of which women will experience, as a significant minority of their lives, at least once in their life. Of course, this leads to further questions about how many will re-occur, will have second, third, fourth, and so on, instances of violence against them.

But it is also realizing the ways in which the, even in the environment of violence against women, remedial changes can be done to clean up some of the damaged caused by abusive men. It is about encouraging healthy masculinity or virtuous men, in which there are systematic encouragement and gradual elimination of violence against women in this domain.

Then for the violence against women that impacts some women, the proactive response will be to provide some relevant help, mentioned above, for repairing the psyches and the bodies following from the abuse. It is not complicated. But it is about being compassionately responsive.

Some populations of women, of course, will be more vulnerable to levels of violence and kinds of violence. It is the same with the region. We are the same species. So, the same brains, thus minds, and then the social systems and power dynamics become important factors in describing the variations in the levels of violence against women by region, by culture, and by subgroup of women: “young women, refugee, displaced and internally displaced women, women with disabilities and women migrant workers.”

The recommendation is the enforcement of extant legislation or the creation of new legislation in order to deal with the various forms of violence against women that simply come the way of women more than men.

This leads to some of the similar and obvious conclusions from before, about the need for an assertive and active compassionate response to the violence against women around the world and then working together, men and women, for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women: Paragraph 129(a)-(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/10

Strategic objective D.2.

Study the causes and consequences of violence against women and the effectiveness of preventive measures

Actions to be taken

Promote research, collect data and compile statistics, especially concerning domestic violence relating to the prevalence of different forms of violence against women, and encourage research into the causes, nature, seriousness and consequences of violence against women and the effectiveness of measures implemented to prevent and redress violence against women;
Disseminate findings of research and studies widely;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration, as with most documents, will enter into some of the drier aspects of the dealings with reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women. This, in no way, is to deny some of the unique difficulties facing men or boys, or young men in the current moment who, in difficult economic and educational and cultural circumstances, find themselves adrift to various degrees.

What emerges from these are a variety of epithets and such, these intended to identify sectors of the, typically, young male population who have struggled within their particular societies. As an aside, one small bit of research can find terms including hikikomori meaning “pulling inward, being confined” or “acute social withdrawal” – related to parasite singles and freeters and Fushūgaku, Sōshoku(-kei) danshi meaning “Herbivore men or grass-eater men,” diaosi meaning “dick hair,” bamboccioni meaning “big babies,” Man-Child/Child-Man meaning “…Childish Man,” Peter Pan Syndrome means “someone who does not want to grow up,” NEETs meaning Not in Education, Employment, or Training,” and MGTOW meaning “Men Going Their Own Way.”

There is a wide smattering of them. They can be comedic. In some, or even many, cases, they may even be descriptive. But is this orientation compassionate or constructive? In the end analysis, it may not be. In fact, it may regress the conversation and worsen the situations for these particular males. Once past the ridicule stage, the next questions, potentially, for the general public is constructive criticism and work to reintegrate these males back into society.

On the more numerous and often more severe cases facing women, we can observe the stipulations in the Beijing Declaration here about the national and international levels to be brought into the fold of consideration for the work towards dealing with violence against women.

One is the base level of recognition and acknowledgement by the wider public. Women may know, suspect, or speak to one another occasionally about their experiences in difficult circumstances, in which, no doubt, there will be trauma produced.

But, at the same time, there may need to be more data collected and analyzed for those who are unwilling to acknowledge the reality a significant minority of women will face in their lifetimes. This is the reason for the first stipulation here. Its purpose is a proposal of the proper widespread collection and compilation of data on domestic violence in order to have better knowledge of it. Its effects. Its prevalence, and so on.

Wiht this, the more efficacious measures against this can be worked towards. I would argue. We have the data now. We know many of the causes, as highlighted by UN Women, by the World Health Organization, by national statistical databases and so on.

The next steps are simply moving forward with the proper and full, without pulling punches, dissemination of the research and the studies into these matters of violence against women. Upon this rock, we can carve a new story, a new tale, without reference to the ephemeral and working on the actualization of a newer ethical bounded to the world and within the constraints of the evidence before us.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 126(a)-(b): Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/08

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

126. By Governments, employers, trade unions, community and youth organizations and non-governmental organizations, as appropriate:

Develop programmes and procedures to eliminate sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women in all educational institutions, workplaces and elsewhere;
Develop programmes and procedures to educate and raise awareness of acts of violence against women that constitute a crime and a violation of the human rights of women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration here deals with governments, employers, and so on. Those entities representative of, often, the more working-class folk. Those citizens at the, typically, bottom of the income distribution and prestige in society scales. Formal procedures and programs meant for dealing with sexual harassment may not be foolproof in, and of, themselves.

However, there may be the co-creation of a culture over time of no tolerance for these behaviors, if these are combatted from a variety of other fronts. In general, the development of standardized policies can set in place a system in which women can feel safer within the workplace as a global stipulation.

This comes in “all educational institutions, workplaces and elsewhere.” Within this context, we can see the general means by which there can be the development of a more just and fair world, at least through the workplace and in educational institutions.

Then, of course, in the second stipulation – although, I think the ordering ought to have been reversed for clarity, we can see the statements to educating and raising the awareness about violence against women as a crime and, in fact, as a violation against the fundamental human rights of women – full stop.

All of these measures are to the good.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 125(h)-(j)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/07

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

125. By Governments, including local governments, community organizations, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, the public and private sectors, particularly enterprises, and the mass media, as appropriate:

h. Disseminate information on the assistance available to women and families who are victims of violence;

i. Provide, fund and encourage counselling and rehabilitation programmes for the perpetrators of violence and promote research to further efforts concerning such counselling and rehabilitation so as to prevent the recurrence of such violence;

j. Raise awareness of the responsibility of the media in promoting non-stereotyped images of women and men, as well as in eliminating patterns of media presentation that generate violence, and encourage those responsible for media content to establish professional guidelines and codes of conduct; also raise awareness of the important role of the media in informing and educating people about the causes and effects of violence against women and in stimulating public debate on the topic.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The rights to be free, in life, from violence is simply a right to one’s own health and happiness. In the cases in which these rights are violated for women, in particular, we simply label this violence against women, which remain non-trivial and something most women will not experience but, unfortunately, a large minority of women will, in fact, have to fear in their lives.

As the World Health Organization and the United Nations tells us, the general image is about 1/3 of women will go through some sexual or physical violence in their lifetimes. It may not be the most precise data, but, certainly, it provides a basis for concern about the ways in which women lead, not necessarily scary but, more cautious lives than men.

It is simply the nature of the world. If women can have proper understanding and be informed about – not the violence inflicted themselves or other women, which they generally already known – the services available for them.

Then women can be able to feel more supported by the systems around them that, traditionally speaking, have only informed the men and enfranchised the men. Bearing in mind, of course, as noted by Rebecca Traister in some contexts, the enfranchisement is simply being extended to women now, which is the reason for this seen as revolutionary; that is to say, but in this specific context, women are, now, becoming enfranchised through protections to their livelihoods to fully participate safely and healthily within society compared to before.

To be perfectly clear, this is not about dismissing men’s suffering of violence from men or from women, or to downplay women’s violence against women, but it, certainly, is about the ways in which the international community is united in efforts to support women in disproportionate negative effects and levels of violence against women more often inflicted by men, often physical and sexual and amongst the most brutal and degrading forms of violence.

Other things that are recommended here are the provision and funding of counseling, and to encourage men to get it, in addition to the rehabilitation programs for the perpetrators, in a compassionate manner even, of the violence against women. That is, against the stereotypes of the progressive movements and international rights movements, not anti-male, but among the higher forms of compassion amongst those males or men who are bound by vices or showing toxic forms of masculinity – as opposed to the healthier forms of traditional masculinity.

No one, or so few as to matter little, is arguing against the behavioral output of bad masculine traits seen throughout history; traditionalists and progressives should be coming together rather than permit true extremists and ideologues fill the void to encourage divisiveness rather than unity and cooperative solidarity and efforts. It can be done. It has been done before, and can be done now.

The counseling and rehabilitation is important in this effort not to tame men or masculinity, or derogate traditional virtues of men and masculinity; it is to protect the futures that those men have left and, more importantly, the potential future violence to be inflicted on women, where this shows a compassionate and emotionally responsive culture rather than a barbaric one.

The media is, of course, an important agent in the collective efforts for education and, in part, better-informed behaviors. Our minor daily dramas play out on the television screens and in the movie theatres. Those media portrayals that may increase the possibility of violence should be worked against in an affirmative matter. In addition, those can easily be done by using our dollars wisely and also encouraging the better angels of the artists’ natures.

Not the FCC, but codes of conduct and guidelines may help in these efforts at improving the general tenor of attitudes and personae portrayed within even the most protracted and emotionally cardboardy dramas; as with, for an example, the powerful image of the son without an involved father on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with a young Will Smith. These can impact portions of the consciousness of a generation, perhaps more if powerful and universally conveyed enough.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

CEDAW Article 25 and Article 26

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/03

Article 25

1. The present Convention shall be open for signature by all States.

2. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is designated as the depositary of the present Convention.

3. The present Convention is subject to ratification. Instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

4. The present Convention shall be open to accession by all States. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Article 26

1. A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at any time by any State Party by means of a notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

2. The General Assembly of the United Nations shall decide upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such a request.

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)

Articles 25 and 26 of the CEDAW are more procedural notes than anything, but, nonetheless, important to its overall contents. This convention needs to have a few things equality for all and access for every Member State. It needed to have the ability for all Member States able to sign onto it.

To deny signatory status to it, it is a rejection of its contents, in part or whole, with the implication of an entire rejection of the document as a result, as a whole based on the in part or in whole rejection in content.

Looking at a similar document with a huge scope and breadth is the UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration that began with 18 months of deliberation and then on July 13, 2018 the considerations and negotiations became more concrete with a “fully endorsed” version on December 19, 2018. It was a rapid affair.

In the voting procedures, there was an overwhelming consensus with 152 votes for, 5 against – including the United States and Israel, 12 abstains, and 24 no votes; in other words, if a Member State of the United Nations voted, then the Member State of the United Nations voted overwhelmingly in favor of the UN migration compact.

Similarly, it speaks to those who did and did not sign the CEDAW as well. The rest of the stipulations in these articles simply look into the processes of ratification and accession for the Member States involved in these signings.

–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 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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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 125(e)-(g)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/02

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

e. Organize, support and fund community-based education and training campaigns to raise awareness about violence against women as a violation of women’s enjoyment of their human rights and mobilize local communities to use appropriate gender-sensitive traditional and innovative methods of conflict resolution;

f. Recognize, support and promote the fundamental role of intermediate institutions, such as primary health-care centres, family-planning centres, existing school health services, mother and baby protection services, centres for migrant families and so forth in the field of information and education related to abuse;

g. Organize and fund information campaigns and educational and training programmes in order to sensitize girls and boys and women and men to the personal and social detrimental effects of violence in the family, community and society; teach them how to communicate without violence and promote training for victims and potential victims so that they can protect themselves and others against such violence;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in these sections is focused on organization, recognition, support, funding, and promotion in general, as actionable modes for the stipulations. In terms of the opening salvo, we can see the general framework of working for the community programs and initiatives aimed at the increase in awareness.

One of the myths abounding in many cultures may be marriage as a magical barrier to the acts of sexual and other violence against women. But there can also be the ways in which simple denial of the rates of violence against women, especially when data has been collected from nation to nation and region to region.

A collected set of data that provides the famous statistics about 35%, or 1 in 3, women undergoing some form of “physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.” That’s high.

It is right in front of our faces with a firm empirical basis in “worldwide” data. Then we also have the issues following from the recognition. It is one thing for relevant sectors of the general public to know about the facts.

But it is another order entirely to work on the development of a grassroots coalition of people willing to even risk civil disobedience in order to create the change wanted in the current moment and into the next generations.

A world in which women can enjoy their “human rights and mobilize local communities.” There are, certainly, differences in the standard modes of conflict resolution. Some cultural sensitivity and knowledge will be needed in order to do it. But some novel means by which it can be done have been mentioned in other publications, including #RefugeeToo to help refugees or #Basma, and others, to help women in difficult circumstances.

It is more than simply a pragmatic issue. These are ethical and moral issues of a high order. On top of this, we find the need to “recognize, support and promote” the relevant intermediate institutions that can attenuate the negative effects of violence against women.

There is no doubt to the informed on the severe levels of violence against women more often perpetrated by men. But also, there is little doubt as to the negative impacts on the lives and livelihoods of women, and girls, who speak with one another as a group more probable to be violated in some way, to have violence cracking their human rights on the stone of injustice.

All the aforementioned secondary institutions – “primary health-care centres, family-planning centres, existing school health services, mother and baby protection services, centres for migrant families” – are important to have in place following or even coinciding with the higher acknowledgement and recognition of the problem.

But without the broader public knowledge, any strongman ideologue could emerge and strip these social programs overnight of their funding, because the public has been kept distracted or unaware and then the defunding can go on without a hitch or a stall, or a protest or a march.

But the active citizenry remain the prime force in the changes of societies. Those same citizens become the important members of a global community intended for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women. Those are represented in this and other documents in the stipulations orienting themselves towards the ultimate goal of a justice on a social level disproportionately negatively impacting women.

This can be derided as social justice activism by SJWs in some sense. But then this leaves a retort query, what form of mind mocks and ridicules and works to deter those working to improve the social justice implied in the reduction of violence against women – and others?

All these secondary programmes and initiatives are important infrastructure, but, as noted, the central need is the development of information campaigns, workshops, and other measures to begin to develop a deeper understanding of the context in which violence against women happens and, hopefully, to learn in community about its severity around the world. This may lead to conclusions about the realities in one’s own home country, not necessarily the most comfortable conclusions, either.

This education and training and be helpful in self-empowerment of those who have been violated or those who may be, in terms of providing a context speaking out for themselves on their own rights and then, also, improve their ability to fend off possible incursions into their rights, as happens around the world and, likely, right in the backyard of your own community.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

–Human Rights
Wednesdays 1 pm EST / 10 am PST
Call-In Details: (701) 801-1220
Meeting ID: 934-317-242
Lead Page: https://goodmenproject.lpages.co/conscious-intersectionality/
Led by: Scott Douglas JacobsenTo the socio-political Right, a disclaimer; to the socio-political Left, a trigger warning: the subject matter may be disturbing or triggering for some listeners, speakers, or call members. The statistics on international violence against women is disproportionately more than violence against men. In turn, there is violence against women committed by women against women but more often by men against women. It is the statistical difference, which is the basis for the international emphasis on violence against women in multiple spheres rather than localized differences. Wednesday morning, we will speak on violence against women for one hour or so.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 125(a)-(d)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/02/01

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

125. By Governments, including local governments, community organizations, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, the public and private sectors, particularly enterprises, and the mass media, as appropriate:

Provide well-funded shelters and relief support for girls and women subjected to violence, as well as medical, psychological and other counseling services and free or low-cost legal aid, where it is needed, as well as appropriate assistance to enable them to find a means of subsistence;
Establish linguistically and culturally accessible services for migrant women and girls, including women migrant workers, who are victims of gender-based violence;
Recognize the vulnerability to violence and other forms of abuse of women migrants, including women migrant workers, whose legal status in the host country depends on employers who may exploit their situation;
Support initiatives of women’s organizations and non-governmental organizations all over the world to raise awareness on the issue of violence against women and to contribute to its elimination;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Important to note about these specifications within the documents here, we can note the ways in which the ideals connect to highly practical measures for the improvement of the wellbeing of those who have been abused in some manner or other.

Let’s take even the specific nature of the recommendation for shelters or relief support for girls and women, it is not about anything too high falutin’. It can be the basic provision of a safe space and haven for women, and potentially girls, who have undergone some form of violence against them.

From this basis, there can be the work on the source of the problem, which, in the language of religious traditionalism, is vice and, in the language of secular progressivism, is toxic; that is to say, the men and women of virtue implies a male vice set and set of female vices too, but also links to the dichotomy of healthy masculinity and toxic masculinity.

Not in every facet or aspect, but, on their face, though coming from different perspectives on the overall orientation of the nature of the world and the sexes and genders, they, in essence, aim for some of the same core values of virtue and health, and work against vices and toxics.

Given the orientation of the audience here in The Good Men Project, obviously, we will come from the center-left set of the aisle more often than not, where this will produce a form of language use to get a message across with the toxic masculinity as a central one.

The toxic masculinity, in one aspect, is the abuse of legitimate power or the development and assumption of illegitimate power over another human being. Something like this, as these are casual commentaries. Looking into the toxic masculinity, we can note the ways in which the higher innate aggressive tendencies in males leads to more violent instances, as one factor.

Another is the sense of entitlement of the men and then outcroppings of this in behavior and in the unfortunate, frequent, criminal, and common instances of women being attacked by men. These, and other, low cost or even free assistance can help mitigate the post-occurrence damages, including “medical, psychological and other counseling services and free or low-cost legal aid.”

Each can be important for the improved livelihoods of women who have gone through horrible circumstances. But if we look at migrant women and girls, and works, they can be victims of gender-based violence with layered problems including language and culture barriers.

If the services or supports for these victims are not available, this makes them similarly vulnerable to those who have a native tongue and cultural heritage of the mainstream society, which is one issue; however, or on the other hand, if these services are available but not in a language or with a cultural sensitivity of the migrants or the migrant workers, then this leaves them outside of the realm of full treatment options – of those, typically, available to the women who have the language, say English, and culture, say British Anglo-Saxon that an Arabic-speaking Kurdish woman may not.

These are the difficulties confronting us as a global community for the health and wellbeing of women. These are relatively cheap interventions for the health and wellness of abused women, but these are also nuanced means by which to help them. It is cheap. But it requires thoughtfulness and consideration of the individual circumstances of the woman.

There should be a common backdrop, as per the stipulation, of recognition of disproportionate violence faced by women migrants and women migrant workers compared to other working and migrant populations. There are situations in which their employers will simply abuse their rights and privileges as employers over and against their employees: these migrant women and women migrant workers.

This leads to the last part for this one with the emphasis on the women’s organizations and the non-governmental organizations, the NGOs, with the focus on raising awareness about the violence against women and its associated reduction and eventual elimination.

None of this is some arcane and esoteric knowledge, as if exegetes find out Timothy Leary is an admirer and someone carrying on the work of Aleister Crowley. It is simply a base discussion about the rights of women migrant workers and women migrants who are disproportionately likely to be affected negatively by several circumstances of violence against women.

It is simply working on the fundamental basis of the reduction of suffering of those who are amongst the most vulnerable to suffer and then working to attenuate that pain and despair. Not much more sophisticated moral analysis required there.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 124(r)-(s)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/26

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

r. Cooperate with and assist the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women in the performance of her mandate and furnish all information requested; cooperate also with other competent mechanisms, such as the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on torture and the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on summary, extrajudiciary and arbitrary executions, in relation to violence against women;

s. Recommend that the Commission on Human Rights renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women when her term ends in 1997 and, if warranted, to update and strengthen it.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basic program in the work fighting or combatting violence against women, and girls, comes in the acknowledgment of the human rights of women, and girls, where this, at a minimum, sets a stage of a base consideration of women as human beings deserving of the same freedoms and rights as men.

This basic consensus ethic is a basis for modern morality. Within this universalistic rather than objectivistic ethic, we find a reasonable basis for the continuance of the work for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women. Of course, looking at the specific stipulations here, we can note the ays in which there are specialized individuals, commissions, and so on, for the protection of women from violence.

In particular, we can note the rather serious content with the extrajudiciary and the arbitraty executions as well; those related to violence against women. Then the rest simply remarks on some routine procedural and station notes.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 124(o)-(q)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/26

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

o. Adopt laws, where necessary, and reinforce existing laws that punish police, security forces or any other agents of the State who engage in acts of violence against women in the course of the performance of their duties; review existing legislation and take effective measures against the perpetrators of such violence;

p. Allocate adequate resources within the government budget and mobilize community resources for activities related to the elimination of violence against women, including resources for the implementation of plans of action at all appropriate levels;

q. Include in reports submitted in accordance with the provisions of relevant United Nations human rights instruments, information pertaining to violence against women and measures taken to implement the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Inasmuch as there are rights, then there are rights violations, as the idealized notion of every human being as fundamentally deserving of the same rights and freedoms will become violated to some extent, in different ways and to various degrees; this leads, in some small ways, to profound derivations, from purely rationalistic concerns, about the nature of the treatment of other human beings with an idealized set of abstract ethical nails-in-wood, human rights, in the real world: different nails will be hammered softly for some, hard for others, and still not at all for even another set of people.

Rights for women are new. Women, for much of the historical record, can, insofar as we can tell and broadly speaking, be considered property – of men, of the family, of the state, of He on High, or even they on the mountain – and, thus, be seen in principle and in fact as lesser than the men around them.

We find ourselves in a peculiar position with the terrible rights situations for women, and girls. Violence against women violating their human rights in child marriage, female genital mutilation, intimate partner violence, humanitarian crises, human trafficking, economic inequalities, and others, not to mention preceding in time and surrounding in context conditions for them.

We find acts of violence without the force of law to protect them. But as per the stipulations above, if there can be an enforcement of laws for both civilians and law enforcement alike, then any forces or state enforcers can use their legitimate authority in illegitimate ways, where the general tenor is an expectation of the police using the force of the law and the possible need for physical force as a means by which to accrue justice over time.

In the performance of civilian life, as we all know by now, extensively, women and girls face extreme bias. But we should also look into the ways in which the law enforcement themselves can engage in acts of violence, where the violence against women, and girls, is peculiarly and grotesquely inflicted by those whom women, and girls, are expected to trust in these matters; and, as a result, they may not trust the enforcers of the law as much in the future, further leading to a hidden level of violence against women – potentially explaining part of the lack of proper reportage.

Women talk; women teach their daughters mostly, in most cultures; and this can become a part of common wisdom in the culture based on the sharing of information and experiences of women with and girls with one another and across generations about what to coldly, and rationally, to expect in the world or their locale given experiences with men, with the law, and with the enforcers of the law, i.e., with the culture at large.

The governmental budget line items should incorporate these finances as well; the monies for the resources capable of helping the community mobilize in these instances, where there can be further activities for the reduction of the current status and eventual elimination of violence against women. This means “all appropriate levels,” which sounds as if most conceivable ones, and then need to include this funding into the plans of actions.

That which sets about pragmatic steps for progress for the aforementioned reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women. Then there are a variety of reports, to catalog the rates and types of violence against women, in the United Nations with the Declaration mentioned as another important document. But this all requires time, commitment, sacrifice, education – personal and otherwise, and work to advance the basic human rights of the individuals involved in these, at times, atrocities or simply abuses: women and girls.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women Paragraph 124(l)-(n)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/15

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

l. Create or strengthen institutional mechanisms so that women and girls can report acts of violence against them in a safe and confidential environment, free from the fear of penalties or retaliation, and file charges;

m. Ensure that women with disabilities have access to information and services in the field of violence against women;

n. Create, improve or develop as appropriate, and fund the training programmes for judicial, legal, medical, social, educational and police and immigrant personnel, in order to avoid the abuse of power leading to violence against women and sensitize such personnel to the nature of gender-based acts and threats of violence so that fair treatment of female victims can be assured;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration deals with a substantial amount of material. But it also manages the presentation with specific sections. This particular set of paragraphs looks into the aspects of violence against women.

In these cases, the emphasis in 124(l) is either the strengthening of the gaps for women in terms of the institutional mechanisms available to them over the ability of women and girls to report violence against them to the appropriate authorities.

Within this context, we can see the general perspective of the need for a “safe and confidential environment” devoid of coercion or standard coercive techniques related to the fear of potential retribution for coming out about the abuse of the woman.

Then with this respect for the accuser, there can be a proper process, if found to be a legitimate charge, for the filing of charges against the individual who committed the act of violence against women. All parties deserve respect these conditions and, thus, require respect for due process while also taking into account the prior data; that is to say, if we take the rape statistics within the United States, after review of several cases, and in one set of research by the Home Office of the United Kingdom, only 8% of rape allegations turn out false or, more accurately, unfounded.

This makes the probability scales much different in terms of the overall framework of the accused and accuser. It does not set about a guilty soul, but, insofar as the data and not some whimsical vengeance narrative tells us, it seems rather clear and almost stark as to the nature of violence against women with, in this case, only 8% of rape cases as unfounded.

This next line focuses on women with disabilities, where the nature of a life of a person is more difficult than most other peoples; however, this fact of disability does not reduce the value and the seriousness of a rape allegation.

In fact, as we can see in one of the grotesque stories coming out of the news, we can see the ways in which a woman without consent but disabled – i.e., an unconscious woman – was impregnated while in a coma and then gave birth, also in a coma. Obviously, the moral consideration here is independent of disability; the ethical non-quandary comes from the violence against a woman in a vulnerable state.

Information and access to conscious women who also have disabilities is important and does not reduce in any way the severity – or should not – of the situation; nonetheless, we can see the general tenor of the sentence: dry, factual, but supportive. Information or data and services, whether initiatives or programs, for women with disabilities to know about violence against women.

One of, on an individual basis certainly, the lowest crimes possible. The last section of this particular set of stipulations works within the framework training programmes at all levels of the society without respect to a particular focus. Literally, the focus becomes “judicial, legal, medical, social, educational and police and immigrant personnel” within societies and organizations.

Those pieces of training, as we have seen in other contexts, are an explicit effort to reduce and eventually eliminate the level of violence against women. The nature of hierarchical structures does imply, by their nature, power imbalances; power imbalances, without the appropriate checks and balances, that can be abused, whether by Christians against Indigenous populations, whites against minorities, or men against women, where the long history of much of the world reflects these truths coming through narratives or stories.

They do not need to be the future. There can be a healthier path. But it will require concerted efforts in line with some of the stipulations above-mentioned. It is providing a basis for awareness of all parties as to what is and is not acceptable, and then knowing how to deal with it in a strict procedural and respectful manner, and then having the mechanisms in place to do it.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 124(i)-(k) of the Beijing Platform for Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/10

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

i. Enact and enforce legislation against the perpetrators of practices and acts of violence against women, such as female genital mutilation, female infanticide, prenatal sex selection and dowry-related violence, and give vigorous support to the efforts of non-governmental and community organizations to eliminate such practices;

j. Formulate and implement, at all appropriate levels, plans of action to eliminate violence against women;

k. Adopt all appropriate measures, especially in the field of education, to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, and to eliminate prejudices, customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration deals quite frankly and directly, though in academic and rights garb, with the serious global social and legal issue of violence against women in addition to the fallouts around it.

For examples listed above, we can take into account the basic facts of tens of millions of women undergoing female genital mutilation. The nature of cultural institutions dictating the preference for sons over daughters and, thus, the need to kill a female child over a male child because of the chance to carry on the family name more, within the context of the culture, through the sons rather than the daughters.

This extends right into the “prenatal sex selection,” which simply builds into this general line of argument against or analysis of the sex preference for boys and, thus, bias against girls. The formulation of laws and enforcement of them against these violations against the autonomy and the bodily integrity of women must be put in place, firmly.

With setting in place the plans and then enacting them “at all levels,” including legal, administrative, political, educational, and so on, the work to reduce violence against women in its systemic form can begin to take some shape.

Akin to the need to teach the sciences, to fund scientific enterprises at a national level, to alleviate and mitigate the anthropogenic climate crisis, to instill universal human values within normal human empathic and bonding sentiments, it needs to be done all at once; these approaches require pervasive administrative efforts and intensive funding linked to long-term implementation to become effective.

All these “appropriate measures” connected to the relations between the sexes can only become implemented with sufficient political will, sociocultural approval, and financial backing for the known-to-work and more experimental programs and initiatives currently on offer to solve this global problem.

It is and never has been about superiority or inferiority of men or women but about the equal treatment of them in order to reduce the stereotypes each experience throughout their lives and, in this particular section, the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 124(g)-(h): Beijing Platform for Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/10

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

g. Promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes related to violence against women; actively encourage, support and implement measures and programmes aimed at increasing the knowledge and understanding of the causes, consequences and mechanisms of violence against women among those responsible for implementing these policies, such as law enforcement officers, police personnel and judicial, medical and social workers, as well as those who deal with minority, migration and refugee issues, and develop strategies to ensure that the revictimization of women victims of violence does not occur because of gender-insensitive laws or judicial or enforcement practices;

h. Provide women who are subjected to violence with access to the mechanisms of justice and, as provided for by national legislation, to just and effective remedies for the harm they have suffered and inform women of their rights in seeking redress through such mechanisms;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the long history of violence against women, we can examine the straightforward women simply by religion, culture, patriarchal attitudes, and traditions were not viewed as human beings, as those worthy of independent consideration and valuable in and of themselves.

It is, in this direct sense, the modern work to provide policies and initiatives with women as the focus has become a central arena upon which to see better gender equality provided for women and men.

But also, the active work to disseminate accurate information to inform, actively, policy and programs have been crucial in working to reduce the level of violence against women. It is, in short, about the reduction of the violence against women, as emphasized here, through those measures within the society that can have short-term effects with medium and long-term consequences on the health and wellness of women – re: violence meted out against them.

Now, the ease is simply stating the truisms here. Violence against women is a reality. There is a distinct sense in which the fundamental rights of women are violated through violence committed against them. It is not only a distinct social disadvantage against women and crime in violation of their basic protections, but also a form of psychical and physical damage that can, in turn, affect the long-term life prospects of the individual woman.

The basic premise in the violation against women is the social and legal sanction of it. The reduction of this would start in the home and the schools working in conjunction, while, at the same time, looking into the means by which to prevent the violence perpetuating into the next generations or of those who the familial and communal bonds did not suffice in preventing their committing violence against women.

At the level of the legal and law enforcement stages, we need to base the laws and actions of the enforcers of the legal system within the framework of the sensitivity, respect, and due process. There is the real risk of revictimization of women through the implementation of insensitive legal and law enforcement proceedings.

The point, obviously, is not to emphasize innocence of either party but to take into account the vast majority of claimants to any ill-treatment are real rather than feigned and, thus, to be taken seriously while still retaining respect and dignity for those whom one is dealing with in the process of sussing out the veracity of the claims and, if true, the kinds and degrees of violence inflicted on women.

The provisions of state can be an important factor in this. But the two important emphases here are the judicial system and the national legislation. The passing of laws and policies to help women have better chances a higher quality of life in trying circumstances: dealing with the legal system for instance, tied to law enforcement inquiries.

The other would be associated downstream with the aforementioned respectful and more dignified treatment of women within the contexts of the law o a nation and the larger environment of fundamental human rights for women. It is not that men are intrinsically disordered or bad, but it does not better education to reduce a social ill-health problem: the contagion of violence.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 124(d)-(f) of the Beijing Platform for Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/06

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

d. Adopt and/or implement and periodically review and analyse legislation to ensure its effectiveness in eliminating violence against women, emphasizing the prevention of violence and the prosecution of offenders; take measures to ensure the protection of women subjected to violence, access to just and effective remedies, including compensation and indemnification and healing of victims, and rehabilitation of perpetrators;

e. Work actively to ratify and/or implement international human rights norms and instruments as they relate to violence against women, including those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,/21 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 13/ the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,/13 and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment;/22

f. Implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, taking into account general recommendation 19, adopted by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at its eleventh session;/23

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Where the rights of women are violated, then, in many instances, we can predict proportional violence against the autonomy and bodily safety of women within the sub-population in question. Without a doubt, akin to the findings of evolution by natural selection and of the anthropogenic global warming ongoing since the Industrial Revolution, violence against women remains a perennial social and public health problem more often inflicted on women by men.

These are the need to catalog and categorize the things done to women, as important as finding out the metrics of harm done to men on harsher worksites in order to prevent and lower the levels of injury and death. There is a distinct need to work on analyzing said data, reviewing it, and then using this information to improve the situation for so many men and women around the world.

As women tend more to be the victims of violence against women, there, certainly, is the need to bring about a better understanding of the rights of women and the ways in which violence against them violates their rights as human beings. A proper review and analysis process can be a genuine means by which to work on the reduction of rather vile acts against women.

But if we look further into this, not only as to the data collection and analysis of the offender rates and victim types, the appropriate remedies can be catalogued and oriented within the framework of understanding or comprehending the world, which is the important or most salient here; even with the piddling or rather, likely, marginal provision of resources – outside of the grand rhetoric – towards solving this problem, or set of them, the solutions will be akin to a Swiss Army Knife approach, in which the raped woman, the battered woman, the financially coerced woman, and so on, each are given a specific means out of an abusive situation.

To the men with concerns about the males of the species, this can also apply to them when these do happen to them, as the solutions, quite probably, have an overlap and, by implication, an overlap within the context of both problems and solutions. We can take examples of far more men dying and being injured in their physical labor; as women enter more of the lower-wage, harsher jobs, the more the statistics will decrease as a male-dominated phenomenon, as well as the increase in respect for fundamental rights and labour laws will provide a context in which men’s and women’s livelihoods will be more respected, whether in the sweatshops of China or the construction sites of America.

Any work to ratify, sign, and implement the rights enshrined in the listed documents, and many others, will become an important aspect of the basic ideational stances of the international community and the Hippocratic notion of “do no harm.” Respect for the rights and wellness, and health, of those, typically, among the least among us. This comes to the violence against women statistics with 1/3 women, which is a substantial minority, experiencing some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes; this implies a substantial majority of women do not and a substantial majority of men do not inflict it, as an important caveat.

The calls for ratification and recognition of these substantial and important international rights, and women’s rights, in particular, documents is an incredible part of the beginning waves for equality. Without them, the world of rights for all but the richest would be rather dismal, akin to the times of only the Divine Right of Kings being in place. From these, there can a direct line of data collection, analysis, production of recommendations, and so on, oriented within the international rights frameworks signed, ratified, and implemented.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

To the socio-political Right, a disclaimer; to the socio-political Left, a trigger warning: the subject matter may be disturbing or triggering for some listeners, speakers, or call members. The statistics on international violence against women is disproportionately more than violence against men. In turn, there is violence against women committed by women against women but more often by men against women. It is the statistical difference, which is the basis for the international emphasis on violence against women in multiple spheres rather than localized differences. Wednesday morning, we will speak on violence against women for one hour or so.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 124(a)-(c) on Violence Against Women Through the Beijing Platform for Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/01/06

Strategic objective D.1.

Take integrated measures to prevent and eliminate violence against women

Actions to be taken

124. By Governments:

Condemn violence against women and refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination as set out in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women;
Refrain from engaging in violence against women and exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons;
Enact and/or reinforce penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions in domestic legislation to punish and redress the wrongs done to women and girls who are subjected to any form of violence, whether in the home, the workplace, the community or society;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The ways in which violence against women becomes enshrined probably emerges from both social sanction, higher aggression in the males of our species, and the sociological interpretation of entitlement of men to engage in overt acts of violence against women based on some slight to the man’s core masculine identity.

Any condemnation of this entitlement, as per the calls of the Beijing Declaration, can be important in a first reaction, first-response preventative, to the overwhelming violence against women around the world. But also, we can examine the ways in which women remain are kept down through the excuses of tradition and religion within societies.

Indeed, we can see the religious injunctions in the language and the forms of misrepresentation of women throughout societies. It can be for the noblest or ignoblest of reasons, but it results in the same forms of explicit, and often tacit as well, discrimination against women.

The reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women become important movements connected to these early stipulations of paragraph 124. If we continue this into section (b), it follows from the condemnation of acts of violence against women with the refraining from engagement in it.

This amounts to more of an individual and state dual-level moral stipulation about the need to use due caution in cases of violence against women for the benefit of the wellness and health of the women. If we look at the instances of the false accusations, such as the American case of Rolling Stone, we can see the need to bear in mind some estimates state 2-10% of the claims of rape are false, with the FBI finding of 8%.

That is to say, in the cases of some of the most severe forms of violence against women, most claims are true – over 9 out of 10, according to the FBI. The national legislation should reflect this in addition to the severity of the situations involving the violence against women. This includes “due diligence” in investigations for proper justice and prevention, so this does not happen as much.

From the levels of “penal, civil, labour and administrative sanctions,” violence against women as a global social health problem; mostly, men imposing on women. The purpose of the invocation of all these levels fo societies is to prevent, treat, and create a just reaction to and preventative framework for instances – very common – of violence against women.

Punishment for wrongs and comprehensive frameworks for prevention into the future. These remain important aspects of the work to reduce and eventually eliminate violence against women, whether “in the home, the workplace, the community or the society.”

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action, Paragraph 123 on Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/21

123. In addressing violence against women, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes so that before decisions are taken an analysis may be made of their effects on women and men, respectively.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration continues to provide insights into the phenomenon of violence against women and, in particular, the itemization of ways in which to catalog and deal with it, as provided by the international community.

Governments and other relevant actors become the emphasis or the scale of the suggested solutions here. If we look into the ways in which the, by analogy, structural adjustment programs did not include women in the considerations of the international community, and the ways this led to more horrors in making these social and economic transitions for women compared to men.

We can then also reflect on the negligence of much policy in the incorporation of a gendered lens. That is to say, there should be a focus on the ways that women tend to get a worse straw or stick in the global lottery of life, in time, in space, and in culture.

Women around the world tend to have a harder time and more barriers; in this sense, men tend to swim in water while women seem to swim in the muck of molasses to travel through this ordeal called life.

The mainstreaming of a gendered perspective can be an important part of the inclusion of women into the global conversation of rights, in particular, their own, and the ways in which violent acts tend to impact them more, including even in contexts of civilians caught in the crossfires of military actions and events.

With policies and programs set out for the benefit of the international community, one problem can be found in the forms of them oriented within the concerns more often afflicting women.

In this specific context, we’re speaking about the majority of violence in multiple spheres impacting women more, more brutally, and more consistently around the world as a cross-cultural phenomena, probably ranging from 1 in 5 to 2 in 5 women, dependent on region, experiencing some form of violence against them in their lifetime, e.g., sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner.

An analysis and set of policy recommendation set forth with the women of the world as the core concern would set the gendered lens within policy and programs as more viable, concrete, and, hopefully, less bound by dogmas of non-gendered lenses of priorm policies and programs.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action: Paragraph 122

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/21

122. The effective suppression of trafficking in women and girls for the sex trade is a matter of pressing international concern. Implementation of the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others,/20 as well as other relevant instruments, needs to be reviewed and strengthened. The use of women in international prostitution and trafficking networks has become a major focus of international organized crime. The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on violence against women, who has explored these acts as an additional cause of the violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls, is invited to address, within her mandate and as a matter of urgency, the issue of international trafficking for the purposes of the sex trade, as well as the issues of forced prostitution, rape, sexual abuse and sex tourism. Women and girls who are victims of this international trade are at an increased risk of further violence, as well as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection, including infection with HIV/AIDS.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The sexual trafficking of women and girls can be a serious issue needing dealing with a conscious set of identifications, analysis of the data, and implementation of counter-action plans.

Throughout the world, the continual criminal activity around sex trafficking has been disproportionately negative for women compared to other groups. There is a reference to a 1949 international rights document.

But this may not seem necessary, as we can consider simply the largest market of the pornographication of the imagination. It’s mostly men. This reflects a long-term historical trend of the sexualization and objectification of women.

The question before us: is it appropriate in civilized and modern society at large, as a norm? We can ask women; we can report the real experiences of women. The public can have a vote on this if they so choose. Then this sensibility can be extended into international human rights work to protect women from sexual violence via sexual trafficking.

The effective suppression mentioned can seem vague, but the statement does not necessarily have to be vague. The tackling of the networks that entrap young women into destitute lives caught in sex trafficking, permitting them to be vulnerable to all forms of violence typical of violence against women and bound to some of the standard contexts with financial entrapment.

Women without financial independence can be caught in the loop of sexual trafficking far more easily. This is an incredibly important factor in most other violence against women contexts with even intimate partners, i.e., husbands or male sexual partners.

Not only violations of the rights of women, but sexual violence committed against women can also come with STIs and STDs, potentially. As per some of the concerns from the previous documents, HIV/AIDS can leave women stuck with sexual diseases that will likely kill them, assist in early death, or leave them with lower quality of life compared if they did not have them – apart from the psychological trauma of those who have experienced sexual trafficking.

Similar with 1995, there should be continued diligence and urgency about the rights of women and the violation of the rights of women in these contexts, as women may simply be more probable to be subject to sexual diseases and unwanted pregnancies with what amounts to conditions of rape.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Waleed Al-Husseini on 2019 for the Council of Ex-Muslims of France

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/20

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped from the Palestinian Authority to Jordan and then to France, after torture and imprisonment in Palestine. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist.

I started the conversation for this session by asking about the prospects for increased secularization in France, especially as he founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France.

It is important to keep some of these activities in mind as secularism is something not only protects the citizens from religious encroachment but also protects some citizens more who tend to be vulnerable within the context of religious threats, including death threats.

Al-Husseini stated, “Our secularism is dangerous in 2019. We are losing. They were talking about reforming the law of 1905 at this time. I don’t agree with doing this now. Because they are doing this bless Muslims and Islamists, and let more Islamic values into society. To be more clear, I’m with reforming it to go forward not backward, like what they will do now. I want to keep all religions and religious values out of public life. That’s why our fight now should not let this happen. We should stand up against it and show the dangers of this.”

Then I asked about the robustness of the ex-Muslim network in France. Al-Husseini noted the strength of it. That they continue to stand for their secular and areligious values within France.

He wants to point to the dangers of Islamism or political Islam. It has been a bane in the work of the ex-Muslim community, especially as there are open death threats against them. In addition, it can prevent furtherance of secular values within Europe as a whole.

Al-Husseini stated, “… for ex-Muslims we still follow some cases in Arabic countries who face ‘justice’ for blasphemy. In France, we still meet to support each other and to not feel alone in this belief and kind of discussion about the situations in Islamic countries.”

Then I asked about the channels for ex-Muslims to be able to challenge religious fundamentalisms and then find some asylum within nations around the world. He noted that there aren’t really channel and the work of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France can be simply to contact various human rights organizations in order to provide ex-Muslims with their rights.

“We just give the testimony to be acceptable of asylum,” Al-Husseini noted, “That’s the maximum that we can do: the testimony for the time being. To fight fundamentalists, it will require more, especially working with other organizations and publishing articles in the name of all of us to face the dangers of Islamism.”

Now, the Council of Ex-Muslims of France and others reach out to the media to change the thinking of more people, in order to understand the threat with greater clarity. I asked about some of the prominent anti-ex-Muslim figureheads in France and things being done about them.

“The most anti-ex-Muslim groups in France are these Islamist organizations who just attack us. It is an injustice all the time. They try to make us stop talking. There a lot of these types of organizations. Also, we don’t forget the Far Left who attack us in the name of racism: imagine that,” Al-Husseini stated.

But he also pointed to the serious danger of, literally, ordinary Muslims attacking them because they’re ex-Muslims. He noted the complex nature of the situation there.

Then I asked what the government is doing, the work to protect a vulnerable minority within a minority, or ex-Muslims. Al-Husseini stared that the situation is complicated and, in fact, is limited, especially with the recent events around yellow jackets and other, as the government simply has a lot on its hands now (the Government of France).

He concluded, “The government has a lot of things on their hands, but they can arrest the individuals who call for killing us and killing others like us. However, you can see how things are complicated even with terrorists’ attacks.”

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2022-04-26

Gissou Nia on Human Rights and Leadership

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/20

Ms. Gissou Nia is the Board Chair of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and the Strategy Director of Purpose. Here we talk about human rights and leadership.

When I started the conversation, we focused on the human rights work and positions of leadership of Gissou. In particular, the potential takeaways for women with want to pursue human rights work based on her experience.

Nia spoke to human rights interests probably being based on personal experiences. Where if some things happened in a different way for her, she may have acquired different interests to channel her talents.

“Being keenly aware of that, and seeing my peers who some came from similar conditions or culture, things could have gone differently for me. That was a driving force motivating me to pursue that work,” Nia stated.

The personal connection is more important than the pay grade of the work, where the “monetary incentive” simply is not the main reason to enter into the work. It is about making an impact in the lives of others. Of those people in those impact-sector positions, Nia noted the legal qualifications commonly found in the backgrounds of the individuals in them.

She remarked on the variations in the qualifications, though, while also reiterating the J.D. credential as a prominent trend. This became a motivation to enter law school and to acquire the appropriate skills to create a “serious body of work.”

In terms of the advice to others, Nia stated, “I would say to focus on the things that personally move them and to make sure they have a serious body of work or research to show that they have expertise in an area. I think it is tempting, in the current environment, that has cropped up over the past 5 years to be in this place of personal branding and looking to being very active in terms of sharing things on social media or having an opinion but without necessarily doing the really deep work that would credibly inform that opinion or would come from a place of substance.”

Nia thinks there needs to be more of the substantive presentation of opinions and information rather than the uninformed and the superficial. We began to speak about some of the gender-selected educational statuses around the globe with, typically, more investment in the boys than in the girls.

“If there is a family with 5 children and only a few of the children can go to school because there are only the monetary resources for 2 or 3 of those children to go to school,” Nia explained, “in many countries, the boys would be seen as the ones to go to school because they are going to be seen as breadwinners and the people that the family should be most invest in as they will carry the family name.”

The issue, then, is working to overcome the inherent bias of family and culture for boys and against girls. Where this is regarded as an important part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals now, for the empowerment of women and girls, education is crucial for the advancement and empowerment of women and girls.

Nia said, “Of course, education changes everything. We see a direct connection between lower rates of child marriage, lower rates of child and teen pregnancy, and higher education rates for women and girls. There is the statistical evidence to show that it is important.”

In terms of the anecdote for Nia’s life, she saw the difference in quality schooling on her life, personal interests, and, indeed, options for her life. I remarked on the other sociocultural barriers for women and women of color, and women in developing countries.

Nia noted the ways in which, one way or another, girls and women can miss out on education. These gaps in education could come about via the death of a parent and then taking on the tasks and responsibilities of the parent for the other siblings, as the eldest daughter, for example.

“You often see women, girls, or adolescent girls are shouldering the parenting responsibilities. This is something that can happen in situations of conflict where there has been a natural disaster or in challenging circumstances involving health and the loss of a parent,” Nia explained, “Other things are the factors that I mentioned such as early marriage. Once a girl is married off, it is unlikely that she will be continuing her education. If she falls pregnant, it is unlikely that she will be continuing her education.”

Nia noted something rather astonishing. Even in the United States, teen pregnancy can be a huge issue. It’s a global problem. But it can impact even some of the richest nations in the world. Then there are factors, Nia described, in the restrictions of girls to have primary education. Something like 15 million girls will never enter a classroom compared to 10 million boys.

That is a gross disparity. She made a distinct point: no one should miss schooling. However, the disparity is the real issue. Nia said some of the issues may be menstruation and then cultural taboos around it. Girls not being able to interact with others during their periods, and so on.

Nia concluded, “She would also not be able to go to school during those days. There is a lot of awareness built around that. There are a lot of programs specifically directed at improving access for girls, but that is something very front of mind and was informing what I was saying at the beginning. I am lucky in a global sense to have those opportunities.”

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 121 of the Beijing Platform for Action

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/19

121. Women may be vulnerable to violence perpetrated by persons in positions of authority in both conflict and non-conflict situations. Training of all officials in humanitarian and human rights law and the punishment of perpetrators of violent acts against women would help to ensure that such violence does not take place at the hands of public officials in whom women should be able to place trust, including police and prison officials and security forces.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 121 of the Beijing Declaration deals even further with violence against women in conflict and non-conflict contexts. When we look into the variety of situations in which there is violence forced on women, it can be in both of the aforementioned contexts.

Within a humanitarian frame, one disturbing trend is the increase of the civilian casualties from war, as a proportion of victims. In fact, the majority of the civilian casualties in war are women and children.

In either case, whether in a civil environment or a war context, women will be more likely to be subject, as non-combatants, to the impacts of war. The emphasis here, even as far back as 1995, is to work for proper training of the humanitarian and other officials in both “humanitarian and human rights law.”

The knowledge of this can provide a modicum of backdrop into the rights and potential rights violations involved around violence against women. It can also provide some information as to what the appropriate level and kind of punishment are both considered requisite and proportional to the crime.

The idea is to ensure, inasmuch as is possible in each specific locale, the lack of violence by public officials against women, especially those in whom “women should be able to place trust.” This means the law enforcement or prison officials.

To the degree that this happens, we are moving to one systematic reduction in the degree to which there is lessened violence against women.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 120: Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/19

120. The absence of adequate gender-disaggregated data and statistics on the incidence of violence makes the elaboration of programmes and monitoring of changes difficult. Lack of or inadequate documentation and research on domestic violence, sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in private and in public, including the workplace, impede efforts to design specific intervention strategies. Experience in a number of countries shows that women and men can be mobilized to overcome violence in all its forms and that effective public measures can be taken to address both the causes and the consequences of violence. Men’s groups mobilizing against gender violence are necessary allies for change.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The ability to parse information and delineate what is happening to different sectors of a society, in societies or even in the global community, can limit the programs, initiatives, and movements intended to change the social and economic inequalities of the world.

We can find this in the violence against women statistics, in part. The problem arises through the ways in which there is a continual onslaught against the public through imposed ignorance, via the shutdown of data gathering mechanisms that compile information on behalf of the public or the general good.

For example, without dis-aggregated data – info not cut up into groups, the violence against women statistics can be, in essence, black boxes. Those that do not have clear-cut answers as to the levels of violence against women, the forms of violence against women, the severity per forms of violence against women, and the ones women are more often subject to, and the comparison of the aforementioned with the men in societies.

This brings the notion or proposal, really, of the gender-disaggregated data as an important hallmark of what we might consider more equal societies. Those that take care and concern for the wellbeing of women seriously.

With the proper data, the elaboration and monitoring can be done more easily or with fewer consequences. Now, we can have more documentation, where solid data comes from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, rights groups, and national statistics. More documentation on violence against women in order to develop national and international action plans.

Without the data on domestic violence, sexual harassment, and violence against women and girls, our social and cultural dialogue, legal responsiveness, and national and international plans of action can be bereft of their full flowering of effect.

Of course, there are explicit efforts to prevent the work for more equality. This is known; this is done covertly, or overtly. But the important work of going about reducing and eventually eliminating violence against women remains part of the powerful waves of history marking the progression from terrible conditions for women to more and more equal status for women and girls.

Good data, robust analysis, and then the development and implementation of national and international plans of action in line with these efforts is important for the reduction and eventual elimination against women, the social movements, including MeToo and associated collective social actions, can work to build coalitions between communities and nations for the health and wellness of women, families, and societies.

Men’s groups can help with the mobilizztion as well, as noted, but, likely, only in coalition with many other collectives.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 119

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/17

119. Developing a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the challenging task of promoting families, communities and States that are free of violence against women is necessary and achievable. Equality, partnership between women and men and respect for human dignity must permeate all stages of the socialization process. Educational systems should promote self-respect, mutual respect, and cooperation between women and men.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the work to reduce the levels of violence against women, some of the important factors to keep in mind are 1) the problem is multifaceted and 2) there continues to be work to reduce the level of violence against women on a variety of levels.

If we look into the ways in which there are the multi-causal pathways and thoroughly positively correlated effects throughout the statistics on violence against women, we can see the need to work on promoting families and communities without violence against women, but we also may want to reflect on the ways in which a state where women are “free of violence” is a hard slog.

It is going to take a significant amount of time, but it should not take forever and, technically, could be, in theory, one generation away. Our families, communities, and various states are important actors in the prevention and eventual elimination of violence against women.

The questions become about in what ways and how much. But there are also issues to do with the ways equality can play an important role in this.

In that, as has been noted, women tend to be disproportionately lacking in finances and, thus, economic independence. Most of the structures enforced in societies and reinforced in familial and communal, and even state manufactured, values present a patriarchal family structure.

One in which men are unquestioned and the violence they potentially mete out to women in their lives is something that they simply must take. But there is also the angle of the ways in which various systems and anchors of influence within the society prevent women from being able to freely speak out against the violence inflicted on them, or simply the fear of it.

The notions or the ideals within the global community, or those participating in it, reflect the ideas of respect for human dignity. The argument here is for a ‘permeation’ at “all stages of the socialization process” for human dignity and respect, typically, given mainly to men, especially those with more powerful and influential, and extending those to women as well.

The educational system can be an important force in the increased equality and the mindset concomitant with further “self-respect, mutual respect, an cooperation between women and men” necessary for the future desired by most inherent in a more equal and just societal system.

But, of course, this will not come without difficulties or individuals who may, actively and vociferously, against equality of the sexes based on entrenched forms of privileges and influence, or simply misunderstandings about what these changes imply; however, apart from those ideologues, the basic claims of gender equality are desired by much of the international community and can be seen enshrined within the Sustainable Development Goals.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 118

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/17

119. Developing a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the challenging task of promoting families, communities and States that are free of violence against women is necessary and achievable. Equality, partnership between women and men and respect for human dignity must permeate all stages of the socialization process. Educational systems should promote self-respect, mutual respect, and cooperation between women and men.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the Beijing Declaration, the general view is of the human rights violations and implementations, or lack thereof, with an emphasis on the human rights of women, as these tend to be the most violated around the world.

In fact, if we look into the differentials of the power relations between men and women, there is a general trend for men to behave as if women are lesser than them.

That is to say, ann form of intrinsic misogyny bound to the idea of women somehow requiring the permission of men to do some basic activities in life, whether to freely move, to acquire an education, or to work and be gainfully employed.

But this is the general trend. One of the largest social ills still plaguing most societies, and to different degrees, is the violation of the rights of women.

As noted in the extensive paragraph, we can note the historical perspective within a gendered lens. The ways in which gender, in history, has played a major factor in the violation of the rights of women, or the abuse of women as persons – or, perhaps, the view of women as non-persons.

Men have domineered and discriminated against women as a general rule. There seems to be a modern set of movement, mostly in the advanced industrial economies, to attempt to whitewash and denude the truth of this.

But the plain fact is women were property, if that, throughout much of history and this was enshrined in the world’s ‘great’ religions. Women were intended to be secondary or adjunct to the purposes and the lives of men. This is the history of women’s struggle to free themselves from the oppressive grips of the powerful.

It takes a strong propaganda system to work to misinform the public and ignore these trends throughout the history of the world. Of course, this is an even more poignant message for women of color in much of the world too, including the colonial, or even especially in the colonial, powers.

There are cultural patterns around the world still present amount to “certain traditional or customary practices” that oppress women in a variety of ways.

These can be linked to various forms of lowering women’s status explicitly or implicitly within the society, including in the “family, the workplace, the community and society.”

But then there is also the view of modern societies with the legal provisions but the lack of political will to push these laws. It is a particularly low, abhorrent, and barbaric form of an act to violate another human being to the point of stealing their humanity or dehumanizing them.

This, right into the present, prevents women’s full participation in society and their complete empowerment. Similar to those who deny the facts of evolution the facts of anthropogenic climate change, the facts continental drift and plate tectonics, and so on, the denial of the facts of violence against women as a disproportionately negative life experience for a significant minority of women remains within the same category.

There are a variety of social pressures that can make the impacts of violence against women even worse with, for example, the inability to comfortably come forward and report the experiences of women.

We can find this bursting onto the scene with some movements including the #MeToo movement. The force, power, and import of the movement reflects the failure of the social and legal measures to properly provide recourse for women victims, and to then, by implication, permit the criminals to run on their rather grotesque ways.

No aid, no protection, few legal recourses, shame for having been sexually assaulted or abused, a lack of willingness on the part of the leadership to reform laws to defend victims, and the poor responsiveness of the law enforcement to the legitimate grievances of the women within the society, this all compounded with the lack of education the subject.

There are individuals and movements who probably know better spreading malicious and false information to the public against the widespread international data, which shows women as the disproportionately negative recipients of violence against them.

It is a perpetual search for the ways in which women can garner some recourse for the violence against them and then change the socio-cultural discourse; one which, in essence, amounts to a humanistic, human rights oriented, and a feminist discourse on the nature of the relations between the sexes, where the seldom has been clear-cut indications of the long-term equality of women in society at all or even most levels.

Then we can come to the media representations of rape or sexual assault of women; there is a deep responsibility of the popular media to work harder in their depictions of violence against women and the on-screen reactions of violence against women. All of these impact the ways in which violence against women is received in society.

Take this one step further, we know the intergenerational impacts of this on women. But even further than that, the child and the young are watching this, and the violence against women impacts those who tend to the disproportionate burden-carriers of the care of the women, which is women.

Thus, we remain left with the general view of violence against women as a problem at several levels of analysis with immediate and long-term impacts and, therefore, the need for immediate and long-term plans for remediation and eventual elimination, as per the efforts of the United Nations, in part, and other world actors.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 117

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/16

117. Acts or threats of violence, whether occurring within the home or in the community, or perpetrated or condoned by the State, instil fear and insecurity in women’s lives and are obstacles to the achievement of equality and for development and peace. The fear of violence, including harassment, is a permanent constraint on the mobility of women and limits their access to resources and basic activities. High social, health and economic costs to the individual and society are associated with violence against women. Violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men. In many cases, violence against women and girls occurs in the family or within the home, where violence is often tolerated. The neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and rape of girl children and women by family members and other members of the household, as well as incidences of spousal and non-spousal abuse, often go unreported and are thus difficult to detect. Even when such violence is reported, there is often a failure to protect victims or punish perpetrators.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The 117th paragraph of the Beijing Declaration deals with a number of things. Some of these appear to include home, community, and notions of the state. The various forms of precarity that women feel is simply a long nightmare for too many.

The act of violence can have immediate impacts on women. It can have an impact on their lives, their trajectories. As we beginning to see the pervasive abuse of women within even comedy circles, late-night television, Hollywood in general, and through the traditional religious institutions with sexual abuse by the Christian hierarchs or female genital mutilation by some of the international Muslim community.

These form one of the bases for women’s perceived and actual precarious safety in life. But then, of course, there is also the threats of violence from the community, the families, and the government. In formal academic terminology, the ones dominated by men who then set laws and policies to the detriment of women would amount to patriarchies. Systems dominated by men with men setting the agendas. Similar things happened with the structural adjustment reforms with women not being in its considerations directly and then women being the disproportionately negative recipients.

This has little to do with the idealized world of abstraction but with the real world in which we live and women bear the brunt of negative aspects. The removal of these barriers to women’s participation in social and political, and economic life.

The general global culture of women fearing for the livelihood and wellbeing is pervasive. We can consider the ways in which there is a constraint on the free mobility of women. This can, in turn, become a barrier to women’s “access to resources and basic activities.”

In addition, not only with different clothes or feminine hygiene products, we can see the issues with higher health and other economic costs for women, who already tend to be given lower wages.

At the same time, the individual and societal costs of this can ripple for a significant period of time, even intergenerationally. One of those is the violence against women being more probable when the woman or women are placed in an inferior or “subordinate” status compared to the men in the society around them.

As well, there is simply an ignoring of these problems because may not have the safety of ability to freely speak up about injustices against them, individually or as a demographic within societies.

Take the instance mentioned, the women who are victims; they may not be able to get support and the abusers or perpetrators of the violence against women crime may simply not get a trial or a significant punishment – a “slap on the wrist.”

These are the issues facing us. But the long tide of history simply sits in our favor compared to the opposite, where further freedom and equality is clarion call of society; but not handed from on high, it comes from long, persistent struggles and fights against injustices around the world with violence against one being a particularly large social health problem.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Paragraph 116 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/16

116. Some groups of women, such as women belonging to minority groups, indigenous women, refugee women, women migrants, including women migrant workers, women in poverty living in rural or remote communities, destitute women, women in institutions or in detention, female children, women with disabilities, elderly women, displaced women, repatriated women, women living in poverty and women in situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation, wars of aggression, civil wars, terrorism, including hostage-taking, are also particularly vulnerable to violence.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The central focus of the Beijing Declaration remains the rights and well-being of women. Women tend to be the disproportionately negatively impacted around the world and, thus, become the foci of so much international efforts and movements.

The violence against women simply extends this concern and emphasis on them as well. Here, we see the catalogue of the major sectors of women in most contexts in which I could imagine off the top, and, in fact, even more.

The situation for the women in most environments of the women pertain to violence inflicted on them or a friend, as the international data coming from the best sources – for example, the United Nations – postulates about 1/3 women being subject to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

Typically, though there may be some derivations from report to report, the definition of an intimate partner in these contexts is someone who is the husband or male sexual partner of the women. In other words, there is little in the way of wiggle-room for this particular definition.

Furthermore, the notion of partnership, including pair-bonded heterosexual marriage implied by the term husband, does not, in contradistinction to the arguments from several North American conservative commentators provide some magical barrier from abuse; in fact, it may be contributive or facilitative, as the men tend to harbour more of the financial and other forms of power and influence, which then become wielded over the individual women within these situations.

However, and even further, the notion may extend to other forms of couplings as well, where this can simply reject the notion of traditional courted mates and progressive derivations of such as a protection against abuse but, rather, the sufficient levels of control and power dynamics influence this more.

In that, a, not the, feminist lens can help in understanding some of the dynamics here. The interactions of the minority status of women around the world living in a variety of contexts provide a lens into the disproportionately negative lives and experiences of women compared to the men.

Indeed, if we take the basic premise of the plight of women as simply worse, and if we look at the facts, so a biased framing, or, indeed, if we take the opposite with a full-breadth examination of the global trends and then formulate an opinion, it seems relatively obvious of the trends one would find around the world, where women disproportionately negatively bear the brunt of the violence in the world – especially with civilians and not combatants.

There has been an increase in the number of civilians murders by armed forces around the world, which implies the continued increased vulnerability of civilian casualties in war being women (and, in fact, children too). What we do from here is up to us, but the message seems relatively clear, the notion of women as not subject to more violence throughout history and right into the present harbors false ideas and, potentially, those conveniently propped up for convenience of the powerful.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action 1(iv)-(v)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/15

Legacy

Child welfare

1. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and
Aboriginal governments to commit to reducing the
number of Aboriginal children in care by:

iv. Ensuring that social workers and others who
conduct child-welfare investigations are properly
educated and trained about the potential for
Aboriginal communities and families to provide
more appropriate solutions to family healing.
v. Requiring that all child-welfare decision makers
consider the impact of the residential school
experience on children and their caregivers.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action (2015)

The welfare of the young remains an important aspect of the rights of children. But this becomes a point of special emphasis segments of the population that experience, trauma, and loss as a result explicit governmental and Christian policies enacted and implemented for explicit imposition on those populations.

Of course, the central sector of the population spoken of here is the Indigenous Canadian population. The Christian church, in general, has played an enormous and general role in the process of colonization and deliberate – and failed – attempts at extermination and genocide of the peoples and cultures of North America.

Now, the central thesis in these two further stipulations is the making sure that there is sufficient education of the social workers in order to be better equipped to work within the cross-cultural context.

This includes looking into some of the most sensitive situations or contexts for the social workers and the Indigenous communities within a historical context. The orientation here is not only acknowledgment but also the environment in which there can be healing.

Without the proper healing of the communities and the families, and the young, the intergenerational trauma from the impacts of colonization can continue and will advance and, potentially, become worse.

Another stipulation, (v), speaks to the ways in which the child-welfare decision makers should be taking into account the individual and collective experiences of the Indigenous or Aboriginal within Canada given the residential school systems.

These, only closing in 1996 and impacting tens of thousands of Indigenous people, should be acknowledged, taken into account, and used as part of the knowledge base about the Aboriginal communities within this country.

There is a deep wound in this country; this was inflicted mostly by the European settlers in the process of colonization. The basis for healing is acknowledgment and recognition of this fact followed by incorporation of this into efforts to mutually work on the healing of individuals, families, and communities within the Aboriginal context of North America.

The questions to bear in mind are the historical markers as the first point of contact, followed by the impact – negative – on the individuals who went through the traumatic experiences, and then the ways in which their trauma may leave them less capable as caregivers of the next generation and, therefore, leading the intergenerational trauma and negative outcomes for the young.

It was an imposed system based on tremendous amounts of dehumanizing activities, but it can also be a means by which to look at as something never to be done again and towards healing, and so on.

But the work needs to be done at several levels and throughout the nation.

—

(Updated: December 7, 2018)

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015)
C169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) (1989)

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 115

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/14

115. Acts of violence against women also include forced sterilization and forced abortion, coercive/forced use of contraceptives, female infanticide and prenatal sex selection.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The violent acts perpetrated on women remain an important source of the problems set forth in the world. These produce a form of trauma and long-term suffering and degeneracy within societies without remedial programs to try and correct the course that the bad actions have put forward into the future.

Violence against women retains its particular inherent problematic status with the ways in women remain subject to physical, psychological, and sexual forms of violence. In particular, the forms that can be seen around reproductive health systems.

There has been a long and ignoble history in the world with the forced sterilization of women. There have also been the forced abortions of women. All in the service of the men, the family, the community, the religion, or the state, and often multiple of these referents at the same time.

The idea of women as fundamentally the property of the men in their lives remains one of the defining characteristics of the world in which we inhabit, where we can, if reading carefully or even not, the signifiers of the world around us or the religious texts in our midst the notion of women as lesser than or, in fact, property.

The modern contraceptives are part and parcel of the family planning movements of the world. But we can also see the pushback from several sectors and organizations throughout the world, too.

The coercive or forced use of contraceptives fails to see women as fully autonomous human beings worth equal consideration and rights, including the right to autonomy over their own body.

In addition, if we look at several cultures around the world, we can note the general reflection of the misogynistic impulse rather pervasive in the air – so to speak: simply reflect, observe, and analyze.

Cultures around the world and right into the present day harbor misogynistic aspects or facets to their cultures through the preference for sons to carry on the family honor and name and, thus, enact sex-selective infanticide.

This also connects to prenatal sex selection, where this amounts to a serious form of reduced status of women and girls as women and girls; they are not as useful to the overarching functionary roles assumed for them within the society and, therefore, get weeded out, in an environmental forced choice, by parents and society in the form of female infanticide and prenatal sex selection.

This happens by the millions right into the current period, which means the idea of a post-sexist world is not true in the starkest possible terms at the earliest stages of the life of a female. Most of the falsehoods will continue their march, but the truth will, more or less, remain and the rest will fall by the wayside in the end; the question for the current crop of individuals within this country and around the world is to query whether they want to be part of the move towards more equality or back towards the swamp of prejudice, bigotry towards and ownership of women whether through the force of the state or the whip of fundamentalist religion now.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 114

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/14

114. Other acts of violence against women include violation of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict, in particular murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In paragraph 114 of the Beijing Declaration, we come to the inclusion of the violence against women in the phenomenon of armed conflict. This is a serious problem around the world. One of the big problems is the way in which the murder and rape have been forces of women’s oppression for eons.

It goes back a long way, even being incorporated into purported divine holy texts with women seen as property, as purposed for the propagation of children – hopefully sons, and so on. The coercive and slave-based sexual history of much of the species reflects the oppression of women.

It is not that every individual woman is, by the necessity of being a woman, oppressed but, rather, the nature of the relations and structures within the society produce forms of inequality at the detriment of women.

Indeed, these can be the cases in which the women, in an armed conflict context, become tools of the conquerors to further humiliate and take over the defeated populations. The murder of women and children, as more often civilians, is one tragedy.

Others include the rape as a weapon of war. Rape as a means by which to subdue and control the subjugated population. Violence against women remains an important and vile aspect of human nature and human interpersonal relations. It is done; thus, it is a human capacity.

The systematic rape of women is something tackled in some of the work written on by us here, but also within the larger global conversation started in North America by Tarana Burke but had throughout world history too.

One of the contexts of this is the ways in which the conversation is had, then misrepresented or misunderstood, and, thus, obfuscated. But, in general, the proper message gets out and the public can begin to coordinate, share common experiences, and work to change the world for the better.

But, as most know, the consequences of rape can be pregnancy, which can be an enforced form of pregnancy. These are some of the real-life circumstances and contexts for the women of the world. It pervades the contexts or environments of war.

Women simply take this as a brunt, as civilians mind you, within the context of armed aggression between two groups or state powers. The “murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy” retain a sensitivity within the public conservation while, at the same time, having the data to back up the import and prevalence undergirding the level of salience of the subject matter in any honest conversation about the sexual and other violence against women.

The questions for us moving forward related to the degree to which we continue to turn a blind eye to the derivative, or even sometimes direct, consequences and even intentions of war, violence, armed conflict and aggression around the world and the impacts on the lives of women.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action 1(i)-(iii)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/09

Legacy

Child welfare

1. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and
Aboriginal governments to commit to reducing the
number of Aboriginal children in care by:

i. Monitoring and assessing neglect investigations.

ii. Providing adequate resources to enable Aboriginal
communities and child-welfare organizations to
keep Aboriginal families together where it is safe to
do so, and to keep children in culturally appropriate
environments, regardless of where they reside.

iii. Ensuring that social workers and others who
conduct child-welfare investigations are properly
educated and trained about the history and impacts
of residential schools.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action (2015)

The basic premise within this new series is the rights of the Indigenous communities throughout the world, starting within the Canadian context or Turtle Island more generally (“North America”), and then working on the implications of the responsibilities of the international community to the recognition of and upholding of the rights of the world’s Indigenous peoples.

The first document in the series will be the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with a focus on the actionables or the “Calls to Action.” Within the context of Canadian history, there is a fraught history, to say the least, of racism, warring, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and discontent, hatred, fear, and ignorance in the relations between Occidentals or Euro-Canadians and the Indigenous peoples, of which there are many.

Canada remains a complex society comprised of few people in comparison to the international or global population norms. Now, the context of Canadian society starts with colonialism and xenophobia connected to racism. “Race” is not a scientific category; rather, “species” is a scientific category. However, people believe race.

Ethnicity remains a heritage and sociocultural category. Thus, “ethnicity” and “species” become appropriate or proper in the description of the realities of the world, not “race”; hence, any argument becomes a pseudoscientific or pseudo-ethnographic discussion if based on “race.”

In this sense, “race” becomes true as a construct in the sense that people widely believe in it. It has widespread socioeconomic and cultural, and individual, impacts because of the truth of people believing in it. However, it’s not true because people believe in it. People can believe things widely and still harbor false beliefs, which implies widespread false beliefs about the world. While at the same time, false beliefs can create horrors throughout the histories of nations with impacts on specifics populations following right into the present.

To clean the global conversation would require a transition from race discussions into ethnic and species discussions, the impacts of the ideas of race believed as true is seen throughout the racist history of Canadian society, from John A. MacDonald in explicit quotes – “savages” – and policies to slaves in New France – the first colony – to the last Residential school closing in 1996 over a century of operation with an estimated 150,000 Indigenous youth impacted, to the 60s (and other) scoops, and so on, into the derivatives with the current lower school performance, lower lifespans and worse healthspans, and higher suicide rates in Attawapiskat First Nation, and impacts of genocide of cultures and languages and the ongoing denial, implicitly, of the equal status of the socio-cultural narratives of the Indigenous in this country, especially insofar as suffering is part of life for many, including the Murdered and Missing Indigenous women stories.

This series will attempt, in its own minute way, work to present the asks or, more explicitly and assertive, “Calls to Action” of the Indigenous community within Canada of “North America” or Turtle Island. As noted by the prominent and prolific Cree author, Lee Maracle, the aim is all Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action being met – and in full, not 1 or 50 or 70: all of them.

The first call looks at the national to the local levels of analysis for working on the reduction of Aboriginal children inside of care. The first stipulation looks at the core aspect of cataloging and monitoring the neglect investigations. If children are neglected, their life prospects in the long term and health in the short-term can be deeply impacted by this. Our species has an unusually long rearing period.

The second stipulation looks into the adequate resources – nothing extraordinary or even simply above-average – for the Aboriginal communities within the nation in addition to the child-welfare organizations with the explicit purpose to keep the families intact for the health and wellbeing of the Aboriginal youth.

There should be, especially in the dampened or darkened light of Canadian colonial history and violence and bigoted interaction with the Indigenous populations, taken within the context of a cultural sensitivity. Nothing sycophantic or pandering, but simple respect would be a decent start, probably, and a vast improvement from the past. It is a statement, the stipulation, about working with Aboriginal peoples and individuals where they feel comfortable rather than what seems most convenient to the Canadian government.

The last stipulation for today, and for getting this series off the ground, is the ensuring that social workers and others who are going about conducting the child-welfare investigations have been given, and have been ensured to have taken in, the proper education and training relevant to these populations of young people.

This is important for sensitively working within the context of the history and impacts of the residential schools in this country. However, and even more important, it fits within an overall new approach of sensitivity, compassion, working on their terms, and making sure that past does not happen again and the prior injustices are, inasmuch as this can be done, rectified. In short, it is looking at the Aboriginal or Indigenous peoples as fellow travelers in life, as human beings.

—

(Updated: December 7, 2018)

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015)
C169 – Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) (1989)

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence against women – Paragraph 113(c)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/07

113. The term “violence against women” means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life. Accordingly, violence against women encompasses but is not limited to the following:

c. Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The term “violence against women” comes with a few assumptions, often misrepresented or misunderstood: more often than not, the miscomprehending comes from the faulty representations.

The basis for violence against women remains the statistical higher probability of women throughout the world to experience trauma and violence by men to women and by women to women with the majority by men to women, where this creates an obvious tentative conclusion for an emphasis of international emphasis of the social resources of the international community: work to reduce violence against women and then this, in turn, will create a foundation upon which to work in a robust manner for the reduction in violence against women.

Here, the stipulation focuses on the activities of the State and its role in the perpetration, or perpetuation rather, and condoning of the general phenomenon of violence against women, including physical, psychological, and sexual violence against women as the first-blush general categories.

Carrying forth from this, we can see the further forms of violence against women in both “public and private life” in which they may subject to forms of state terror. This can be seen in the case of Decree 770 in Romania, where women were, indeed, commanded in a secular fashion to birth 4 children each.

In this, the state intervention into the lives of the world became an authoritarian and secular fundamentalism imposing itself on the bodies and reproductive lives of women, with, for example, the checking up once per month to see if the citizens, the female citizens, were doing their Decree 770 duty to the State.

These forms of violence against women form a basic juncture in the disproportionately negative treatment of women compared to men. We can see this, often, in economic inequalities, where the men harbor more financial independence while the women retain financial dependence, in part or completely, with the men in their lives.

It is, in this sense, the actions of the family, the community, and, as per this stipulation, the State can be forces for violence and repression against women around the world and throughout most of human history.

The current context of more identification, cataloging, analysis, and recommendation and implementation of solutions to the issue of violence against women remains an important not only moment, as Tarana Burke would state, but also a movement to be carried forth boldly and without compromise, as this is a clear evil with some easy solutions but many hard and long-term solutions ahead of us.

The basic premise of a more peaceful, just, and prosperous State comes from the recognition of the equality of women as well as the need to tackle problems disproportionately more thrust onto them needlessly compared to the men without too much regard for differences of regions in the world.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence against women – Paragraph 113(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/01

b. Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The coercion, intimidation, and violence that women face in their lives remain an important aspect of the abuse of women around the world in several ways, but these “several ways,” in fact, fit into a select set of categorizations.

The main ones listed in the international community are physical, psychological, and sexual violence against women. These forms come alongside a select set of other ones.

Some have not even been recognized throughout history, but now, we can see the increasing relevance of the reduction in the violence against women for the flourishing of communities.

Indeed, if we even posit a glancing examination of the ways in which women’s lives are impacted by gender-based violence, we can simultaneously see the immediate and long-term impacts on the health and wellness of women.

In addition to this, the forms of violence within the family or the home extends into the general community, into the public domains of the society. Recalling, of course, that, at the same time, these are forms of violence experienced around the world by women.

The explicit purpose is known in some circumstances and not in others, but the eventualities in the lives of women, certainly, is foreseeable, as the empirical would appear to be both the modern international and national statistics on the matter in addition to the historical record.

This can be enshrined in some of the deep traditions practiced over centuries and millennia including the religious. The questions of rape, sexual abuse, and so on, retain a particular import in the current Burkean-MeToo moment.

As she noted in a recently released TEDTalk, the MeToo is not a moment but a movement; similar with the solutions to these large-scale social ills, we have the increases in the conversations on the problem but, unfortunately, at times, lack the assertive and solutions-oriented perspective on it.

Following this, the communal and professional space harassment of women may not be completely reduced to anything. However, certainly, we can decrease the levels at which women experience inappropriate commentary or physical contact, or attempts at coerced interaction on the job, for instance.

The changes in the workplaces with specific policies and guidelines on appropriate and inappropriate professional conduct with company-specific codes of conduct can be an important part in this.

In addition, not only working conditions but the coerced into particular ‘labor’ markets of some women, we can see the ways in women are continually taken into prostitution or sex work through coercion, often led by men who exploit their ‘labor.’

Women, in these and other circumstances, remain vulnerable to a wide variety of community-level, violence but also exploitation, as another form of violence against them.

But there are also the ways in which the gendered lens referenced throughout this document can provide the basis for a reframing of not only the problem as violence against women, in particular but also the solutions that may be proposed for this multiple problem.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence against women – Paragraph 113(a)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/30

a. Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Violence against women can be seen as a global health challenge – as indicated by Thaddeus Howze in a recent Human Rights Social Interest Group, as this impacts the short- and long-term health and wellness of women, children, families, and communities.

These incidences, very common, are not isolated, can happen to any woman, and reflect gender-based violence. The main forms considered by the international community are physical, psychological, and sexual.

If familiar with some of the research, there are many more forms of violence against women. The main foci for human rights calls have been on physical violence against women. Now, these are moving towards psychological violence around the world and then, likely, transitioning in 2019 into sexual violence against women.

But there are more forms of violence against women including stalking and financial abuse, e.g., withholding funds or money from a woman in order to control her. All these are components to the general phenomena of violence against women. One of the main factors is economic dependence.

The inability to live free from men in the degrees of freedom of choice in society. Within the constraints of a system set for women to have fewer choices, we can see the need for women to be more economically free for a) the right to self-determination and b) the chance to improve the economic well-being of the nation.

But violence against women, financial or otherwise, can hinder the moral and social development of a nation, alongside its economic advancement as well. This becomes, at a minimum, a tripartite duty for the advancement of women based on moral rightness, economic soundness, and wellbeing improvements.

Whether inside of the family unit or outside of the family, there is the fundamental requirement of justice to provide for the women in the society for the improved living conditions of the society.

Fewer women with trauma, while still the main recipients of the burden of the unpaid labor market including childcare and housecare – let alone emotional labor of the families and friends, can better take on the disproportionate burdens of societal responsibilities placed on them.

This comes, as George Carlin noted, ‘without pay, and without a pension.’ This is true. It is part of the issue of women simply taking on the work many men see as, potentially, beneath them or simply not paying enough and, thus, women take them on.

The forms of violence against women from within the homes can be particularly damaging to them and can, in fact, lead to severe forms of damage, or even death, on any imaginable factor of her life. This is the important of dealing with violence against women, whether defined by patriarchal values or fundamentalist theology.

–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-26

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence against women – Paragraph 112

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/30

112. Violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace. Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. The long-standing failure to protect and promote those rights and freedoms in the case of violence against women is a matter of concern to all States and should be addressed. Knowledge about its causes and consequences, as well as its incidence and measures to combat it, have been greatly expanded since the Nairobi Conference. In all societies, to a greater or lesser degree, women and girls are subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse that cuts across lines of income, class and culture. The low social and economic status of women can be both a cause and a consequence of violence against women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

One of the more touchy and important social problems to tackle in the modern period, in the MeToo moment, is the global social illness of violence against women, We are a violence primate species. No doubt about it.

However, this is not our only mode of operation. We can work in ways best fit for the moves of the ethical dial towards development, equality, and peace. There does seem to be some backlash to these efforts.

Invariably, these, probably, link to religious notions of the subordination of women, to sexist notions of men own or being in control of women, to political notions of women as unhinged and too emotional for public life, or deserving of the abuse received by men in their lives.

This is part of the normalcy or normalization of violence against women from attacks at suitability in public and political, and civic, life to sexual and physical abuse in the home. The main recognized forms of violence within the international community are psychological violence (or abuse), sexual violence, and physical violence.

Within these, we find the basic forms of violence against women and the fundamental forms in which women can be kept back in their success in life. The main ones, of course, being the derivative effects that can, or may, persist throughout life.

For those familiar with some of the calls or conversations in the Human Rights Social Interest here at the Good Men Project, we have the discussions on regions, nations, impacts, prevalences, solutions, and types, with the main types as “physical, sexual and psychological abuse” that do not have much regard for the socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age,or geography of the woman.

Some sectors or demographics of women are at greater risk. However, this is not a reason for despair. For sure, this remains an important emotional valence, an area for concern. But the concern can be moved past despair; in that, women have a far better time than at many prior times in history with the provision, at least in principle, of fundamental human rights, in addition to the fact that the conversation, as done through GMP elsewhere, is working to improve the status assumptions of women in conversations.

Some areas of the conversation will need more in-depth coverage and greater moral emphasis than others; however, the general acknowledgement and discussion, and dialogue, about the rights of women as person is new and increasing, which portends the demise of particular aspects of unhealthy international or global culture: consider this an age of changing some of the parts, houses, paints, and infrastructure of the Global Village.

–(Updated 2018-11-10 based on further research) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 111(c)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/29

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

111. By Governments, the United Nations and its specialized agencies, international financial institutions, bilateral donors and the private sector, as appropriate:

c. Give higher priority to women’s health and develop mechanisms for coordinating and implementing the health objectives of the Platform for Action and relevant international agreements to ensure progress.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The sense of justice within the women’s rights sentiments in the Golden Rule, in the equality aspects, found in John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill link to utilitarian foundations of a rightness-wrongness axis linked to the greatest good for the greatest number, where this becomes particularly salient with the inclusion of the other half of the speices as worth moral consideration – somewhat of a novelty in world history; hence, the Mills get quoted quite a bit.

In regards to paragraph 111 section (c) of the Beijing Declaration, there remains the fundamental notion of the equality of women within the framework of increasing rights for women. The universalization or the democratization of rights as the extension of the Golden Rule to women, to regard women as persons, and, therefore, their health and wellness of equal relevance and need for consideration with the men in societies.

In fact, with the general disparities in the consideration of the health of the men and the women in society, the maintenance of thought about men’s wellbeing and then the raising of women’s can feel like greater parity for many women and then decline for many men. It becomes a subjective or relative evaluation of provisions.

But the emphasis here is the higher priority for women’s health, probably for a series of reasons. One of them is the increase in the consideration for greater parity. Another is the unique circumstances more women than men face. For example, the gestation of the next generation in contrast to men. The health objectives set forth in the Platform for Action retain import now.

However, these do not remain the main sets of reflections about the overall health and wellness concerns of women, as science and medicine advances and the conversations about women’s equality with men advances then further ethical advances come into awareness with the widened domain of ethical discourse, of moral consideration.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 111(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/27

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

111. By Governments, the United Nations and its specialized agencies, international financial institutions, bilateral donors and the private sector, as appropriate:

b. Provide appropriate material, financial and logistical assistance to youth non-governmental organizations in order to strengthen them to address youth concerns in the area of health, including sexual and reproductive health;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The inclusion of women within the decision-making and power-centres of influence within societies remains novel in the history of the world, especially within the additional reflective piece of information with the current global civilization, this global village, being the most vast and all-encompassing information-based civilization ever seen in the history of the human species.

This permission, and the moral rightness, of women within the “material, financial and logistical” decision-making frameworks of the international system remain as important as ever. It becomes something of import for the health and wellness of individual women.

It also becomes something relevant to the flourishing of the economies of nations. Some of the most impactful times in one’s life is in the earliest moments, which are childhood and adolescence. The sexual and general health and wellness of young women is the focus here.

The ability to garner proper information and knowledge about reproductive and sexual health can mean a life as a teen and young adult parent and one in which the young woman is able to garner some post-secondary education prior to the choosing to become a mother or nor.

The strengthen of the young NGOs is part and parcel of this effort.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 111(a)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/21

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

111. By Governments, the United Nations and its specialized agencies, international financial institutions, bilateral donors and the private sector, as appropriate:

Formulate policies favourable to investment in women’s health and, where appropriate, increase allocations for such investment;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Here the Beijing Declaration continues with the background perspective of the equality of the sexes or the genders, more broadly, as an important aspect of the work of the international community.

The formulations or brainstorming of policies can come from a few locations including the top-down methodology as well as the bottom-up. Take, for example, the grassroots method that comes from the popular activism of the communities within a society.

This is non-trivial. As some of the most important changes forced on the governments with racist or sexist policies, including the lack of the right to vote for women and the right to vote for minorities within several semi-democracies, by the mass activism of the conscious objector citizens to the current systems in place, these are powerful catalytic forces in the world.

Even, as noted astutely by the wonderful Rebecca Traister, the simple power of women’s anger or righteous indignation as the basis for the important social movements in the United States of America alone.

The responsible use of power can also be an important source of moral guidance and work within the nation, as those representatives of the better conscience of the nation can work to improve the material conditions of the women and the families of the nation.

It may not be a big trumpet affair, but simply the quiet workings of people of conscience working for the betterment of the society in which they inhabit.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 110(d)-(e)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/21

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

110. By Governments at all levels and, where appropriate, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, especially women’s and youth organizations:

d. Develop goals and time-frames, where appropriate, for improving women’s health and for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating programmes, based on gender-impact assessments using qualitative and quantitative data disaggregated by sex, age, other established demographic criteria and socio-economic variables;

e. Establish, as appropriate, ministerial and inter-ministerial mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of women’s health policy and programme reforms and establish, as appropriate, high-level focal points in national planning authorities responsible for monitoring to ensure that women’s health concerns are mainstreamed in all relevant government agencies and programmes.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 110, in sections (d) and (e), of the Beijing Declaration deal with not only the targeted objectives/concrete goals but also the timelines in which to do them.

It speaks to the areas in which women’s rights are not fully respected and, in fact, where, unfortunately, this is important and integral for the social and economic development of societies.

That is to say, the increased respect for and implementation of women’s rights is a boon to the socio-economic livelihood of nations around the world. This is an international generalization based on the empirical evidence for the moral rightness, economic soundness, and social benefits of the moves for the advancement and empowerment of women.

This includes, as has in part been discussed before, the planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating of the programs and initiatives that are done for the explicit benefit of women.

It has not, even in 1995, been done haphazardly in most cases. There is a focus on the forethought and analysis. The forethought to set about a plan to be set in motion, eventually – potentially competing among others for viability based on feasibility of the timeline and available resources.

But this requires some things mentioned in prior articles that include the development of criteria for evaluation of the efficacy of the programs and initiatives, as noted: “sex, age”, socioeconomic status, educational level, and so on.

These demographic variables should not be ignored as they can be an important factor in the overall performance of the program over time and for the implementations of its improvements.

The ministerial and inter-ministerial references simply relate to the government and the inter-governmental relationships to work on, what is seen as, common international problems in relation to women.

Thus, the basic premise in this section deals with the healthy implementation of the programs for women’s health. This is in regards to policy and to programs. The purpose is to use the authority of government and “inter-ministerial” cooperation for the mainstreaming of women’s health within and between nations.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 110(b)-(c)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/15

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

110. By Governments at all levels and, where appropriate, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, especially women’s and youth organizations:

b. Develop innovative approaches to funding health services through promoting community participation and local financing; increase, where necessary, budgetary allocations for community health centres and community-based programmes and services that address women’s specific health needs;

c. Develop local health services, promoting the incorporation of gender-sensitive community-based participation and self-care and specially designed preventive health programmes;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 110 of the Beijing Declaration focuses on the innovative approaches to the advancement of women’s rights in the community. It is the basis of health services mentioned in the previous article.

The ability of women to have access to a variety of reproductive and sexual health provisions for the improvement in their livelihoods is essential to the respect for and implementation of women’s rights.

In addition, there is the need to work on making the older technologies cheaper, more widely accessible, and, possibly, in some manner mass-produced for easy delivery to nations in the world without sufficient health provisions for women’s needs.

The budget set-asides are for the possibility of women to be able to live their lives as freely as the men in the nation, which, probably, includes the girls living as well as, or as equally as well as more properly, as the boys in their lives.

The health and community centres can be important adjuncts to keep this going. But these should not be the sole means by which individual citizens empower themselves.

They can self-empower or have the promise from the international community of self-empowerment, but then to make the promise and then not provide the necessary resources to do so, or move towards doing so, is criminal.

There are girls- and women-specific programs. It is the promise plus the provision of the resources for the needs of women and girls that is central to the Beijing Declaration, which means, as has not been done, keeping the needs, wants, desires and statistical requirements of women and girls in mind as much as the boys and men – and, in fact, more as the next generations depend more on women than on others.

This comes out in the sociocultural phenomenon of more women taking on the majority of the childcare and home care responsibilities. But this can, in part, be tackled with a gendered lens on the solutions to the problems of the world.

In fact, these can be one of the main, basic premises of the programs set forth for the increase in the equality of the sexes through specialized programs and initiatives with an innovative research perspective – and, hopefully, eventual productions – that can create a more equitable world the helpful additions of modernized technologies. But this requires money.

Sometimes, a big investment at first and smaller ones as time goes onward. But the focus is to reduce costs not only with the innovation but also with the special designs of the preventive care for women.

This can, in the end, reduce overall costs, especially where it can be the most impactful in the less developed nations without sufficient resources to adequately provide for the healthcare and reproductive health needs, in particular, of women.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Paragraph 110(a) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/15

Strategic objective C.5.

Increase resources and monitor follow-up for women’s health

Actions to be taken

110. By Governments at all levels and, where appropriate, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, especially women’s and youth organizations:

Increase budgetary allocations for primary health care and social services, with adequate support for secondary and tertiary levels, and give special attention to the reproductive and sexual health of girls and women and give priority to health programmes in rural and poor urban areas;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 10 of the Beijing Declaration examines the ways in which increased resources and monitoring of programs and initiatives for the rights of women can improve their overall health.

The forms of financial allocation can be the lifeblood for some of the important programs at the various levels of government for the increase in the programs and initiatives for women’s health and the health of the young.

Also, this continues into the need for some of the most sensitive areas having additional focus. These foci are the reproductive health and sexual health and women and girls.

Each of these provides a means by which to support those most vulnerable to poorer life circumstances without sufficient supports to have control over a) their own sexual health and b) their own reproduction.

It is a matter of if or when, under what circumstances, with who, and the financial and other life circumstances taken into account for the provision of the funding.

These amount to the freedom to move within a society having some minimal social support programs for the more vulnerable population in nations around the world: girls and women.

This vulnerability becomes even more exacerbated with rural women, young women, Indigenous women, and part-time or precariously employed & uneducated women.

Each of these factors should be considered of high importance to reduce the increased probability of poor life outcomes with less and less ability to take part in society in a significant manner because the finances or social supports simply do not exist.

This is a reiterated point throughout several sections of the Beijing Declaration as this is a needed area for improvement of international performance and the respect for and implementation of 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Paragraph 109(k)-(l) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/14

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

k. Develop mechanisms to evaluate and disseminate available data and research findings to researchers, policy makers, health professionals and women’s groups, among others;

l. Monitor human genome and related genetic research from the perspective of women’s health and disseminate information and results of studies conducted in accordance with accepted ethical standards.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in this section of the paragraphs deals with the need to not only provide the relevant information but grade or evaluate it.

That is, the emphasis is on the national and international systems, in addition to the relevant experts and the media, to work on women’s rights work through the relevant means by which to accomplish greater education of women.

This was interesting in the light of the statements about the genome, as the Human Genome Project was still quite new and, potentially, had not accomplished its goal by the time of the Beijing Declaration publication.

In addition, there is an emphasis on the evaluation and the monitoring of the research of genetic to see the areas in which women may be particularly vulnerable or in need of additional information.

We can see some of this emerging in the modern period with the breast cancer risk much higher in women than in men, of course; and, also of course, the genetic triggers for the variability in the riskiness of one’s life and developing cancers and tumors of the breast(s).

The accepted ethical guidelines of standard professional, medical and academic work become the basis for the reliable provision of proper information for women to make informed decisions about what happens and what they do with their bodies in all matters.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Paragraph 109(i)-(j) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/14

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

i. Since unsafe abortion/16 is a major threat to the health and life of women, research to understand and better address the determinants and consequences of induced abortion, including its effects on subsequent fertility, reproductive and mental health and contraceptive practice, should be promoted, as well as research on treatment of complications of abortions and post-abortion care;

j. Acknowledge and encourage beneficial traditional health care, especially that practised by indigenous women, with a view to preserving and incorporating the value of traditional health care in the provision of health services, and support research directed towards achieving this aim;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The stipulations here in the Beijing Declaration relate to some of the most consequential decisions in the life of a woman, whether to have children or not. Other factors relate to this including how many (if so), under what financial and other circumstances, and so on.

But the big reproductive health right consideration here is the unsafe abortion aspect of the (i) statement, which deeply is related to the issues or concerns of deaths and injuries in relation to denial of safe and equitable access to abortion – for any reason.

It can be seen as wrong on several levels. One of which is the denial of a fundamental human right: equitable and safe access to abortion. Another is the lifelong injuries based on having to get abortions under unsafe circumstances; still another, the ways in which there is a disregard for the health and wellness data about women as a group.

The increase in women’s and, thus, families’ well-being through the provision of their fundamental human rights. Sometimes, this can get lost in translation or in the misrepresentations about abortion as “baby killing” or other slanders.

The basic idea is a fundamental human rights argument plus the health and wellness for women with the legalization for safe and equitable access to abortion.

Indeed, there is an emphasis on the likelihood of fewer complications and fewer abortions if legalized and, therefore, a pro-life person, if true to conviction, should be pro-choice, as this become, by the evidence, pro-infant life, pro-maternal life, and pro-human right.

It is important for proper and non-fear-based information to be freely given to women for them to make free and informed decisions about what they do with and what happens to their bodies.

This should include care and “post-abortion care” as well. Next is the focus on the need to emphasize good health care provisions through the incorporation of a variety of health care relevant to culture – aiming for efficacy of those practices rather than simple appeasement at the same time.

The incorporation of traditional values can be important, though, especially as this can improve the consent to health care in general.

Sometimes, a traditional system may represent a patriarchal structure in which the modern medicine is accepted more or the acknowledged efficacy of some traditional medicines can be used in conjunction with the more modern medicine for a better outcome.

This is all to the good insofar as I can discern, as not every culture will automaticqlly trust the outsiders or those who one may see as the colonizers if not, factually accurately, the descendants of colonizers and, thus, those who shall not be trusted.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Paragraph 109(f)-(h) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/12

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

f. Support and fund social, economic, political and cultural research on how gender-based inequalities affect women’s health, including etiology, epidemiology, provision and utilization of services and eventual outcome of treatment;

g. Support health service systems and operations research to strengthen access and improve the quality of service delivery, to ensure appropriate support for women as health-care providers and to examine patterns with respect to the provision of health services to women and use of such services by women;

h. Provide financial and institutional support for research on safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods and technologies for the reproductive and sexual health of women and men, including more safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods for the regulation of fertility, including natural family planning for both sexes, methods to protect against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and simple and inexpensive methods of diagnosing such diseases, among others; this research needs to be guided at all stages by users and from the perspective of gender, particularly the perspective of women, and should be carried out in strict conformity with internationally accepted legal, ethical, medical and scientific standards for biomedical research;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

If we look at the ways in which the research and dissemination of data on women’s health improve women’s health and wellness, one of the prominent referents is the HIV/AIDS concerns, especially prominent in 1995.

But this is neither the limit nor the scope. The funding becomes a major issue within the context of these paragraph sections. They speak to pluripotent funding requirements to solve the issues concerning gender inequity.

In particular, we can see the issues associated with the outcomes in a variety of treatments based on gender not being taken into account as a serious consideration.

A gendered lens is important for the effective tackling of problems linked more to one gender than to another, more to women than to men, as a statistical phenomenon.

As noted in the Human Rights calls, we can note the general negative outcomes that are strongly more negative from women to women and especially from men to women in terms of violence against women.

The significance can be seen in international and national statistics from reliable sources and not on the fringe. These are not on the fringe and simply not dealt with in a robust manner.

Now, there should be work to support the extant programs and initiatives, as well as the bolstering of the creation or construction of new ones with similar or improved aims – as discussed in casual or colloquial terms about research and monitoring for improvement of the performance in some programs.

There are health-care services and research needing financial and other backing, but there are going to simply be more of these in the advanced industrial economies compared to the others.

But this is also important for the promises of sufficient quality in the delivery of health-care to those most in need. Consider, for example, the particularly important moments around the birth and raising of a child.

There, simply, is too much work that needs to be done to provide even the most basic forms of health social services for the women most in need at this time in their reproductive lives – let alone having the right to choose to have children, and when, and how many, and under what financial and other life circumstances.

Next, as noted about the contraceptives, the funding or financing of the contraceptive methods is also extraordinarily important and, in fact, cheap compared to the long-term cost of unplanned or teenage, or coerced pregnancy.

Women reserve the right to provisions of basic reproductive healthcare services and tools based on reproductive health rights. But there is also the need to work on the effective education of women to be able to self-empower.

One of these, often opposed by the Roman Catholic Church – a non-trivial political entity, is family planning, as one of the above-mentioned categories of assistance.

Note, the inexpensive, likely, nature of most of the provisions for the sexual health of women. Within these contexts, it can be possible for women to self-empower and find their way into the “safe, effective, affordable and acceptable” means of reproductive health tools for little cost, and with the proper supports than, potentially, no cost.

Societies would benefit and have benefitted greatly from the respect for, implementation of, and maintenance of women’s rights as non-negotiable. Same with the research that goes into making the next generation of reproductive health tools.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

In-Depth Conversation with Sandra El Khoury

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/12

Sandra El Khoury is a woman who was born in Lebanon but came to Sweden at a young age. She was brought up in a Syrian-Orthodox home with parents that did the best they could to hold on to their culture, traditions, and religion. Sandra started revolting at a young age and the more she pushed the more harm her parents caused her. She was physically and emotionally abused daily and when it did not help, her parents married her off against her will. After a year and a half, she ran away and from that time until now she is being seen as the shame of the family.

Today, she lives by herself in an apartment in a small town in Sweden and she is fighting every day to try to reach her dreams. She lives with a brain injury and Complex PTSD as a result of the abuse she endured. Still, she isn’t giving up to reach her dreams. She wants to become a spokesperson for women abused by honor culture. Sandra is also a writer and an aspiring poet.

*Note: El Khoury was kind enough to provide two personal poems expressing sentiments, experiences, traumas, and feelings at the end of the interview.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Where did your family come from? Where did you come from? How did you end up in Sweden?

Sandra El Khoury: I was born in Lebanon. My father was born in Syria. My mother in Lebanon. I have a mix of origins. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was Turkish. My great grandmother on my mother’s side was Greek. I have four countries in me: Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon.

So, how did we arrive in Sweden? Sweden was entirely my father’s choice. He had heard about people going to Sweden. We were the first family of all our relatives to flee the war. It was awful. I have some horrific memories from the war so in 1984 my father had enough and sent us to Sweden.

Jacobsen: What was his background or involvement in the Syrian Orthodox Church?

Sandra: Listen, when we lived in Lebanon, we were in Sunday schools. It was more social than being forced to learn the Bible. My parents were not pushing us. However, we prayed before we ate dinner or breakfast and before we went to bed.

So from what I remember, I was never beaten for not praying or sitting right in church. My mother was beating us children for other reasons, like spilling our ice cream.

The physical abuse I got from my mother was never about religion. Church back then was a playground for us. It was not about sitting around and memorizing the Bible. We were in the Scouts as well.

The three fingers up sign and then saying, “I swear on my honor to serve the Scouts.” It was never about Jesus or God. We had fun.

We got these badges when we finished an assignment. But that all changed one day. When I was 5-years-old, it was the first time I was shocked and disappointed by the church.

For me, it began there. My journey out of Christianity. Before we move on, let me explain what “Syrian Orthodox” means, people have the wrong idea. To be Syrian Orthodox, it does not mean being from Syria.

It is like the Assyrians. There is no country named Assyria because it is not bound to one specific country but several as a race and religion.

It is the same with the Syrian Orthodox people. Their origin is from Turkey, from which it spread to other countries.

Let’s go back to why I started to hate the church and question it: in the Syrian Orthodox Church, when a boy is being baptized, it takes place at the altar, where they also put the Baptist cup for boys.

After the baptism, there is a ceremony, where the priest goes first. Then the godfather carrying the baby boy, and then all other men and boys follow.

Then they go around the church 7 times. I do not know why it is specifically 7. They walk around: up on the altar, down, around the church, up and then down, 7 times.

The priest first and then all the others. Of course, only the men and boys are permitted to do it. When a girl gets baptized, the cup where they baptize the baby will be put between the front row and the altar.

So, in the Syrian Orthodox Church, a girl can never set foot on the altar, from the day she is born to the day she died. A girl, according to the Syrian Orthodox religion, is dirty and born sinful.

So, back to the day I started hating the church, my father was the godfather here.

He was carrying the baby. I wanted to walk beside my father. They pushed me to the side.

The men and my father pushed me out of the way and were angry with me. Imagine me, at 5-years-old, I wanted to walk by my father, but I couldn’t. I was so sad. I was like “Why?!”

It was the first poor treatment because of religion. I understood there and then of the inequality between boys and girls.

The next time, I was treated differently came at age 15. I was menstruating. My mother said, “You cannot participate in this.” I felt shame. I was put in the corner of the church with other girls and women who had their periods.

We were treated like parasites. We were not allowed to partake of communion or touch anything considered holy in the church, e.g., a crucifix.

We were treated as if we carried all of the shame in the universe. I was so embarrassed. As a girl, I was shy. At the age of 15, you do not want the whole world to know that you are on your period. The public humiliation was the second strike.

Let’s go back to strike one, the one with my father. In my eyes back then, my father was my hero. Not my mother, she was abusive. I was very attached to my father. For him to push me away, it was too much. I was shocked. I had many traumas before, but it was the first one caused by my father.

Jacobsen: Did you ever have a chance when you were young to talk to other girls or young women?

Sandra: That is a good question. However, no! I have never talked about this with anyone while growing up. My sister and I were controlled. We did not have friends. We couldn’t play with our cousins even sometimes; it was forbidden for us. Even our thoughts were controlled.

Some was honor culture. Some was not, in my case. My mother was a sick woman. She did some things that are not included in honor culture society or religion. Of course, you are allowed to play with your cousins in an honor culture, but it was only my mother who did not allow us to play.

If she would have told us to not play with black people or Muslim people, that is honor culture, but that was not the case here. If not supervised by her, we were not allowed to talk to anyone, not even our own relatives. She was a control freak.

I talked to doctors. They think, she could be schizophrenic. So, to answer your question, “Why I have not talked to other girls or women?” I was controlled by my mother. I was shy. I was afraid to talk to people about anything, afraid to trigger beatings from mom. Her beating was horrible.

She would beat me with wooden spoons until they break on my body. She would cut me and my sister’s hair and if we dare to cry, she would beat us with the scissors on our heads until we started bleeding.

She would beat me until I fall down on the floor and then she would kick my head so hard that my head bounced many times on the floor until it finally stopped. She would throw things on me, whatever she was holding, shoes, knifes, plates, and glasses.

If someone would have visited us back then, they never could tell that there were kids in the house. We were forbidden to leave our bedrooms. Even us kids were not allowed to talk to each other that much. It all depended on her mood. I grew up as a very traumatized and scared little girl.

It is far from the girl talking to you today. Nowadays, I speak up. I am tough. However, back then, if you would make a sudden move, I would not stop crying. I was so fragile back then. I was growing up, questioning everything, screaming out the pain but in silence.

If I cried I got beaten, if I smiled I got beaten, if I laughed I got beaten. This went on for 17 years. My father during this time would sit and watch TV. He never stopped her. I even tried to kill myself when I was 16 years old. I failed. I ended up in the juvenile psychiatric ward.

The doctors did everything in their power to make my mother visit me. She refused. My father came every day. One day my mother called. The doctors were hopeful and smiling telling me that my mother was on the phone. I ran to take the call.

She said 4 words to me and hang up the phone in my face. I remember how hurt I was as if it is happening right now. I dropped to the floor, crying, screaming. All I could hear was her 4 words on repeat in my head “I wish you died”. The story does not end there but let us change the subject.

Scott: Was there ever a connection with other Syrian Orthodox people outside the family?

Sandra: When we moved to Sweden, we lived in a village with no Syrian Orthodox people. There was no one to talk to there in our first years there. After a couple of years, my father took us to a Syrian Orthodox Church. We didn’t understand the Syriac language.

I suggested: we should go to the Swedish church. Then my father stated the closest Swedish church, theologically, was the Roman Catholic Church. After one year, my father stopped bringing us to church.

Even at home, we were not forced to pray before eating and before going to bed. So, we never met other Syrian Orthodox church members because we stopped attending church. The only remnants of the sociocultural context of the religion were the honor culture.

Now as an adult, just because my family does not want to have anything to do with me, I am a divorced woman living by myself, then Syrian Orthodox people do not want to have anything to do with me. That is fine by me. I would rather stay away from Syrian Orthodox people.

I do not like them as much as they do not like me. It is wrong of me, to think like that. Maybe, I need 20 years of therapy to change that about myself [Laughing]. Without therapy, I may not change my mind. However, now, as soon as I know they are Syrian Orthodox, I try to avoid them. In my experience, Syrian Orthodox people are the most judgmental people of all Christians.

I am terrified by them because of the long history in my life. I have experienced lies and distortions, and have been ratted out, by people in my family’s social circle. This is why I stay away.

Jacobsen: You were married at 17. At 18, you divorced. What was the reason for the divorce?

Sandra: The short answer: it was a forced marriage. I was not given a choice in who or how I marry. My uncle, he formed fingers to replicate a gun. He pointed the makeshift gun at my knees and said, “Choose which knee, I can shoot the one you choose if you do not get married. Do you want the left or do you want the right? I will make sure you end up in a wheelchair, so no boy ever wants to marry you. Either that or you get married.”

I believe that counts in the category of “forced marriage.” Right? I think so too. Both my parents and I did not know him. However, my uncle did.

Before my uncle’s threats, my mother had taken my sister, who was only 14-years-old, out of school and to Lebanon to marry her off to a cousin.

When my sister was gone, my mother came back for me. I knew. I was next. I went to social services. I told them about my sister and that I was next in line. They did not help me. A month after my mother came back from Lebanon, I was forced into marriage.

Why did I leave? He was beating the shit out of me every day and raping me every day for one-and-a-half years. How can you love someone forced on you?

While married, I repeatedly asked my father to help me. I wanted the abuse from my husband to stop. My father did not care. Not that he did not care, he might have cared. However, my father is afraid of conflicts. He becomes like a small child.

He goes under the cover of a bed. He stays there like a scared child, literally. If I ever needed to talk to my father, he would hide under the covers and say, “I do not want to. I do not want to. I do not want to.”

He has done that my whole life, at least since he came to Sweden. My mother can beat us until we bleed, but he will sit and watch TV. It is like he does not exist. He is like a ghost at home. My father has never been an authority. It has always been my mother and that is not common in an honor society.

It is the father who usually is the monster and the mother who is the kind one. So, when I called my father and told him, “I am being beaten.” He said, “Now, you are married. You have to stay with your husband.”

When my father did not help me, I tried to kill myself to get away from the marriage. It did not go well, as I am still alive. Then three months later, after my suicide attempt, I convinced the husband to let me visit my parents. He never allowed me to go anywhere.

I talked every day about it. I nagged. I begged him to let me go and see my parents. Finally, he said, “Yes.” I left the train one station before my parents’ station. I was afraid that they will catch me and force me back. I called my father.

I said, “If I come, I do not want to go back. I want a divorce.” He said, “You are not allowed to visit if you do not go back to your husband.” My mother was screaming in the back, “What is the whore saying?! What is the whore saying?!”

I continued, “Father, I have a six-month-old-baby in my arms. Where should I go?” He said, “If you were smart enough to leave your husband, then be smart enough to take care of yourself. So, it is not my problem”.

They hung up.

I collapsed at the train station, crying. Two girls helped me to call social services. That is how I got married and divorced.

Jacobsen: It is not only important to get the whole story out. Statistically, there are likely others going through the exact same thing. It is probably cathartic to you, to put a time stamp on it, to put a narrative on it, and say, “This happened.” It is an important part of processing and therapy.

Sandra: My therapist I have had for one-and-a-half years. He has yet to start my therapy. Because he wants me to trust him first, whatever that means. He does not want to move into the therapy part, until I can say that I trust him.

I haven’t even started to process my experiences. But I am doing that every day on my Facebook page and with this interview.

If I am courageous enough to speak out on my experiences and abuses, then my hope is others, especially girls, going through similar experiences and abuses will feel sufficient courage to speak out themselves, get help for themselves, and be examples for still others.

Jacobsen: That makes sense. The people who were supposed to be the first bond. You, at some level, probably feel they betrayed you. So, getting to trust a stranger who is a therapist – even though a professional and an expert, there is a certain cachet.

But the idea of trusting someone random after being betrayed by family and husband. It would, probably, make of sense. “Work on the foundation, you trust what I am going to do with you in terms of the therapeutic practice.”

Sandra: I have complex PTSD. He wants to treat me with EMDR. It means that your blocked memories will come back, from what I understood of it. I need to trust him in order for that to work according to him.

He did not use the word “totally,” but he said, “I need you to trust me, Sandra.” One-and-a-half years later, we are still here. In the meantime, I am doing a complete neuropsychiatric assessment. I have a cognitive disability caused by the brain damage from the beatings my mother inflicted on me.

So, back to that trust issue, I do not think it will happen for me. I cannot trust anyone. I like my psychiatrist. He is cool. However, trust? I do not know. I do not know what it even means. Is it to trust someone 5% or 70%?

I do not even know what trust means, because everyone can hurt you! It is not like I believe everyone is out to get me, but I do not trust anyone. Not anyone.

Even my friends, I love my friends. I have lots of good friends. I have had them for 15 years, 22 years, and so on. However, “trust,” it is a big word. It does not come easily, if ever.

Jacobsen: What is the situation with your daughter now?

Sandra: The situation started there with her, at that train station. Unfortunately, Scott, I was not a good mother. Not because I was a bad mother per se but because I was a child, I did not know how to take care of a baby.

I was scared and traumatized by my mother so much that I was terrified to become like her. For example, because my mother forced food in me to the degree that one day she was pushing food down my throat and I vomited in my own plate. I was only three years old. She forced me to eat my own vomit. So when my daughter at 4 months should have started to eat baby food, I did not push it on her. The first spoon she moved out with her tongue, I stopped immediately, afraid to become my mother.

Another thing, I carried her all the time in my arms, except when she was sleeping, of course. That caused, even at the age of 6 months, an inability to keep her head up and move from side to side. I had done it all wrong. Because I was always holding her and carrying her too much. I was afraid. I did not want to become my mother. My mother who never hugged me or held me.

So back to the train station, when social services came to pick us up, they put us with a Swedish family, temporarily, until they knew where to place us. While there, the mother of the family reported me. She told the social services, “This girl is not doing anything right with the baby.”

She told them, “The baby cannot hold its head. She should be able at this age.” I both thank and curse her. Because I wish that she would have told me this to my face. But she ratted me out behind my back. I found out many, many years later, when I was reading the files they kept back then.

In one way, it was good. I should not even have a baby. A child should not be forced to become a mother. I couldn’t even take care of myself nevertheless a baby. So, in one way, it was good, but not the way she did it. The outcome was a disaster. I lost my daughter.

What should have happened is they should have placed me with the baby in a family, I would have had the opportunity to grow into a young adult and also a mother. Instead, they placed me in an investigation home for parents.

They put you under the microscope to see if you are able to take care of your child or not. Then they will decide to take the child from you or not. While at the investigation home, the baby’s father and I still had shared custody. Here in Sweden, when you have children together, you cannot get a divorce right away. They make you wait for 6 months.

So, we still shared custody. The investigation home told the baby’s father where I was. He told my parents. This spread to my relatives. Everybody started to talk about me, “She left her husband. She is the worst. She went to the Swedish people. This should stay in our society.”

For them, I had committed a terrible sin. My older brother came to see me. He said, “You have to go back. You are embarrassing us.” I started to translate what he said in Arabic into Swedish so the staff could understand he was threatening me.

“It is our father’s duty to kill you. However, it is my duty as the older brother if he won’t. I cannot do it. If I do it, I will kill myself. However, I have to warn you. It is your uncle’s duty then to kill you.”

I translated everything. He wanted to keep me quiet. He said, “Quiet, stop translating!” and then he pushed me. I had my daughter on the sofa while facing him. When he pushed me, I fell backwards on the sofa. I was close to falling on my baby. The personnel came and took her.

They said, “She is not safe with you.” I started crying, “Please do not do this.” My brother left. They gave her back to me that day. But now, the staff started to constantly harass me, “You cannot take care of her. What happens if you go out with her? They can come and do something. She is not safe with you.”

One day I wanted to take a shower. I asked them for help to hold the baby. They said, “No, we want to see what you do with her.” I put her in the stroller and took her with me to the bathroom to take a shower. When I came out they said, “You did two mistakes. You did not put the safety belt on the child and it is too steamy in the bathroom. She could have died. You cannot take care of her.”

Every day, I was under tremendous pressure: the staff who always complained about how useless I was as a mother, to the calls that I got from my parents who told me that I was a shame to the family, and to the husband who said, “How can you do this? I can find you. I know where you are. I can do this or that to you.”

One day it all became too much. The staff said something about mistakes. I said – this is so hard for me to admit, “What do you want from me?! If you want her, then take her!”

Immediately, they took her. They placed her with a Swedish family. When my daughter was gone, they said, “You cannot stay here. This is an investigation home for families.” I asked, “Where will I go? I have nowhere to go.”

They said, “It is not our problem. You can call social services.” The social services personnel came and started asking questions. “Do you know how to pay rent?” I said, “What?” I did not know anything about rent. It was foreign to me. Even if I lived in Sweden, I did not live like Swedish people. My father took care of the finances of the family. They started to ask, “Do you know anything about electricity bills?” I did not know anything about it. I thought they were interviewing me. They were smiling. [Laughing] I was so stupid. I did not know that this would be important for me keeping my baby or not.

They decided to put me in a teenager home. In hindsight, I appreciate it because I needed time to grow up. However, they should not have done this because when the court date came, I was living in a teenager home and not a safe place for a child to grow. I did not have anything. I lost her in court. The only thing I had left was rights of access to my child.

They granted me a few hours every weekend. This went on until I became 22 years of age and got my first apartment. I went to court. I wanted part of the custody. I won half of it. For the first time in years, she could finally sleep in my arms again.

I had her every other weekend, every other holiday, and four consecutive weeks in the Summer. Time went by, when she was five, she said, “You are not my momma. I was not in your stomach. Jesus does not love you.”

The older she got, the more she had to say: “My father said that your own parents do not want you. So, why should I?” She would, from time to time, lash out at me and say, “Shut up! I hate you! I do not want you! I am ashamed of you! You will go to hell! You will burn in hell!”

She also said that a priest told her the church and Jesus loves her because she is not like me and does not follow my path in life. I would be devastated by these words, but she was only a child. It has never been her fault.

They taught her to hate me and avoid me. From the age of 14 until now I have not been allowed to talk to her very much. I am blocked everywhere on social media. Today, she is 22.

Somehow, it is never over for me. People say; I should come out of this PTSD. How could I? I am reliving the past in my future because my child is stuck in the honor culture I have tried to leave behind me my entire life.

Jacobsen: In real time, you are reliving the past vicariously.

Sandra: Exactly! All I know is if I will ever be seen as her mother then I have to become a Syrian Orthodox again. I cannot be an atheist. I also have to be married or living with my parents, as a woman can never live by herself. A single woman living alone, unmarried is seen as repulsive.

I would rather die than go back to it. So, I do not know. I wait, wish, and hope for her to come back into my life. That is all I can do for now. All these years, all my apartments, I always had my bed in the living room.

I kept the bedroom for her, wishing someday of her return to me. Today, she is an adult. However, the room is empty. It means something is wrong with me. In my brain, I cannot understand it. She is an adult. However, I am still looking for my lost baby.

I want her in my arms; I cannot explain it. It sounds crazy. Every day, when I walk past this empty room, it feels better that it is empty because I have this empty space in my heart, which carries her name. I am a mother that lost her child. It feels like nobody cares.

Nobody ever asked, “How do you feel about it?” Nobody, not even my therapists and doctors, maybe, they are waiting for me to talk about it. The way I talk to you now. I have never told a doctor about this. Not like this, I have not opened up yet.

Jacobsen: There is a syndrome called Phantom Limb Syndrome. People who come back from war. Let us say, they lost an arm through a grenade blast. Somehow, the parts of the brain. There is a map.

You can touch fingers, arms, the face. You can map the nerves of the hand connected to the part of the brain. There is a map from left to right like a big half-circle crown on the brain. You can map the circuitry.

It is like a sensory map of the brain (cortical homunculus or Penfield’s Map). For some people, the sensation does not go away for the ‘arm.’ They have a phantom limb. They will say, “My limb is stuck. Sometimes, it is stuck in an uncomfortable position.”

But it is a phantom. They do not have an arm. They have the idea that they have an arm, but stuck in an uncomfortable position.

Sandra: I have seen videos of this. That is why I get what you are saying. I know this phenomenon. So, yes, the empty room is my uncomfortable position. The ache in my heart for my lost child. Thinking that she is still a baby and that she will return.

Jacobsen: If you look at someone who plays the piano who is a virtuoso, it is almost as if the piano or instrument is an extension of themselves. I would suspect you could map this to the brain in terms of the sensory map having an extended map for the keyboard.

When you are talking about this, I can imagine a concrete, naturalistic answer. When you have a child, I can see a correspondence here.

Sandra: I was still breastfeeding her when I lost her. They ripped her away from me. I went through nights of horror for months. Milk came out of my breasts. I screamed and cried because I heard her in my mind. I was feeling that she was hungry.

People said, “No, she’s not here. It is okay.” I went through it. This kept happening until my breasts stopped producing milk. It was so hard for me. However, no one has helped me with this. Back then, the 1990s, there was not so much discussion about mental health.

Of course, there were psychiatrists and therapists back then but it was not as common as today to seek help. The staff at the teenager home said, “You should talk to someone.” They drove me to a therapist. I sat there. The therapist asked, “Sandra, can you answer?” I was like, “Mickey Mouse!”

I did not want to open up because I did not want to talk about those things. They stopped taking me to see the therapist after two weeks. They said, “Oh, you are making a fool out of us. It is not acceptable. We drive you. You act irresponsibly.”

I said, “Fine, but I do not want to go, I do not want to talk about it.” I was a child for God’s sake. I did not want to hear what they had to say to me. Today, I am 40. I still, at times, feel like a child who never grew up. I still feel like I need a mother and a father. It sounds crazy.

Jacobsen: It is okay. I understand. Every story has a context. I understand given the context. You had an abusive mother and a negligent father. A forced marriage with an abusive rapist husband. Then you had a child and fled at only 18.

Sandra: Yes, it is hard to move forward now. Also, I feel as though there are things missing with my doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists. I ask them, “Where is the education when you go to a university about honor culture? How do you help someone who went through honor culture?”

“Did you have as a part of your program any education about honor culture?” They say, “No.” I say, “How can you help me if you do not understand?” We have sects here in Sweden. It is similar to honor culture. How can the doctors be so clueless?

I ask, “Do you know how to treat someone who lived in a sect or an honor culture?” The answer: they do not know. So, how can they help me? It is the same if I go to the police, the hospital, the social services, or school. There must be proper education about victims of the honor culture.

We who live in a sect or an honor culture and want out: how can they see and help us? That is what is missing. More education about it.

Jacobsen: That is a difficult context for people. It is a failure on the part of the government rather than a failure on the part of the individual people.

Sandra: I know it is not totally the doctors’ fault, when there are no programs in their education about it. Whose fault is it? It is whoever put this program together. Is it the politicians? Who decides what topics you read at school?

Jacobsen: Even in Canada, it is asynchronous, whether in the development of psychology or psychiatry. In my province, we only, recently, banned conversion therapy. It is the purported therapy to make gay people straight; this only got banned this year, in part of the country.

Some see this as crazy, even in Canada. Given the context, there are some areas, where it takes time for developments and progress. To the point, where people, for instance, coming out of a fundamentalist background – and a culture and religion that bind themselves to honor culture – treat women differently than men, the scapegoating is more with the women than with the men.

Sandra: Yes, it is.

Jacobsen: Societies tend to be terrified of an educated woman and a sexually liberated woman. Most of the cultural restrictions are on women. Another way of doing it; if you look at the religious texts, whether Fatima, Ayesha, or Rachel, or Mother Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary, there are a few stories.

If they are there, they are an afterthought or an “also.” It is also in the culture as well as the texts. It is in the stories that tell people how to live their lives.

Sandra: I agree with you. You know, Scott, in the media, no one speaks about Christians; however, they talk constantly about Muslims. But honor culture does not exist in Muslim culture alone. It is in Christian culture too.

In Sweden, many of the women’s organizations who focus on helping victims of honor culture would not speak with me. They did not want to hear my story. That’s what I mean, Scott. They did not care about my story because it came from a Christian background rather than an Islamic one, which is what they’re used to.

When I tell my story to people, they assume I’m Muslim. They say, “Oh, so, you are Muslim.” No, I am not! I wonder why only Muslims get all the benefits of being believed? I exist, too. However, when they hear that my parents are Christians, they do not believe me, or assume that it would have been worse if I was a Muslim girl.

“At least you weren’t forced to wear a hijab.” How can that make it better? This piece of fabric means more than my entire existence to some people. It is horrible. As soon as you are a foreigner, people assume: Muslim.

Even now, when I get invited to parties with Swedish people, they say, “We are sorry. Because of your religion, how do you feel when we sit and eat pig?” I say, “First of all, I am an atheist. Thank you very much. My parents are Christians. Second of all, give me bacon and shut up!” [Laughing]

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Sandra: It is the same with alcohol. It is not because it is forbidden in my culture that I do not drink. I just hate alcohol. I do not like the taste. The first and last time I drank was when I was 19 years old. I ended up in the hospital. I had my stomach pumped. I got alcohol poisoning. Since then, I hate alcohol.

Yet, when I get invited to parties by Swedish people, they say, “Oh! Sorry Sandra, we forgot. We are sorry to drink alcohol in front of you.” They will never allow me to be Swedish. Whatever I do, it does not matter if I speak Swedish fluently or dress like them.

I will always be singled out. On the other hand, my culture and country do not want me, too. They single me out as well. “You are European. You are an atheist. You left your husband. You left your child. You did this and that…”

I feel lost sometimes. Where do I belong? I want to belong to something.

Jacobsen: It is common. In this sense, it happens. It is not common. In this sense, it does not happen the majority of the time. It is stuck between worlds: family, culture, country, religion-nonreligion, modernity seen more in European culture, and family life in Lebanon.

I am sorry for what you’ve gone through.

Sandra: Thank you, when you come to a new country as a child, it is more difficult than if you would come as an adult because you already have an identity. We who came as young try to find an identity here. Your parents try then to block you from becoming a part of the community as they see the new country as the enemy of morality.

You get alienated from both countries. You feel like you do not have roots in either country. I do not know what has to happen for this to change. At least, I want to be taken seriously when I talk about honor culture.

It cannot be that my voice isn’t heard because I was born Christian. Media has to stop writing articles that only talk about Islam. There is an honor culture in every religion. My tears and pain are as true as that of a Muslim girl.

Jacobsen: Oftentimes, I think the focus for most Europeans will be Christianity. Given Europe was, historically, Christian, people give it more of a pass when bad things happen within it, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, what have you.

In North America, the population is becoming less and less religious. People harbor more Christian heritage. They will be more likely to excuse it. I expect this more in Muslim and ex-Muslim household communities, even though they may have more Muslim heritage than Christian heritage as here.

That is what I heard. They do not register it. “I cannot get a job,” is not bad – though bad – as, “I am forced into marriage,” and so on.

Sandra: Even the human rights organizations that are fighting for gender equality, they only refer to what the Muslim women go through. There are ex-Muslim societies or atheist societies, or women organizations.

However, they only talk about how bad Islam is, especially for women. I have not seen a single article written to highlight honor culture within Christians from the Middle East, for example. Maybe, this article is a start. Who knows?

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sandra.

By Sandra El Khoury

TIME TO BURY YOUR PAST

When you least expect it, it comes to you

Making you realize what you’ve been through

It makes you angry, it makes you mad

Now you realize how much power they had

Even from the first day you were born

They forced you to wear Christ’s thorn

They watched you bleed, they saw your pain

They trapped your freedom and locked the chain

When you grow up, you understand

They forced you to obey, it was planned

They forced you to think you were meaningless

And you carry it inside you in your adultness

But no evil plan is without solution

Love becomes your bloodless revolution

Real friends take your hand when you lead the fight

Your loved ones become warriors of human right

So you will be at war all your life

Your inner strength becomes your knife

It is known that war never ends

Until one of the fighters descends

That person can never be you

Not after all they put you through

The day will come at last

When it is time to bury your past

By Sandra El Khoury

IN THE REFLECTION OF MY AFTERNOON TEA

In the reflection of my afternoon tea

I see a wild wave of the Mediterranean Sea

I see the place where I was born

Where my innocent childhood was torn

I see war exploiting the Lebanese

I see politicians as an infectious disease

But as a little girl that wasn’t my terror

It was my family who were the dangerous error

I wasn’t afraid of the bombs outside

Not even the images of all the people who died

I wasn’t afraid of the bloody river in the street

Not even the thousand bullet holes in concrete

I was afraid of the adults in my life

Who brought me up to become an obedient wife

To dream was forbidden in all sort or form

They stopped my wave in the Mediterranean storm

One day they moved me many miles away

Sweden were the country where they wanted to stay

I thought maybe now there will be a change

But their convictions became more and more strange

As they’ve taken my childhood, they now took my teenage years

A new wave was created by my salty tears

The more I grew the more harm they caused

All my hopes and dreams for a future they paused

I’ll not give you details of all the horrible things that took place

That will force me into the unconscious memory trace

All I can say is that I’m looking for the wild wave in me

That I saw today in my afternoon tea

That reflection was a reminder of what they couldn’t kill

And I get closer to reach it after every psychiatry bill

One day I will find the wild wave in me for sure

Because what they did will not hurt so much anymore

I will become more than I was meant to be

I will be the waves on all the tsunamis of the sea

So come then and try to stop me

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2022-04-25

Paragraph 109(d)-(e) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/11

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

d. Increase financial and other support from all sources for preventive, appropriate biomedical, behavioural, epidemiological and health service research on women’s health issues and for research on the social, economic and political causes of women’s health problems, and their consequences, including the impact of gender and age inequalities, especially with respect to chronic and non-communicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases and conditions, cancers, reproductive tract infections and injuries, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence, occupational health, disabilities, environmentally related health problems, tropical diseases and health aspects of ageing;

e. Inform women about the factors which increase the risks of developing cancers and infections of the reproductive tract, so that they can make informed decisions about their health;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration here is emphasizing the need to provide for the needs of women’s health within the a wide range of fields. It lists most of the relevant broad-based fields relevant to women’s health.

Furthermore, there is the focus on research once more. The ability to research with the most advanced technology remains an advanced industrial economy activity. The equipment and the personnel training is extraordinarily expensive.

Developing or poorer nations will, typically, lack the appropriate amount of resources to conduct the research. Without explicit statement, this is a colder reality about research into these various areas.

However, the provisions with financal assistance and resources relevant for education and prevention-of-sexual-diseases tools can help reduce the probability of widespread infection in poorer populations.

It is also cheaper than the research training for the personnel and for the equipment. In this, we have a particularly important message implied for the wealthier nations.

Based on international obligations and power, and resources, it is incumbent on them to conduct research and provide contraceptive resources in the best interests of all, to reduce the potential human costs in not doing the research and providing the sexual health tools.

The educational aspect, as noted, should also incorporate the facts about infection and cancer risks for the women. In this, women’s health is the focus baseed on the potentials for heavily negative harms to them.

But this is also about women to be persons, as per the UDHR, with autonomy, choice, freedoms, and those guaranteed by the stipulations of international documents.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year reviewin 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 109(b)-(c)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/11

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

b. Promote gender-sensitive and women-centred health research, treatment and technology and link traditional and indigenous knowledge with modern medicine, making information available to women to enable them to make informed and responsible decisions;

c. Increase the number of women in leadership positions in the health professions, including researchers and scientists, to achieve equality at the earliest possible date;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

When we look at the nature of the world and the situations in which we find the poorest of the poor and the various injustices and imbalances, collectively or globally, we can see some consistencies in them.

One is a negligence to the needs and demands, if known, of women. Interestingly, the information referenced alongside the research, treatment, and the technology is, in fact, the Indigenous knowledge.

This makes sense within the increasing relevance of the Indigenous perspective on a number of issues. There does, indeed, exist means by which to improve health outcomes with a culturally sensitive lens.

While, at the same time, there should be a keen and critical eye to things purported to be medicine and others which amount to non-medicine or ‘quackery’ – that which supposedly works and simply does not work.

But this raises some questions about the research and technology part. Technology simply amounts to some technique invented by human for a people-oriented purpose – something to make food, build a study building, help train the mind, or improve health outcomes over time.

Especially in some of the post-colonial contexts, the efficacy – as in good enough – of some treatments should provide the basic treatment for those ill and distrustful of those who resemble the colonizers of the past.

It is less about maximal health and more about optimal given human factors. Also, some medicines within a traditional setting do, in fact, improve health better than some known medicines based on centuries of people getting ill or dying in the worst form of trial-and-error to find out what herbs, and so on, work or do not.

At the center of all this, it is the sensibility of the rights of women and the ability to make autonomous decisions about their own lives and livelihoods. There are, as with 1995, more and more women entering into leadership positions, especially promising in one of the richest and most powerful nations the world has ever seen – the United States of America.

The urgency of the message here is rather striking within the international lens, recalling, of course, the United Nations as the main source of these forms of statements.

Countries’ representatives and, therefore, Member States signed onto the global work towards the furtherance of equality. But this will not come overnight or easily.

In fact, we will continue to see progress as well as reactionary pushback against international secular progress on the rights of women, whether from outright misogyny to simply sexist apathy/indifference to the plight of others while one’s own problems are more or less solved.

We’re in this together. Our collective wills should be oriented towards the same goals inasmuch as we can within the current context. But this does not mean pushing the interests of men out of the foci here.

In fact, the global data are quite clear. The zero sum thinking is illegitimate as more women in the workforce permits flexibility for men and women while also increasing the size of the national (and, thus, international) economic pie.

Basically, the emphasis on the moral argument here is one linked intimately with the economic argument. There simply is more built with more people able to freely become involved in the productive, and paid, economy.

It is in the interest of societies, communities, families, and men and children to have women empowered. No doubt about it.

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 and the optional protocol (1993).
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year reviewin 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
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.
UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 109(a)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/10

Strategic objective C.4.

Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health

Actions to be taken

109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:

Train researchers and introduce systems that allow for the use of data collected, analysed and disaggregated by, among other factors, sex and age, other established demographic criteria and socio-economic variables, in policy-making, as appropriate, planning, monitoring and evaluation;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 109 of the Beijing Declaration continues in similar content and tone to the prior ones but with an emphasis on the data. There can’t be good plans, implementations, updates, maintenance, and furtherance of rights without good data, seriously.

The basic premise in this is the need for the international and national systems, including individual experts and organizations, to work together to collect data, analyze it, and then parse it.

The categories will be the standard ones including sex, age, SES status, and so on. Each of these could be easily tracked, probably, and then utilized to garner some estimates as to the efficacy of some interventions over others in the advancement and empowerment of women via their health and wellness.

The changes in what can be implemented and how it can be implemented seem important for the improved rollout of updates to extant programs and initiatives as well as the provisions of new ones oriented towards women’s fundamental human rights.

The three closing stages are “planning, monitoring and evaluation.” For those familiar with this, which I assume is many, the notion of planning comes from good data to orient the plans in a comprehensive and complete fashion for the immediate and even long-term issues.

The monitoring helps to know where things went wrong, could be done better, and, potentially, even how to do them better right off the bat.

The evaluative criteria would be the aspects of the demographics mentioned above – age, sex, SES status, and so on – to find the aspects most impactful for women’s health. Something like a priority rank-ordering of problems for solution planning could be produced from this.

Thus, data matters, especially in women’s matters.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 108(n)-(p)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/10

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

n. Support programmes which acknowledge that the higher risk among women of contracting HIV is linked to high-risk behaviour, including intravenous substance use and substance-influenced unprotected and irresponsible sexual behaviour, and take appropriate preventive measures;

o. Support and expedite action-oriented research on affordable methods, controlled by women, to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, on strategies empowering women to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and on methods of care, support and treatment of women, ensuring their involvement in all aspects of such research;

p. Support and initiate research which addresses women’s needs and situations, including research on HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases in women, on women-controlled methods of protection, such as non-spermicidal microbicides, and on male and female risk-taking attitudes and practices.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This section of the Beijing Declaration continues to speak to the international and national level responsibility to the health and wellbeing of women through the furtherance of their human rights.

Taking this into account, there is the first emphasis on the support programmes with women in mind. Indeed, the education should, relative to the time, recognize the prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

It remains right in line with the recent set of articles on the education of girls and women about their own bodies, about sex, and about sexuality. All important to make independent and informed choices about their health.

One issue continues to be linked to this. The possibility of ignorance of contraception and other tools of safe and responsible sex and sexuality. These preventative measures can be the first line of defence against STIs and STDs, and unplanned pregnancies, and so on.

The affordability of contraception will remain a problem for, especially, young women and women in general. It is a general support of the inexpensive to the rich but costly to the poor – but impactful in life outcome – contraceptive methods.

Poorer women have a harder time in self-financing for contraception and other methodologies. With cuts in funding for relevant social services, these increased risks for the precariat or those living in penurious circumstances will become even further exacerbated.

While there is a lack of appropriate resources, the boundary between infection or unplanned pregnancy and not will become ever-thinner.

Also, the research into the best means by which to educate and support women where they’re at is important too. This includes on particular types of contraception and the odds of acquisition of a disease.

This provision of tools and education can result, potentially, in positive attitudinal and cultural practice changes.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 108(l)-(m)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/09

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

l. Design specific programmes for men of all ages and male adolescents, recognizing the parental roles referred to in paragraph 107 (e) above, aimed at providing complete and accurate information on safe and responsible sexual and reproductive behaviour, including voluntary, appropriate and effective male methods for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases through, inter alia, abstinence and condom use;

m. Ensure the provision, through the primary health-care system, of universal access of couples and individuals to appropriate and affordable preventive services with respect to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and expand the provision of counselling and voluntary and confidential diagnostic and treatment services for women; ensure that high-quality condoms as well as drugs for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases are, where possible, supplied and distributed to health services;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The role of the governments and the various international bodies or organizations is to work for the benefits of their constituencies, whether in part or whole. With the collection of them working in relative unison, the benefits should accrue to all.

It should in principle. It may not necessarily play out this way in every case. But the specific programmes listed in paragraph 107 can provide some minimal mapping for men to become fathers.

In even relatively poor data, most men and women still want to be parents. This leads to the honest conclusion of most men simply needing to be tracked in a healthy and an appropriate manner.

This will need to start early in order for parenthood to be both planned and grounded in safe and responsible sexual practices and actions. It all sounds so clinical. But it’s not, truly.

These simply refer to the knowledge and tools for men and women to be able to make informed choices about their own sexual paths in life. No one should have control over them in this regard; however, the should retain the right to accurate knowledge of safe sex practices and the rights and responsibilities expected within a sexual activity, e.g., consent, contraception, and so on.

These will likely be negotiated within each relationship. But, nonetheless, there will be a general intent for healthy boundaries, respect between partners, and so on. This becomes especially consequential in the cases of the young and sexually active being, potentially, exposed to STIs and STDs.

It is also a risky terrain to unplanned pregnancy and so on. This can create several problems in the long-term socio-economic livelihood of the individual woman or man, or both for that matter.

Next is the – aside from the education about condoms and other methods of birth control and safe sexual practices – is the connection or linkage with the health-care system.

Where the couples can have provision from it, they can appropriately and confidently afford the various preventative services regarding STDs and STIs.

This also includes the frequently mentioned HIV/AIDS epidemic. It was still a problem in 1995 and is now. There are a wide variety of problems but the international community continues to work on them.

Now, note the “universal access” as the phraseology here, the movements and political parties fighting for universal access to health care, in essence, fight for these internationalist stipulations, ideals, or goals

For those who want it, they should have some form of health care coverage of their sexual health. It is should be fundamental and primary, as this is the health of the next generations, of a major facet of the general wellbeing of the citizenry.

Tied into this, the mention of counselling, which could, of course, expand the health and wellness around sexuality too. Unfortunately, many cultures preach, encourage, and enforce a sexual culture of Puritanism on the one side and depravity on the other.

Either extreme seems inappropriate; in fact, most people seem to fit in a healthy range but this preaching, encouraging, and enforcing lead these otherwise informed, healthy, and rational individuals to pursue unhealthy forms of sexuality, seen through the statistical outcomes at times.

But without the support in counselling, social support services with provisions of condoms and other tools, and proper knowledge about anatomy, consent, the psychology and physical aspects of sex, and so on, many adults, even older adults, can be left without proper mentalities about a safe and responsible sexual life.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 108(i)-(k) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/09

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

i. Give all women and health workers all relevant information and education about sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS and pregnancy and the implications for the baby, including breast-feeding;

j. Assist women and their formal and informal organizations to establish and expand effective peer education and outreach programmes and to participate in the design, implementation and monitoring of these programmes;

k. Give full attention to the promotion of mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and, in particular, to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in paragraph 108 sections (i), (j), and (k) looks into the means by which women and healthcare professionals can work to reduce the levels of HIV/AIDS transmission through education and provision of accurate information for women to make informed decisions about their lives.

Without good data, women are left bereft of the possibility of making those informed choices for their lives. This can be potentially highly consequential in the life of a woman and the wellbeing of her baby, especially in regards to breastfeeding.

It is an important healthcare note about the health and wellness of women being intimately connected to the wellbeing of babies in the most crucial development years of the life of the baby.

There is an emphasis on proper peer education. This means the outreach through the formal and informal organizations and mechanisms in order to improve the outcomes for girls and women. Remembering, of course, all of the recommendations and courses of action work for the furtherance of the rights and equality and, therefore, life outcomes of women.

This translates into better families, communities, and societies based on international evidence. But this requires three stages of development. One is the planning stage. Another is the implementation of the designs. Still another, it is the monitoring of the outcomes to gauge the efficacy of the programs that have been implemented.

These lessons based on the monitoring of the outcomes can be used to refine the next stages of planning for the subsequent implementations, which will be monitored themselves and so on in a continuous loop of, in theory, or in principle, improved performance over time.

The various organizations on offer can be a boon these efforts. Indeed, these can be considered among the most effective actors in the advancement and empowerment of women educationally and otherwise.

It seems far too hard for even singular outstanding individuals to make significant dents on the problems faced by women.

As well, there is a focus or a stipulation on the need to provide some increased awareness of the prospects of the perceptions of men and women to one another. The idea of a reciprocal relationship in respect for one another’s talents, merits, capabilities, triumphs over tribulations, and so on.

A significant shift in this perception or a wider awareness would move the dial to a more equitable distribution of meritorious proclamations and praise for women and men.

This move can shift the conversation about the relations of the genders. But also, this can be important in the changing of the dynamics in sexuality as well. It may reduce the tensions in the power dynamics of the relationship.

In that, the adolescents mentioned in the final section are able to be properly informed about sex, protection, consent, and sexuality in order to make those informed and independent choices about their intimate lives.

This is a means by which to build one of those positive and responsible sex lives most parents, likely, want for their children as become fully-fleshed out adults. But one of the important points is the improved sexual relations early on in life through education about sex and sexuality for the young can deal with the pipeline issue, potentially, of one of the main problems identified as a social pathology in modern movements.

Then there are also the means by which to work in large coalitions and groups to reduce the level of discrimination in health outcomes for women with newborn babies or babies generally, again related to sexual health.

The progress made on each of these fronts remains an individual choice to come together in union with others or not to vigorously, over the long haul, make changes in the lives of women and, subsequently, of men.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 108(f)-(h) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/08

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

f. Facilitate the development of community strategies that will protect women of all ages from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases; provide care and support to infected girls, women and their families and mobilize all parts of the community in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic to exert pressure on all responsible authorities to respond in a timely, effective, sustainable and gender-sensitive manner;

g. Support and strengthen national capacity to create and improve gender-sensitive policies and programmes on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, including the provision of resources and facilities to women who find themselves the principal caregivers or economic support for those infected with HIV/AIDS or affected by the pandemic, and the survivors, particularly children and older persons;

h. Provide workshops and specialized education and training to parents, decision makers and opinion leaders at all levels of the community, including religious and traditional authorities, on prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and on their repercussions on both women and men of all ages;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The facilitation of the welfare of women and girls in the light of the, at the time, HIV/AIDS pandemic but which continues to be a problem for many people around the world. The building of locale-specific strategies for dealing with HIV/AIDS can be effective in the prevention of transmission and care, compassion, and concern through reduction of stigma for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

For those girls and women who have been infected, there is a call on the communities to act on this facilitation and work to prevent future occurrences of its spread through the population. Now, one of the issues plaguing is the spread of the diseases. But another layered one relates to institutions.

The culture, too, and the institutions have a lack of responsiveness to the needs of women and girls in regards to their health and wellness. This links into the section of the focus for this article today.

We can see the need to strengthen the national capacity of the gendered lens across institutions through their respective implementations of “policies and programmes” in relation to STIs and STDs. All important for the improved health and wellbeing of women.

In addition to this, we can see the developments of a spread in the caregiver responsibilities from mostly women to a more egalitarian split. Because the majority of the housework, childcare work, and the care of the old and sick sits firmly with women.

It is a burden thrust upon them unduly and unfairly. It is not from on high, or from down-low from some perspectives, but, rather, the conscious decisions of people in power and in culture to subordinate some of the most tedious caring work of the society to women. This can change with human decisions in a similar manner in which this has changed before.

Now, the educational aspect continues to crop up in the discussions in the Beijing Declaration. There is a continual need to focus on education because this remains one of the first forms of self-defence against lies and distortions as well as the mobilization around a common cause for gender equality, which is, 20 years after the Beijing Declaration, one of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the international community through the United Nations.

This education should be directed at all levels, “parents, decision makers and opinion leaders at all levels of the community, including religious and traditional authorities.” The reason simply is health and working with people where they’re at rather than enforcing a generalized mould on everyone.

However, it is in this that we can see the problems of prevention and the difficulty in education, because there has to be a general framework for the education and provisions for the public. It is in this pervasive attempt at education about, prevention of, and care for those infected by HIV/AIDS that the world can begin to reduce and eventually eliminate the “pandemic” of HIV/AIDS and continue the long battle against STIs and STDs plaguing much of the world and, in particular, the developing world with lifelong impacts on women and, if they have them, their offsprign and, thus, families and communities over generations. This can be solved, but only with diligent work.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 108(c)-(e)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/08

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

c. Encourage all sectors of society, including the public sector, as well as international organizations, to develop compassionate and supportive, non-discriminatory HIV/AIDS-related policies and practices that protect the rights of infected individuals;

d. Recognize the extent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in their countries, taking particularly into account its impact on women, with a view to ensuring that infected women do not suffer stigmatization and discrimination, including during travel;

e. Develop gender-sensitive multisectoral programmes and strategies to end social subordination of women and girls and to ensure their social and economic empowerment and equality; facilitate promotion of programmes to educate and enable men to assume their responsibilities to prevent HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The encouragement throughout the facets of society can be an important first step, alongside others, in the advancement and empowerment of women. The emphasis on the compassionate retains a particular resonance in a minor era of non-dispassionate and enflamed negative rhetoric about the opposition.

The compassion and supportive encouragement can help with the advancement of policies and practices that help among those most in need, e.g., those infected HIV/AIDS. It is a horrible disease if you ever read a small bit about it.

Different nations have a different set of concerns about it. Mostly, probably, around the prevalence of the disease and then the level of institutional or infrastructural support – speaking of medical and care related – for the individuals who suffer from HIV/AIDS infection.

Next, we have an impact on women through the discrimination and stigma around infection with HIV/AIDS. It is a form of magical thinking about the possibilities of contagion through being around women with HIV/AIDS.

The gendered lens – a common phrase in these conversational commentaries – is a frequent frame of reference for these documents, as these deal with the explicit or via negligence exclusion of women from the mainstream international human rights conversation.

It is incredibly important to bear these in mind, as the benefits to whole societies come from the explicit inclusion of women in the decision-making and power centers of the society.

For one, this makes use of the other half of the species. For two, this creates a more level playing field for the society. We cannot do without the efforts and input of everyone for the advancement towards solutions of some of the most pressing problems in the modern period.

This implies a significant shift in the relation of the sexes or the genders in more general terms. The explicit exclusion of women from influence and platforms on an equal basis with the men has been a continual problem throughout the history of all cultures in the world.

Often, this comes with religious injunctions. But there are larger issues related to this. The problems of overpopulation and excessive restrictions on the choices of, at least, half of the population prevent the flourishing of the nations around the world.

In literal terms, the restriction of women has been a net negative on the progression, technologically and economically, of the species with explicit moral implications about the rightness-wrongness of the repression or “social subordination of women and girls.”

The programs and initiatives of the world system should keep the flourishing of women and girls in mind because of the basis of equality of the sexes can only come in the sincere listening ear and inclusion of the bodies and minds of women in the centers of influence and power in the world, and then replicating this in the social milieu of the nation and within the family structures. Some say, “It starts in the home,” but only in part.

It starts wherever someone is at, which makes the access points of equality in all aspects of interpersonal, and intrapersonal, life. These can emerge in the foundation of educational programs geared with men in mind for the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially in the basics of how HIV/AIDS spreads from men to women and how the prevention of infection of others is a personal and collective responsibility.

All these “multisectoral programmes and strategies” may not solve the issues in the short-term but set a solid foundation for the reduction via prevention of the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases while simultaneously working on the central equality of the sexes issues of the subordination of women in sociocultural life.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 108(a)-(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/07

Strategic objective C.3.

Undertake gender-sensitive initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, and sexual and reproductive health issues

Actions to be taken

108. By Governments, international bodies including relevant United Nations organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

a. Ensure the involvement of women, especially those infected with HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases or affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in all decision-making relating to the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases;

b. Review and amend laws and combat practices, as appropriate, that may contribute to women’s susceptibility to HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases, including enacting legislation against those socio-cultural practices that contribute to it, and implement legislation, policies and practices to protect women, adolescents and young girls from discrimination related to HIV/AIDS;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In paragraph 108, the emphasis is on the nation-state, the United Nations, and a wide variety of other actors important to the flourishing of women from the top down. This is a top-heavy section.

For the women infected with HIV/AIDS, or any other sexually transmitted disease, this can be treatable in some cases and fatal in others depending on the particular form of sexually transmitted disease.

Thinking about the impacts of the life circumstances of many women, an STI/STD infection is a serious issue. It can create a situation in which there is a reduction in the chance of the woman to pursue a life course free from stigma in many cultures, or with treatment in many others – some with both problems.

Thus, in regards to decision-making relevant to women’s health around STIs and STDs, women should have a front seat. There deserve to be a part, and the main one, of the conversation regarding their own health.

Because men may not necessarily know the collective experiences or circumstances of the majority of women within their own nation. Compassion and sympathy are certainly possible and the main bridge, but the representation of women in all levels of decision-making relevant to them is important for the proper development and implementation of programs and initiatives for reduction of the rates of STIs and STDs in women.

The next section looks at the laws and practices, thus legal and cultural. The laws of the land, historically and in the present, have been, can be, and are discriminatory against women in a variety of contexts.

This can even emerge in some of the more subtle forms with the restrictions on women’s explicit in the laws. It is a discrimination via omission in this sense. There can be brutal social and cultural practices too.

Take, for an extreme example, the ‘corrective’ rape of women, even lesbians, who simply do not conform to the sexual orientation of the dominant heterosexual culture in which they find themselves. These women, in particular, can be subjected to a form of rape thought, within in the culture – wrongly, to shift the sexual orientation of the woman to one of like heterosexual men.

Simply does not work, isn’t the case, and can, sometimes, leave these women, through no fault of their own, infected with HIV/AIDS, it devastates their lives and leaves them as third-class citizens within their countries, where before they already harboured minimal consideration as human beings.

It is this form of culture and the surrounding laws that may not permit it but, certainly, do not openly condemn and punish it, which is the problem. There should be a shift in global culture seeping into the national legislation, policies, and practices in order to instantiate the enfranchisement of women as global citizens equal in stature and worth to the men.

The idea posited in the UDHR and in the Utilitarian ethic of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, and enshrined in the work of the mainstay ethics of the religions in the world, in the ethical precepts or principles, found in the Golden Rule. If men would like to enjoy treatment as human beings, then women reserve the same right to enjoyment to treatment as persons.

For those women and girls already affected by HIV/AIDS, this, certainly, can hinder their advancement in a number of domains in life; however, the change in the global culture can be a significant step to the introduction of the practical realities of the equality of women and girls, of the equality of women and girls. Nothing to it besides that simple ask.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 107(o)-(q) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/07

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

107. By Governments, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, the mass media, the private sector and relevant international organizations, including United Nations bodies, as appropriate:

o. Create awareness among women, health professionals, policy makers and the general public about the serious but preventable health hazards stemming from tobacco consumption and the need for regulatory and education measures to reduce smoking as important health promotion and disease prevention activities;

p. Ensure that medical school curricula and other health-care training include gender-sensitive, comprehensive and mandatory courses on women’s health;

q. Adopt specific preventive measures to protect women, youth and children from any abuse – sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking and violence, for example – including the formulation and enforcement of laws, and provide legal protection and medical and other assistance.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Here we are, once again, on this long journey, dear reader: with some examination into the needed solutions on the question of women, one of the first lines of defense against regression and, in fact, offense in the long battle for the implementation of women’s rights is the knowledge of girls and women about their fundamental human rights as women.

Indeed, we can see direct attempts to keep women uninformed about a) their rights and b) their recourse to the violation of their fundamental human rights. It is an issue to deal with the basic problem of the health and wellbeing of some women.

The awareness can come from a variety of places. Not limited to the general populace themselves but also coming the legitimate health authorities, the drawing of a line between what is proper health information within the best medical science to date and what is simply junk medical ‘science.’

One of easiest means by which women can be empowered is through the knowledge of preventable health hazards, as listed. But there should be a robust educational system and public health campaigns to combat this public health hazard.

There is also the need for the medical and health professionals, starting from the training institutes and postsecondary education curricula, to have a gender sensitivity to the problems of the women.

The gendered lens is important as women’s health needs are different, especially as regards reproductive health rights implementation.

Then, as per the SIG Human Rights calles we need to focus on the protection of women and the young from forms of abuse including “sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking and violence” because these are incredibly degrading and traumatizing acts against other human beings.

Our fundamental human rights come with respect and dignity inherent to being human beings are part of the basic documents in international human rights documents

The prevention of these crimes and punishment of them when happening, and then the treatment of those who have gone through them amount to a comprehensive package for the respect of the human rights of women and others more often subject to these violations.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 107(m)-(n) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/06

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

m. Establish and/or strengthen programmes and services, including media campaigns, that address the prevention, early detection and treatment of breast, cervical and other cancers of the reproductive system;

n. Reduce environmental hazards that pose a growing threat to health, especially in poor regions and communities; apply a precautionary approach, as agreed to in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,/18 and include reporting on women’s health risks related to the environment in monitoring the implementation of Agenda 21;/19

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The emphasis is the global authorities for this section of the 107th paragraph. The establishing of programmes and services to move the dial towards the promotion of women’s health a lot.

Many nations around the world lack the proper provisions for the health and wellness of women. It is crucial for the health and wellbeing and, thus, the rights of women for programs and initiatives to be created with their health in mind.

Another methodology aside from the construction of entirely new programs is the bolstering of ones already in place. For example, if there is the legality of safe and equitable access to abortion for women, then the support of the abortion clinics can help with the implementation of women’s rights.

The other health system checks can be put in place for the help with the actualization of women’s rights through improved screening for some of the deadliest health issues out there, which are those connected to cancers including the ones of the reproductive system.

The other portions of this section of paragraph 107 link to the environmental hazards, which, of course, will connect more intimately to the developing rather than the developed countries around the world.

The impact of poverty cannot be understated as poor circumstances and a toxic environment can set girls and women on life paths and much poorer health and, in fact, could impact the ability to partake of education and work because of the consequences of the poor health.

This can produce a problem of more girls and women in penurious circumstances, where they already comprise the majority in these circumstances. For those with an interest in more of these details on solutions and international documents, I would highly recommend the above-mentioned documents.

The health risks to women can impact their trajectories in life. But the poor and the developing countries are the ones with the populations most probable to be impacted by the issues of environmental degradation and lack of proper health standards in living environments.

This is an international issue.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 107(j)-(l)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/06

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

j. Ensure that health and nutritional information and training form an integral part of all adult literacy programmes and school curricula from the primary level;

k. Develop and undertake media campaigns and information and educational programmes that inform women and girls of the health and related risks of substance abuse and addiction and pursue strategies and programmes that discourage substance abuse and addiction and promote rehabilitation and recovery;

l. Devise and implement comprehensive and coherent programmes for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis, a condition that predominantly affects women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Looking at the means by which an individual child can have sufficient nutritional and caloric intake to learn properly, the early stipulations in this particular section retain a peculiar resonance with me, as the children without proper nutrition may live with certain forms of a cognitive deficit for the rest of their lives.

That is, the kids with good food can benefit more from the education available to them than others. This is one of the cheapest and most consequential means by which to empower children who become adults, citizens, and taxpayers in nations throughout the world.

This is an important notion built into the mention of the “adult literacy programmes and school curricula.” Consider the girls, or the boys, without adequate nutrition all over the world, for cheap, they couldSmae have a much healthier and longer life than otherwise if they have or are provided with the appropriate early life nutrition.

It takes proper knowledge on the part of the community around them as well, as the individuals within the community cannot be expected to have perfect or comprehensive knowledge of good nutrition within every specific locale around the world.

These health campaigns in early life nutrition should be connected to the education on the potential risks in substance abuse and addiction, which, as a Canadian hits home because it, can be seen in the opioid crisis striking many of the city centres now.

Thousands dead among the young population of this country and many other nations around the world. These education programs, in personal opinion, should not lie to the young while not working to scare the young.

There should be proper information with a harm reduction methodology in order to work to reduce the number of the addicted, then thrown to the side by society, and the dead and those living on the streets.

This isn’t cold but simply the factual nature of substance misuses. Proper education without simplistic messages of “Just say no!” should be discouraged while comprehensive educational programs and health provisions should be put in place for the health and wellness of the young.

Same with the late-in-life programs set forth in the osteoporosis educational paradigm. There is a particular importance in the older cohorts of women to be informed, aware, of the higher possibility of osteoporosis for them compared to men.

This has been true for a long time and needs serious consideration, as fractures and breakages of bone for the elderly are significant problems in advanced age and could cause a series of other consequences to late-life health connected to the (potential) need for surgery and additional care for the woman.

All connected to one another. The basic premise in this section is the focus on the proper education of the young and provision for them in terms of the appropriate nutrition in their diet.

The other is the focus on the, mostly, adolescent and middle-aged issue of drug misuse, overdoses, deaths connected to drugs, and so on, which, in the more modern period, pertains more to the need of a harm reduction focus to prevent some of the serious consequences of ill-health impacting the much of the world now.

It has been called out both by the UN, the WHO, major internnational figures, and major cities’ health authorities within my own country. In addition, there is also the emphasis on the specific health concerns of the elderly women in terms of the risks for osteoporosis, which is non-trivial – akin to a focus, but not equal to an emphasis on, men and heart disease.

All important and part of the general educational process towards a more enlightened global populace about health and wellness.

–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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2022-04-25

The Good of Writing and the Bad of Writing, Sara Al Iraqiya

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/05

Sara Al Iraqiya is a USA-based 2nd generation Iraqi-American social scientist, writer, and activist. Raised under Sunni Islam and a survivor of attempted radicalization in American mosques and centers — she has both lived experience as well as academic experience with Islam. By age 20, after gaining the freedom to live autonomously and exercising her right to protect herself, she left Islam altogether.

Sara aims to educate her fellow Americans and lovers of Western civilization on the horrors, inequalities, and injustices that occur in Western-based mosques and Islamic centers. Sara has been published in two languages (and counting). A world traveller, she briefly lived in France, Jordan, and even Cuba in order to complete her Masters of Arts in Global Affairs specializing in Global Culture and Society. Sara Al Iraqiya has been published in Conatus News and Spain’s ALDE Group.

Some time ago, Al Iraqiya and I talked about the general topic important to the two of us. That is, the subject matter of the written word. In particular, her early life becoming interested in writing and developing as a writer.

Al Iraqiya said, “As soon as I could take a pen to paper. I recall a project in elementary school where we learned about the concept of the biography versus the autobiography. We were asked to write a ‘tentative autobiography’ up to retirement age. I left the graded assignment which was bound like a small booklet in my family home. My dad read it.”

Since that time, she was encouraged to write and share the productions with others. Her father’s sister, her aunt, is a writer who Al Iraqiya shares a bond with. It becomes a bond between the two of them with both human rights and the writing. She notes the shared quirks of the writer, which is, as she states, a cliché.

When I asked about the demarcation between a good and a bad writer, and even a greater writer, Al Iraqiya shifted the formulation of the response into the idea of no true good or bad writer in existence.

“Perhaps a bad writer is one who commits plagiarism — I really have zero tolerance for that. Also, I understand that many folks use ghostwriters, but that concept has just gone over my head. A great writer takes his or her time. They feel emotionally and perhaps in a sense spiritually moved by words,” Al Iraqiya stated, “A great writer is either extremely afraid or extremely unafraid of his or her feelings. The point is to not be afraid to record those sentiments and share them with the world. These are simply my own personal observations.”

There were some new events, at the time, in the life of Al Iraqiya. Now, she works in television, even while not owning a television. She tries to remain connected to the global liberty movements. Those peoples proposing means by which to increase general freedom for the intellectual benefit of all.

Al Iraqiya exclaimed, “I moved to New York City — the Big Apple! I absolutely love it because I can be fucking weird and it’s normal here, you know? The city is full of candour. Washington, D.C. was a bit uppity but again I will be corny and say going back to D.C. is very sentimental for me and I enjoy my frequent visits back to my nation’s capital. It is a place I called home for 20+ years.”

Also, she loved Mount Vernon in D.C. while also enjoying getting away from the pervasive noise of NYC. I asked about the article most prominent in her memory, in terms of having pride in writing. Without skipping a beat, she said “Muslim-American Femicide and the Intersectional Feminist Enablers” for Conatus News.

“Because it pissed people off. But many of those same people actually took a step back, questioned their own beliefs, and thought critically about why their visceral reaction was adverse. Thought provoking — I think every writer wants to be thought-provoking. Also, it lit a fire under the asses of feminists who did not realize their own bigotry, hypocrisy, and yes — misogyny. I wrote that article for my missing friend.”

This “missing friend” extended into writing the article for young women who died for “authenticity” and who “suffer in silence.” She did receive some feedback for the article, and enjoys the civil discourse, critique, or compliment of her writing.

I noted a ubiquitous fact of history. Men being the “source of a lot of inspiring work and a lot of horrifying catastrophes.” I asked about the encouragement of a healthier sense of masculinity in men.

Al Iraqiya reflected and said, “It was the men in my life who inspired me to be the woman I am today. Male family members, male friends, and male mentors. What they all had in common, when I was sort of an isolated walking stereotype of a writer, was ‘Sara you need to get out there!’ They really pumped me up! I cannot thank the wonderful men in my life enough.”

The one common trait for the good men in life, to her, is having a solid work ethic. For the boys transforming, hopefully, into mature men, she stated the importance of recognizing the healthy sense of masculinity that makes the most sense to you (the man).

“Some men embrace what many call a ‘feminine’ side. Why are we calling it that? Some examples of men who have been described as ‘feminine’ would be artists who incorporate striking and flamboyant physical appearances such as David Bowie, Prince, and Freddie Mercury but I say this is still masculinity. Because it is a male doing it. Merely existing is masculinity,”

She sees the David, Prince, and Freddie as “go-getters and trailblazers” for their time in the history of the culture. They are remembered for it. Thus, masculinity, Al Iraqiya argues, is not simply about being the tough and gruff, rough and tumble dude. A real man, in this sense, permits flexibility in presentation but always shows “vision, determination, and innovation.”

“Too often I’ve seen men from certain cultural or religious enclaves where there is a pressure to — and I’ll be frank — there is a pressure in those communities to treat women like garbage in order to be considered a so-called ‘real man.’ This is detrimental to something very important for a man’s growth — his relationships with women,” Al Iraqiya concluded, “You have to take a step back from any toxic communities and practice intellectual autonomy. It is the most precious thing we as free human beings have. I think the healthiest thing a man can do is think for himself. Stay away from counterproductive modes of thought. Just act natural.”

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2022-04-25

Ask Sara 1 — Building Early An Career & Portfolio

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/05

Sara Al Iraqiya is a USA-based 2nd generation Iraqi-American social scientist, writer, producer, and activist. Raised under Sunni Islam and a survivor of attempted radicalization in American mosques and centers — she has both lived experience as well as academic experience with Islam. Sara aims to educate her fellow lovers of Western civilization on the horrors, inequalities, and injustices that occur in geographically Western mosques and Islamic centers.

Sara has been published in two languages (and counting). A world traveller, she briefly lived in France, Jordan, and even Cuba in order to complete her Masters of Arts in Global Affairs specializing in Global Culture and Society. Sara Al Iraqiya’s has been published in Conatus News and Spain’s ALDE Group. She has also been featured on CRTV and Compound Media.

This session started on the prominent media outlets and publications. Al Iraqiya has experience with writing pitches and developing a voice in the large online environment seen now.

Al Iraqiya’s opening advice, “Write up a ‘pitch,’ watermark it accordingly, and send out your pitches to whoever will read them. Be a loud mouth — talk to people. In the past, perhaps the advice was ‘slow and steady wins the race.’ Today, that is outdated advice. The faster you can move up, the faster you should move up. Accept any and all internships in relation to writing or whatever your media or journalistic endeavour may be.”

Al Iraqiya sees the potential in internships for young people. The possibility to acquire valuable early career experience, beneficial to later career development and advancement. However, she notes the unpaid nature of many of them, which, of course, remains one of the common complaints about them.

However, she continued with a nuanced shift in perspective on school and paid work, and unpaid internships and paid work. The work and school combination reflects the admixture of an unpaid internship and paid work at a less-than-pleasurable job. She remarked some manner of greater-reward-than-loss with the sacrifices.

The next stage of this sessions was on the working environment of the larger publications or outlets. That is, the modern work environment is somewhat the same and somewhat different to the work environments of prior generations. Nonetheless, teamwork, cooperation, coordination, and so on, become necessary for a harmonious work environment.

“The role of the internet in the way we communicate, in my experience, is a wonderful thing. One can work remotely for example with a large, global cooperative but can easily connect via social media platforms. I did this with Conatus News,” Al Iraqiya stated, “And, of course, because it is a global team you will hear from many, as you say asynchronous voices as bias is always present and it is largely shaped by our environment.”

She continued to note the continual publication of different materials in different ways over time. There will be a need, in the new electronic work environment, to be comfortable with working in different time zones. Also, the virtue of patience has become ever-more important in the current media landscape.

Thus, Al Iraqiya recommended, as emphasis, the need for internships once more. It is also relevant to keep apace and in-contact with fellow writers.

Al Iraqiya concluded, “Why? Because it is fun and everyone wins. You may disagree with your peers, agree with them, though you disagreed with them but they opened your eyes to new possibilities, and perhaps you return that favour. It is all highly rewarding.”

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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 107(g)-(i)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/04

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

g. Recognize the specific needs of adolescents and implement specific appropriate programmes, such as education and information on sexual and reproductive health issues and on sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, taking into account the rights of the child and the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents as stated in paragraph 107 (e) above;

h. Develop policies that reduce the disproportionate and increasing burden on women who have multiple roles within the family and the community by providing them with adequate support and programmes from health and social services;

i. Adopt regulations to ensure that the working conditions, including remuneration and promotion of women at all levels of the health system, are non-discriminatory and meet fair and professional standards to enable them to work effectively;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The recognition of the needs of the young, or the acknowledgement of unique requirements in their development, is important in the respect of the rights of the child. The education system should set forth in order to empower them.

The power to be informed with empirically grounded and rational truths about the world and then make informed choices about their own lives. This is freedom. This is also the responsibility of the older generations, the government, and the family in the proper education of the nation’s young.

This is particularly consequential and acutely important on the issues of sexuality and reproduction. The burden on the child’s life and on the healthcare system with bad sex education leading to the transmission of STIs and STDs is non-trivial.

The policies and political conversation should work within this framework. Bad information leading to misinformed young people and, hence, negative consequences to the individuals and the society; good information leading to information youth and, thus, positive consequences to the individuals and the society.

But it should also be born in mind: women work within a more difficult situation post-birth and family formation, as they work, still, in the home, with the care of the children, and bear this burden while continuing to increasingly dominate the education and work world.

It is not a glass ceiling for men or women at the bottom, but a glass ceiling for women at the top and a motivational ceiling – self-imposed for a variety of reasons – of men from the bottom to the top.

The work to expand health policies and include more people within the sphere of consideration of health should emerge in both the health and social services. While, at the same time, the inclusion of regulations out in the professional world can improve the conditions for women, the outcomes for women.

One of the most specific points is about women working within the healthcare system. The focus is on the provisions of “remuneration and promotion” of women in order for them to thrive in the workplace and the world.

More finances, more prestige and status, women can begin to attain some of the vaunted benefits held by most men at present, though women continue to enter into and will most likely dominate middle management as they do with the part-time, low-status, and menial jobs with low death risks.

The boundaries and borders, or regulations, set for the women in the professional realm can help be done through the adoption of strict professional standards for women to be able to work in an effective way: to complete their work in a timely manner with a high-quality output.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 107(e)-(f) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/04

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

e. Prepare and disseminate accessible information, through public health campaigns, the media, reliable counselling and the education system, designed to ensure that women and men, particularly young people, can acquire knowledge about their health, especially information on sexuality and reproduction, taking into account the rights of the child to access to information, privacy, confidentiality, respect and informed consent, as well as the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents and legal guardians to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in conformity with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; ensure that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child are a primary consideration;

f. Create and support programmes in the educational system, in the workplace and in the community to make opportunities to participate in sport, physical activity and recreation available to girls and women of all ages on the same basis as they are made available to men and boys;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The central points of these sections of paragraph 107 are the proper preparation and delivery of the information on health. These come in the standard channels of education, probably K-12 or its equivalent, and the popular press or the media.

In the cases of more specific ones, there is the need to have public health campaigns. For instance, with the nations having the devoted resources, the vaccinations require extra combat against aspects of the religious right and the liberal left who do not give their children vaccinations or take vaccinations themselves.

These individuals, in particular, become public health hazards. There is a sense in which the fundamental basis for the education of the public comes with the willingness of most of the public to trust in its institutions and professionals.

Typically, this works. But with vaccinations and some other medical information, it, certainly, can be a difficulty. There should be quality education, good counselling, robust public information campaigns, and socio-cultural denouncement of the misinformation and disinformation campaigns happening around the world with real impacts on the health and wellness of women.

I do not simply mean some fundamentalist religious leaders claiming women driving causes orgasms and, thus, the orgasms causing earthquakes, so women shouldn’t drive. I mean the ones around the idea of abortion being the cause of breast cancer. This, at the present time, is a deliberate, malicious lie with harmful impacts on the health and wellbeing of women.

As noted by the American Cancer Society:

The results of studies looking at the possible link between breast cancer and induced abortion often differ depending on how the study was done. Cohort studies and studies that used records to determine the history of abortions have not found an increased risk. Some case-control studies, however, have found an increase in risk.

These lies cause problems. Even in purported soothsayers and truthtellers, the falsehoods abound and create problems in the overall wellbeing of women, especially in regards to making free, prior, and informed decisions about their healthcare and make those choices relevant to health, including reproductive health.

Now, the nuance comes in the form of access about sexuality and reproduction linked to the rights of the child. It is important for privacy and confidentiality with respect for consent to be basic premises in the provision of health.

It comes with the rights of being a parent, the responsibilities. Some may complain about individuals arguing for their rights because this ignores responsibilities. Unfortunately, this, either wittingly or not, ignored the premise of rights as, many times, having concomitant responsibilities and, therefore, rights derive responsibilities but not vice versa.

As most children move through the normal stages of development, the responsibilities of parents and the rights of children shift until adulthood for the child of the parent. But the main or “primary” interest is the rights of the child.

The educational system should work in tandem with the general community and the parents through the inclusion of the higher quality information about sexuality and reproduction for the sake of the children.

Also, and on different notes of accessibility, the education system should provide the opportunity for the child to participate in a wide range of physical activities and endeavours. As for boys, then for girls, as for men, then for women, this is the point of freedom and individual rights (and responsibilities), which forms the basis for a freer and more just society.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraph 107(b)-(d) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/03

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

b. Pursue social, human development, education and employment policies to eliminate poverty among women in order to reduce their susceptibility to ill health and to improve their health;

c. Encourage men to share equally in child care and household work and to provide their share of financial support for their families, even if they do not live with them;

d. Reinforce laws, reform institutions and promote norms and practices that eliminate discrimination against women and encourage both women and men to take responsibility for their sexual and reproductive behaviour; ensure full respect for the integrity of the person, take action to ensure the conditions necessary for women to exercise their reproductive rights and eliminate coercive laws and practices;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The development of policies for improved social and human development, and education access and employment opportunities can be a powerful move towards reducing the level of poverty among women, especially, for instance, among young women, rural women, mothers, and single mothers.

The improved financial or economic status can also enhance the possibility for decent healthcare or a reduction in poor health with, perhaps, less financial stresses and strains in life. This is good for the woman’s health.

It can also be good, if a mother, good for the children’s and family’s health with better health and wellness of the mother. Now, there is an ongoing move to get further support in the home and with the kids from the men. This comes with a lament about the lack of support, which is true in general; however, there remain positives.

For example, does this problem remain the same or as bad as before? In other words, have men retained the entitlement of not providing support in-home care and with childcare or not? By several indices, in objective terms, it is bad, still, but, in trendline terms, it is improving and, thus, good.

The laws, the institutions, the cultural norms, and the social mores that promote discrimination against women are functioning in one and could, with some effort, be utilized for the opposite through the encouragement of women to actualize and exercise their fundamental human rights as well as promote responsible sexual activity on the part of men and women with consent, contraception knowledge, and so on.

The reduction in discrimination against women can be a powerful catalyst for the exercising of fundamental human rights. Indeed, if we look at the nuanced view of an important upcoming moral voice, Rebecca Traister, the anger of women can be, and certainly has been, a powerful catalytic force for the social movements in, at least, American history.

This could be extended to other parts of the world. When we look into the forms of reproductive rights and coercive laws and practices around sex enforced on women much less than the men, we can see the development of a problem or set of issues.

One in which the men have more tacit social ‘rights’ over women’s bodies than women can have over their own bodies. But this isn’t the focus for women’s rights; it is about the ability of women to know about and exercise their fundamental rights, and for those autonomous choices about their bodies to be respected.

If we look at the more advanced industrial economies, we can note the ways in which women and men differ in some distinct ways in life choices, but we can also see the boon to, for one example, the base level of the productive economy.

With more hands and minds in the economic system, the GDP of the nation rises. It creates a more productive society, as a basic rule of thumb, when women enter into the paid economy.

Furthermore, this raises some other fundamental questions about the nature of paid work. Should women be paid for the currently unpaid work or simply accept their lot as unpaid maid and babysitter?

Many women may think and say, “How about, ‘No’?” That seems more than reasonable. If anyone has babysat for an extended time or educated the young, or worked in home care on a continual basis, they can attest to the extensive level of work and, certainly, the work is difficult enough to qualify for some subsidies or pay, especially as this is the care and raising of the next generation of taxpayers.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 107(a)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/03

Strategic objective C.2.

Strengthen preventive programmes that promote women’s health

Actions to be taken

a. Give priority to both formal and informal educational programmes that support and enable women to develop self-esteem, acquire knowledge, make decisions on and take responsibility for their own health, achieve mutual respect in matters concerning sexuality and fertility and educate men regarding the importance of women’s health and well-being, placing special focus on programmes for both men and women that emphasize the elimination of harmful attitudes and practices, including female genital mutilation, son preference (which results in female infanticide and prenatal sex selection), early marriage, including child marriage, violence against women, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, which at times is conducive to infection with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, discrimination against girls and women in food allocation and other harmful attitudes and practices related to the life, health and well-being of women, and recognizing that some of these practices can be violations of human rights and ethical medical principles;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The health and wellbeing of girls and women, especially in a knowledge-based economy, are intimately linked to twinned-up with the quality and ubiquity of the educational provisions available to them. This particular section of paragraph 107 deals with the means by which women and girls can be advanced and also self-empower (few will do the studying for them).

The ability to earn an education, for many families around the world, is a great honour and boost to the sense of self, self-confidence, and moves someone, typically, further towards self-actualization. The chance to get some education, especially regarding her own health, is one of the most consequential moves for women, too.

It becomes the basis for making independent or autonomous choices in regards to reproduction. The decisions to have children or not, when, how many, and under what circumstances become one of the most consequential in a woman’s life.

It is a fundamental right to be in control over one’s own body, as most men are, and also in who one is intimate with or not. But we can continually see this violated with the cases of female genital mutilation, in the tens of millions, and the preference of son consequences with female infanticide and then the sex selection for boys over girls.

This happens in both religious and secular circumstances, by the way; thus, the phenomenon crosses two of the biggest divides known in the world. The consequences of child marriage are devastating as well, cutting off the life prospects of a girl right at the root, truncating her.

Furthermore, there has been the ongoing Social Interest Group Human Rights calls focusing on violence against women in general with an emphasis for the past two or more months on physical violence against women.

It is, in this, where we find them – women – having continuing problems of vulnerability in a number of domains, especially tragic showing in the cases of “sexual exploitation, sexual abuse,” and other forms of sexual violence against women.

Here we find the starkly disproportionately negative treatment of women around the world, it requires an extensive public relations system to ignore, downplay, or divert attention from these facts.

Then, not only in education but in food allocation, women will, often, be given less than the men. It can even come in the subtle and harmful attitudes followed by practices with women impacted more negatively than men in health, well-being, and, thus, life outcomes.

It is important to recognize and acknowledge women’s rights as fundamentally human rights and then move towards the implementation and actualization of those rights linked to some of the basic medical ethical precepts – such as “do no harm” – in order to provide the upcoming and adult populations of women the best chance at success in life to create the more equal world desired by much of the international consensus without waffling or holding women back in any way.

–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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2022-04-25

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 106(w)-(y)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/02

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

w. Promote and ensure household and national food security, as appropriate, and implement programmes aimed at improving the nutritional status of all girls and women by implementing the commitments made in the Plan of Action on Nutrition of the International Conference on Nutrition,/17 including a reduction world wide of severe and moderate malnutrition among children under the age of five by one half of 1990 levels by the year 2000, giving special attention to the gender gap in nutrition, and a reduction in iron deficiency anaemia in girls and women by one third of the 1990 levels by the year 2000;

x. Ensure the availability of and universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation and put in place effective public distribution systems as soon as possible;

y. Ensure full and equal access to health-care infrastructure and services for indigenous women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Food insecurity can make people desperate and commit acts of desperation. The need for robust creation of food, which is done, needs to coincide with robust transport around the world, which is not done or, at least, efficiently.

It strikes at the heart – always found this an interesting phrase – of the problems for girls and women. It hits at the stomach – a bit more apt – of the proper development of girls and women. In that, without good food, nutritional intake, girls will not develop as fully as they could otherwise.

It is in this sense that the potential for severe to moderate malnutrition is a serious concern when looking at the health status of girls and women compared to the rest of the population. A malnourished cannot perform as fully in school and becomes a woman unable to fulfill her true potential.

This gender gap in nutrition can, and should be closed., also with regards to the universalization of the access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation. These are not huge requests, as the technology exists and, likely, the distribution networks exist and, hence, simply need some social activism and political will to advance these efforts.

These provisions should be part of the mainstay of the “public distribution systems” as this would improve the health and wellness of the vast majority of the population, and lower the burdens on other infrastructure in the medium and the long term.

Following this, we can see the respect for the full and equal access to the relevant healthcare systems for women of Indigenous origin, of 3-3.5% of the global population; thus, non-trivial and important to be born in mind.

–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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2022-04-25

Paragraphs 106(u)-(v) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/02

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

u. Rationalize drug procurement and ensure a reliable, continuous supply of high-quality pharmaceutical, contraceptive and other supplies and equipment, using the WHO Model List of Essential Drugs as a guide, and ensure the safety of drugs and devices through national regulatory drug approval processes;

v. Provide improved access to appropriate treatment and rehabilitation services for women substance abusers and their families;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The reliable provisions among governments, NGOs, and other organizations are important for the improved health and wellbeing of the women around the world. This, inevitably, yields benefits not only to the women throughout their entire lifecycle but also for the children most will birth and raise, the families that develop as a result, and, thus, the communities and societies too.

As an aside, we should collectively get serious about the need to provide for the needs of women in terms of unpaid labour or work with childcare and homecare. It is a non-trivial aspect of the work life of women. Indeed, one can see this as a situation in which the work appears to never end for women.

A rational program for drug procurement – even a national pharmacare program – would be a good means by which to improve the health and wellness of the lives of women. This can coincide with following the various drug guides and research and safety measures to ensure safe development and delivery of drugs too.

Now, the improved access in treatment for women and rehabilitation is also another aspect of healthcare – one of the minor but non-trivial ones – in which women will be coming for help, because they may be substance abusers or, more often, will be in a home or household with one or more male substance abusers, which impacts the larger family unit and the health of the community.

It is a situation in which to best manage their problems with the support of the social service programs on offer around the nation in which they happen to live.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(r)-(t) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/01

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

r. Promote public information on the benefits of breast-feeding; examine ways and means of implementing fully the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, and enable mothers to breast-feed their infants by providing legal, economic, practical and emotional support;

s. Establish mechanisms to support and involve non-governmental organizations, particularly women’s organizations, professional groups and other bodies working to improve the health of girls and women, in government policy-making, programme design, as appropriate, and implementation within the health sector and related sectors at all levels;

t. Support non-governmental organizations working on women’s health and help develop networks aimed at improving coordination and collaboration between all sectors that affect health;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The health and wellbeing of women throughout their entire lives should be a core focus in the international community for several reasons. One of the main ones being that women comprise approximately half of the world’s population.

In addition, women bear the burden of gestation, the risks of birth, and the unpaid labour and workload of childcare and homecare. Men simply continue to expect these. We see these in the resentment movements of some young men, not big but, no doubt, a minor concern among the social problems; however, these men seem a small concern and near the lower-middle of the list of concerns.

The benefits for breastfeeding are numerous, especially in the crucial early periods of brain development for a child. It is in these circumstances that we need to gather proper evidence, package it appropriately and sensitively, and deliver to women in order for them to make informed choices about breastfeeding their child.

Furthermore, we can look at the various health organizations and support services to help with giving sufficient “legal, economic, practical and emotional support” networks for women, even in the cultural domain of having breastfeeding as a normal and healthy process of life in the major legislatures of the world as has happened in some select instances.

All these levels working in coordination are important for the construction of protective mechanisms for the support of women, women’s rights, and provision for women’s health. It is crucial to get this right, as the cultural norms can get stuck and even regress to less than salubrious circumstances.

It requires a massive collaborative educational campaign to ensure the most women as possible as accurate and reliable information about their circumstances, their rights, their options, and therefore, the best possible opportunity to achieve equality of the sexes and have their fundamental human rights implemented.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(o)-(q) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/01

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

o. Ensure that girls and women of all ages with any form of disability receive supportive services;

p. Formulate special policies, design programmes and enact the legislation necessary to alleviate and eliminate environmental and occupational health hazards associated with work in the home, in the workplace and elsewhere with attention to pregnant and lactating women;

q. Integrate mental health services into primary health-care systems or other appropriate levels, develop supportive programmes and train primary health workers to recognize and care for girls and women of all ages who have experienced any form of violence especially domestic violence, sexual abuse or other abuse resulting from armed and non-armed conflict;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 106 sections (o), (p), and (q) speak to the specifics of other vulnerable populations around the world. These include those with disabilities. The women who are workers and live with physical disabilities or mental handicaps will require more support and public services.

The solutions to these personal-professional problems are almost never singular and, often, multivariate with the need to take into account the feelings of the individual. It is difficult, as the person may not consent to certain interventions.

It seems well within their rights to reject provisions attempting to be foisted on them. But also, we can see the services running downstream from the “special policies…programmes…[and] legislation.” Therefore, we can look to the second section for some guidance on some specific metrics.

These can help with the various health hazards seen on the job, in terms of prevention and precautionary measures. Having worked on construction sites for years, these are important to bear in mind, as any day on a construction site can go from routine to terrible with minor to major injuries on one or more workers including deaths.

This is the issues of some jobs. Women dominate some other ones, where, certainly, physical injury is a serious possibility, e.g., a housecleaner who slips and falls in the tub and then cracks vertebrae. Now, this woman has a host of problems, probably for life.

Now, there should be an additional sensitivity for the more vulnerable populations of women as women, which includes both pregnant and lactating women.

Finally, the integration of mental health services, e.g., counselling, can be important for the maintenance of the overall health and wellbeing of the individual women in the workplace. It can improve the care of the individual worker but also, probably, be preventative in terms of negative mental health consequences on the job.

Indeed, as covered in the SIG human rights call, these issues for women are plural, historical and ongoing; these are serious problems for the health and wellbeing of the individual women in conflict and non-conflict zones with rates as high as 1 in 3 women within their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. Things can change, but only with robust, long-term work – and the institutions that have propped abusers are crumbling and, similarly, with social conventions and norms.

So it goes.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(l)-(n) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/31

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

l. Give particular attention to the needs of girls, especially the promotion of healthy behaviour, including physical activities; take specific measures for closing the gender gaps in morbidity and mortality where girls are disadvantaged, while achieving internationally approved goals for the reduction of infant and child mortality – specifically, by the year 2000, the reduction of mortality rates of infants and children under five years of age by one third of the 1990 level, or 50 to 70 per 1,000 live births, whichever is less; by the year 2015 an infant mortality rate below 35 per 1,000 live births and an under-five mortality rate below 45 per 1,000;

m. Ensure that girls have continuing access to necessary health and nutrition information and services as they mature, to facilitate a healthful transition from childhood to adulthood;

n. Develop information, programmes and services to assist women to understand and adapt to changes associated with ageing and to address and treat the health needs of older women, paying particular attention to those who are physically or psychologically dependent;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The health and wellbeing of girls is highly important in the moment for the girls but also for the women that these girls become. Some of these concerns and issues should take a gendered lens in order to fulfil the rights obligations of the international and national community.

For example, if we look at the reduction in infant and child mortality, ignoring for this conversational article the focus on the “year 2000,” the focus is on its reduction, obviously. But, interestingly, this has, likely happened, everywhere except in cases of war or reversals in the appropriate health technologies and information being provided to girls.

The promotion of health behaviour is not just about physical behaviour but about the sexual-psychological phenomena of intimate relations. The information to make informed choices. The technologies to prevent unwanted or unplanned pregnancies.

This links to section (m) with the ensurance of women having the appropriate health and nutrition information. As girls transition into women, physically and psychologically, this can be a basis for a healthier transition rather than a stunted one.

The programs and educational initiatives can be important in this with women understanding the processes and problems that come with time, with wear tear, or aging.

Older women should an area of emphasis too. Whether a younger women learning about it, or an older woman becoming more informed about what she is experiencing or what to expect, it is these circumstances in which the physical and psychological dependence will, still statistically, being a familial and community burden of younger women and increasing decrepitude and disability as an issue of older women.

So it goes.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(k) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/31

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

k. In the light of paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, which states: “In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning. All Governments and relevant intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations are urged to strengthen their commitment to women’s health, to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion/16 as a major public health concern and to reduce the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family-planning services. Prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority and every attempt should be made to eliminate the need for abortion. Women who have unwanted pregnancies should have ready access to reliable information and compassionate counselling. Any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process. In circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe. In all cases, women should have access to quality services for the management of complications arising from abortion. Post-abortion counselling, education and family-planning services should be offered promptly, which will also help to avoid repeat abortions”, consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures against women who have undergone illegal abortions;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration continues with the full lifecycle focus on the health and wellness of women with, in essence, the creation of a universal healthcare system accessible by all people within the society.

As the extensive section (k) stipulated, one side of the issue is family planning, of which the Catholic Church and many other organizations around the world have been opposed. This has, according to Dr. Madeline Weld, caused significant damage to much of the world with growth beyond current sustainability and capacity in specific locales, for instance.

But it is also emphasized that abortion is not a form of family planning. It is a form of emergency health for women. The extreme examples brought forth are the instances of pregnancy from rape. This is an unwilling mother and an unwanted fetus, eventual potential child, and abortion seems ethically appropriate in this circumstance. But, in the end, it is a woman’s individual choice about her body and future, full halt.

The dealing with unsafe abortions is taking the current empirics seriously. Without this, taking the positions of such a person becomes difficult, because we have known issues with the health and wellbeing of women, girls, and families in relation to safe and equitable access, or not, it is this framework that is the best in terms of the dealing with both the spillage and the crack in the pipe.

Prevention is the best methodology by which to decrease the number of overall abortion. Thus, our main option is working with family planning and other measures, which spiritual and political organizations should bring to bear on the health and well-being of their participants and constituents, respectively.

It could save lives and improve the outcomes of their respective communities, somewhat overlapping of course. It is noted that “prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority,” which seems correct; even though, the “from here to there” is an uncertainty.

The proper preventions could drastically cut, except in some extreme strawberry picked examples, the number of net abortions every year and, thus, circumvent many of the concerns about an increase in the number of fetuses being destroyed and taken out of wombs over the long-term – pro-choice becomes pro-life in this way, as a statistical rule of thumb.

But the basic tenet of healthcare for women with good information and counselling goes with making free, prior, and informed choices about their own health. This shall be “determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process,” which is highly important and relevant.

Now, interestingly, abortion is against the law of the land in some countries, which is the right of the country. But this does, in fact, harm the health and wellbeing of women and the communities in the country. Nonetheless, abortion should be equitably accessible and safe when legal.

This includes the bulwark support and social services in the cases of complications from the abortion, which still happen but much less in the conditions of legal and safe abortions. All these discussions around abortion are not black and white but about independently valid but conflicting moral values that need to be balanced within the empirical data while also respecting the fundamental human right of women.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(i) & (j) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/30

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

i. Strengthen and reorient health services, particularly primary health care, in order to ensure universal access to quality health services for women and girls; reduce ill health and maternal morbidity and achieve world wide the agreed-upon goal of reducing maternal mortality by at least 50 per cent of the 1990 levels by the year 2000 and a further one half by the year 2015; ensure that the necessary services are available at each level of the health system and make reproductive health care accessible, through the primary health-care system, to all individuals of appropriate ages as soon as possible and no later than the year 2015;

j. Recognize and deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern, as agreed in paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development;/14

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 106, sections (i) and (j) of the Beijing Declaration help with the improvement of the healthcare services, via the explicit statements over two decades ago. Indeed, the continual emphasis is on the universal access to healthcare, where someone without wealth, more often women and children, can have equal access to relevant health services for them.

It is this democratization of rights since the UDHR that provides this form of equality. It is viewing the concerns of women as the same as the issues of men, and vice versa. This is the basis for a universalization of ethics and healthier families, communities, and societies.

Although, at the present, things may seem chaotic. We remain in a status of transition, which retains ongoing risks including the current issue of authoritarians and demagogues coming in to fill the ideological vacuum to scapegoat, blame, and redirect the public’s discontent against themselves Coming together, these rather weak authoritarian forces can be overcome.

The aim of healthcare for all is, for one, the reduction in the maternal morbidity of women in order to achieve the goals, at the time, of a 50% reduction in the levels of maternal mortality.

But moving into the latter 2010s and 2020s, what lessons can we take from these? Some them can be viewed with the reduction as an extended goal, where we continue to aim to do better by the end of this year and the following year, as an ethical heuristic of an improvement curve in healthcare provision for women, pregnant women, and mothers.

This requires safe and equitable access to relevant healthcare technologies and provisions. Indeed, the primary healthcare system is one of the core bulwarks to maintain women’s health, regardless of age or socioeconomic status.

The provision for abortion services fits into this overall narrative. Here, we can see the major declines in health status for women with the unsafe abortions. These cause thousands of deaths every year, which is known, in addition to tens of thousands of injuries based on these unsafe, unsanitary, and often unprofessional set of circumstances for the ‘surgery.’

Now, the big issue is simply giving equitable and safe access does two things. One, it respects a fundamental human right of women. Two, it reduces the maternal and infant mortality rate, decreases the number of abortions, reduces the impacts of the healthcare system in terms of costs over the long-term and, thus, to the society. The legalization can be a case for human rights and health.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 106(f)-(h)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/30

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

f. Redesign health information, services and training for health workers so that they are gender-sensitive and reflect the user’s perspectives with regard to interpersonal and communications skills and the user’s right to privacy and confidentiality; these services, information and training should be based on a holistic approach;

g. Ensure that all health services and workers conform to human rights and to ethical, professional and gender-sensitive standards in the delivery of women’s health services aimed at ensuring responsible, voluntary and informed consent; encourage the development, implementation and dissemination of codes of ethics guided by existing international codes of medical ethics as well as ethical principles that govern other health professionals;

h. Take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful, medically unnecessary or coercive medical interventions, as well as inappropriate medication and over-medication of women, and ensure that all women are fully informed of their options, including likely benefits and potential side-effects, by properly trained personnel;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

These sections of paragraph 106 in the Beijing Declaration speak to some nuanced issues. Question: if healthcare providers lack adequate information about a patient to give proper evidence-based care, and if the patient is misinformed based on bad information when making ‘informed’ decisions, what are the chances of a positive outcome for the patient, e.g., the girl or woman?

By thought experiment, we know, as in anything with bad information and a lot more potential for bad answers than good ones, more women and girls, or patients generally, will be given worse health care and have bad health outcomes with the bad information.

Now, we can see the concrete form in which inclusion of a gendered perspective, or having gender in the policy and praxis of health care, retains a high level of importance for the health and wellbeing of women and girls, and of having accurate information for the healthcare providers to give good health care.

The ethics of human rights is the foundation here. The focus is on conforming to ethical and professional standards with an emphasis on human rights and gendered perspectives. It is in this gender-sensitive background and practice that there can be better-served patients by the medical community.

There should be voluntary and informed consent too. It goes back to good data and quality information analyses for medical professionals to be able to better serve their patients.

Even more so, the medical professional at all relevant levels should have good information too, about the ethics within their field of expertise. There are codes of ethics as there are human rights stipulations. These become the basic tenets of dos and don’ts within a field, in this case medical.

These are a series of measures to reduce poor practice and health outcomes for patients, and for procedures to be done with free, prior, and informed consent. When women have more information about their particular medical backgrounds, about their issues, and the potential outcomes of the sets of medical options available to them, they will, statistically speaking, have more positive health outcomes in contrast to the times of when this does not happen and when women are making uninformed medical choices.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 106(c)-(e)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/29

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

c. Design and implement, in cooperation with women and community-based organizations, gender-sensitive health programmes, including decentralized health services, that address the needs of women throughout their lives and take into account their multiple roles and responsibilities, the demands on their time, the special needs of rural women and women with disabilities and the diversity of women’s needs arising from age and socio-economic and cultural differences, among others; include women, especially local and indigenous women, in the identification and planning of health-care priorities and programmes; remove all barriers to women’s health services and provide a broad range of health-care services;

d. Allow women access to social security systems in equality with men throughout the whole life cycle;

e. Provide more accessible, available and affordable primary health-care services of high quality, including sexual and reproductive health care, which includes family planning information and services, and giving particular attention to maternal and emergency obstetric care, as agreed to in the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 106, sections (c), (d), and (e), deal with the working together of the non-governmental organizations and the various labour organizations with the support of a variety of institutions around the world.

The design and implementation of gendered programs oriented within this context can improve the outcomes for women and communities over time. In the short term, the benefits accrue to the women. In the medium term, we can see the benefits to the next generations with the benefits to the mothers running downstream in time to the kids and, thus, the families and communities as well.

Any help to women, in that sense, is a benefit to the communities, is an investment in the communities. There is a need to assist women as women but also women as the main source of life, families, and communities, in terms of the contributions to the next generation, to home care and child care, to the family unit’s fundamentals, and, therefore, to the communities.

An investment in women and girls is an investment in the health and wellness of society as a whole within this framework as well. Now, the roles, and associated tasks and responsibilities, of women are “multiple,” which simply creates a more complicated life script.

It is interesting. This becomes, in some ways, even more, true for the women who live in rural settings, with disabilities, or both. Life simply becomes more complicated, not only in the more numerous and nefarious difficulties in life but also the potential for restrictions on the women too.

Now, the basic need for many women is a base recognition of their rights, which is different from the standard transcendental ethics found in religious traditions.

This is non-trivial and important. The transcendent ethics put men at an advantage, with divine mandate, over women more often than not; the international rights traditions put women and men in the same line of ethical consideration, which aligns more with the abstracted core of the religious traditions’ ethical code or that identified by an exemplar of the “highest moral character,” according to Noam Chomsky, who goes by the name John Stuart Mill.

The Golden Rule recognizes women as equals. Human rights, in concrete terms and idealized stipulations, recognize women as the equals of men. Therefore, we can see, in some internationalist or globalist sense, the era of the democratization or universalization of ethics incorporates women into the expanded, idealized sphere of the Golden Rule. All the better.

The socio-economic and cultural differences can be a factor, as well, in the rights implementations of women regarding healthcare. Women and girls have fewer economic resources devoted to them. They have less money to work with; thus, they are more apt to be left out of the healthcare considerations of the nation.

This is, as per (d), something that then impacts the whole life cycle of girls and women less than boys and men. It is something where the equality of the sexes should be vigorously applied in order to close the society security systems gap within the context of health care.

Also, there should be more affordable and accessible primary healthare too. As we see with sexual and reproductive health measures, women tend to be not at the top of the list. This would include things as simple as family planning provisions to as controversial and ethically murky as abortions.

But this can also incude emergency obstetric case too. In addition, this should all be born in mind with the agreements, the promises in other words and so ethical obligations, and the international community and nations to work to improve women’s and girls’ equality in the healthcare domains.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 106(a)-(b)of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/29

Strategic objective C.1.

Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services

Actions to be taken

106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:

Support and implement the commitments made in the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, as established in the report of that Conference and the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development /15 and the obligations of States parties under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and other relevant international agreements, to meet the health needs of girls and women of all ages;
Reaffirm the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, protect and promote the attainment of this right for women and girls and incorporate it in national legislation, for example; review existing legislation, including health legislation, as well as policies, where necessary, to reflect a commitment to women’s health and to ensure that they meet the changing roles and responsibilities of women wherever they reside;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The ability of women to access proper healthcare has been and continues to be a massive area of focus in the international community, especially, in terms of sexual violence reportage and care, with the current #MeToo movement travelling through much of the world.

We can see the statements about the need to support commitments already in place as well as implement them, too. There is a definite need to further the obligations of the states in order to work on those commitments in both mutual support and individual systems implementation.

The health needs spoken of here are both girls and women, in fact. But this is based on a loose definition of the “highest attainable standards of physical and mental health.” That is to say, the basic right of girls and women to live healthy and happy lives relative to their surrounding society.

This is something to be ‘protected and promoted’ as well as supported as and recognized as a fundamental human right of females of all ages. This becomes the work of the national legislation, which means popular mobilization and activism on the part of the public to enforce those international rights stipulations for the good of the public.

The changes could then imply improvements in the health legislation and policies relevant to women’s health, in order to not only help women, children, and families live happier and healthier lives but also provide the increased freedom, through social services and supports, to make room for more flexible gender roles and responsibiltiies for women.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 105 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/28

105. In addressing inequalities in health status and unequal access to and inadequate health-care services between women and men, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes, so that, before decisions are taken, an analysis is made of the effects for women and men, respectively.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The issues for the health of women remains an international issue, while also retaining an ongoing urgency as this relates to several other concerns of human rights activists. For example, the recent moderate decline in access to the reproductive health rights of women.

This, of course, speaks to the international view about abortion with the right to autonomy and individual choice of women around the world, about what happens to and with their own bodies including in the case of choosing, or not, to bring new life into the world.

There is a gendered lens here. it should be born in mind, as it is an important lens to see some of the disproportionately negative care for women at crucial times in their medical lives – in their times of care.

The governments and other relevant actors should work to include a gendered perspective on the issues of healthcare and its proper provision. This should before decisions are made, prior to the medical changes.

There needs to be an analysis of the areas of greatest need, as an example, to then determine where the changes most urgently and comprehensively need to be made in the medical arenas of various countries, in order to best serve the needs of women.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 103 and 104 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/28

103. The quality of women’s health care is often deficient in various ways, depending on local circumstances. Women are frequently not treated with respect, nor are they guaranteed privacy and confidentiality, nor do they always receive full information about the options and services available. Furthermore, in some countries, over-medicating of women’s life events is common, leading to unnecessary surgical intervention and inappropriate medication.

104. Statistical data on health are often not systematically collected, disaggregated and analysed by age, sex and socio-economic status and by established demographic criteria used to serve the interests and solve the problems of subgroups, with particular emphasis on the vulnerable and marginalized and other relevant variables. Recent and reliable data on the mortality and morbidity of women and conditions and diseases particularly affecting women are not available in many countries. Relatively little is known about how social and economic factors affect the health of girls and women of all ages, about the provision of health services to girls and women and the patterns of their use of such services, and about the value of disease prevention and health promotion programmes for women. Subjects of importance to women’s health have not been adequately researched and women’s health research often lacks funding. Medical research, on heart disease, for example, and epidemiological studies in many countries are often based solely on men; they are not gender specific. Clinical trials involving women to establish basic information about dosage, side-effects and effectiveness of drugs, including contraceptives, are noticeably absent and do not always conform to ethical standards for research and testing. Many drug therapy protocols and other medical treatments and interventions administered to women are based on research on men without any investigation and adjustment for gender differences.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraphs 103 and 104 of the Beijing Declaration speak to the need to provide for women’s health needs with the specifics based on locale. In many contexts, as recognized by the first paragraph listed above, women lack basic respectful treatment.

This can come with a disrespect for their privacy and confidentiality. Even in the cases of women getting some modicum of information, the information will not necessarily be complete. This restricts women’s ability to make fully informed decisions about their lives.

This creates a problem with regards to the implementation of women’s rights. Now, the lack of provisions in healthcare can even extend into the realm of surgical intervention, but the ones there are not needed at all.

It is this tied to inappropriate medication. In Canadian medicine, there is a movement or a phrase, “Too much medicine.” These may be, at times, indicative of too much medicine or simply over-reacting to women’s needs and then doing too much in terms of medical interventions.

But looking further into the statistical data on health, there is a field called Evidence-Based Medicine, mostly by the late Dave Sackett and Distinguished Professor Gordon Guyatt, with a focus on systematic review of the evidence.

The main purpose of the EBM methodology is to provide a robust means by which to sift and select treatments best suited to the individuals; circa 1995, this methodology was simply coming online and not entirely formulated into its current form.

If a relevant analysis is done, the best interests of the poor, the rural, the marginalized, and the minority could be done. It is important to get the reliable data in order to make valid medical decisions for those who, typically, do not have the finances to afford high-quality health care relative to the advancement of medical technology in their particular country.

The many conditions and diseases that many women face may be comorbid with a bunch of others. This can create a situation in which are some diseases or conditions occur with others, thus blurring the lines.

The social and economic conditions of a woman can create a problem for the women, and the girls for that matter, in many regions of the world. Because of the lack of acknowledgement of women’s health problems, or other their particular health issues, which, many, can be unique to them.

The gendered perspective on health is incredibly important for the advancement and empowerment of women because the basis of living as high a quality of life as is possible to attain requires proper medical care and the knowledge of the medical professionals about the specific health problems that women can face, which men do not, or at higher rates than men, e.g., osteoporosis, breast cancer, and so on.

With the emphasis on clinical trials, this can be an important addition to the medical literature as to the differentials in the health outcomes for men and women given particular treatments at specific points in the treatment timeline and so on.

Thus, the gendered perspective has been and will continue to be important in the treatment of men and women, boys and girls, in as robust a manner as possible.

So it goes.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 101 and 102

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/27

101. With the increase in life expectancy and the growing number of older women, their health concerns require particular attention. The long-term health prospects of women are influenced by changes at menopause, which, in combination with life-long conditions and other factors, such as poor nutrition and lack of physical activity, may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. Other diseases of ageing and the interrelationships of ageing and disability among women also need particular attention.

102. Women, like men, particularly in rural areas and poor urban areas, are increasingly exposed to environmental health hazards owing to environmental catastrophes and degradation. Women have a different susceptibility to various environmental hazards, contaminants and substances and they suffer different consequences from exposure to them.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in paragraph 101 and 102 stipulate the ways in which the life expectancy of the world was increasing up to 1995, and, in fact, continues to increase in much of the world with a rise in standards of living and quality of both nutrition and healthcare.

As the world’s population continues to increase, the number of older women increases, too; we can see the sex split by age. Far more old women than men live in the world, especially the centenarians and supercentenarians – even the world record is stuck with the Jeanne Calment at about 122.5 years. The issue for men is simply making to those ages. The concerns for women are the health complications of aging, which is more than one single thing.

It is a combination of, by Kurzweil’s estimates, 12 processes leading to eventual death. Some can progress faster in particular individuals with the proper, or unhealthy, environments or genetic preconditions for them.

Some of the issues can come in the forms of poor nutrition and lack of physical activity, which can, in part, be a problem of individual initiative. But there are those that can happen more often in women, osteoporosis, or in the old, cardiovascular disease.

The disabilities can be particularly acute areas of concern among the aged, as breakage of bone, weakening of muscle, and fogginess and forgetfulness of mind become gradual incursions on the functionality of one’s body over time.

As rural areas can tend to be farther away from the basic health services, especially the advanced health services found in the city centres, those living in them can, at times, be subject to worse health outcomes in the cases of environmental toxin exposure: “environmental hazards, contaminants and substances.”

These are needed areas of activism and public pressure on the political system and the policymakers, as these are among the most vulnerable populations among us – the old.

–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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2022-04-24

Ask Sarah 1 — The New Media

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/27

Sarah Mills is a Managing Editor and Writer at Conatus News, as well as a writer at Areo Magazine, Huffington Post, Litro Magazine, and Culture Project. We have been colleagues for well over a year now. I reached out about garnering some intel, some insider information, on writing and editing within the new media, especially as a journalist. Here we talk about the new media and navigation of the modern terrain.

Mills is a writer with a postgraduate degree in creative writing. The world of writing and journalism in the 21^st century comes with its own set of unique challenges and advantages. While the dissemination of news has become easier, there is much potential for misinformation.

The new online media and communications technologies create a problem. In that, the dissemination of news becomes easier but the potential for misinformation and disinformation by non-journalists becomes a problem too.

When I asked Mills about the unique set of challenges for journalists, she said, “One of the biggest challenges is the sheer number of outlets vying for public attention–and receiving it. In the digital era, we’ve seen countless outlets spring up to challenge traditional media, with varying results.”

Mills expressed concern over the rise of click-bait and unethical journalism. That is, the consumer may not be critically thinking, may be prone to acceptance of emotional appeals and image-based content, and the publication or disseminator may be unbounded by codes of ethics.

“They use biased or charged language and lie by omission, and their stories are picked up and shared across social media by influencers,” Mills explained, “With the rise of citizen journalism in the digital era, anyone can go to an event, upload a video, and see it go viral. This is not altogether a bad thing, depending on who is holding the camera and what his or her intentions are.”

However, the era of mass skepticism seeps into traditional, often legitimate sources of news information. Skepticism, which is good, becomes a generalized (almost) cynicism about news sources.

Mills recommended, “Writers and editors must be diligent to always trace back sources, trace back the money, and counter the spread of misinformation when the epithet of ‘fake news’ is attributed merely to sources at odds with the perspective of the accuser.”

Trends in general media show a rapid decline in traditional, printed mediums and a significant shift toward online media outlets.

“Some outlets have responded by putting up paywalls and employing ads. Others have yielded to the temptation of the clickbait, which invites misreading and encourages sharing by social media users, again, often without ever having read the article in its entirety,” Mills stated.

The processing of writing, almost always, comes with editing. The online environment can make this, in turn, easier with the ability to work around the world in spite of geographic, travel, and financial limitations otherwise.

“At the click of a button and from the comfort of my own home, I can contact people for interviews, I can conduct background checks on them, I can network with colleagues, I can reach people in war zones and they can video chat live with me from the scene,” Mills concluded, “It’s grand and humbling to be living in this time, despite the challenges. You only need a reliable Wi-Fi connection and you can have the world at your fingertips.”

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 99 and 100 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/26

99. Sexual and gender-based violence, including physical and psychological abuse, trafficking in women and girls, and other forms of abuse and sexual exploitation place girls and women at high risk of physical and mental trauma, disease and unwanted pregnancy. Such situations often deter women from using health and other services.

100. Mental disorders related to marginalization, powerlessness and poverty, along with overwork and stress and the growing incidence of domestic violence as well as substance abuse, are among other health issues of growing concern to women. Women throughout the world, especially young women, are increasing their use of tobacco with serious effects on their health and that of their children. Occupational health issues are also growing in importance, as a large number of women work in low-paid jobs in either the formal or the informal labour market under tedious and unhealthy conditions, and the number is rising. Cancers of the breast and cervix and other cancers of the reproductive system, as well as infertility affect growing numbers of women and may be preventable, or curable, if detected early.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraphs 99 and 100 are important, together, in a number of ways. These include the ways in which sex and gender are combined here for the broad-based gendered perspective (full-scale definition of gender).

A gender-based perspective can, potentially, summarize the enhancement of the international conversation brought to bear by the Beijing Declaration. It provides a means by which to critically analyze the sex or gender differentials in the international scene, where females are discriminated against via sex or women are subject to bias due to gender.

The forms of violence against women as women is a broad conversation but is one of the most prominent social global problems in the present day. Climate change is a mostly human-made product, often called “man-made”; in fact, the largest man-made, in a literal sense, problem is, probably, violence against women and the biggest human-made issue is climate change or global warming with nuclear potential catastrophe as a close second (and potentially shorter term) issue.

But the violence against women can come with the psychological, mental-emotional, forms of trauma. These wreak havoc on the minds and bodies of girls and women who have been subject to them.

This also raises questions about our true commitment to the health and wellness of women and girls when we lack sufficient care and concern for the problems faced by women and girls, including unwanted pregnancy.

Next, we come to the psychological problems connected to the sociological inequalities faced by women. If we look at the list, we have marginalization, powerlessness, poverty, overwork, stress, domestic violence, and substance abuse. How many would bet these amount to interrelated phenomena for the mental illness faced by women?

Indeed, imagine any set in the combinatorics of the factors and then the short- and long-term effects on the life of an individual woman. It is something with a serious need to be covered in some manner. Simply by having this presentation over two decades ago, this is a start.

Something not entirely obvious, in its severity (not in its reality), is the occupational set of hazards for women. Those health issues on the job. Women dominate, by a huge margin, the low-wage, temporary, and precariat work of the world.

Many of the alternative tedious and unhealthy jobs. These jobs without benefits may fail to provide adequate finances or coverage, if available, for the women to pursue some healthcare. As mentioned at the end of the paragraphs, the ability to detect some of these cancers or dis-eases early can result in extensive injury or deatyh of the woman. This is the point of a gendered analysis, of the importance of some aspects of intersectional analysis bolstered by both individualist and collectivist sentiments.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 98

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/26

98. HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the transmission of which is sometimes a consequence of sexual violence, are having a devastating effect on women’s health, particularly the health of adolescent girls and young women. They often do not have the power to insist on safe and responsible sex practices and have little access to information and services for prevention and treatment. Women, who represent half of all adults newly infected with HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, have emphasized that social vulnerability and the unequal power relationships between women and men are obstacles to safe sex, in their efforts to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The consequences of HIV/AIDS reach beyond women’s health to their role as mothers and caregivers and their contribution to the economic support of their families. The social, developmental and health consequences of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases need to be seen from a gender perspective.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Now, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is a serious problem, especially with deliberate misinformation and disinformation made about the sources of sexually transmitted diseases. The most tragic examples, excluding derivative negative consequences in other actual examples, comes from direct exposure to an HIV/AIDS due to rape, say so-called ‘corrective’ rape of a lesbian woman.This is the continual story of history, and its further acknowledgement and reduction with the societal and legal protections against it. However, we remain over a century from equality by some estimates, but we could move more rapidly as the future remains uncertain.The health and wellbeing of girls and young women remain highly important. Not only as fundamental rights but also on grounds of compassion, the issues for safe and responsible sex practices are: most people will engage in safe and responsible sexual activity, as per the data, with the proper information – to make informed choices – and tools – to engage proactively with the information to enact those informed sexual choices.Women are a non-trivial proportion of the new HIV/AIDS cases. They will be more stigmatized than the men as well. There is an ongoing power dynamic and, more accurately, imbalance. It is having a sensibility to perceive the obvious power imbalances in social, familial, and legal contexts.With such an awareness, while attenuated by knowledge of Confirmation Bias, the formulation of appropriate measures to solve the inequalities can be done, in concrete terms, for further reduction in the level of restrictions against women compared to men.The restrictions in information and health-care relevant to sexuality. Sometimes, this has to be done covertly in literature, as with Margaret Atwood, who should be one of the most effective moral actors in the world today based on not only the literary excellence.The ability to control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is important. This is also to consider in the relevant health consequences to mothers who may be left in very precarious circumstances in the ability to help the family economically and otherwise, even as a single parent.So it goes.–

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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2022-04-24

Professor Sven van de Wetering on Psychological Science, Canadian Public Policy, and Being a Father

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/25

Dr. Sven van de Wetering was the head of psychology at the University of the Fraser Valley and is a now an associate professor in the same department. He is on the Advisory Board of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal.

Dr. van de Wetering earned his BSc in Biology at The University of British Columbia, and Bachelors of Arts in Psychology at Concordia University, Master of Arts, and Ph.D. in Psychology from Simon Fraser University.

His research interest lies in “conservation psychology, lay conceptions of evil, relationships between personality variables and political attitudes.” We have been conducting an ongoing series on the epistemological and philosophical foundations of psychology with the current sessions here, here, here, and here.

Here we explore blind spots of everyone, epistemologies of psychology, public policy, and social science.

Talking to van de Wetering, the blinds spots in the academic world were the focus of the first question, but, in fact, the focus, immediately, expanded into the more general. Van de Wetering argued everyone has blind spots. Those can create trouble for the wide smattering of us, at a variety of levels.

For example, he directed attention to being enamoured with logic and evidence – odd statement. But unpacking it, he means the ignorance as to the reasoning processes of non-academics. That is, the blind spot of knowledge about the public’s blind spots.

To focus too much on logic and evidence for one’s own tribe while ignoring the modes of reasoning of another tribe, it creates a problem in the bridging of the knowledge gap between academics and the public, so this amounts to a blind spot of academics about the blind spots of the public.

“Where we tend to ignore the criteria by which people outside academia judge the truth of propositions, criteria like emotional resonance, I believe logic and evidence are usually much more useful criteria for truth than emotional resonance (though there are exceptions, and we are not vigilant about those),” van de Wetering explained, “However, the fact of the matter: we try to use those criteria and much of the rest of the world does not lead to some fairly spectacular breakdowns in communication. A lot of us seem to think that coming across as condescending assholes is an acceptable price to pay for improving our odds of being right.”

These are profound insights and important to keep in mind, especially when working to massage the channels of communication. Van de Wetering sees miscommunication as an important or non-trivial matter, as we see these consequences in the politics of America now.

Van de Wetering opined, “Another blind spot adversely affecting not only our communication but also our odds of getting things right is our assumption that universal or nearly universal generalizations are useful epistemological devices in almost all domains. This is probably more of an issue for the sciences and social sciences than it is for the humanities.”

One manifestation, van de Wetering notes, is in psychological sciences with the first-year undergraduate population in Western nations as the samples used in the research. These are, hardly, representative of the human global population. Inevitably, with more extensive research, these samples are shown to represent a slice of the human population and not the total one.

“People from this population have been described as WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) to highlight the inappropriateness of generalizing from studies done on this population,” van de Wetering explained.

When I asked about learning more about the implicit ways of knowing how the natural world operates via psychology, van de Wetering described how this can teach a person to be more a part of the WEIRD category, social grouping. This is, in a manner of speaking, a social consequence of university education in Western nations in psychology.

“On the positive side, it does give them some valuable tools for assessing the validity of evidence, especially evidence for generalizations; on the negative side, it also puts them on the wrong side of the communications barrier I was talking about earlier,” van de Wetering stated, “If they absorb these lessons well, I hope it also gives them a certain amount of intellectual humility, but I am not sure how often that part of the lesson takes.”

This does build into another part of the conversation, which was around the public policy becoming better informed by the science. Immediately, van de Wetering quoted Bismarck talking about laws being like sausages. You do not want to see how they’re made.

He sees the inclusion of more scientific knowledge into public policy as an improvement of the situation from before. However, van de Wetering remarked that the distortion of science will eventually occur with the “political horse trading.”

“So, by the time it becomes law, it may be almost useless. Radically changing the political process is not easy to do and, therefore, the best that is achievable is to hope for science to exert some influence over policies at every stage of their development, not at the beginning,” van de Wetering said.

The likelihood of politicians listening to the constituency is an important factor in the development of a change to the policies in a science-based and evidence-based format. One way to do it; easy, the incorporation of a robust public science education system.

Van de Wetering, on the building of a rich scientific education system and the use of this to change the public policy in a direction connected to the real world, lamented, “…so that the politicians’ constituents do not quietly accept policy modifications that go against what is thought to be best on a purely scientific basis. This is probably a pipe dream. Science is hard. Our culture does not seem to be good at motivating people to do hard things that do not have immediate payoffs.”

We reached the end of the session on the ways in which federal and provincial public policy within the nation does not reflect the best psychological science. Van de Wetering spoke less from professional expertise and more from parental knowledge. That is, someone who is the father of a child on the autism spectrum tied to an intellectual disability.

“…I am horrified to discover that the level of support for such children drops very dramatically after they turn 19. This is not totally contrary to science, which does say that getting it right in childhood does greatly reduce problems in adulthood,” van de Wetering opined, “But the degree of decline in support needs is much less than the policy seems to imply. I do not think this massive drop off in funding is due to a misunderstanding of the science.”

He remarked on the cultural view of children with intellectual disabilities as cute, where this becomes a basis for easy funding in a political sense. He was speaking quite directly on the matter. But with the adult population with intellectual disabilities, the intellectual disabilities become “substantially less cute.” These can, by the vice of non-cuteness, become ignored, politically.

He concluded, “The other provincial policy that drives me crazy is the relative degree of funding for education and for health. Education has been underfunded in this province for so long that we do not even know what normal funding looks like. And yet, failure to invest in education is going to have far more adverse effects on our future than failure to invest in health, which is, as far as I can tell, not happening to nearly the same degree.”

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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 97

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/25

97. Further, women are subject to particular health risks due to inadequate responsiveness and lack of services to meet health needs related to sexuality and reproduction. Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth are among the leading causes of mortality and morbidity of women of reproductive age in many parts of the developing world. Similar problems exist to a certain degree in some countries with economies in transition. Unsafe abortions threaten the lives of a large number of women, representing a grave public health problem as it is primarily the poorest and youngest who take the highest risk. Most of these deaths, health problems and injuries are preventable through improved access to adequate health-care services, including safe and effective family planning methods and emergency obstetric care, recognizing the right of women and men to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant. These problems and means should be addressed on the basis of the report of the International Conference on Population and Development, with particular reference to relevant paragraphs of the Programme of Action of the Conference./14 In most countries, the neglect of women’s reproductive rights severely limits their opportunities in public and private life, including opportunities for education and economic and political empowerment. The ability of women to control their own fertility forms an important basis for the enjoyment of other rights. Shared responsibility between women and men in matters related to sexual and reproductive behaviour is also essential to improving women’s health.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Women continue to be subject to a set of adverse health outcomes, which were even worse in 1995 and still bad. It can be split via the demographics too. Some are worse off a general rule. For instance, we can see the problems of mortality and morbidity with the larger numbers of young women and poor women.

The problem comes from a culture of apathy in some ways. But this can be reflected in “inadequate responsiveness,” in the case of the services existing but can also simply not exist. This is a problem, especially for women of reproductive age, in several areas of the continually developing world.

The various forms of death or injury that can result from inadequate or poorly timed care for a pregnant or birthing woman are real. One of the biggest violations of bodily autonomy through lack of provisions is the restriction on abortions for women.

It is about as consequential a choice women could ever make, which makes sense as a source of social and political control among the fundamentalist nations and the totalitarian states. Even to the present, thousands of women die every year and tens of thousands are injured because of unsafe abortions.

These are deaths and health problems, including internal injuries, due to activities such as abortion. It is necessary for the recognition of women as autonomous agents for the rights of women in these consequential areas to be respected.

This includes not only the promise of freedom but the mechanisms upon which to ensure their safe and equitable access to them, for example, abortion. The responsibility of the public services is to provide a safe and healthy transition from pregnancy to birth to motherhood.

However, this can be restricted and lead to highly negative outcomes for women who lack these medical and social services. Without these services, we can see the robust restrictions on the ability of women to pursue their proper life course.

Indeed, with the rights restricted in the public sphere, not only the private arenas, this amounts to fundamental violations of them as persons – worthy of dignity, respect, and autonomy – because of the violations there.

What does this imply for their long-term health and wellness in the final analysis?

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2022-04-24

Ask Charlotte 2 — Initiative for Initiatives

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/24

Charlotte Littlewood is the Founding Director of Become The Voice CIC. A grass roots youth centred community interest company that she has built in response to the need to tackle hate, extremism and radicalisation within communities and online. Here we talk about having an initiative for projects.

Littlewood is involved in humanitarian work. Often, this work does not pay well. In turn, this has some intriguing implications for the individuals involved in these activities. They want to make positive – hopefully – changes in the world for the benefit of people through a social cause.

She described how, from a young age, acquired and maintained an interest in human rights. Indeed, the violations of human rights become an immediate concern for a young humanitarian. Because the ubiquity of the violations is stark and staring the international community right in the face. Actions need to be taken, often bold acts by the young.

Littlewood stated, “I did a law degree with the aim of working in human rights. Whilst doing the law degree, the war in Syria broke out. There was very much a sense of the next human rights issue being around a clash of civilization between East and West, and cultures and religion, rather than states and state power. I started reading and learning Arabic. I started reading the Quran as well.”

This is despite coming from a faith-based background. Littlewood has an academic interest in religion, including Christianity and Islam. Her professional work was oriented around faiths and minority groups, and cohesion and integration work.

“Eventually, it led me to start my own community interest company in that. That has always been my drive. It is to tackle human rights abuses and stand for minority rights abuses but from a standpoint of bringing us all together and cohesion,” Littlewood said, “I don’t work on human rights from the perspective that we should put minorities above everyone else. No matter what they’re believing in or action they’re involved in. It is involving everyone on the same level, bringing everyone together, and making sure no one’s rights are violated.”

It is taking a firm moral stance on the import and salience of human rights applied in a similar manner across the board without regard to identities, labels, and so on. Individualist moral calculus bound within the ethics of human rights.

Littlewood explained, “For instance, I would not work with a minority group that believed homosexuals should be thrown off the cliff and stoned to death simply because they are a minority group — as we have seen in a shift with some leftwing thinking.”

This creates the basis for a high value on autonomy and choice compared to other values. Littlewood self-describes this as a belief system for her. Following this, I asked about overcoming the inevitable issues of a young person coming to grips with the setbacks of a founding an organization while also attenuating the question because Become The Voice CIC (BTV) was only founded in January of 2018.

Littlewood said, ‘We are only just developing our funding strategy. We had some bits while in Palestine. But we need a more sustainable model. We are working with Think Try Do, which gives free support to Exeter alumna students to build their businesses and social enterprises. They are helping with being more product focused and meeting with schools around the products, getting an idea of what people’s needs and wants are, getting a wishlist in essence, and then matching that with funds to help pay for the work to be done if the school needs it.”

This becomes the model for the products of BTV. She is going to present at funding meetings with thinktanks, philanthropists, and trusts, in order to garner financial support for BTV. But the use of free tools in the early stages of BTV has been crucial to its operations.

“So, one of my directors is good online. She built the website and doing that for free. It is under the knowledge of paid roles when we get some funding. My other director coming back to Palestine once we have a project; he will help with the bids and funding, “Littlewood explained, “It is about passionate people willing to invest their time, they are also able to put being a director on their CV, which is good.”

Littlewood is all about setting a reasonable and realistic goal for BTV and then pursuing it. One is the finding of funding by January. If the funding is not acquired by that time, then she will, in fact, transfer those responsibilities of the CIC to the directors.

She concluded, “One has a part-time job. One is a masters student; financially, both are comfortable and can do it in their spare time. For me, it is full-time. However, I am optimistic. The meetings for October are promising, I am hoping to talk with you again after that time, to see how it has gone. It can give some insight into whether what we have done is successful. If it successful, it means that we will have our first successful money-raising after 7 months. A lot of CRCs and charities do not see the first bit of significant money for a year.”

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2022-04-24

Ask Tara 2 — Women’s Rights in the US, Pornography, and Feminist Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/24

As I asked Abhasakun about the state of women’s rights in the United States, she went directly to the recent news of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. Where, even without a full FBI investigation into the sexual assaults of three women, he was confirmed.

Abhasakun stated, “On top of that, as we all know, he was nominated by a president who claimed to have grabbed women “by the pussy” so there’s that too. I don’t even know what else to say about either of these things, because they are both so utterly ridiculous, yet they’re apparently both possible, and real.”

This led to some discussion on pornography, not coming from the American religious right. In fact, the different perspectives and, most often, lack of condemnation coming from the socio-political Left. Indeed, the views vary from legitimate paid sex work, economic independence, abuse and exploitation of women, and a branch of sexual liberation, and so on.

“Firstly, let me acknowledge that there may be many women who truly enjoy working in the porn industry. I think the issue, however, is what “consent” truly means,” Abhasakun, on sex acts and consent, opined, “When there is money involved, and someone knows that they will be paid to perform certain sexual acts, it means that they may feel pressured to perform those sexual acts in order to maintain their livelihood. Is that really consent?”

She continued to note the same logic around consent can be applied to almost any job. However, we associate complete assent of self to the sex in contrast to a desk job, where we may feel as if we do not need to go to work on some days.

Abhasakun said, “In ordinary sexual situations in which no money is involved, we acknowledge that people must give full, enthusiastic consent to sex, and not feel pressured into it. I have a hard time believing that everyone who works in the porn industry is always giving their full, enthusiastic consent, when there is money being dangled in front of them.”

She provided some musing on feminist porn, but she did not continue onward from there – as her knowledge was limited at the time of the interview.

Following this, the conversation shifted into the incorporation of feminism into religion. The belief in something else, other, out there and outside of us. That pervasive sense of a hereafter and a higher/greater power than puny us.

“I don’t think that belief in a higher power can exactly help, in fact, clearly, belief in a higher power is used to abuse women. And yet, the fact of the matter is that many people cannot help but believe in a higher power. Many people have had experiences in which they were very, very likely to die, and something that can only be described as miraculous happened, and they didn’t die When things like this happen to people, it’s often impossible to convince them that there is not a higher power,” Abhasakun described.

Thus, the belief in a power beyond oneself seems likely to stay, which leads to the conclusion by Abhasakun. The thought about the ways in which to properly see and examine holy texts: objectively. The form of education recommended is secular with pupils reading the texts and then coming to conclusions on their own, i.e., critical thought via autodidactic education. With this mode of minimally or nominally guided education, feminism may influence religion or be infused into faith, seeing religion within a proper historical context.

Abhasakun concluded, “They can begin to think, ‘Maybe the treatment of women in this holy text exists because this was written in a backward time period.’ Then the question can become ‘What can I draw from this book that is useful today, and what do I need to discard?’ From there, the understanding of God will hopefully move away from a judgemental guy scowling down at all of us, to a force that permeates through the universe.”

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2022-04-24

Ask Emily 1 – Entrance Into Civic and Political Life

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/23

Emily LaDouceur is a mother of two boys and Executive Editor for The Good Men Project. After working in higher education administration for over a decade, she left the field to dedicate her life to dismantling the systems and internalized biases that oppress all of us. LaDacouer is a very active and valued member of the team at The Good Men Project. I decided to reach out, as she has been running in politics, recently. She is part of the unprecedented trend in terms of the number of women entering into civic and political life in the United States. It is exciting. Also, it is educational. She agreed to take some time for short interview sessions, where this represents the first one. Enjoy.

When I spoke with LaDouceur about her start in politics and civic life in the United States, as a personal decision, she spoke to spending many years engaged in the political process, even spending time volunteering on a number of campaigns.

She relayed a cool experience of shaking hands with Barack Obama in 2008. At the time, she was canvassing in Westchester, Pennsylvania. She talked about never truly imagining herself as someone running for public office, a distant dream – even, potentially, a daunting and fearful nightmare.

However, LaDouceur stated, “It was only after watching so many women stepping up to run for office, many of them winning, that I said to myself, ‘I could do this. I SHOULD do this.'” The rest was history.

Then I related the post-November 2016 situation, where American women, across all identity lines, began to enter into politics in droves. I asked, “Why?”

She replied, “We’ve been left out of the political process for too long. Women are waking up more and more every day, realizing our own oppression and unpacking our internalized sexism. We feel compelled to act! If not us, then who?”

Imagine not only being among the many to realize this, but, in turn, to have the gumption or courage to go out into the public arena and fight for what matters most to her – and, in fact, millions of women like her. On a deeper and distant point, the women throughout the developing world looking to the directions the richest, most powerful nation on the face of the Earth is taking regarding women’s equality.

Then I brought the point about the rather asynchronous and grassroots movement of women and mothers, as she is a mom, becoming more civically and politically engaged than before. Taking the bold steps, they become leaders in spite of the additional barriers, challenges, and, in the cases of mothers, time limitations.

LaDouceur concluded, “I don’t think it’s been asynchronous at all. Women have been the strongest organizers on the ground since the dawn of time. We’ve just shifted our focus from propping up male candidates to elevating ourselves, encouraging each other to run and beginning the process of grooming young women for leadership roles. Succession planning will be key for us to sustain this movement.”

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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 96

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/23

96. The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Equal relationships between women and men in matters of sexual relations and reproduction, including full respect for the integrity of the person, require mutual respect, consent and shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its consequences.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration in paragraph 96 deals with the human rights of women. In that, women have the right to freedom over their own bodies. It amounts to the fundamental choice of women in the light, and not in spite, of the international rights documents connected to national law.

The autonomy of the body, including in safe and equitable access to reproductive health services, are fundamental human rights. It takes a rich public relations industry to reduce the public discourse, to delete the notion of rights as fundamental, or to selectively cherry pick them for the individualistic or religious benefit.

The democratization of ethics means everyone has equal rights while some populations – children, women, mothers – have specified and within context adjunctions to their standard fundamental human rights, which remain non-derivative or non-secondary as well.

Women are more vulnerable to being subjected to coercion into sexual activity, various forms of discrimination, and the overarching phenomena of violence against women (physical, sexual, and psychological).

The means by which to reduce these would be to eliminate the gender inequities that exacerbate and, in many ways, permit these inequalities between men and women. The respect for the individual person is important, not only for men as has been historically the case but also for women.

There, certainly, is a deep need for respect and consent in the actions of society. One where the women’s identity’s as real individuals become fundamental. In this, we can create a world in which the relations between the sexes, and in communities around reproduction, can respect the fundamental autonomy of the woman.

It is important with the integrity of the individual and the shared responsibility to the child for this to be respected, as the main responsibilities, historically and right into the present, for gestation, childcare, home care, and other care for the child have been, nearly, the sole domain of the woman.

Thus, the “shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its consequences” become the same with the primacy in reproductive health and consent being a co-responsibility.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 93

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/22

93. Discrimination against girls, often resulting from son preference, in access to nutrition and health-care services endangers their current and future health and well-being. Conditions that force girls into early marriage, pregnancy and child-bearing and subject them to harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation, pose grave health risks. Adolescent girls need, but too often do not have, access to necessary health and nutrition services as they mature. Counselling and access to sexual and reproductive health information and services for adolescents are still inadequate or lacking completely, and a young woman’s right to privacy, confidentiality, respect and informed consent is often not considered. Adolescent girls are both biologically and psychosocially more vulnerable than boys to sexual abuse, violence and prostitution, and to the consequences of unprotected and premature sexual relations. The trend towards early sexual experience, combined with a lack of information and services, increases the risk of unwanted and too early pregnancy, HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as unsafe abortions. Early child-bearing continues to be an impediment to improvements in the educational, economic and social status of women in all parts of the world. Overall, for young women early marriage and early motherhood can severely curtail educational and employment opportunities and are likely to have a long-term, adverse impact on the quality of their lives and the lives of their children. Young men are often not educated to respect women’s self-determination and to share responsibility with women in matters of sexuality and reproduction.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 93 of the Beijing Declaration looks into the young among us. Internationally, we can find a culture that deep favours boys and men The reason for this comes from cultural and family tradition, not necessarily religious.The reasons given are for the preference of the male child over the others. These restrictions in the preference in the favour of boys and against girls comes with cultural consequences as well. Why?If a society rather explicitly prefers girls over boys, this can produce consequences in the number of resources that the society provides to the girls. It can also be in the ways in which the society restricts and punishes girls compared to boys, or at the expense of girls for boys.Take, for example, the listed example of female genital mutilation, estimated at 200 million girls and women, as well as “early marriage, pregnancy and child-bearing.” But what are the consequences for the boys here? Not as much as girls.The girls can have any of the host of coinciding problems in health outcomes based on these practices. These pose significant health risks, especially as many of the contexts in which this happens are unsanitary, non-medical, and in very poor circumstances.The problems in discrimination against girls can happen with the lack of respect for their privacy, lack of counselling and other care, and simply being subject to a number of other possible harm straight from the society to the girls including forms of violence, including sexual slavery and exploitation, and improper sexual education.That form of poor education for a higher degree of lack of self-knowledge leads to a higher level of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted/unplanned pregnancies in girls who are, in essence, still mentally children and trying to grow up. But they have had these thrust onto them via the sexism of the society.With childbearing too early in life, the restrictions are against the women and in favour of the men. That is to say, the economic, social, and political realms, and the educational world are open to the men and boys without these worries, not so for the women and the girls.There also comes the privileged mindset of the boys and men, thinking the bodies of women simply amount to extensions of their own. Meaning, boys and men raised or inborn with the notion of women lacking less autonomy than them, leading to a complete disrespect for the self-determination of the women in their lives regarding sexuality and reproduction.So it goes.–

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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 95 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/23

95. Bearing in mind the above definition, reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes their right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents. In the exercise of this right, they should take into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community. The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for government- and community-supported policies and programmes in the area of reproductive health, including family planning. As part of their commitment, full attention should be given to the promotion of mutually respectful and equitable gender relations and particularly to meeting the educational and service needs of adolescents to enable them to deal in a positive and responsible way with their sexuality. Reproductive health eludes many of the world’s people because of such factors as: inadequate levels of knowledge about human sexuality and inappropriate or poor-quality reproductive health information and services; the prevalence of high-risk sexual behaviour; discriminatory social practices; negative attitudes towards women and girls; and the limited power many women and girls have over their sexual and reproductive lives. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because of their lack of information and access to relevant services in most countries. Older women and men have distinct reproductive and sexual health issues which are often inadequately addressed.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 95 is interesting with the continued “bearing in mind” of reproductive health and rights. It becomes an important part of the right of a woman to make informed and independent choices about her own body with fear of violent reprisal or governmental-religious restriction or sanction on the independent choice.

As stated, the reproductive rights connect or link, intimately, with the human rights already recognized by national laws in accordance with international human rights documents. These amount to universal, in the sense of broad consensus, rights and stipulations documents to guide the direction of international discourse.

The odds of pushback against these rights will come from national ethnic fundamentalisms, state fundamentalisms, patriarchal oriented groups, and religious fundamentalisms. These produce problems for the ability of the people to simply live their lives freely, in spite of the public and political rhetoric about freedoms.

The reality, many times, can be quite different from this. The family planning has been pushed back against by several movements and organizations around the world. We can continue to see the impacts of this since the earliest days of the UN to try and make family planning a fundamental human right.

The poor educational systems, regarding sexual education curricula, set children, and in particular girls, inadequately and even improperly – misinformation, disinformation – educated on the important roles of consent and contraception in the prevention of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, and the other technologies available to them.

The basic premise is consent as a reinforcement of the fundamental notion of autonomy, of choice, of freedom, of the ability to say, “Yes,” or, “No,” in a sexual, potential, encounter. It is interesting to see a strong male negative reaction to it.

Yet, a positive reaction from more women. What does this seem to imply to you? In essence, it represents the dichotomy with women gaining equality and then men who had power-over losing veto status, in a way, which creates a sense of negativity when another party gains the right of choice akin to one’s own. Equality to the previously unequal feels like a loss.

Then we have the issues with the older women. But these are long-held problems by societies with women bearing the majority brunt of them. They raise fundamental questions about the nature of consent, of autonomy, and who gets freedom and who does not in the international world.

Historically, the rich, the royal, and the male had these. Now, we are seeing a democratization – since December 10, 1948 – of rights for everyone in the world with a bumpy transition into modernity, a transition into a better world through universalization of ethics, which approximates the transcendent.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 94 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/22

94. Reproductive health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes. Reproductive health therefore implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition are the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law, and the right of access to appropriate health-care services that will enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant. In line with the above definition of reproductive health, reproductive health care is defined as the constellation of methods, techniques and services that contribute to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health problems. It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations, and not merely counselling and care related to reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The issues of reproductive health are incredibly important. As we can see the “complete physical, mental and social well-being” of the girls and women, it matches some of the prior statements in the Beijing Declaration.

One of the prime concerns for women, among many, in the modern period, and as noted in the prior article, is reproductive health rights. The ability of women to have safe and equitable access to fundamental rights regarding their reproductive health, including abortion.

This is speaking internationally, not to a peculiar concern among some nations’ members. The ability for women to have an enjoyable and safe sex life is fundamentally connected to make choices about their own bodies and who they partner within the moment.

This independence of body, of not being owned by the state or the community, or controlled by the men, is fundamental to a woman’s right to choose to have a family or not. The basic test of a society’s respect for women is the fundamental right to choose their own destiny, individually and if thinking larger then collectively.

Appropriate health-care services create a foundation for freedom in life, because of the reduction in potential fatal health problems. Also, the issues with social service supports around a pregnant and new mothers for the higher possibility of a healthier child.

Indeed, the reproductive health technologies available now remain one of the effective tools for the ability of women to achieve some form of independence for their life narrative and their set of choices from moment to moment.

Sexual health, in spite of some proclamations against sexuality and frequent and consenting sex among adults as a more modern culture, is a basic or nearly a basic human piece of wellbeing. In the health and wellness category of human wellbeing, we can see the obvious inclusion of a health sex life.

The ability to be educated is important for a number of reasons. One of which is the knowledge about sex and consent to make autonomous informed choices about sex and sexual health.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 92

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/21

92. Women’s right to the enjoyment of the highest standard of health must be secured throughout the whole life cycle in equality with men. Women are affected by many of the same health conditions as men, but women experience them differently. The prevalence among women of poverty and economic dependence, their experience of violence, negative attitudes towards women and girls, racial and other forms of discrimination, the limited power many women have over their sexual and reproductive lives and lack of influence in decision-making are social realities which have an adverse impact on their health. Lack of food and inequitable distribution of food for girls and women in the household, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation facilities and fuel supplies, particularly in rural and poor urban areas, and deficient housing conditions, all overburden women and their families and have a negative effect on their health. Good health is essential to leading a productive and fulfilling life, and the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The best standard within the constraints of a woman’s locale becomes the basis for the standard of a quality and healthy life. Duly note, which I consider very important, the emphasis on “whole life cycle” rather than a particular sector or cross-section of a female’s life.

This emphasis is throughout the life cycle and, thus, focusing within the entire population of women while within the equality with the men. Women have more in common with men than not, including in the health areas.

However, the additional concerns of women can be simply ignored or not dealt with as seriously as the men. With women in penurious circumstances, they can live with a perpetual cloud of dependence in a variety of ways.

They can be and are subject to violence, negative social perspectives, in addition to overt racism and sexism. The reduction in the choices of women regarding reproduction amounts to this fundamental form of restriction on the lives and livelihoods of women.

Take the “social realities” handed to women in the variety of means by which their fundamental access to finances, food, and water are restricted to such as extent as to leave them at the mercy of the men and the community, it is a form of bondage.

This connects to the excess work burden of women in the world too. There exists a persistent and ongoing overburdening of women in work, in the home, and in other social responsibilities of the society.

This impacts health. Some differences are innate, grow as a snowflake forms over time. But others are socio-cultural and imposed from the outside, often through coercion or force on women. Some health-care coverage may want to focus on this.

The final focus is the most consequential with control over one’s body, which is reproductive bodily autonomy with abortion and other reprodutive health rights respected and implemented.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 91 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/21

91. In many countries, especially developing countries, in particular the least developed countries, a decrease in public health spending and, in some cases, structural adjustment, contribute to the deterioration of public health systems. In addition, privatization of health-care systems without appropriate guarantees of universal access to affordable health care further reduces health-care availability. This situation not only directly affects the health of girls and women, but also places disproportionate responsibilities on women, whose multiple roles, including their roles within the family and the community, are often not acknowledged; hence they do not receive the necessary social, psychological and economic support.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The lives of the world’s citizens are precarious and increasingly to some extent due to climate change exacerbating wars, conflicts, droughts, and, therefore, migrancy patterns. A significant portion of the world’s population is living in a set of conditions best seen as precarious as a result.

Terms including the global precariat have been proposed by some leading thinkers. Those least able to handle these problems, especially in the health systems, are the developing nations of the world.

The structural adjustments of the past decades, circa 1995, were disastrous in the transitions for women. Why? Because women were not considered in the formulations of the restructurings and, thus, bore the inadvertent or inattentive brunt of the negative consequences. This is the result of a void or lack of a gendered lens on even economic issues.

The privatization of the health-care systems works against the general welfare movements for a universal access to healthcare. The privatization, in part, assumes a form of zero-sum thinking – common to conservatisms – rather than the greater than the sum thinking with the orientation of universal access to healthcare.

A healthier population can work better and longer with fewer needs for time off. It creates a more robust economy for the health and wellness of the citizenry, and the health and wealth of the particular nation-state.

Those, of course, and as with structural adjustment programs, with the disproportionate family and other duties – the unpaid economy or societal workload – remains with more women compared to the men.

The lack of proper economic, social, and psychological supports leaves women far worse off than the men. This simply reflects an iterative function in the operations of the international systems for decades.

Women lack the supports and suffer worse outcomes in a variety of ways, whether for the negligence of a gendered perspective or the simple non-provision for the needs of women. Ironically, this occurs in contexts where men view themselves as the providers and protectors of women.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 90 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/20

90. Women have different and unequal access to and use of basic health resources, including primary health services for the prevention and treatment of childhood diseases, malnutrition, anaemia, diarrhoeal diseases, communicable diseases, malaria and other tropical diseases and tuberculosis, among others. Women also have different and unequal opportunities for the protection, promotion and maintenance of their health. In many developing countries, the lack of emergency obstetric services is also of particular concern. Health policies and programmes often perpetuate gender stereotypes and fail to consider socio-economic disparities and other differences among women and may not fully take account of the lack of autonomy of women regarding their health. Women’s health is also affected by gender bias in the health system and by the provision of inadequate and inappropriate medical services to women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Basic healthcare amounts to a human right to decent livelihood and an okay life based on one’s circumstances in general compared to the surrounding area. There is, in many ways, an expectation of the moderate possibility of a better among many in the world.

Women require different health and medical needs than men. The primary health services around the world must recognize this and coordinate around this. Without the appropriate access to the health provisions to prevent some of the common but lethal diseases and health issues, women, and girls, will be shortchanged more than the men.

Furthermore, many families can be left without a mother. In many contexts, with the disproportionate burden of home and childcare thrust on women, this raises the obvious implication of worse issues in the childcare and homecare spheres with the loss of the mom.

The policies, programs, and initiatives should take a gendered lens. It is this view that gives an ability to see women’s and girls’ problems within a unique frame of health challenges, and then to work to incorporate them into the framework.

The gynecological and obstetric care for women is poor or non-existent in many developing countries. It has improved, likely, but circa 1995 it was even worse than now. The autonomy of women regarding their bodies, to make independent choices about the outcomes of their bodies.

These, often, can be infringed on by either social patriarchal system or paternalistic religions that do not recognize the independence and autonomy of women.

This represents, also, the gender bias in societies. Not only in the large national systems as a wholw but also by relevant particular domains such as the healthcare system, because the provisions for women are “inadequate and inappropriate.” All serious concerns about the health and wellness outcomes of women.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 89

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/20

89. Women have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The enjoyment of this right is vital to their life and well-being and their ability to participate in all areas of public and private life. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Women’s health involves their emotional, social and physical well-being and is determined by the social, political and economic context of their lives, as well as by biology. However, health and well-being elude the majority of women. A major barrier for women to the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health is inequality, both between men and women and among women in different geographical regions, social classes and indigenous and ethnic groups. In national and international forums, women have emphasized that to attain optimal health throughout the life cycle, equality, including the sharing of family responsibilities, development and peace are necessary conditions.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 89 of the Beijing Declaration deals with the highest attainable standard of both mental and physical health. Now, this is a nice statement. But this raises the question about definitions and feasibility.

Obviously, the rare and rarefied forms of the definition will create a foundation upon which we will base the metrics. If the highest possible standard with Japan, then, yes, this becomes near impossibility with the current technological thin spread of medicine and the population of the Earth.

But if we look into the highest possible standard as defined within the social and medical confines of a particular or, better yet, subculture of a nation, then, of course, this becomes highly feasible for the world population, as this takes into account the peculiarities of a particular country.

This relativizes the universal in the rights to life and well-being become subjective to the context of a culture. This becomes a lack of dis-ease and infirmity of an individual citizen within a country.

This includes the health of women in the emotional, physical, and social spheres. Indeed, we can see the political and economic contexts restricting women in the past and right into the present. The efforts, now, are to denude, weaken, or attenuate those issues of the oppression of women in order to achieve that non-absolute and relativized height of the attainment of a highest possible standard of mental and physical health.

The forms of inequality faced by women continue to be a major stumbling or roadblock to the attainment of the highest standard, which becomes worse per sector of the population taken into account.

These can include the social classes and the minorities as well, Indigenous and otherwise. Continually, then and now, the emphasis on the international stage is the furtherance of efforts for shared parental responsibilities as a means of both improvement of communities as well as development and peace.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 88 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/19

Strategic objective B.6.

Promote life-long education and training for girls and women

Actions to be taken

88. By Governments, educational institutions and communities:

Ensure the availability of a broad range of educational and training programmes that lead to ongoing acquisition by women and girls of the knowledge and skills required for living in, contributing to and benefiting from their communities and nations;
Provide support for child care and other services to enable mothers to continue their schooling;
Create flexible education, training and retraining programmes for life-long learning that facilitate transitions between women’s activities at all stages of their lives.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The actions of the communities, educational institutions, and the governments amount to collective efforts of a society to improve its own lot through the improved livelihoods of the women and girls in the nation-state.

There is an emphasis in this paragraph on the availability of the educational and training programs for women and girls. This is for the early life fulfillment of potential for girls and the later-in-life retraining of adult women (more often than not).

The contributions to and living within a community and nation require a reciprocal relationship between the nation-states systems – “communities, educational institutions, and” the government – and the individuals living within the country.

The child care and other support are important for the flourishing of mothers. Because these provisions of social support systems can permit a mother to pursue an education in spite of the challenges of, likely, breastfeeding, and childcare and housecare, and, often, more than the man in each of the latter two departments.

That is known. The ability to pursue an education in a flexible manner is fundamentally important to the health and wellness of individuals in the society, and for the economic viability of the nation now.

The idea is to encourage and provide some modicum of stability, maybe even a lot in fact, for women and girls to be able to become independent and lifelong learners.

Of course, there are robust systems in place in several societies with the distinct and clear, and not unique, intent to restrict this through belief in magic, in male authority without much warrant or minimal justification, and assertion of some things as fundamentally mysterious and, therefore, best left unexamined.

Literally, not an original thought pattern: magic, mystery, and authority as a means of the control of women; we can see this applied to education and to other rights restrictions of women.

But with the lifting of these through popular struggles and international pressure, we can see the increased flourishing and range of possibilities for women “at all stages of their lives.”

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 87

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/19

Strategic objective B.5.

Allocate sufficient resources for and monitor the implementation of educational reforms

Actions to be taken

87. By international and intergovernmental organizations, especially the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, at the global level:

Contribute to the evaluation of progress achieved, using educational indicators generated by national, regional and international bodies, and urge Governments, in implementing measures, to eliminate differences between women and men and boys and girls with regard to opportunities in education and training and the levels achieved in all fields, particularly in primary and literacy programmes;
Provide technical assistance upon request to developing countries to strengthen the capacity to monitor progress in closing the gap between women and men in education, training and research, and in levels of achievement in all fields, particularly basic education and the elimination of illiteracy;
Conduct an international campaign promoting the right of women and girls to education;
Allocate a substantial percentage of their resources to basic education for women and girls.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In an examination of this extensive set of stipulations and suggestions in paragraph 87, the thrust or orientation of the Beijing Declaration here is the improved implementation of educational reforms with better allocation of resources.

It does not have to be anything extravagant. But it, certainly, requires a minimum level of recognition about the current, at the time, limitations in the educational provision for girls and women followed by the recognition of a need to change this with educational reforms.

This emerges, continually, in the strategic objectives here. The orientation of strategizing funding options and channels in an effective manner for the benefit of women and men with an emphasis on girls and women.

The urgency in this stipulations is apparent. The implementation of a variety of measures in order to achieve greater progress than prior generations is the emphasis here. The point is to bring more education and training opportunities for the general public.

While also bearing mind, the disproportionate problems of women compared to men in all fields. The basic literacy and primary/basic education programs are emphasized here as well. In the developing countries, one of the big issues is the inclusion go more monitoring, robustly speaking, of the gap in educational achievement.

Note, the emphasis on an international campaign as well. One in which the education of girls and women is encouraged across the board. Something to bring more girls and women into the mainstream educational fold.

Of course, the more women and girls impacted by this in developing countries, then the greater the overall impact. Developed nations, circa 1995 and now, have not achieved compete parity across the board.

However, the developing nations, even in the present, are significantly behind in the equality department. Now, the allocation of a “substantial percentage” is indicative of the importance given to early life education.

The earlier in the young person’s life, then the greater the positive impact on their life prospectives. This becomes non-trivial, impactful, and a long-term benefit for the individual able to garner the early life basic education support.

The problems can start very early in life. Without the appropriate means by which to have a solid basis in life, the pursuit of education and advanced professions in life can be stymied to a significant degree. This is all the more true for girls and women in contrast to boys and mne, as a instituttional and cultural phenomenon for much of the history of the world.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 86

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/18

Strategic objective B.5.

Allocate sufficient resources for and monitor the implementation of educational reforms

Actions to be taken

86. By multilateral development institutions, including the World Bank, regional development banks, bilateral donors and foundations:

Consider increasing funding for the education and training needs of girls and women as a priority in development assistance programmes;
Consider working with recipient Governments to ensure that funding for women’s education is maintained or increased in structural adjustment and economic recovery programmes, including lending and stabilization programmes.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The regional and the multilateral organizations retain the most import in this part of the Beijing Declaration. This is salient to a global perspective. The scales tend to be national, regional, and international. Thus, we’re dealing with a massive focus.

If you wish to learn more about the regions of the world, I encourage some independent investigation on the matter. But to the focus of regional focus on the allocation “good enough” or sufficient resources for the monitoring of the efficaciousness of educational reforms, we can see the need for training of both girls and women.

This becomes an emphasis for the development assistance programmes. Indeed, this is the basis for something like secondary bulwarks for education. The reforms in education may not be clean and the transitions will, probably, require a wide variety of support mechanisms.

Women’s education, as with general education, is the task and responsibility of the government. It should be an encouraged independence of mind. However, the basic notion of women’s education as a fundamental value and benefit to the society, and of import for the lifelong health and wellness of women, puts this squarely in the role of the government as a duty to the public.

As has been noted several paragraphs ago, the structural and economic adjustment programs did not negatively or positively include a gender perspective or women in the vision. This made women and girls non-partners to it.

The main bearers, literally, of the negative impacts for years, and years, were women and girls, especially rural, Indigenous, and poor women and girls; thus, the least among us bore the brunt of the structural adjustments.

The inclusion of them in this becomes important for the improved relations of women within society and, in particular, society towards women – and girls.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 84 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/17

Strategic objective B.5.

Allocate sufficient resources for and monitor the implementation of educational reforms

Actions to be taken

84. By Governments:

a. Provide the required budgetary resources to the educational sector, with reallocation within the educational sector to ensure increased funds for basic education, as appropriate;

b. Establish a mechanism at appropriate levels to monitor the implementation of educational reforms and measures in relevant ministries, and establish technical assistance programmes, as appropriate, to address issues raised by the monitoring efforts.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 84 emphasizes the basic need for general resources – not simply monetary – to be allocated for the reforms in education. Obviously, this will mean implementation of reforms in line with the general thrust of the entirety of the document.

The budgets for the educational sector are non-trivial. Which is to say, if no dollars, then no schools. The financial considerations for the international community are non-trivial for the advancement and empowerment of women.

It is in the readjustment of the current educational curricula and educational pipelines where the monetary drain will be the most intensive, not simply upgrades in the technology or the technical expertise. It will take some vision to see these through; however, it is not coming from some mystical, mysterious realm, but the local coalition of teachers and administrations and policy-makers putting in the time and effort to make the important early life changes in the lives of kids.

The emphasis here is national, who take education and the enfranchisement of women seriously, funding for basic education. Early life education will have the most impact. Why? Brains are more malleable and hereditary components become less relevant at that time. The organism remains less fixed.

The mechanisms for keeping tracking of funding and improvement in specific areas can be a basis for improved performance in the funding allocation and basic education performance over time. Some things work; others do not.

The monitoring of success is the basis there. The educational reforms are, furthermore, relevant with the ministries and the establishment of a robust basic education system. In order to fulfill various international rights documents’ stipulations and recommendations, the monitoring is crucial in order to adapt and make efficient use of, often, limited educational funding.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 85 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/18

Strategic objective B.5.

Allocate sufficient resources for and monitor the implementation of educational reforms

Actions to be taken

85. By Governments and, as appropriate, private and public institutions, foundations, research institutes and non-governmental organizations:

When necessary, mobilize additional funds from private and public institutions, foundations, research institutes and non-governmental organizations to enable girls and women, as well as boys and men on an equal basis, to complete their education, with particular emphasis on under-served populations;
Provide funding for special programmes, such as programmes in mathematics, science and computer technology, to advance opportunities for all girls and women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The emphasis here expands from the prior section of the Beijing Declaration with a look into the “private and public institutions, foundations, research institutes and non-governmental organizations.” Neither trivial nor comprehensive in fact.

However, the areas of emphasis here cover a wide, at face value disparate, smattering of systems and levels of organization in society. But we can run through the central contents with the aforementioned in the back of the mind, the funding of this widespread of collectives can diversify the funding sources and support structures available for students.

Let’s take, for example, the case of a single mother pursuing a doctoral degree but without sufficient finances, these private, or public for that matter, funding streams could be the difference between the completion of the dissertation and becoming one of the massive attrition acolytes.

But this does not need to be as august. It can simply be, as per one of the recent articles, an improvement in the basic education provisions of the country, to serve those “under-served populations” who may lack a wide variety of internal or external resources to pursue and complete an education.

The special programmes in modern science and technology fields are important, because these are the future upcoming and ongoing economy. We live, somewhat, in a rundown science fiction future of the past.

The provisions in 1995 remain as important now, especially as some numbers have stalled science and technology disciplines. The distraction efforts have been, strangely but understandably (cynically), directed at the men with all-male movements to attain once more what they assumed should be theirs by birthright.

We can see this, as per the statements of Pankaj Mishra, in the rise of not full but mild fascist mysticism to mollify the men into their historical trend of obeisance to a male authority, a patriarch promising prior power and glory. It is zero-sum thinking rather than everyone gains through cooperation – a sum more than the parts – thinking.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 83(o)-(s)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/17

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

o. Acknowledge and respect the artistic, spiritual and cultural activities of indigenous women;

p. Ensure that gender equality and cultural, religious and other diversity are respected in educational institutions;

q. Promote education, training and relevant information programmes for rural and farming women through the use of affordable and appropriate technologies and the mass media – for example, radio programmes, cassettes and mobile units;

r. Provide non-formal education, especially for rural women, in order to realize their potential with regard to health, micro-enterprise, agriculture and legal rights;

s. Remove all barriers to access to formal education for pregnant adolescents and young mothers, and support the provision of child care and other support services where necessary.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Indigenous in this set of stipulations continues. Also, the wider emphasis on the less monetary-driven goals of the international community in recognition of the human ‘spirit.’

The idea is art and culture. Some imply spiritual, but this, to me, seems mainly to apply to the non-supernatural or the edificative and instructional: tall tales of fantasy and magic to tell a story to children, not intended for but often believed by adults.

The notion of tales from ancient pre-science societies as indicative of the fundamental nature and processes of the world reflects more moral and coming-of-age stories and not facts about the world. True in the sense of cultural wisdom; false in the sense of natural fact.

But, of course, the purported wisdom of several stories from near pre-history take on a garb more akin to the factual than to the less scientific; science can redact the notion of even purported wisdom from all traditions. Skepticism is important.

The gender equality of the Indigenous women in the relevant abovementioned areas is crucial. The respect for particular cultural traditions comes from this, too. This can be enshrined in the educational institutions, as is happening.

Furthermore, the more vulnerable and less empowered populations of women become an additional emphasis in document-after-document, where women’s rights and fundamental equality are to be encouraged and implemented as per the stipulations and recommendations & within the force of the international community.

This includes the inclusion of the non-formal education that many women generally, but rural and Indigenous get more of in particular, for the flourishing of the individual women, who happen to be a part of more impoverished, statistically speaking, groups than others around the world.

Then the others, lastly, emphasized are the pregnant/expectant mothers or already mothers with dependents. The practical empowerment of this population would go a significant way in the improved relations of the health of not only women but families and communities as well.

The provisions listed are simply the bare minimum, which are childcare and social support services to improve the probability of the health and wellness of mother and child from pregnancy to post-birth for several years, minimum.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 83(l)-(n)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/16

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

l. Encourage, with the guidance and support of their parents and in cooperation with educational staff and institutions, the elaboration of educational programmes for girls and boys and the creation of integrated services in order to raise awareness of their responsibilities and to help them to assume those responsibilities, taking into account the importance of such education and services to personal development and self-esteem, as well as the urgent need to avoid unwanted pregnancy, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, and such phenomena as sexual violence and abuse;

m. Provide accessible recreational and sports facilities and establish and strengthen gender-sensitive programmes for c in education and community institutions and support the advancement of women in all areas of athletics and physical activity, including coaching, training and administration, and as participants at the national, regional and international levels;

n. Recognize and support the right of indigenous women and girls to education and promote a multicultural approach to education that is responsive to the needs, aspirations and cultures of indigenous women, including by developing appropriate education programmes, curricula and teaching aids, to the extent possible in the languages of indigenous people, and by providing for the participation of indigenous women in these processes;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This particular paragraph set of the Beijing Declaration almost does the writing for the individual wanting to analyze it. But there are some caveats important for its consideration.

But let’s work through some of the material nonetheless. The encouragement and guidance of women into the areas of educational institutions is important, because the flourishing of nation-states has been strongly positively correlated with a net concept that means a set of policies, programs, and actionables.

This is the advancement and empowerment of women. If one wants to see the level of development of a society, they should look no further than the level of empowerment of women.

Furthermore, a set of integrated services are important for the reduction of negative life circumstances that can reduce the possibilities for women flourishing in a society.

Take, for example, the level of non-consideration for a long time as to the concerns important for gender in not particularly nuanced areas of the society. Some of these can include gender-sensitive programs in athletics and physical competitions as well.

The call is for around the world. But this, in fact, is a rather mild request but still encounters some controversies in even the mental sports of chess, for example, with sex separation of men and women as well as the call for mandatory wearing of some, usually religious, clothing in the sport, too. There has been news about Iran sometimes tied to coinciding protests of women, too.

Also, the right of the more vulnerable populations of women to be able to pursue their educational dreams and aspirations is mentioned here. Not trivial, it is 6-7% of the global population, so 3-3.5% of the world’s population with a specific mention here.

The recommendations and stipulations become more particular and all-encompassing, with an increase in fidelity, as the emphasis becomes sports and other athletic arenas & specific global populations as per the mention of Indigenous women.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 83(h)-(k) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/16

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

h. Develop curricula and teaching materials and formulate and take positive measures to ensure women better access to and participation in technical and scientific areas, especially areas where they are not represented or are underrepresented;

i. Develop policies and programmes to encourage women to participate in all apprenticeship programmes;

j. Increase training in technical, managerial, agricultural extension and marketing areas for women in agriculture, fisheries, industry and business, arts and crafts, to increase income-generating opportunities, women’s participation in economic decision-making, in particular through women’s organizations at the grass-roots level, and their contribution to production, marketing, business, and science and technology;

k. Ensure access to quality education and training at all appropriate levels for adult women with little or no education, for women with disabilities and for documented migrant, refugee and displaced women to improve their work opportunities.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basis in the non-discrimination of women, or men for that matter, in education, is not only in the behaviour of the individual but also in the presentation of the information in the educational curricula, the materials used for the study.

This can be helpful with vocational and technical training. Also, this can be an area in which women’s livelihood can be improved in general. Take, for example, the recommendation of “better access to and participation in technical and scientific areas.”

What is the common recommendation now? We see the argument from unsuitability. The assertion of women as unfit for particular positions. Before, it was innate capacities, which fell by the wayside.

Then as this attenuated, denuded, and deleted as a notion, the incursion of the other explanation emerged. It is not an innate capacity but innate preferences. You can see this eroding too.

In general, it is a trend in the reduction of the viability of innate arguments about the capacity of women. Then the reduction to non-existent or general relevance over time of the assumptions about women and men.

The apprenticeship programs for various forms of trades can be encouraged with the inclusion of policies and programmes aimed at increasing more women participation in them.

Indeed, we can find the variety of encouragements for women to enter into arenas of the education, vocational, and professional spheres not seen for them or considered for them as such as massive scale.

It is this basis that is a sign for encouragement because it is work through documents such as this that created the basis for the modern equality movements for the sexes.

This comes with further repetition, as per several prior sections of the document, of the need for inclusion of the educational provisions – and encouragement – of women at several levels in addition to the professional access.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 83(e)-(g) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/15

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

e. Introduce and promote training in peaceful conflict resolution;

f. Take positive measures to increase the proportion of women gaining access to educational policy- and decision-making, particularly women teachers at all levels of education and in academic disciplines that are traditionally male-dominated, such as the scientific and technological fields;

g. Support and develop gender studies and research at all levels of education, especially at the postgraduate level of academic institutions, and apply them in the development of curricula, including university curricula, textbooks and teaching aids, and in teacher training;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration, though this section deals with the education and training of women, implies an overlap in several domains of the world. Indeed, we can see this within section (e) of paragraph 83. Here, it speaks to the need to introduce training in conflict resolution.

This is heartwarming and, rather, complex in its representation. Why? Because the formulation of education here is direct intervention through greater provision of educational materials and staff, and curricula, towards conflict resolution.

But, in general, the more educated a population, then the more peaceful the population, not always true and sometimes extraordinarily not true. But, nonetheless, we can see the direct emphasis here, as has been continually recognized right into the present with women seen as integral to conflict resolution and international stability and peace.

There is a need to reduce the level of stereotyping and discrimination against women in being able to attend and complete education. However, we should bear in mind the levers of power, not simply access to the training, education, and professions.

There are simply levels of policy-making and decision-making authority not given to or even accessible to women. It raises some basic questions about equality and power dynamics. In the intersectional jargon, it defines a patriarchy, where men dominate the most important and influential positions even when being greatly impactful on the lives of women.

This, in essence, is a truism worth repeating in the vernacular or not, because men dominate most social, economic, political, and religious systems around the world and the operations rely on the pervasive subservience of women.

The work to reduce these can improve the levels of gender equality and the open the horizons and possibilities for women, which were for more of even recent history closed to them.

The inclusion of gender studies is, also, important for the improved levels of equality of the sexes. Without this, women would be in much worse straits than the men, and have been historically and still are in most of the world. Furthermore, the educational curricula can be oriented to improve this educational context for women as well.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 83(c)-(d) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/15

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

c. Develop training programmes and materials for teachers and educators that raise awareness of their own role in the educational process, with a view to providing them with effective strategies for gender-sensitive teaching;

d. Take actions to ensure that female teachers and professors have the same opportunities as and equal status with male teachers and professors, in view of the importance of having female teachers at all levels and in order to attract girls to school and retain them in school;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The training programmes and materials for those who teach the next generations are crucial for the integration into society as well as preparation for the modern world. One without the veneer of powerful ignorance, where old superstitions and stereotypes could legitimately, within the evidentiary framework of the time, make sense.

It is much less benign now. Why? Because the evidence tells us better. Thus, the educational materials and processes should fit more into this updated framework of the world. One with less prejudice, stereotyping, and deliberate attempts at the restrictions, mentally and behaviourally, of men or women, girls or boys.

The inclusion of gender-sensitive teaching becomes important within this framework too. But there is more to consider: the actions, the concrete steps, that can be taken by the women educators from K-graduate school to reduce the bias or prejudice against vulnerable populations.

Often, and relevant to this article, these have been girls and women, especially, as per the focus, in the educational spheres. How can we reduce the level of prejudice and bigotry against girls and women based on stereotypes? How can we reinform with real evidence the attitudes and opinions of the current and upcoming generations rather than perpetuate ignorant stereotypes of the past?

Working within the educational curricula and the next generation of teachers is one methodology, another is to provide equal access to the opportunities in education, in the professional arena, for both men and women at all levels.

It is important to have both women and men as teachers. At the moment, based on historical pigeon-holing of women and some preference in professions, we have far more women in the educational areas than men, educationally and professionally.

But in developing nation contexts, the effort should be on the inclusion of more girls and women into education. This takes the finesse of building bonds of trust and working to encourage girls to enter into school and pursue their dreams without fear of reprisal from religious leaders, town elders, community and family, and government and cultural coercion & discouragement.

This will and has been a long battle. But the arc in this historical moment continues to be more towards the positive, not as an inevitable trajectory from on high but through the incredible sacrifice and work of those who came before and had the vision and perseverance to see that vision through to its next stage of development – of which we see now.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 83(a)-(b) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/14

Strategic objective B.4.

Develop non-discriminatory education and training

Actions to be taken

83. By Governments, educational authorities and other educational and academic institutions:

Elaborate recommendations and develop curricula, textbooks and teaching aids free of gender-based stereotypes for all levels of education, including teacher training, in association with all concerned – publishers, teachers, public authorities and parents’ associations;
Develop training programmes and materials for teachers and educators that raise awareness about the status, role and contribution of women and men in the family, as defined in paragraph 29 above, and society; in this context, promote equality, cooperation, mutual respect and shared responsibilities between girls and boys from pre-school level onward and develop, in particular, educational modules to ensure that boys have the skills necessary to take care of their own domestic needs and to share responsibility for their household and for the care of dependants;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The responsibility of governments and other educational constructors and administrators are for non-discrimination in both education and training. These are among the more important things in society to get right. Consider the consequences of failing to fully and properly educate one’s own public.

The recommendations and contents of the educational materials should reduce or eliminate the stereotypes of men and women at all levels of education including in the materials used to teach and train educators.

There are, certainly, forces in society wanting to keep them at a low level. But, at the same time, the overwhelming curve in many developed societies is to shift into the less discriminatory, stereotypical, and restrictive, of either any gender in fact.

The educational materials will include aspects of dual-responsible families, speaking of in the home, looking at the contributions of men and women to the family. This is heartwarming, necessary, and part of a long shift of the tacit conversation around families.

The co-responsibility and mutual respect of boys and girls is important for the long-term healthy developmental attitudinal trends of the boys and girls who become teenagers and then men & women.

The shift in the representation and the conversation is one aspect of broadening the horizons of the tasks and responsibilities in the home. It is not a minor thing. In fact, the additional set of hands in the home, even though women still do more in the house, expands the possibilities of many women who, in spite of the progress in work and education, continue to do the bulk of the housework as a statistical aggregate.

The care of dependants follows this trend as well. If a more just and equitable world is to develop, which may manifest in surprising and pleasant ways, then the work on boys and the men for the benefit of all is important, especially as this pertains to opening time and energy resources for girls and women to pursue their dreams. It is not better-worse as the axis but restrictive versus opened forms of feeling, thinking, and acting in the world.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 82(h)-(k)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/14

Strategic objective B.3.

Improve women’s access to vocational training, science and technology, and continuing education

Actions to be taken

82. By Governments, in cooperation with employers, workers and trade unions, international and non-governmental organizations, including women’s and youth organizations, and educational institutions:

i. Develop policies and programmes to encourage women to participate in all apprenticeship programmes;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This has been a rather packed paragraph. But it is, no less, salient for the consideration of the orientation of the international community in principles of description and prescription.

The statistics and empirical evidence point to the direct benefits to the advancement and empowerment of women through most or all systems within the society. One obvious reason: the societies begin to work at more full capacity rather than in a limited manner.

Furthermore, the opening of the channels in the populations’ workforce and postsecondary education systems raises the quality of jobs, of life, of the general population in addition to raising the cultural level of the country. There does seem to be a reason why fundamentalisms and bigotry associate with ignorance and culturally low-status nations.

The educational curricula and training materials developments with gender in mind, with women in mind, can be part of this effort to raise the floor of the nation on a variety of metrics.

Furthermore, the policies and programmes, too, should bear women in mind. But it is non-trivial. The advancement and empowerment of women remain the single most powerful driver of the development of nations known to us.

The terminology of “apprenticeships” bring to mind trades and vocational education, which will retain a similar level of importance in the 21st century as in the 20th; except, some will become automated or obsolete with the incursion or innervation of artificial intelligence and machinery into the market.

Robots will take many of the jobs. As we can see this being used to scapegoat vulnerable populations with misattribution of the real problem in 2018, this could be a basis for trying to repress women once more, to, where ‘things were better back in the day when women knew their place and men had a definite, pre-ordained role in society and in the family.’ Something like this.

Section (j) is interesting in its specification of a wide array of fields with import for much of the general population, where women can enter or be encouraged to enter into these fields as much as men.

But the economic generation in these areas should coincide with economic decision-making. Even in my own country, in several subpopulations, the familial and patriarchal system is such that the women are encouraged to work but not empowered by the work, thereby denuding the notion of work as empowerment as a farce. But why?

The reason: the finances of the women go back into the family mainly or to the man. Even though, in international studies, if finances are given to the men, the finances will be invested more in the men; if the finances are given to the women, the women will invest in themselves, their family, and community, as a general rule or a statistical-empirical generalization.

Indeed, the assurance of equal access to education is integral to the better lives and livelihood of women, but the assurance cannot be empty; there should be the assumption, culturally and legally, that women are empowered in such a way as to permit them economic independence rather than subordinate monetary lives.

Economics means choices. More money leads to more degrees of freedom in society. Women without this lack real choice or as much freedom as men in societies. This is one strong basis for sexism and the outright restriction of the possibilities of women in life.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 82(d)-(g)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/13

Strategic objective B.3.

Improve women’s access to vocational training, science and technology, and continuing education

Actions to be taken

d. Design educational and training programmes for women who are unemployed in order to provide them with new knowledge and skills that will enhance and broaden their employment opportunities, including self-employment, and development of their entrepreneurial skills;

e. Diversify vocational and technical training and improve access for and retention of girls and women in education and vocational training in such fields as science, mathematics, engineering, environmental sciences and technology, information technology and high technology, as well as management training;

f. Promote women’s central role in food and agricultural research, extension and education programmes;

g. Encourage the adaptation of curricula and teaching materials, encourage a supportive training environment and take positive measures to promote training for the full range of occupational choices of non-traditional careers for women and men, including the development of multidisciplinary courses for science and mathematics teachers to sensitize them to the relevance of science and technology to women’s lives;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Most levels of the national and international, and local, systems are emphasized in these portions of the paragraph. Indeed, the first section speaks to the improved education and training regimes for women.

Many women remain unemployed and stuck in financial dependence on either the men in their lives or the government because of the inability to access or even have opportunities in the various educational and training systems on offer in societies; those, more generally and unfairly, present and available for the men.

The self-employment is connected to this. How? Knowledge about a sector of the economy to innovate, be entrepreneurial, and so on, are part and parcel of financial independence, of which most women will never attain; however, the ability to garner an education and use this for effective, long-term employment can improve the probability of a positive life outcome for the women.

For those with a more in-depth interest in the areas of the possibilities of women, as these are introductory level analyses and conversational presentations of the international rights documents and recommendations, you can look into the international communities’ relevant documentation and recommendations for more depth.

But the economies are continually changing and this requires a diversification of the avenues for self-empowerment of women, these include “science, mathematics, engineering, environmental sciences and technology, information technology and high technology.” No doubt about it.

The world is more technologically advanced, more scientifically savvy, and needing the further movement towards the freedom of all through the empowerment of women and girls into the 21st-century economies, which are science and technology-heavy economic systems – globally and nationally.

The focus in this document is also on recognition in less science and technology-heavy industries. But this recognition of women’s contributions can reduce social stigma and improve the possibility of the removal of social and cultural blockades of the pathways available to women.

This includes, as well, the promotion of women into science and mathematics towards the international targeted objectives of gender equality and parity. We do not know what an equal society looks like in full, nor do we have definitive data as to optimal structures for a society.

However, the tendency in international thought is in pro-gender equality with purely nationalistic goals tending towards the pro-gender inequality with men in one role and women in another and never the twain meeting.

Thus, the orientation of a particular ideological perspective can elucidate the orientation of someone, in general as a tendency and in principle with the more nationalistic as unequal in orientation and the more globalistic as more equal in orientation. This may be a fun experiment, intriguing at a minimum, for a self-inventory of true views.

–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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Paragraph 82(a)-(c) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/13

Strategic objective B.3.

Improve women’s access to vocational training, science and technology, and continuing education

Actions to be taken

Develop and implement education, training and retraining policies for women, especially young women and women re-entering the labour market, to provide skills to meet the needs of a changing socio-economic context for improving their employment opportunities;
Provide recognition to non-formal educational opportunities for girls and women in the educational system;
Provide information to women and girls on the availability and benefits of vocational training, training programmes in science and technology and programmes of continuing education;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration, as a rights document with an extensive set of stipulations and recommendations, deals with the rights of women as persons. By analogy, we can see women as legal persons in a democracy with the ability to vote.

It required long, hard struggles for many women. There are new problems that arise with each generation, but there are, certainly, common problems among subpopulations around the world.

We can see this in the educational domains without a doubt. In some areas, the motivational ceiling for young men in postsecondary institutions and glass ceilings for women in many areas of the world.

If we want a more just society, our goals should be consonant with these facts and working to reduce the problem areas. The ones mentioned here are the educational and training regimes with women in mind.

The ability of women to be able to retrain, upgrade education and earn higher-earning and stable jobs. The ceilings would be prevention from entering into the educational environment or being able to attain the jobs (for women). For men, it would be resentment or lack of guidance into pursuing lifestyles and targeted objectives with long-term impacts on their lives and livelihoods. Civilizations can collapse if men lack motivation and women are completely restricted – no oars for the rowboat, worse than circles.

The recognition of the non-formal educational opportunities for women is, also, an important development in the educational systems of the world. We can see the opportunities for girls and women in areas to garner some support systems.

But we lack the recognition of this as real education; something worth recognizing to the point of providing certification. Why can we not do this? Or if we are doing it, why can we not do this more broadly, comprehensively through the recognition of women’s contributions to the various areas of society?

Even with the provisions available, the more sexist elements of a society thrive on the ignorance of women, imposed from the outside with deliberate negative intent.

The knowledge about areas for continuing education, retraining, and becoming involved in the educational and work world are integral to the flourishing of early 21st century societies, for the continued prosperity of the advanced industrial economies and the improved general social development indices of developing societies. These can be done, vigorously. But there is work to prevent it.

–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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2022-04-24

Ask Tara 1 — The Crossroads of Thailand, Iran, America, Journalism, and Women’s Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/12

The mixed ethnic and national background provides an interesting admixture not only in terms of heritage but, if culturally influenced then, an intriguing view on the world, too. Journalism needs this around the world, for a rounded perspective. Abhasakun’s interest in feminist issues were the first points of the conversation.

Abhasakun stated, “I think Thailand and Iran influence my feminism in different ways. I have never been to Iran before, however I have grown up knowing about the abuses against women over there. This has made me feel extremely lucky to have grown up in the US which, despite all its flaws, is a free society, although women’s rights are going downhill here too given the Kavanaugh confirmation.”

When she moved focus over to the examination of Thai personal history, she was quite young, so didn’t care about human right issues as much (age 6, so, of course). She returned to Thailand as an adult. Now, she has experienced sexual harassment by taxi drivers several times.

Abhasakun continued, “Thailand does not have as many laws that are as obviously or overtly sexist as Iran does. For example, there is no strict dress code or hijab law. Yet, from what I see of a lot of the mindset here, many people still seem to not value women as much as they value men. For example, when conversing with strangers about my family, when they ask if I have siblings and I tell them yes, they ask, “a brother?” When I say no, they then say “oh, so no boys?” as if every family should have at least one boy.

Apparently, this is common in Thailand. There was a water festival in Thailand. Astoundingly, over half of the women reported gropings and harassments. The Thai police blamed the victims for dressing in a sexy way. Abhasakun, justifiably, was fuming over this a) behaviour of men at the water festival and b) the reaction of the authorities hired to protect the public.

“…[It] motivated me to interview the host of Asia’s Next Top Model about her #DontTellMeHowToDress campaign against this victim-blaming. Thailand is also an international hub for the sex trade,” Abhasakun stated, “It’s very common to see very old foreign men here walking around with young Thai women, and it grosses me out to no end. I realize that there are probably many women who “want to” work in the sex trade, however many poor Thai women are doing this because they have to feed their families. It’s exploitation.”

Sexual exploitation is a form of moral-economic-rights issue not nearly getting enough coverage by activists, journalists, and self-reflection by the buyers or the exploiters – often men.

The conversation shifted into the conditions of women and minorities in the Middle East. She reflected on this, but she added a caveat first. She does not want to pick what group’s rights are most severe because all are severe.

“…I would have to say that the genocide against Yazidis is by far the most dire thing happening in the Middle East right now,” Abhasakun explained, “When I say “most dire” I mean that out of all the situations happening to different human rights violations taking place right now, the threat of violence and death is the most severe. Over 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still held captive by ISIS, and are still being gang-raped every day.”

These are some of the worst conditions for women and minorities (and minority women) in the world and amount some of the worst human rights violations ongoing in the world as youread this (dear reader).

Abhasakun explained theseling of people to families, literally, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the MENA region. She thinks the UN and politicians – “around the world” – should do better in retrieving enslaved people from ISIS. The violence is severe.

Abhasakun said, “Apart from the Yazidis, there is Asia Bibi’s situation happening right now, as well as the threat to possibly execute 24 Yemeni Baha’is. And of course, so many people are executed in Saudi Arabia and Iran. After the Yazidis, it’s honestly a bit hard for me to say what exactly the most dire situation is.”

Lastly, the shift of the first session went into religion and feminism. She considers all religion needing to be updated with feminism in addition to the removal of the gender norms pervasive within them.

“I believe that it’s possible to keep the aspects of religion that help people to remember a higher power and connection to the universe and their fellow human beings, while throwing away the misogynistic social norms that became a part of religions due to the time periods in which they emerged,” Abhasakun concluded.

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2022-04-24

Ask Charlotte 1 — Become The Voice CIC & Palestine

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/12

When I opened about Become The Voice (BTV) as an activist organization, I wanted to suss out some of the details about the organization. Behind every organization, we can find inspired thinking about its title and foundation, values and mission, and so on.

Littlewood explained, “Become The Voice was created in January of this year. What I had noticed working in counter-extremism and in Prevent (which is the soft end of counter-terrorism) in the UK, is a distinct lack of coordinated work on the central ground, we have seen politics divide with an increasingly illiberal far-left alongside a far-right. Identity politics have taken front stage. We have seen radicalisation taking place Left and Right, but definitely not in the Center.”

Noting this, she founded BTV to empower, enable, and equip youth with progressive values to be vocal in their fight against extremism. The idea is to create a resilience or a resistance against the narratives of the extremist elements of society.

These are built with progressive and positive messaging. One of the big projects is outreach to the young. The knowledge about extremism can embolden the young in countering their narratives. One of those outreach methodologies is social media.

“So one problem was a lack of grassroots work. Another problem was any attempt to create youth work was coming from a top-down government effort rather than the young doing this from their own media platforms, their own ways of engaging with each other. That is a second unique thing about BTV, it is truly youth lead,” Littlewood stated.

But increating activists on the ground, this leads to questions about the people. Why these people, the Palestinians? How do they get their message out into the communities in order to expand progressive and positive voices and combat negative and extremist ones?

Littlewood said, “What we did in Palestine was a gender equality women’s program, through this we were, naturally, opposing extremism in itself. It is important to give an understanding of Hebron, Palestine first. I took this quote from Rateeba, who runs the largest youth forum in Palestine. She spoke to me about extremism in Hebron and the history extremism in the women’s movement.”

Rateeba spoke at length about the women’s movement starting in the late 17th century and emerging, with prominence, in 1965. According to Rateeba, women and men worked to bring about political and economic equality.

“After the first Intifada in 1987, political Islam started to influence the culture of the Palestinian people. They moved our society far away from the leftist leading parties. They use and continue to use religion to influence people, coming into conflict with our leftist political parties,” Rateeba opined, “The Islamist groups started recording successes in the peace process as successes for themselves, which increased their popularity. The Left has essentially disappeared.”

This gap of the Left, of the progressives as one example, creates a need for more progressive coalitions and community building to combat the Islamists, the extremists found in political Islam. Rateeba continued to speak on the lack of a Left or a Center, where the Islamists continue to gain ground and fill the political vacuum or void.

She reflects on the rise in “Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and now Turkey.” Indeed, women are forbidden from things that they did before, including dancing. There were nuances and community differences in Islamic beliefs. Those are gone now.

She lamented that the separation of people was on nation, language, and culture. Now, the religion of Islam works to dominate them.

Littlewood said, “I think this really demonstrates the shift in Palestine towards extremism and a push against progressivism. So, working in gender equality was interesting, because it is gender equality that organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir have really been working to prevent; it has, in the last year, prevented a shelter for battered women being created. In the last couple of months, they prevented a marathon from taking place that was running through Hebron because it was a mixed gender marathon: men and women were running together.”

As noted in prior articles and work, the moves, internationally, for the advancement and empowerment of women are important in the well-being and wealth of nations. To further bolster this case, it also becomes something extremists work to prevent, as part of their strategies and ‘activism’ of oppression of women.

Littlewood described the work to prevent gender equality and the equality of women with men. BTV, thus, added gender equal, also one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, to the dossier of its work.

“We aim first to identify the issues facing people in an area and gender equality definitely was a prominent issue. We then work with organizations who are working in that area on the ground,” Littlewood further explicated, “so we can get some professionals involved to do some training with the young people — so they get hands-on workshops with people working on this day-in-and-day-out.”

BTV had a number of women’s rights organizations work with women. They know the issues and ways to create dialogue and bridge communities’ work. Now, BTV and others work to upskill the knowledge about social media for the activists and others.

The organization, BTV, has a digital expert as a director, who knows Twitter and how to blog in the right tone, place the right #s/hashtags, and the timing of release for materials on social media. This social media training is given in stages or step-by-step for the activists and others.

It becomes a means by which to effectuate proper change. The BTV Facebook and Instagram platforms were important in helping with training and outreach for the social media of the activists. The organization has more than 300 people following BTV Facebook, mostly Palestinians from Hebron.

Modern communications technologies permit more women to have a platform, especially as women and girls tend to have less economic independence in most countries of the world. BTV trained people in how to utilize social media communications in an effective manner.

Littlewood stated, “BTV trained young women in how to use social media effectively. It gives them organizations, including ourselves and other organizations within my network, to tweet at and include in their posts. So, we can reach a wider audience. What is really, really useful about social media, it is completely free. There are no economic restrictions on this. Even some of the cheap phones, smartphones, they have the ability to take a photo and put things on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.”

The ease and accessibility help with the outreach of the progressive activists in order to fight extremist narratives. Littlewood reflected on the ongoing #MeToo social media campaign. 4.7 million people engaged with 12 million posts in the first 24 hours of the campaign.

Littlewood concluded, “It started with an activist standing up for a young woman who had been sexually abused. Then an actress used the hashtag, her name escapes me, she was the first to use it in the public sphere. That was in 2017. Within 24 hours, 12 million posts using #MeToo. It shows the impact and the reach we can have. Obviously, it influenced discourse, particularly if it was discourse in the UK. It has given the feminist movement a big kick up the ass once again.”

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2022-04-24

Paragraph 81(d)-(f) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/11

Strategic objective B.2.

Eradicate illiteracy among women

Actions to be taken

81. By Governments, national, regional and international bodies, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

d. Narrow the disparities between developed and developing countries;

e. Encourage adult and family engagement in learning to promote total literacy for all people;

f. Promote, together with literacy, life skills and scientific and technological knowledge and work towards an expansion of the definition of literacy, taking into account current targets and benchmarks.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The problems with illiteracy are numerous, empirically known, and verifiable in the recommendations of international organizations and documents. The question: why are the solutions not being pursued? It is an important question.

I leave that as a homework assignment for the interested. The level of analysis for this paragraph comes in the form of the governments and then the “bodies” from the national to the global. It includes the donors and the NGOs.

That is to say, this is a paragraph twin set about most relevant organizations dealing with one of the fundamental problems, which is illiteracy. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, are foundational cornerstones to functioning within a society.

For those who fail to integrate, some of the reasons will, probably, include the inability to become educated based on functional illiteracy, which becomes a problem, apart from some cognitive deficit, of the educational system and, unfortunately, a failure in many cases.

The point of these two paragraphs appears to be the focus on the development of both developed and developing societies’ with an emphasis on a wide array of organizations to reduce the level of disparity between them. Thus, the improvement in developing societies should outpace the rate of literacy improvement of developed ones.

The second section deals with the integration of family and adults to improve the rate of literacy not only for kids but also the family and adults themselves. Living in Canada, there is a rich tradition of working to build a literate culture.

One with the ability to adapt to the changes in intellectual culture while, maybe, having much of our own intact. In an information-rich world, this is almost a mandatory skill-set, to be cognitively flexible based on literacy levels of the nation.

Therefore, (d) and (e) seem intimately related to one another. The closing of the gap between the status of these societies socio-economically relates to the level of development built in the ability to operate in the modern knowledge economy.

With the promotion in a family and with adults, and in the closing of the disparities in literacy between the rich and the poor societies, there are a set of skills in life and in technical expertise, even basic actually, that should be born in mind for the reduction in the problems associated with illiteracy.

One example which comes to mind: many electronic books exist for free or cheap. These can be used to become autodidactic educational tools, and to learn more about the world. But, in these electronic cases, it requires some basic technological knowledge and tech savvy. Otherwise, it could be for naught.

Thus, the emphasis on the social networks – family and adults, the large collectives – international and national organizations and NGOs and nations at large, and the technology of the time – electronic books and other basic 21st century life skills, are non-trivial for the reduction of illiteracy, even more than 2 decades past 1995.

–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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Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 81(a)-(c)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/11

Strategic objective B.2.

Eradicate illiteracy among women

Actions to be taken

81. By Governments, national, regional and international bodies, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations:

Reduce the female illiteracy rate to at least half its 1990 level, with emphasis on rural women, migrant, refugee and internally displaced women and women with disabilities;
Provide universal access to, and seek to ensure gender equality in the completion of, primary education for girls by the year 2000;
Eliminate the gender gap in basic and functional literacy, as recommended in the World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien);

Beijing Declaration (1995)

One massive issue, still today and not simply in 1995, is the level of illiteracy in the world. Happily, then and now, it has been on a steady decline but still millions and millions of girls and women lack appropriate levels of literacy and even have functional illiteracy.

This becomes particularly impactful on rural women, migrant women, refugee women, and internally displaced women, and women with disabilities, as per section (a). Not only this, we can see the lack of consideration of the livelihoods of women connected to this.

Because: what will be the long-term impacts on women in the vulnerable categories listed above? It will be a higher probability of poverty, uncertainty in work and health, and likely poorer outcomes for the children.

This is not something from on high. This is decades of policies and centuries of conscious construction of societies bent towards the benefit of only a few compared to many. When this becomes questioned, we can see the violent reactions emergent in response to it.

This raises distinct answers as to the reason for the calls for universal access to primary access to all girls, but, as well, the assurance of gender equality through provisions including the provision of this education.

The call was for by 2000. I suspect this succeeded in several countries while failing in others, even in entire regions of the world. For example, with the world’s imperial powers making war and destroying nations in the MENA region as if their playthings, this can create a context of too much instability for the educational potential of girls to be fulfilled, sometimes for generations.

This comes with a caveat. Boys and men can never even complete primary education in several parts of the world. This raises questions as to the gender gap and its manifestation in still fewer girls and women, globally speaking, able to pursue their dreams because of restriction on their ability to get an education.

This gender gap emerges in basic and functional literacy gaps. This has been recommended at several points in international documents as an important targeted objective, including the abovementioned global declaration.

–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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2022-04-24

Reverence for the Natural World

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/10

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team.

—

Do you ever think about reverence? I don’t. So now, I will. If you look at the religious demographic of the world, most people will either have a spiritual, mystical, or religious belief. That means that these people will probably have at some point in his/her life an experience of reverence for themselves, for others, for something outside of human experience.

Perhaps a profound feeling. Something mystical. Something religious. Something unknown that cannot be articulated in words but felt for the people we have in our lives and our surroundings. I think that a lot of the concern for the environment seems to come from two domains. One is a sense of ownership and the other is a sense of reverence. The former is more devoted to the domination and control of the environment, while the latter is based on protection, respect, and interdependency. I think that at some fundamental level, these two ideas are distinct, distinguishable, and mutually exclusive. And that they are unable to be converged or brought together in some relevant practical sense

Maybe in some sense of higher-order, they can be abstract and brought together. However, I do not think this is necessarily possible at this present time. In a practical sense, I think that the perspective of reverence for nature, or for the environment, is a concomitant of concern for one’s own livelihood. It is remarkable that people will risk their own livelihood to go out onto a boat and try to save a dolphin, or a whale, or some form of cetacean that is assumed to have some kind of cognition like to feel pain. Some might even argue a soul. Although, historically, people have argued that animals do not and are machines, and even more to the modern perspective have extended this to people, and that we are not special in this natural world. That sense of reverence is something that seems to extend into wanting to help the environment and all creatures that live in it.

This is a bit of an evolving discussion. My questions to you: What is your own relationship to reverence and the natural world? And does this reflect an environmentalism? Or does it reflect a concern for the well-being of children in terrible working conditions? Or the fact that slavery exists in this modern world?
Reverence

Reverence is a nearly fundamental aspect of being a person. However, it may not be the most fundamental thing about being a person. But it does seem to be reflected a lot of times in the ways in which activists – economic, social, political, bring themselves to sacrifice their own well-being up to the point of the potential death for an ideal they consider higher than themselves.(And I would make the term “higher” in some sense very metaphorical and not in any way literal). It’s overused, cliché, and a sort of toss-away term now. So I would argue that reverence is in some way completely natural and evolved as some mechanism for I know not what, but I think that this is now at the present time possibly expressed in concern for others.

And I don’t mean to restrict this to the formal or informal religious or spiritual or mystical communities, in fact, this can be definitely and assertively extended to those that are in the a-religious community such as humanists, skeptics, agnostics, and atheists. These communities themselves have many individuals that promote and advocate some type of practice for self-improvement in many domains. And this is in itself reflective of the sense of reverence for humanity, nature, oneself, or one’s own reason. So, this is not something that is necessarily restricted but I think, makes it one of the things that is universal in all of us.

Because it actually shows up throughout the world and across cultures, political systems and societies. Or in different groups of people throughout the world. (Same species: duh) Do you have your own sense of reverence, Scott? I’ll leave that for another day.

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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 80(h)-(j)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/10

Strategic objective B.1.

Ensure equal access to education

Actions to be taken

80. By Governments:

h. Improve the quality of education and equal opportunities for women and men in terms of access in order to ensure that women of all ages can acquire the knowledge, capacities, aptitudes, skills and ethical values needed to develop and to participate fully under equal conditions in the process of social, economic and political development;

i. Make available non-discriminatory and gender-sensitive professional school counselling and career education programmes to encourage girls to pursue academic and technical curricula in order to widen their future career opportunities;

j. Encourage ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights/13 where they have not already done so.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration is crucial for the proper understanding of the rights developments for women around the world circa 1995. The progress has been global since that time. However, there can be pockets of regression, even regression-progression dependent on the system of a nation or region taken into account for the calculus.

The improvement in the quality of education and the ability to gain some access to those societal systems is one important move for women to be more equal with men in the world.

Furthermore, the inclusion of gender as an important adjunct consideration of the efficacy of various initiatives and implementations. The emphasis in paragraph 80 is the entire setup of the educational system to enhance or improve the quality of skills, education, and character development women and men have on offer.

It is intriguing to note the ways in which the historically marginalized can become those needing to be empowered so swiftly. Genuinely, an exciting and positive proposition for much of the world, of which we can observe the benefits to the cultural development now.

Everyone or the vast majority of people will encounter some form of major setback or trial in their lives. This may require professional care. The construction of a counselling system built for the pupils at all levels of education is important.

The prior segmentation of society becomes less and less viable over time. Furthermore, there is, certainly, an improvement in the material conditions of everyone with the improved capacities of societies’ citizenry to take part, in wider and broader portions of the population, in education on a mass scale.

The factor of gender in education can, in part, improve the possibility of a more inclusive environment for women in many of the abovementioned professions and educational areas. Indeed, this even comes alongside the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

It is an international, multilateral treaty is one of the most important human rigths documents in the world. Thus, this emphasis on education connected to this should not be taken lightly.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 80(f)-(g) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/10

Strategic objective B.1.

Ensure equal access to education

Actions to be taken

80. By Governments:

f. Increase enrolment and retention rates of girls by allocating appropriate budgetary resources; by enlisting the support of parents and the community, as well as through campaigns, flexible school schedules, incentives, scholarships and other means to minimize the costs of girls’ education to their families and to facilitate parents’ ability to choose education for the girl child; and by ensuring that the rights of women and girls to freedom of conscience and religion are respected in educational institutions through repealing any discriminatory laws or legislation based on religion, race or culture;

g. Promote an educational setting that eliminates all barriers that impeded the schooling of pregnant adolescents and young mothers, including, as appropriate, affordable and physically accessible child-care facilities and parental education to encourage those who are responsible for the care of their children and siblings during their school years, to return to or continue with and complete schooling;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The problem at the level of entire nations is the decreased enrolment and retention, even if they stay in school, of students. This has been and continues to be a problem. In terms of the right to education for women and girls, the idea is to find the basic resources and will to provide for girls and women as early as possible with as robust an education as possible.

This is the main path to the highest quality of life, dignity, self-empowerment, and, indeed, the health and wealth of the nation as well. It does require a collective effort. Not only in terms of ridding ourselves of the illusion of non-embedment of the self but also in the consideration and implementation of the effort: how will this affect the most people in the most positive way?

If not, there may need to be a different qualitative calculation. The set of recommendations are, in fact, quite good. They are both specific practical, and with a good track record in formal institutions, in terms of opening the pathway for high performance of students.

Now, the parents and community are important to the success of any child. They are part of the aforementioned collective effort. The other efforts, which could be pushed by the parents and the community, would work to enlist financial support to reduce the burden of the cost of education on the young.

The right to education should be respected, also, within the bounds of the right to conscience and religion, i.e., religion should not be a club to prevent women from entering into education. The reduction of barriers across the board should be considered for the reduction of prejudice against women as well.

The impediments to the actualization, educationally for women and girls are numerous. Take, for example, the stark cases of adolescent pregnancy, where this, instantaneously, has life consequences for the young woman.

It impacts the ability to complete education, in turn, to get a job, and this is aside from the social stigma, the judgment of family and community, and the strong potential for lifelong poverty.

Proper child-care facilities are important for the rights mothers to be respected, but they often aren’t; even though, these provisions would greatly improve the livelihoods and outcomes of children in such circumstances and, thus, increase the outcomes of the young.

This should incorporate, but not be limited to, the “parental education to encourage those who are responsible for the care of their children and siblings during their school years” to become actively encouraged and supported in their own pursuits of education.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 80(c)-(e) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/09

Strategic objective B.1.

Ensure equal access to education

Actions to be taken

80. By Governments:

c. Eliminate gender disparities in access to all areas of tertiary education by ensuring that women have equal access to career development, training, scholarships and fellowships, and by adopting positive action when appropriate;

d. Create a gender-sensitive educational system in order to ensure equal educational and training opportunities and full and equal participation of women in educational administration and policy- and decision-making;

e. Provide – in collaboration with parents, non-governmental organizations, including youth organizations, communities and the private sector – young women with academic and technical training, career planning, leadership and social skills and work experience to prepare them to participate fully in society;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The areas of gender equality around the world have been fraught with difficulties for a variety of reasons. Among them, the ways in which barriers have been placed historically that require comprehensive plans for solving, but also the barriers put in place actively by regressive forces.

It raises questions about the ways in which to solve the problem of inequality, to unfold over time the unseen aspects of inequality, and work towards a more equitable and just future. The elimination of gender disparities in tertiary education is important to this move.

There is a wide smattering of women who can pursue postsecondary education more often than their peers in poorer countries or their mothers who rose from worse circumstances than them. The provisions of training, scholarships, and fellowships are some means by which to improve potential outcomes.

Looking into the educational system at large, we can see equal access, not necessarily outcomes but access, are important to ensure equal educational and training opportunities for women to be able to participate in the global economy in some meaningful way.

Looking at the women with sufficient representative power, the administration of institutions, and those in educational policy-making and decision-making roles can be important for the outcomes of women in postsecondary education.

As well, the individual parents of the children and NGOs can play an important role in systems around young women to provide them sufficient support to be able to pursue their dreams. This is part of a wide array of preparation in order to be able to participate more fully within the institutions of the nation.

For example, training and career planning, and leadership and social skills, to be able to benefit from the provisions of the nation at large. There is a great need for women in leadership to, at core, round out the opinions and work of the leadership of many men.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 80(a)-(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/09

Strategic objective B.1.

Ensure equal access to education

Actions to be taken

80. By Governments:

Advance the goal of equal access to education by taking measures to eliminate discrimination in education at all levels on the basis of gender, race, language, religion, national origin, age or disability, or any other form of discrimination and, as appropriate, consider establishing procedures to address grievances;
By the year 2000, provide universal access to basic education and ensure completion of primary education by at least 80 per cent of primary school-age children; close the gender gap in primary and secondary school education by the year 2005; provide universal primary education in all countries before the year 2015;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The work of governments to ensure equitable and pervasive access to primary and secondary education is important. In that, it is a salient means to reduce the level of discrimination on the abovementioned levels.

The grievances may be numerous, but, probably more often than not, grievances are more legitimate than not. Often, what is seen is the dismissal of those with historic and present grievances by the privileged and the powerful, this creates a problem for the individuals without much power, fractured social movements, and work from the grassroots to garner a voice in society.

To those with the power and the privilege, this can be a blind spot, simply as a matter of course. The goal of equal access to education at all levels is important and relevant to the social movements now, especially in developing nation contexts.

Projecting forward from 1995, the document points to the provision of universal basic education and the completion of primary education. This alone would already be doing a lot to improve the circumstances of the least among us, nations and individuals.

Looking or examine 80% of the primary school-age children, we can see a gender gap then and now. Not for lack of ability, as per some chauvinist biological determinists – the some time Social Darwinists who do not believe in Darwin, the restrictions against women and girls by law can, in fact, be quite socially determinative about averages and the attitudes throughout centuries, unquestioned and unchallenged including the mythology enshrining them, can become influences as well, quite strong in fact.

The global education gender gap is real and needs to be taken seriously in order to implement proper solutions to the problem. We have the reached the year milestones. Question to you, dear reader: have we reached the goals set to be reached by those yearly milestones?

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 79

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/08

79. In addressing unequal access to and inadequate educational opportunities, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes, so that, before decisions are taken, an analysis is made of the effects on women and men, respectively.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 79 of the Beijing Declaration provides a glimpse into the focus of some rights work, circa 1995, on the ways in which unequal access and inadequate educational opportunities, as it describes them, impact the lives of the world’s citizenry; arguably, even easily based on known data from a variety of domains – except in a few only in the last decade or so, this has been the trend but even worse for women and girls, over time, especially as they remain unable to attain some education based on the demand of the government, the culture, the family, or the religion.

Straightforward oppression of women and girls, now, they attain more in the more developed societies through hard work; this should inspire the men and upcoming women, not become a basis for repression and restriction of women or resentment on the part of boys and men.

The governments and the relevant other large-scale actors in this should work to further incorporate a gendered perspective, e.g., taking into account the sexual education needs of girls and women, targeting counter-cultural stream programs to encourage women and girls to enter into fields they have been deemed unable to enter, provide other services unique to the health and wellness of girls and women in educational institutions, and so on.

It is the practical, probably quite cheap compared to military costs, implementation of policies and programmes for the improved livelihoods of women and girls in the educational institutions around the world.

This will require the abovementioned analysis of efficacy prior to firm decision of a policy or program. Indeed, there can, and should, be a set of trial programs with a search as the most efficacious programs on offer.

Then to do a comparative analysis of the different cultural implementations around the world, the ones working the best in a particular nation or region, or around the world, should be the programs of choice.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 77 and 78 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/08

77. The mass media are a powerful means of education. As an educational tool the mass media can be an instrument for educators and governmental and non-governmental institutions for the advancement of women and for development. Computerized education and information systems are increasingly becoming an important element in learning and the dissemination of knowledge. Television especially has the greatest impact on young people and, as such, has the ability to shape values, attitudes and perceptions of women and girls in both positive and negative ways. It is therefore essential that educators teach critical judgement and analytical skills.

78. Resources allocated to education, particularly for girls and women, are in many countries insufficient and in some cases have been further diminished, including in the context of adjustment policies and programmes. Such insufficient resource allocations have a long-term adverse effect on human development, particularly on the development of women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The mass media has a particular import for me. Why? It’s inextricable linkage, at least historically right into the present, with the work of editors, writers, and journalists. We work through the mass media. Increasingly, writers and journalists do a disservice to the public as servants of the powerful and privileges rather than pursuers of truth and justice.

Everyone is mixed. But the tables have begun to tilt, which is the problem or the trouble with it. Insofar as mass media is a democratic tool, it is a powerful means by which to educate the public, to perform a needed duty of which money should not be the motivator.

If we look into the context of the educators, and the governmental and non-governmental institutions, our work, as an international community, should be in alignment with the international rights framework founded on December 10, 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As the global conversations evolved over time, we, the international community, not always but tended to support the efforts for the advancement and empowerment of women. The newer forms of education with advanced technologies can be a boon for this.

These can help advance the agendas of improving the lives and livelihoods of women and girls around the world. Indeed, even with television and now the widespread audiovisual material spread throughout the internet, the portrayals of men and women can be more flexible, less cardboardy. Something with a new vision.

Another aspect to have a proper education is simply having access to it. Furthermore, the ability to critically analyze and judge information coming at oneself requires a decent educational system and sensibility about how the world works in the first place.

There have been several resource sources devoted to the promotion of women’s equality in one of the most consequential of areas, which is education. In a knowledge economy, it is the key to a better livelihood and set of life prospects for girls as they become women and for women who want to retrain or garner some financial independence – and intellectual acuity for mental independence – from the men in their lives.

This is not to demonize men. But it is to acknowledge a long-held set of assumptions and systems of which women have been subject to, and which many men have not necessarily questioned.

It does not require inflated academic language (as can appear in my own, sorry) because it can be explained in statements amounting truisms to some degree. But the acknowledgement, whether colloquially or in academic jargon, is important to work to implement women’s rights through a systematic restructuring of the systems in place keeping women and girls (and men and boys in some areas) from self-actualizing, in Maslow’s terminology.

The long-term investment in girls and women can improve the economic possibilities of nations, as the strongest predictor of social development, probably, is the advancement and empowerment of women. But the insufficiency of the provision of resources to these issues remains a problem needing rapid dealing with, especially as we move swiftly into uncharted international territories with more people far more independent and educated than at any time in human history.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 75 and 76 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/07

75. Science curricula in particular are gender-biased. Science textbooks do not relate to women’s and girls’ daily experience and fail to give recognition to women scientists. Girls are often deprived of basic education in mathematics and science and technical training, which provide knowledge they could apply to improve their daily lives and enhance their employment opportunities. Advanced study in science and technology prepares women to take an active role in the technological and industrial development of their countries, thus necessitating a diverse approach to vocational and technical training. Technology is rapidly changing the world and has also affected the developing countries. It is essential that women not only benefit from technology, but also participate in the process from the design to the application, monitoring and evaluation stages.

76. Access for and retention of girls and women at all levels of education, including the higher level, and all academic areas is one of the factors of their continued progress in professional activities. Nevertheless, it can be noted that girls are still concentrated in a limited number of fields of study.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The context for many women living in some of the destitute circumstances the world can provide for them is one of abject poverty, but in some nuance senses with the poverty of mind for women and girls. That is to say, in line with the general statements in paragraphs 75 and 76, we can see note the general treatment of women as objects for particular kinds of education, certain levels of educational attainment, and differential work opportunities once out.

As paragraph 75 notes quite clearly, there is gender bias in the science curricula for the representation of girls and women, as in “women’s and girls’ daily experience,” where this can come in the insidious form of a lack of representation of the recognition of women geniuses in history, whether major or minor. We can take the case given of women scientists.

This builds into the privation for women and girls in the areas of the basic educations necessary for having a general scientific understanding and outlook on the world. In these instances, they can mean “mathematics and science and technical training” with the attempts to improve their daily lives through science can be hampered.

If you don’t know how the world works at root, how can you work with the knowledge of the world to manipulate its processes in your favour? Life becomes a mystery. Nature becomes magical. And generally, the world for women shrinks and grows opaque with the lack of access to proper education. It leads to many problems in intellectual development and societies cannot function as efficiently.

In the other cases with the advanced study in science and technology, well beyond basic training or basic science, the women can rapidly develop the industry of the society for a much stronger economy and scientifically literate society. As we have seen since the election in 2016, there has been a weakening of the economy.

With the rapid advance or march of technology, we can note a quicker development of the capacities of the society. Not only do the women themselves benefit from the education and the improved quality of life, including a more stimulating intellectual life, but there is also a general and rapid development of the quality of life of the society, which is good for the men too

What about metrics and maintenance in paragraph 76? This is an arena of the world a definite gaping hole requiring filling in many countries. It can be seen in theocracies. Also, it can be seen in nations without strong liberal democratic traditions. The metrics can help see the relative rankings of the education of women and girls at all levels, whether basic science and advanced study, and then give a marker as to what can be done better the next time around.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraphs 73 & 74

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/07

73. Women should be enabled to benefit from an ongoing acquisition of knowledge and skills beyond those acquired during youth. This concept of lifelong learning includes knowledge and skills gained in formal education and training, as well as learning that occurs in informal ways, including volunteer activity, unremunerated work and traditional knowledge.

74. Curricula and teaching materials remain gender-biased to a large degree, and are rarely sensitive to the specific needs of girls and women. This reinforces traditional female and male roles that deny women opportunities for full and equal partnership in society. Lack of gender awareness by educators at all levels strengthens existing inequities between males and females by reinforcing discriminatory tendencies and undermining girls’ self-esteem. The lack of sexual and reproductive health education has a profound impact on women and men.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration is important for women’s rights on several levels of analysis. In particular, the area of training, acquisition of skills, and the garnering of knowledge through education. In the area of knowledge and skill acquisition, many women may not have the opportunity, even more true circa 1995, to partake of schooling.

They could be denied schools. They could have schools but be denied equal access to boys and men regarding schooling. Or they could be denied schooling even with schools outright, or given schooling but with inadequate and lower than quality textbooks, supplies, and teachers.

Apart from the schooling environment and access, the contents of the texts could, in fact, be discriminatory in the representation of women and girls, and men and boys. The common cultural knowledge now where the stereotypes were limited in view by their nature, the behaviours rote, and the portrayal of the individuals 2-dimensional.

With the inclusion of a wider array of voices and individuals, the gendered perspective, not as the whole picture but, as an adjunction to the formulation of curricula and teaching materials. The acknowledgement of girls’ and women’s concerns is important; indeed, it can be done in a subtle, informative, and entertaining way.

The reinforcement of stereotyped roles handed down from an understandably more restricted prior age creates the basis for acknowledgement of the past, reformulation of the present, for the construction of a better future. In this case, a future bound to more flexible notions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, in between, or otherwise.

The lack of knowledge about not only what gender means but also how this connects to real people living in the world is important.

This, over time, can work at the proverbial pipeline portion of the issues of gender inequality in attitudes and assumptions, and even prejudices – as bias against women and girls, typically, emerges when women or girls act in a non-standard or unexpected way, e.g., working in a trade, taking the initiative in a date or sexual encounter, pursuing a scientific career, choosing to not have children, and so on.

The bullying women and girls may – and, in fact, do – experience can undermine confidence or self-esteem, as noted in paragraph 74. The questions then arise about the appropriateness of this as not a social norm, as in accepted, but a common occurrence without sufficient negative attention to it, condemnation.

Education is part of the solution to this. Same with the ability to make independent and informed choices about their own bodies. Both the bullying and the referenced-implied improper sexual education of women and girls has a huge impact on life trajectories, especially as this relates to confidence to pursue a dream career and also – if wanting a family and children – when to have them and how many, and under what socio-economic circumstances.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 71 and 72 – Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/06

71. Discrimination in girls’ access to education persists in many areas, owing to customary attitudes, early marriages and pregnancies, inadequate and gender-biased teaching and educational materials, sexual harassment and lack of adequate and physically and otherwise accessible schooling facilities. Girls undertake heavy domestic work at a very early age. Girls and young women are expected to manage both educational and domestic responsibilities, often resulting in poor scholastic performance and early drop-out from the educational system. This has long-lasting consequences for all aspects of women’s lives.

72. Creation of an educational and social environment, in which women and men, girls and boys, are treated equally and encouraged to achieve their full potential, respecting their freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, and where educational resources promote non-stereotyped images of women and men, would be effective in the elimination of the causes of discrimination against women and inequalities between women and men.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

These sections of the Beijing Declaration, as is important to reiterate, deal with education through the lens of gender and discrimination in education. But what does “discrimination in education” mean if gender is brought into the equation? The basic idea: the empiricism of the query. It should have an evidentiary basis.

We should be able to discover the fact of the matter. Is there a statistically significant disparity in educational attainment and access when comparing a binary metric – boys and girls, or men and women. When asking this question, the robust answer can come via region or internationally.

The question has been asked. The data has come in, with several answers provided as to the potential reason for it. Looking at the information, there is a definite disparity, smaller than 1995 but extant, in the level of education for girls compared to boys – even in simple access.

The reduction in opportunities for girls reduces their life prospects for the long-term with remedial hope for recovery. It is simply a difficult circumstance. Some of the reasons for the disparity include “customary attitudes, early marriages and pregnancies, inadequate and gender-biased teaching and educational materials,” even to the terribly tragic and criminal behavior of sexual harassment.

This has a long-term impact on the ability of the girls to cope with the world as they will, in many cases, likely be dealing with the trauma and reliving of said trauma throughout much of their adult life, especially as there may be inadequate psychological-counselling care or mental health services for their plight.

Then there is the other problem, discussed in some of the human rights social interest group calls recently, of physical violence against women, which, in fact, is not solely by men to women but, based on the available data, disproportionately by men to women. Now, this exists alongside the problem of even having access to and reaching school.

They will not have access to the proper facilities for education. When they return home, they will be the ones to disproportionately be dealing with the “heavy domestic work at a very early age.” Thus, this happens in all spheres of their life right from the ground up, speaking of age, of course.

As bluntly stated, “This has long-lasting consequences for all aspects of women’s lives.” Paragraph 72 deals with a similar context in urging for equality, quite directly in fact, as in paragraph 71 but from a more assertive and proactive tone. It is an interesting insight for this section to merge the educational and social environment.

It is an education, as a right as the backdrop. But it is a social environment with real live bodies, students and educators, working in a shared interpersonal setting. In this area, it stipulates the importance of boys and girls, and women and men, being treated with equality, which is simply reiterating respect and dignity for all in the call for educational access for all.

The achievement of full “freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief” is, in fact, quite a call and a rare one too. It requires much from people. The necessity in the implementation of the right to education, which is a universal rights call; then, however, we have the particular call for more proportionate access for girls and women.

The latter call will be the one to elevate not only the girls and women in dignity with the society, and in self-respect, but also the society itself. More education adult women, which assumes education of them as girls earlier, means more advanced job opportunities to raise the floor of the country.

The finalized nuance is in the call for the promotion of non-stereotype representations of women and men to prevent early discrimination against women and for men – and, in some cases, vice versa. Indeed, this may not be an afterthought or trivial in any way. Media matters; and it matters for self-image and self-efficacy too.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 70

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/06

70. On a regional level, girls and boys have achieved equal access to primary education, except in some parts of Africa, in particular sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia, where access to education facilities is still inadequate. Progress has been made in secondary education, where equal access of girls and boys has been achieved in some countries. Enrolment of girls and women in tertiary education has increased considerably. In many countries, private schools have also played an important complementary role in improving access to education at all levels. Yet, more than five years after the World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990) adopted the World Declaration on Education for All and the Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs,/12 approximately 100 million children, including at least 60 million girls, are without access to primary schooling and more than two thirds of the world’s 960 million illiterate adults are women. The high rate of illiteracy prevailing in most developing countries, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa and some Arab States, remains a severe impediment to the advancement of women and to development.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The important areas of development for the long-term visions, if one has one or societies have them, comes in the form of education. It was true among the most elite including the scribes in Ancient Egypt or the religious scholars, e.g., Jesuit priests, centuries in the past, but, now, the basis for the advancement of economies into – what has been termed – the modern world is an education for all.

Insofar as the statistical analyses show, the general trend is the increased investment in the education of girls and women within societies, especially developing or underdeveloped nations, yields benefits – with more payback, in the positive sense, with investment in girls and women compared to boys and men.

This does not seem innate but cultural and institutional. People can be raised as entitled as selfish; they may also be raised with the do as you would be done by and love your neighbour as yourself. In several countries, circa 1995, there was already moderate progress in the increased access to secondary school for girls to reach parity, in terms of opportunities, with boys.

Then we come to the modern period with the inclusion of more girls and women in the educational system with, at least at the level seen now, unprecedented proportions of women entering into education compared to the men, which is an exciting and profound fact about the modern world.

We continue to invent new things, but we also make, in some ways, leaps in the inclusion of more girls and women into the aforementioned long-term plans of the society: through education. Looking out, the number of those who have illiteracy is quite high. Given the numbers, these are worth pausing on, so many girls without basic education, it is, in one word, staggering.

The next considerations are geographic within the paragraph. In fact, the areas are what most of the pointers direct assumptions to – far more, not for any other reason than the prior data seen in other documents. The regions dealing with wars, ethnic feuds, warfare, post-colonial contexts, and so on, are the ones most probable to be facing the problems of, at least in terms of education, illiteracy.

These are the sub-Saharan African and Arab countries or “States.” The lack of education access and opportunities for women and girls continues to be a major impediment to their progress within society. In turn, this alters their life course. Consider, the idea of sexual education based on evidence.

Without the ability to be informed and make educated choices – to make, in real terms, non-evidence-based, illusory-education-based, and uninformed choices about sex, the young, such as the adolescents, will be left to make worse choices, on average, than otherwise; this has an impact, a concrete impact in terms of the dynamics of young people’s lives, e.g., teenage pregnancy rates going up and then changing the educational life course of a woman, increased rates of STIs and STDs, and so on.

These can damage the psyches, or the mental lives, of these pupils – our young fellow citizens, and to ignore this is to damage their life prospects; this problem is ours by virtue of our responsibility to not only the planet and ourselves – to treat it and ourselves properly – but to also the next generations. Education is part of this process of the creation of an informed citizenry. It can be in the form sexual education. It can also be in the simple access to reading, writing, and arithmetic education as well.

–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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2022-04-24

Being Self-Aware About Your Talents

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/05

Mr. Melvin Lars is a native of Bossier City/Shreveport, Louisiana; he received several undergraduate and graduate academic degrees from various universities; La. Tech. (BS) Univ. & Centenary (Admin. Cert.) College) in Louisiana, Texas (Tx. Southern (MA) Univ), Michigan (Eastern, Mi Univ, & Saginaw Valley St. Univ.) and has done extensive educational studies in Ohio (Youngstown (Supt., cert.)St Univ) and California (Los Angeles, (CA. cert) City College).

Lars is a certified Violence Prevention/Intervention Specialist, receiving his certification and training through the prestigious Harvard University, with Dr.Renee Prothro-Stith.

He is a licensed/ordained Elder/Minister in both the C.O.G.I.C. & C.M.E. Churches. He is the CEO/founder of Brighter Futures Inc; a Family Wellness, Violence Prevention/Intervention and Academic Enhancement and entertainment Company; an affiliate representative for the NFL ALLPRODADS Initiative. Former interim; Executive Director of Urban League of Greater Muskegon, Former NAACP President of Muskegon County; 2007–2012, employed as a consultant to the Michigan Department of Education as a Compliance Monitor for the (NCLB Highly Qualified) initiative for Highly Qualified Teachers and works collaboratively with Hall of Famer Jim Brown and his Amer-I-Can Program and is a ten-time published author of various books, and self-help and academic articles. He is married to Ann Lars and is the father of one adult son, Ernest. Here we talk about sports and pride in an uncensored and educational series.

The conversation, this time, with Lars delved into an arena of greater experience for him. He has a deep history in American history and culture, especially American football. So, I asked Lars about it. I drew attention to the, appearance of “bravado and ego” involved in college and higher-level football. Then I asked about younger men keeping “their ego in check.”

Lars responded, “[Laughing] Scott, when we speak, I am always laughing. I am dealing with life, the real world. To answer that question, specifically, you have to start off with something. When you are involved in sports, certainly at a high level, it is always about being the alpha male. No one talks about it. No one says, ‘You have to be the alpha male.'”

He goes to talk about the fact of the perception. It is simply in the air, in the spirit of the community, around the game. The attention of the alpha male, and its lofty status, is highly attractive to many young men. But, Lars noted talking about the game is one thing and playing the game is another.

“Certain individuals are born with more speed or strength. They are able to build themselves better than the others on top of their natural gifts and talents, and blessings. Many times, you get beside yourself. What is getting ‘beside yourself’? You get full of yourself,” Lars explained.

At some point, a sufficient amount of self-awareness creeps into the mind of the young man. They comprehend: they have an enhanced level of speed, endurance, and strength compared to the other men. Lars noted coming to this realization with some excessive pride, too. He did not want to be a hypocrite. So, he spoke about it.

Lars stated, “I have been full of myself, in trying to be the alpha male. Shakespeare said, ‘To thine own self be true.’ He meant that we have to get in touch with ourselves and realize what we’re doing. In the final analysis, it is a game. Far too often, we take the game too seriously.”

This brought to mind one of the greatest boxers ever, Muhammad Ali. I have source amnesia of who said this. But they, more or less, noted Muhammad Ali’s braggadocious demeanour was not exactly derogatory because, in a sense, you felt good with him. It was more theatrics than putdowns.

Lars agreed. He said, “You know what, Scott, it has been my experience too. I am a huge Muhammad Ali fan. In high school, I was also a Golden Gloves boxing champion. I had the opportunity to go to the Olympic trials, for the 1972 trials.”

He focused attention on individuals who are over-the-top or braggadocious. In that, some remain conditioned, as athletes in sports culture, to be the alpha male. However, there is a neglected fact, according to Lars, or an overlooked piece of information: Muhammad Ali “worked extremely hard.”

His persona tied to the powerful prowess in the ring were a formidable force. But it came with three things: innate talent, hard work, and very high levels of charisma. Lars related the sense of pride when realizing the status has been attained.

“Other people also begin to receive your abilities as being the alpha male as well. With a person, in my experience, of someone like a Muhammad Ali, who was colourful and charismatic, it comes from the personality. He worked extremely hard,” Lars relayed, “When we talk about athletics, we have to understand. There is so much work to becoming the quintessential top-of-the-line athlete. A lot of people do not understand that part of it. They believe: you’re born with this ability to dominate.”

This, Lars believes, is the crucial point about not being full of ourselves; where the “work and time” put into becoming the potential alpha male, and if achieved, there comes the sense of “pride and accomplishment.” Then this comes with respect from others, too. He closed on Ali; a personal hero for him.

“Ali was an entertainer. But when it came to perfecting his craft, he was blessed to be able to perfect it,” Lars concluded. It is the same for those at the lower levels or less talented, or as talented but working in other sports. Pride can be a block to continuing to work hard and maintain the status of “alpha male.”

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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women – Paragraph 69

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/04

69. Education is a human right and an essential tool for achieving the goals of equality, development and peace. Non-discriminatory education benefits both girls and boys and thus ultimately contributes to more equal relationships between women and men. Equality of access to and attainment of educational qualifications is necessary if more women are to become agents of change. Literacy of women is an important key to improving health, nutrition and education in the family and to empowering women to participate in decision-making in society. Investing in formal and non-formal education and training for girls and women, with its exceptionally high social and economic return, has proved to be one of the best means of achieving sustainable development and economic growth that is both sustained and sustainable.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

It is interesting to note the ways in which education can be not only a fundamental human right but also an access point to the provisions of other human rights.

For example, with the provision of elementary education as mandatory, and then the access for secondary and postsecondary schooling, the individuals who pursue their postsecondary educations can begin to develop the life paths and professional lives with greater prestige and income. It becomes both a social and an economic boon for the individual.

That form of empowerment can lead to different series of life outcomes for the girl or woman, or for girls and women generally. Women, as has been noted in recent reportage, are key to the increase in “equality, development and peace.” This includes the recognition, in full and without delay, of the humanity of women and girls.

The provision of education in a “non-discriminatory” way is important for the benefit of both boys and girls because the implication or implied culture, and probably result, is equality between the sexes or amongst the genders as they receive the same education and study alongside one another.

Furthermore, this becomes part of the equal attainment, globally speaking, of credentials, certifications, qualifications, and acquisition of skills of women and men; in part, there may be ongoing disparities in different domains but, as a matter of principles, throughout the international contexts there should be an increase in the number of doors open for women and girls in terms of educational access and opportunities, especially as they, as we all, are entering into the Knowledge Economy or the Fourth Industrial Revolution with artificial intelligence and robotics and the need for more education.

A sophisticated, empirically created, and the technologically advanced world needs sophisticated, scientifically literate, and tech-savvy citizens. There was the concept of the feminization of poverty explored in some of the prior articles. But there is also the importance in the advancement and empowerment of women, which, in the terminology of the 69th paragraph, implies the creation of “agents of change” or women as such.

But given the power of education for the furtherance of knowledge about the world, this can imply the greater opportunities in work, with the possibility of more income earned by the women. This is good in at least three ways. One, women become more equal to men, more autonomous. Two, more the population is educated in the advanced sectors of the economy increasing the wealth of the average household, the community, and so increasing the GDP of the society. Third, education is preparation for this ongoing and upcoming revolution in the fundamental ways in which societies are structured and in the processes underlying national and international, even daily, life.

With education, even basic “literacy of women,” these can help, on average, improve “health, nutrition and education in the family”; thus, education can be among the best gateways to a better life for girls, women, and their families. It leads to further ability to make independent decisions in society, as men tend to have done, in general, or at least more than women in most societies.

The last portion deals with the investment in both the formal and non-formal sections of society that education and train women and girls. This creates a lot of social caital; it also incubates much economic capital. That is, human capital, investment in women, for instance, yields economic and social benefits for the nation-state. Same with investments in citizens, generally, but, for a variety of reasons, pays more per head if equal investment per head if a woman in contrast to a man.

Fo this desired, and oft-mentioned “sustainable development and economic growth” model, these investments can be key in the creation of the high-technology, high-culture future; if less investment than prior, or no improvement in investment, then, as Howard Zinn says, the standing still by a moving train is to, in essence, fall behind in either case.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 68

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/04

Strategic objective A.4.

Develop gender-based methodologies and conduct research to address the feminization of poverty

Actions to be taken

68. By national and international statistical organizations:

Collect gender and age-disaggregated data on poverty and all aspects of economic activity and develop qualitative and quantitative statistical indicators to facilitate the assessment of economic performance from a gender perspective;
Devise suitable statistical means to recognize and make visible the full extent of the work of women and all their contributions to the national economy, including their contribution in the unremunerated and domestic sectors, and examine the relationship of women’s unremunerated work to the incidence of and their vulnerability to poverty.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration here discusses the need to collect relevant information about gender and poverty. This connects to the prior sections dealing with the development of gender-sensitive methodologies or tools of research. The importance of these is the lack of their inclusion as a consideration before.

Now, we can see the increased inclusion of gender into the conversation like this and other documents are advanced forward in time. The collection of the data relevant to economic activity is important in a number respects. One of them is the tracking of progress or regress. Another is the possibility to analyze the data at a later point in time.

This includes the two broad categories of information analysis: qualitative and quantitative. The statistical indicators necessary to provide refinements in the solutions. Thus, the economic performance metrics with a gender perspective, may, as an example, give a basis for measuring the improvement in the productivity of a nation with more people included within the workforce.

Non-trivial and important, especially as more women become more educated and enter in larger numbers into the economy. The next paragraph deals with the statistical demarcation or line-drawing of the areas in which women are working, underrepresented, and even unexpectedly carrying portions of the national economy.

Interestingly, one of the fun parts of this could, potentially, extend into the known statistics about the ways in which women are disproportionately dealing with the housecare/homecare and childcare work compared to men while continuing to take on more advanced education and more of the work of the advanced industrial economies.

It is known, in general terms, how much more women are doing in those areas while maintaining an increased performance in the professional world as well. It is interesting and important work and the listing, in statistical terms, of the areas of the economy, formal and informal, women are contributing is crucial.

There is a need to examine the ways in which women’s unpaid work in the underground or informal economy is creating the basis for the levels of poverty felt and experienced by women. Indeed, we can see this in the phenomena identified by the prior article with the “feminization of poverty,” which, as the Beijing Declaration is from 1995, implies that women’s widespread poverty and systems leading to the disproportionate levels of women’s poverty has been known for at least a quarter of a century. Something to pause and reflect on.

This also ties into the disproportionate vulnerability women to experiencing poverty. The collection of data for further information analysis and then the inclusion of this as a feedback mechanism to improve the material conditions of women is important for the furter implementation of women’s rights.

It is important as the degree of freedom of choice in a society is intimately linked to the material or economic conditions of an individual woman. It is something with which women can self-empower and are, in statistical terms, more probable to contribute to the family and, thus, improve the material conditions of the locale – the community – and the state – the society.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 67

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/03

Strategic objective A.4.

Develop gender-based methodologies and conduct research to address the feminization of poverty

Actions to be taken

67. By Governments, intergovernmental organizations, academic and research institutions and the private sector:

Develop conceptual and practical methodologies for incorporating gender perspectives into all aspects of economic policy-making, including structural adjustment planning and programmes;
Apply these methodologies in conducting gender-impact analyses of all policies and programmes, including structural adjustment programmes, and disseminate the research findings.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration continues to focus on a wider range of actors with the need to implement gender-based methodologies here, or, at a minimum, develop them. The focus or emphasis is on “Governments, intergovernmental organizations, academic and research institutions and the private sector.” These become non-trivial for the improvement of the material – the life or death at times – conditions of women, especially, as is noted, with the feminization of poverty.

Women tend to be poorer than men in the society. This does restrict into any particular statistical segment of the population of women but does, in terms of ethnicity for an example, produce worse outcomes for some ethnic or another background. It is, in this sense, an important gender and ethnic consideration with the “feminization of poverty” being a multivariate problem with the need for some concrete solutions.

Now, the first section, (a), deals with the need to create the basic building blocks of the methodologies, which is the methodologies and the conceptual apparatuses for the gender-based perspectives around the feminization of poverty, which, as a clarification, simply means the disproportionately negative impacts on women compared to men in the society.

Indeed, this can take the form of explicit economic philosophy brought into the real world as well as the inclusion of women in the structural adjustment program planning, which – for those familiar with the issue or reading some of the prior articles – is implicated in the previous disproportionately negative impacts on women with the simple lack or void of consideration for the needs and wants of women when implementing these structural adjustment programmes.

Then (b) deals with the need to analyze the various policies and programs that will be implemented, to look for what is truly pie-in-the-sky and what is practically feasible. Those things that, in some fundamental or even derivative manner, improve the material livelihoods of women who are disproportionately living in poverty. It is important in the light of the feminization of poverty to see the ways in which the inclusion of gender as a factor can impact the outcomes of women in these circumstances.

Furthermore, once the data is gathered and the statistical analyses are complete, there is the need to let the internaitonal community know with more asily digestible presentation of the information in, maybe, handbooks, guidelines, reports, or summaries. Each important for the full realization of the rights of women through empirical research as to what works and also what does not work but also, and more importantly, why certain things work or not.

Not a simple thing to do or pull off; but this is an important part of the process of acknowledging and educating about women’s rights while, at the same time, taking the appropriate measures to ensure women enjoy their full rights as international and national citizens endowed with the same rights and protections as much who, more often than not, unfortunately, are dealt heavier loads of the negative aspects of life.

These empirics or evidences can help with the creation of a greater equality of the genders or the sexes in order to further the work started in the 20th century for not only universal suffrage and access to society but also respect and dignity as equal parts of the society.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 64, 65, and 66 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/03

Strategic objective A.3.

Provide women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions

Actions to be taken

64. By multilateral and bilateral development cooperation organizations:

Support, through the provision of capital and/or resources, financial institutions that serve low-income, small-scale and micro-scale women entrepreneurs and producers, in both the formal and informal sectors.

65. By Governments and multilateral financial institutions, as appropriate:

66. By international organizations:

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration from 1995 covers a wide range of territory in terms of the recognition of the rights and dignity of previous persona non grata or, or accurately, non-persons, generally women and most often the poor. Now, it is an interesting fact of life for many people of the world, especially women and people of color, that the blanket understanding of a position in life is one of the greater statistical likelihood of poverty than others.

In paragraph 64, we can see the emphasis for actions on the “multilateral and bilateral development cooperation organizations.” What some as handouts can, in the medium to long-term, can be drivers of decent portions of the economy, these can emerge in the provisions of these aforementioned organization to women entrepreneurs in more penurious or poorer circumstances.

These finances can help women to build their businesses in their communities, and so lift their communities out of poverty. It is intriguing to note the formal and informal sectors of the economy being included here. It is important, relevant, and a, probably, non-contentious point. If you want to empower women who are “low-income, small-scale and micro-scale,” then the best means by which to do it would be via the formal and informal sectors of the economy in unison.

Now, taking paragraph 65 also seriously, we can see the joint national and multinational emphasis with the government and the multinational financial institutions, respectively. There are some minimum “performance standards” to be taken into account. However, there is an importance in the generalized implementations and principles of consideration.

If we look at the means by which the investment in low-income women, en masse, we can develop see the iterative summing of power, of social development. With investments in women, we are far more likely to see the improvements in individual families, communities, and societies, simply because women do more of the unpaid labour of the family, the community, and the society, and are far more probable to reinvest resources into the family. Men do this less often, as an international statistical norm.

Furthermore, I like the inclusion of low-income men here, too, when it speaks to “capitalization,” “refinancing,” and “institutional development.” It becomes crucial for the most subtle nuance of the human person. That is, the ability to make choices; furthermore, choices with as few coercive external constraints as possible with utmost respect for the individual choices and dignity of the person – to choose for themselves as an individual with the right to self-determination. It comes in the form, as stated, of “self-sufficiency.” Nothing lavish, by necessity, but sufficient economic and resource ownership to be a self-owner of one’s life journey.

Paragraph 66 continues into the international organizations. Those organizations dealing with the increases in funding. The “programmes and projects” with the intention to aim for sustainable and productive activities of entrepreneurs. This is proposed to be an income-generating mechanism for the disadvantaged. In this, the whole floor of the society can be lifted; recalling, of course, the investment into the poorest of the nation for long-term benefit of the society, e.g., fundamental income generation.

It is intended, furthemore, to be of most benefit to women in the worst circumstances including the disadvantaged and those in poverty, of the female variety – which is most of those populations. This can help return many of the people back into the economic viability of the society in addition to empowering more of the citizenry to begin generating wealth from within their own societies for economic independence – or increasing monetary independence – of the nation-state.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 63 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/02

Strategic objective A.3.

Provide women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions

Actions to be taken

63. By commercial banks, specialized financial institutions and the private sector in examining their policies:

Use credit and savings methodologies that are effective in reaching women in poverty and innovative in reducing transaction costs and redefining risk;
Open special windows for lending to women, including young women, who lack access to traditional sources of collateral;
Simplify banking practices, for example by reducing the minimum deposit and other requirements for opening bank accounts;
Ensure the participation and joint ownership, where possible, of women clients in the decision-making of institutions providing credit and financial services.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 63, I like, because it is punchy, to the point, and concise (unlike much of my own writing). The focus in this portion of the Beijing Declaration is the commercial banks and the financial institutions with a specified purpose, also connected to the private sector. The use of credit and savings practices can be an important part of the improvement of the livelihoods of women.

Indeed, the furtherance of these methodologies can reach – not only the women entrepreneurs as discussed in the prior article but also – the women in difficult circumstances and need some financial assistance. Those living in penurious circumstances for an example. The interesting final note of section (a) is the statement on the reduction in the transaction costs and the redefinition of risks.

In (b), the emphasis goes by the demographics of age with a greater focus on the young women and, in particular, the ways this can impact having “collateral” or forms of assets that a borrower can offer a lender. This is a problem for women who are early in life and unable to offer these assets or collateral to bargain, in a manner of speaking, with the lender.

The important part of this is the ways that age can be a barrier for many people but, in particular, this can be an issue for young women.

Section (c) looks into a potential model for the simplification of some banking practices. This can be important, especially for those who may not have been given the opportunity to be able to acquire education in finance or banking practices. Other suggested practices can lower the barriers for entry for women, including the reduction of the minimum deposit or the elimination/alteration of the necessities for the creation of a bank account.

(d) deals with the look into the participation and joint ownership of bank accounts. There are the issues for women who, unfortunately, may not, by culture or family, be independent of their family. It is an undeniable fact of history and many cultures in the present. Women lack the ability to remain independent in the world in terms of the degrees of freedom in a society.

That being, the amount of financial freedom a woman can get. It can come for young women who lack the collateral. It can also come in the fact of being paid less or not permitted into the professional realms for women. The denial of education is another crux in this. Once women begin to enter into the professional arenas, we can see the unprecedented flourishing of them.

It probably comes from the additional drive to succeed of the long-term underdog, but it has only happened in select areas of the world and the traditional (usually male) power brokers notice and, apparently, aren’t happy about it. We can see this in the violent and repression rhetoric, backed by actions, in various groups around the world as women win by merit in education; they work harder now. It is a motivational ceiling for boys and young men, for the most part, with some fringe of early educational barriers.

The inclusion of women for joint decision-making relevant for the financial institutions is so important on so many levels. Take, for example, the empowerment of the psyche of women in impoverished circumstances. This can present a situation in women can become equals in their own minds, in their ability to make independent choices and know that they can do it. It similar for people of color in terms of post-colonial contexts to make their choices for their lives.

It is the basis for women to get together, organize, become active in their community, and begin to press for their democratic concerns. It has happened in the past. It can happen now. In fact, we are seeing, in the United States, for a non-trivial example, record numbers of women entering into the political world.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 62 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/02

Strategic objective A.3.

Provide women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions

Actions to be taken

62. By Governments:

Enhance the access of disadvantaged women, including women entrepreneurs, in rural, remote and urban areas to financial services through strengthening links between the formal banks and intermediary lending organizations, including legislative support, training for women and institutional strengthening for intermediary institutions with a view to mobilizing capital for those institutions and increasing the availability of credit;
Encourage links between financial institutions and non-governmental organizations and support innovative lending practices, including those that integrate credit with women’s services and training and provide credit facilities to rural women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The 62nd paragraph of the Beijing Declaration focuses on the access of women who are not disadvantaged – so not the Queen of England. They point to the need to include women entrepreneurs in all geographically defined areas with people: “rural, remote and urban areas.” This is important.

It gives an idea of the emphasis – everywhere. Of course, there will be differences depending on the region and area, but, also, the general temperament of the times – the 90s – is not fundamentally but, definitely, different than prior times. Taking into account the responsibility of governments to help improve the access of disadvantaged women including the women entrepreneurs, the basic provision will be financial.

Entrepreneurs work in a monetary capital intensive discipline and professional area. For women working in all arenas of societies, the ability to innovate will require some financial backing. It may not be a new technology but could be a novel form of development for the locale in which they find themselves, e.g., some rural Tanzanian village with the need of modernized communications technology, medical tools, or farming methodologies.

The money links can be built with the “formal banks and intermediary lending organizations” with the potential to train women. This could, in turn, lead to the mobilization of capital and increase the accessibility of said credit for entrepreneurial-oriented women.

Section (b) speaks to some of the other ties related to this industry, outside of the governments, including the non-governmental organizations. These are encouraged. If the women can get some credit in the rural, remote, or urban areas, this can be a strong driver for the advancement and empowerment of women. And the women do not need to be told this; they very likely already know this and the barriers for them.

There is the issue involved in the active work to disempower women. We can see this, starkly, in the post-colonial contexts, where religion – Islamic and Christian mainly – were thrust down the proverbial throats of the Indigenous populations of countries – Indigenous around much of the world. The suffering and pain women and girls have endured as a result of this tied to tribal cultural practices is intriguing and an obvious case-after-case lesson of the impacts of active attempts of ideologies, or interpretations of ideologies, with repression of women as the orientation.

It can be seen in the entitlement of some men to think that they own women: women and girls as property and for the heralding of sons to carry the family name, und so weiter. The idea of integrated credit with women’s services and training is a brilliant idea. It is an important means by which to get women grassroots-level training and skills to self-empower.

Education, truly, is power; power capable of being translated into action within the community. For those with a disinterest in the empowerment of women, this is an area to attack, so the policies directed at the restrictions of the bridges and ladders to help women self-empower or with the implied outcomes of that can give away the targeted political and social ideology.

To those looking at these national or international programs and decrying them as empowering women at the expense of men, think about the position some more, especially in a historical context, the empowerment of property-owning men of wealth has been the norm, through the government, the religious institutions, and the media representations.

Now, we continue to see the dissolution of power concentration for the democratization or universalization of rights and power through government social assistance programs, the liberalization of the religious institutions, and the broader – though miserly – spectrum of the media representations in terms of the total set of narratives shown to the general public. All that is being done, and is being asked, is for equal consideration and representation. That’s it.

It’s the Golden Rule applied in the era of the universalization or democratization of rights beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 continuing right into the present and some representative aspects – with advanced considerations, in fact – in the Beijing Declaration from 1995. This can be seen as a fuller realization of the Golden Rule to a wider range of humanity.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 61

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/01

Strategic objective A.2.
Revise laws and administrative practices to ensure women’s equal rights and access to economic resources

Actions to be taken

61. By Governments:

a. Ensure access to free or low-cost legal services, including legal literacy, especially designed to reach women living in poverty;

b. Undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies;

c. Consider ratification of Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as part of their efforts to promote and protect the rights of indigenous people.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The importance of legal services for the poor is important to help them in the situations in which many people find themselves in the modern world. These can include the problems of the, well the obvious one of, lack of financial resources. The inability of the poor, because of poverty, to afford the legal services involved in some aspects of life.

If poor, what does this imply for their ability to afford the legal services? If this impacts life prospects in statistical terms and over the long term, what does this mean for the demographics of the poor? We can see the impacts on women, people of color, and, in particular, those in developing countries. These are the direct impacts of policies and social conditions that impact the lives of women of color disproportionately negatively compared to others.

The ability to get some knowledge about legal issues too. That is, the aforementioned legal literacy is important for the development of the livelihoods and life prospects of women. Not only this, we can see the legislative and administrative reforms to permit the ability of women to enjoy their “full and equal access to economic resources.”

Insofar as I know, no country has done this; although, there remains relatively pervasive smoke to cover this simple fact in a manner similar to those who wish to cover fundamental moral truisms about the world, often for economic or political gain, which is a basis for action among the general public.

Any public in most nations can rise up, make popular demands, and realize their democratic rights to self-governance and autonomy, e.g., take the cases of Indigenous missing and murdered women in Canada. At the very least, there is a greater awareness of the disproportionately negative impact on their lives and livelihood following the consequences of colonialism.

It is instructive and important. Same with climate change activism coming from the First Nations. Of course, we can see modern attempts to dismiss their, and other people’s, concerns with the modern trend of epithets coming from the faux or falsely self-identified Classical Liberal class as well as some branches of the conservatives – new and old – with neologisms in order to dismiss opponents: the clumping together of disciplines as Grievance Studies – imagine theology being clumped with others as Supernatural and Metaphysical Studies, victims, victimhood culture, libtard, snowflakes, social justice warriors or SJWs, betas, cucks, feminists, even globalists, PC, Regressive Left, and so on.

These invented invectives provide justification for the demonization of the other and internal groupthink while proclaiming an individualist ideology, economically and socially, while, in actuality, being staunch collectivists. These self-proclaimed classical liberals and more akin to, but not entirely, laissez-faire libertarian conservatives with a spice and salt pinch-set of social liberalism become a new class of irrational self-proclaimed rationalists.

It amounts to a very soft form of Orwellian inversion of the meanings of words. Then, of course, they portray themselves as academic pariahs and (false) prophets, which, in some cases, is true – for sure – but in most is simply intellectual self-adulation, hyperbole, and valetudinarianism. By some of their own terminology in North America and some of Europe, they are the part of the Regressive Left speaking out against the ‘Regressive Left’ – yelling at the proverbial mirror in an echo chamber in a manner of speaking.

Does this mean automatic support for the soft witch hunts of a super-minority of academics and writers – Left or Right? No, it means a singular examination of one angle on a problem: the breakdown of popular discourse to the detriment of everyone. Indeed, most of the cases of these individuals come in the form of being called mean words – inappropriate, no doubt – such as “fascist” or “racist.”

But does this justify the calls for shutting down entire disciplines, support of anti-science views with impacts for future generations, potentially unsustainable economic models, support for imperialism, or the feeling of a need to return of religious dogmatisms? If so, then say it, rather than imply it – be assertive rather than passive-aggressive; it shows a marked rush to react, as if, in the terminology, to be a “snowflake.”

I see this in other groups with different ideological premises, but I focus on this one for the time – especially as their narrow vision impacts the energy and focus of those with the education, money, and time to contribute to the democratization of nations through the inclusion of previously excluded voices. These groups, as noted, are minor and, typically, self-enclosed. However, there are relevant and important cases needing dealing with, where the concrete identification of problems in the society become grounds for obfuscation – and, probably often, deliberately so.

It takes a lot of work to not see the international disproportionately negative problems impacting women, people of color, and developing countries, or simply the women and people of color – even in simple denial of rights, e.g., reproductive rights or the right to vote until recent history – in one’s own developed nation.

Then it arises in the calls for shutting down entire disciplines or universities, even in whole countries, that look to, in some marginal way, critically examine – albeit in convoluted and polysyllabic language, granted – this aspect of society. Why not shut down theology departments speaking about unseen metaphysics or supernatural entities or magical forces, or economic departments with market fundamentalisms that plunge economies into the tank? These have far more negative impacts, not in all but many cases, on the societies around the world. Of course, this critical examination doesn’t happen, for good reason; this gives the cards away, and it ain’t a Royal Flush.

Also, the ways in which these individuals speak mostly to themselves, or never speak to their opponents on a respectful one-to-one basis, stereotype and bully across social media, re-define the terminology of their opponents and then argue against the Straw Men – even while knowing about the concept of the Steel Man, use underhanded tactics in misrepresentation of opponents and appealing to emotion and pity, extrapolate small instances in select studies to sweeping generalizations about a half-dozen or more fields extant in more than two dozen countries based on – even with optimistic projections – only one year of confirmation bias-based study of the fields, break ethical norms of academic journals and university life, and continue to denigrate and use the morals of bullies to reinforce their biases (while pointing the fingers at others without cleaning house first) and hold their base – hopefully bringing in some of the fringes in the process from the other side.

The Indigenous rights movement is highly important. It is the basis upon which individuals can come to a greater level of flourishing and equality with others who may be the dominant groups within society. Then there is also Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization devoted to the rights of Indigenous peoples. We can see this in the similar documents, full ones in fact, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This is important, even crucial, to recall and bear in mind.

The rights of the Indigenous, especially of the women of many of these peoples, can, in some sense, provide a litmus test as to the ways a culture values its least among them; the prior example in this article is an important reflection on it. Thus, there can be minor distractions among self-involved groups but, in general, the larger and factual issues, based in the ethics of rights (and associated responsibilities), stipulate the need, in documents such as the Beijing Declaration, to work for the equal rights of women with men without delay, especially in areas such as financial need and educational access – even legal training for law literacy.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 60(e)-(f)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/01

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

60. By national and international non-governmental organizations and women’s groups:

e. In cooperation with Governments, employers, other social partners and relevant parties, contribute to the development of education and training and retraining policies to ensure that women can acquire a wide range of skills to meet new demands;

f. Mobilize to protect women’s right to full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration runs in a long line of equal rights documents oriented towards the furtherance of equality among the peoples of the world. One of the delineations comes in the form of sex and gender. The forms of gender-based discrimination of much of the world provide some basis for the consideration of the rights and responsibilities of women, and men, and the ways in which women, typically, are disproportionately negatively impacted by the international system and the national legal and cultural systems in control of so much of the lives of women – directly or indirectly.

Paragraph 60, throughout, deals with the actions needing to be taken, if to be taken seriously – if you will, by the NGOs and the INGOs and the women’s groups. The emphasis here is on the “Governments, employers, other social partners and relevant parties,” which means the national and sections of the nation foci. Those able to take collective and cooperative efforts within the nations systems and link to the larger international network to effectuate internal to the state changes.

These can include the creation of education and training programs with gender in mind. Because, often, very often in fact, women can lack the ability to gain training and education in several areas of the world, even though the fundamental right to education exists. It becomes one of the barriers for women to flourish. It can come packaged in the idea of procreation as women’s sole role as enshrined in Mother Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary within the Christian faith, which is not a small portion of the world’s population led by a dominant system of men. I do not focus on the followers but on the hierarchs and the dogmatic ideology here – big difference between these two groups.

Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine provided a firm education on the importance of individual conscience of the follower of Christ as opposed to the fundamental individual abrogation of personal moral centring to magic, mystery, and authority of religious leaders. Ironically, for all the modern talk about some facets of religion being the groundstone discovery of the individual, this seems false insofar as the faiths tell the tale of groupthink, hierarchy and social control, and magical thinking to buttress the suppression of the individual; indeed, the individual precedes much of the Abrahamic traditions, sorry. In fact, an identity politics and collectivist orientation is Zionism as well.

No philosophy seems to enshrine the individual in totality, if a complete and comprehensive worldview, because, at some point, these break down into the realization of the embedment of the self with sets of other selves in some dynamic ecosystem of embedment. It can be summarized in an aphorism of Dr. Cornel West, “No such thing as being self made.” That’s, in part, the reason for the need of heartfelt dedication on a number of fronts to help with the educational and other needs of women and girls, because they, usually, are worse off.

This ability of women to be able to garner support can be, not a singular but at least, one means by which women can attain “full and equal access to economic resources.” This includes the ability for women to inherit, and own land and property, to acquire credit, and also have equal access to the “natural resources and appropriate technologies” of the world.

This comes with the facts of the situation rather than the stereotyped rhetoric – women are more emotional, women are weaker – about men needing to do the work of the field and the plough, of the office and the desktop. The recognition of personhood does not denude differences in fact but provides equality in rights and responsibilities via ethics. This leads to profound questions about the historic and current inequalities of women with men, and the means by which to implement said equality.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 60(c)-(d)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/30

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

60. By national and international non-governmental organizations and women’s groups:

c. Include in their activities women with diverse needs and recognize that youth organizations are increasingly becoming effective partners in development programmes;

d. In cooperation with the government and private sectors, participate in the development of a comprehensive national strategy for improving health, education and social services so that girls and women of all ages living in poverty have full access to such services; seek funding to secure access to services with a gender perspective and to extend those services in order to reach the rural and remote areas that are not covered by government institutions;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

There is the need to continue the hard work of moving the dial forward on ethics, on women’s rights not only in specifications and education but also in the implementation around the world. What we continue to see are the pushbacks against the advancements of rights, where this indicates a continuous struggle for equality, the jagged line for the prior century, interestingly enough, has been near-continuous in the general trendline upwards with more rights implemented for more women.

As this has happened, we continue to see the positive economic developments around the world, especially regarding reproductive health rights. Some major groups who have worked to prevent the implementation of women’s personhood through bodily autonomy are seen in the enshrinement of the pro-life movement – so called – in the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and others. To reduce maternal and infant mortality, a true pro-life would legalize abortion to reduce the rates of either, to be pro-choice becomes pro-human right and pro-infant and pro-maternal life as well – inasmuch as the evidence from international organizations tell us.

Once groups, especially ones based on dogma, authority, and deep pockets, take the evidence seriously and the impacts have grown adults who can die and will make the independent choice even for unsafe abortions, we can begin a mainstream serious conversation on it – tens of thousands are dead. Otherwise, it probably isn’t worth the breath.

This connects the NGOs and INGOs or the non-governmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations, and the local women’s groups, in a unified effort for the benefit of the women of the world. With the development programmes, there can, and indeed should be based on the prior discussion, be the inclusion of women’s reproductive health rights on the agenda.

With these NGOs and INGOs, women’s groups, and governments tied to the private sector, the move is for the “comprehensive national” strategies of the improved health and wellbeing and the nation-state and its citizenry. Indeed, looking into the comprehensive program, these should, as noted, include “health, education and social services” in order for women, and girls, to be able to fulfill their potential through being able to leave poverty.

There should be efforts to include women within the international system and the national infrastructure plans as countries begin to move from developing to developed societies. One of the main pivot points in the conscience of the world will come in the form of reproductive health rights for women without intrusion by the state or the international community on the individual lives and choices of women.

The economics and social development indices point to the strengthening of the nation and global community through the implementation and respect for women’s rights through the recognition of their personhood; furthermore, the inclusion of women in the conversation of rights recognizes their autonomy, at least in freer and more open societies, about the most consequential and intimate decisions in their lives, whether or not to have children – and how many, and when, by which means, and under other general circumstances.

This become, in particular, important to the large portion of the global population found in the rural and remote areas, who remain among the world’s most poor and unable to access some of the resources considered automatically accessible by much of the rest of the population. It is an important set of considerations for the equal rights considerations of women around the world.

This document, as noted several times, is old, almost by a quarter of a century, but this gives a lens in what ideals can be considered and then stacking of potential ways to make the world more equitable and just with a, sort of, implied rank-ordering of importance based on some of the practical realities of the world.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 60(a)-(b) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/30

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

60. By national and international non-governmental organizations and women’s groups:

a. Mobilize all parties involved in the development process, including academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and grass-roots and women’s groups, to improve the effectiveness of anti-poverty programmes directed towards the poorest and most disadvantaged groups of women, such as rural and indigenous women, female heads of household, young women and older women, refugees and migrant women and women with disabilities, recognizing that social development is primarily the responsibility of Governments;

b. Engage in lobbying and establish monitoring mechanisms, as appropriate, and other relevant activities to ensure implementation of the recommendations on poverty eradication outlined in the Platform for Action and aimed at ensuring accountability and transparency from the State and private sectors;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The impacts of the international economic policies of the last few generations of women have been disproportionately negative compared to me. It is not knocking the quality of life but the disproportionate impacts through negligence of the livelihoods of women in ratio comparison to men, as well as the ways in which the future generations will require considerations of women, people of color, the poor, the disabled, and those living in developed countries more than before with sustainability and confronting the real world around us – with or without the assistance of children’s stories or guidance adult fables/myths/parables/tales/legends. Heuristics, rules of thumb, algorithms, and shorthand, and tips and tricks are helpful; but we have to grow up at some point, so beyond them or with a more sophisticated reading them – the Age of Innocence is over.

The work of the national and international non-governmental organizations and women’s groups is incredibly important. These, coordinated with one another, can improve the efficacy of anti-poverty programs not only because more support and resources are devoted to the anti-poverty programs but the orientation of so many organizations can, in even short order, bring more attention and recognition of the issues of poverty rather than the standard media focus on the gathering of individual wealth and hoping to be like the rich and famous.

The poorest and most disadvantaged tend to me the women, especially those from rural and Indigenous communities. There are a host of other classifications taken into the considerations here. Now, looking at the following paragraph and with an acknowledgement of the additional responsibility of governments here, the lobbying efforts are important, because, for example, political lobbying can change policy, which can affect nations – and if enough of those, then, potentially, regions and the international community.

But this takes activism from the ground up, over long periods of time, but the difficulty now is the reduction in the potential timescales given the possibility of climate and other disasters looming over our heads. The Platform for Action, circa 1995, provided a good window into the need for change. The areas for action to implement women’s rights more fully.

It is interesting as the principles of accountability and transparency become part of the work for the implementation of women’s rights. Indeed, there are direct efforts directed at the “State and private sectors,” as these can be additional assistance in the development of or furtherance of women’s rights. The means by which individuals can mobilize and garner the support of larger external organizations, or build their own, can be an importance source of support for the eradication of pvoerty, especially in which this is in the worst circumstances often set for poor women of color compared to other demographics – incredibly exacerbated in developing countries of the world.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 59(e)-(g) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/29

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

59. By multilateral financial and development institutions, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and regional development institutions, and through bilateral development cooperation:

e. Ensure that structural adjustment programmes are designed to minimize their negative effects on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and communities and to assure their positive effects on such groups and communities by preventing their marginalization in economic and social activities and devising measures to ensure that they gain access to and control over economic resources and economic and social activities; take actions to reduce inequality and economic disparity;

f. Review the impact of structural adjustment programmes on social development by means of gender-sensitive social impact assessments and other relevant methods, in order to develop policies to reduce their negative effects and improve their positive impact, ensuring that women do not bear a disproportionate burden of transition costs; complement adjustment lending with enhanced, targeted social development lending;

g. Create an enabling environment that allows women to build and maintain sustainable livelihoods.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The larger international financial and development organizations or institutions are important for the development of the world’s economy. There is, in this sense, the important consideration of the inclusion of some of the most powerful brokers in the world in the assistance of getting developing societies into the category of the developed society; although, of course, Bill Gates made some light calls, recently, in a change to some of the terminology around developed/developing, first-world/third-world and so on.

In contradistinction to the implications of the prior periods, we see the need for the instantiation of structural adjustment programs but with an explicit emphasis on the “vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and communities,” which, as some of you may recall, was an important point of conversation in the prior sections because the implied conclusion was the women of the world in the worst circumstances were disproportionately negatively affected by the structural adjustment programmes simply because women, especially poor women of color in developing countries, were not in the plans for those adjustments.

The ability to ensure the positive developments without the disproportionately negative effects on women is incredibly important for the advancement of societies through the scales of known social development, especially with the emphasis on the plight of the poorest women in their societies. It is the giving of a chance for women to have some access to and control over their own social and economic resources within these societies.

Indeed, these can help reduce the levels of inequality and the degree of economic disparity. It is not a simple calculation of moving from here-to-there but also bearing in mind the ways in which the historical record shows ways in which to do it, equitably and with women in mind. The review of the prior impacts is important in order to improve on the past and carve a more positive future for women who have been negatively impacted by the structural adjustment programmes of that past generation right into much of the present – the so-called neoliberal period.

The disproportionate level of the costs are being born by women, and so not by most men by implication, which makes this structural-institutional and, thus, a part of what is sometimes termed the Patriarchy but can more simply be defined as an institutional bias against the poor who are most often women of color, but women generally. The next portions are ways in which to continue this work for the development of societies.

Especially as regards the reduction of the costs on women and the disproportionate bearing of the burden by women, this will involve something or sets of things approximating the environments that permit women to be able to “build and maintain sustainable livelihoods,” and as climate change and overpopulation are the main concerns regarding future sustainability of human ppopulations; this, therefore, makes the focus on environmental and modern energy consumption-production cycles and reproductive health rights, including abortion and family planning, crucial for not only the advancement and empowerment of women but also the future sustainability of the global ecosystem in any reasonable consideration with humans living decent lives.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 59(c)-(d)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/29

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

c. Find effective development-oriented and durable solutions to external debt problems in order to help them to finance programmes and projects targeted at development, including the advancement of women, inter alia, through the immediate implementation of the terms of debt forgiveness agreed upon in the Paris Club in December 1994, which encompassed debt reduction, including cancellation or other debt relief measures and develop techniques of debt conversion applied to social development programmes and projects in conformity with the priorities of the Platform for Action;

d. Invite the international financial institutions to examine innovative approaches to assisting low-income countries with a high proportion of multilateral debt, with a view to alleviating their debt burden;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the Beijing Declaration, Chapter IV continues in some of the same tone with the inclusion of larger world financial institutions in the advancement of women’s rights. In section (c), we can see the need to find not only the solutions to inequity through the aims of economic and social development but also with the “durable solutions to external debt problems.”

This is a complicated problem. Indeed, debt can be a means by which nations can take advantage of others, especially the poor. Consider that a form of economic warfare, the forms of finance programs and targeted objectives become the basis for considering what will and will not be within the rubric of the practical implementation of women’s rights.

If a nation is bogged down by debt, the ability to reinvest its own income-generation into future social development programs and initiatives for the country can be hampered, even including those oriented towards the advancement and empowerment of women. Other measures suggested for the reduction, even blanket elimination, of debt is the “debt forgiveness,” “debt relief measures,” and “debt conversion to social development programmes.” All intriguing ideas.

Section (d) ties these various forms of debt solutions through something like a debt artificial solvency solution from an external source for the ability of the nations to continue in their path from developing nation to developed nation. The invitation of the international financial institutions can be important for the development, socially and economically, of a society.

They can help with the inclusion of a variety of “innovative approaches” for the ‘helping hand’ towards lower income nation-states. Without this help, the development of nations would be more difficult. At the same time, this dependence, over sufficient time, on external financial centres could leave the developed nations and their attendant citizenry in the potential midst of easy abuse and misuse by the international financial institutions.

Nonetheless, there was in 1995 and continues to be now great potential in bottom-up globalization, from the people in other words, for the improved livelihoods and living conditions of human beings around the world. There are issues pressing at the heels of us all, but they press harder for those with worse shoes, less money, and unable to run as fast – so to speak.

The chances for the low-income countries with a “high proportion of multilateral debt” to be able to have some debt burden is incredibly important for their host populations to be able to flourish and develop as time progresses, especially as climate catastrophes will require funds foe recovery and, most importantly, preventative measures – including transitioning to low-carbon energy consumption-production cycles as well as the infrastructure to be able to withstand the grave environment catastrophes staring us in the faces.

The World Bank and the IMF can be important in this, especially now; but, at the same time, they could abuse this great power given to them. It is up to the international populations to withstand the potentials for abuse and work in coordination for equitable international development, so at-home and abroad for the good of all – especially as we see a threat worth uniting us all wth the crimes of prior generations in the destructions of ecosystems where current and near-future generations are paying those costs (for the worship of mammon on a short-term basis).

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 59(a)-(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/28

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

In accordance with the commitments made at the World Summit for Social Development, seek to mobilize new and additional financial resources that are both adequate and predictable and mobilized in a way that maximizes the availability of such resources and uses all available funding sources and mechanisms with a view to contributing towards the goal of poverty eradication and targeting women living in poverty;
Strengthen analytical capacity in order to more systematically strengthen gender perspectives and integrate them into the design and implementation of lending programmes, including structural adjustment and economic recovery programmes;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration’s paragraph 59 covers the responsibilities of actors than the governments. These including the multilateral financial and development institutions, which are centralized forms of great power. In sections (a) and (b), there are statements as to commitments and capacities. On commitments, (a) speaks to the “World Summit for Social Development” in an attempt to garner further financial resources for the eradication of poverty, with an emphasis on women living in poverty.

These could fall under fundraising for anti-poverty programs in a manner of speaking. The use of huge potential financial backers in order to get funds for the benefits of the general public’s least off. Those with the, often, least chance in life. It becomes a moral question with empirical outcomes: “Is it moral to help the least among us?” I answer, “Yes.” Others may not answer, “No,” in a direct way but by the implications of their politics, social policies, and economic programs – with known outcomes in prior examples through similar contexts.

The targeted improvement of the livelihoods of women is important. Because women remain among the least among us, globally. If some populations have women surpassing men, it is within the much younger generations and remains a highly new phenomenon and, immediately, organizations are working on the problems of men already; thus, it is not as if this is a travesty for the men of the world or a negligence on their needs but, rather, a simple equitable distribution of concern and resources for the implementation of women’s rights, as women are people and individuals have human rights.

The mobilization of resources in order to maximize their availability is non-trivial because distribution and access are fundamental aspects of equality. You cannot simply have the resources. There needs to be an infrastructure for the women and for the distribution of the resources to them. The world, in some ways, lives in abundance; the concern is the proper systematic distribution of the resources to those in need around the world.

The inclusion of a gendered perspective set can be important for the development of the society. It is, indeed, a fact of the statistics of the world that women and girls were not considered, as much or at all, in the economic and political systems of the world for a long time. Furthermore, there was also the problems associated with the lending programs, and the structural adjustments and economic recovery programs.

If women were more considered in these, then, perhaps, we could work for the greater advancement of the concerns of women. But if women and are simply not in them, as they were circa 1995, then the outcomes will be more probably neutral, which on a moving train means to fall behind, or even negative. These are the contexts of the modern world and the problems that we inhabit. It is a problem.

It is an issue needing dealing with, which will need direct planning, coordination, and implementation with a gendered perspective and, even better, with an input from women at all stages.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 58(o)-(q) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/28

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

o. Create social security systems wherever they do not exist, or review them with a view to placing individual women and men on an equal footing, at every stage of their lives;

p. Ensure access to free or low-cost legal services, including legal literacy, especially designed to reach women living in poverty;

q. Take particular measures to promote and strengthen policies and programmes for indigenous women with their full participation and respect for their cultural diversity, so that they have opportunities and the possibility of choice in the development process in order to eradicate the poverty that affects them.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basis for women’s equality is, in many ways, the basis for values. The basic tenet of most faiths and of the non-religious is the Golden Rule with the expansion of consideration of other beings as the advancement, in practice and not in theory, of the moral sphere to incorporate more and more people, e.g., women, animals, potentially artificial constructs with feelings and will.

Each important; the most salient for these articles has been and continues to the expansion of the moral sphere of the Golden Rule into the arena of rights with more and more rights, and responsibilities, given to women. The actions to be taken by governments to ensure the equality of women with women in rights becomes a pragmatic question or one of implementation as well.

Because the social security systems around the world simply do not exist for the poorest among us, who are disproportionately women. When section (o) speaks to the need for the creation of social security systems, it is speaking to a deep need to provide a basis for women and men to be on an equal footing when, in many instances in a global perspective, men and women simply do not have equal footing.

There is, in section (p), a consideration as to one mechanism to level the playing field for women to some degree. It comes in the form of social security systems. For example, the provision of a socialist system in which legal literacy training is provided for “free or low-cost.” This can provide a decent basis for the improved conditions of women in poverty who not for lack of intelligence but an inability to afford training do not know about the ins-and-outs of various legal contexts.

Section (q) covers other aspects of it. It is the forms of promotion and strengthening of the policies and programs for a few single percent portions of the world population who tend to be the most vulnerable, which is the Indigenous and, in particular, the Indigenous women. It is taking a perspective of respect for the cultural diversity as well as providing opportunities and the sense of choice for those in difficult circumstances.

There are ways in which to work to have these different cultural contexts while working to reduce the level of basic poverty, e.g., food, clean water, shelter, education, and so on. The essence of the equality of rights or the expansion of the moral sphere here would be the basic tenet of taking Indigenous peoples and Indigenous women of those peoples as equals in rights and responsibilities to protect and implement women’s rights.

The work here is important, and broader than simply legal literacy, because the work is to eradicate poverty altogether around the world. The work to implement the basic rights of people so that they can have a decent life is important, where some of the basics of life are important for it. The efforts of section (o) could be a basis for, for instance, social security systems for the health and wellbeing of the women.

Generalized forms of social security programs could, in fact, work to, at a minimum, reduce and move us towards the eventual elimination or “eradication” of poverty. It is an intriguing possibility circa 1995 and now. It seems like one of the easiest problems to work to solve as it is a gradual slide into better health and wellness of a community, but it takes time and consistency in the attempts.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 58(l)-(n) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/27

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

l. Introduce measures to integrate or reintegrate women living in poverty and socially marginalized women into productive employment and the economic mainstream; ensure that internally displaced women have full access to economic opportunities and that the qualifications and skills of immigrant and refugee women are recognized;

m. Enable women to obtain affordable housing and access to land by, among other things, removing all obstacles to access, with special emphasis on meeting the needs of women, especially those living in poverty and female heads of household;

n. Formulate and implement policies and programmes that enhance the access of women agricultural and fisheries producers (including subsistence farmers and producers, especially in rural areas) to financial, technical, extension and marketing services; provide access to and control of land, appropriate infrastructure and technology in order to increase women’s incomes and promote household food security, especially in rural areas and, where appropriate, encourage the development of producer-owned, market-based cooperatives;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Sections (l), (m), and (n) are interesting. (l) looks at the means by which to create better conditions for women living in poverty. These are, often, the socially marginalized women too. It is a context where the chance to move up in the socioeconomic system is lowered simply for the fact of being a woman.

Furthermore, there is the issue of being displaced, as per some of the other articles’ discussions. These can be migrant and refugee women. It states the need to look for the implementation of the human rights of women regardless of their status in life in terms of the economic opportunities for them.

(m) is look at the rights to land and housing. The problems for those who would like to get some land, buy or build a house, and live a life of ease and reasonable comfort, especially in an advanced industrial economy. Here we can see the obstacles for women starkly, there are simply too few provisions for the rights of women here – which can show in even one of the simplest considerations of the lack of economic independence opportunities provided to women in so many contexts of the world.

Women are, continually, denied the right to an education or discouraged, even shamed, from working to get an advanced education. This form of discrimination creates educational deficits and workforce barriers for women. Herein, we can note the long-term consequences for women. Fewer finances, less independence, and the inability to buy land and own a home. It can indirect driving the direct lacks of women for land and housing apart from the men in their lives.

The policies and programmes stated should, as stated in some recent articles, work within the context of also encouraging and increasing the access of women into the agricultural and fishing markets. With the “appropriate infrastructure and technology,” women’s incomes can increase alongside the food security of the home.

All in all: the basic sentiment for improved access for women in these domains of housing, land, and other resources do not automatically imply but permit the possibility for the economic advancement and empowerment of women. But programs and policies with an emphasis on this form of empowerment can be powerful drivers for the equality of women with men.

It is important, timely, and still relevant almost a quarter century since its being written. The emphases and programs set for the time when some were just being born and may now even be graduating college are relevant to those who are also simply being born now. The cycle of deprivation is certainly less and conditions, depending on the area of consideration, have improved, but because some things have improved somewhat does not imply the automatic solving of other problems or the non-creation of others. We live in a time of radical changes, which may be needing even more rapid changes in the economic, social, and political structures around us – to respect rights of all and produce the potential for a viable and sustainable future for all.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 58(i)-(k) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/27

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

i. Formulate and implement, when necessary, specific economic, social, agricultural and related policies in support of female-headed households;

j. Develop and implement anti-poverty programmes, including employment schemes, that improve access to food for women living in poverty, including through the use of appropriate pricing and distribution mechanisms;

k. Ensure the full realization of the human rights of all women migrants, including women migrant workers, and their protection against violence and exploitation; introduce measures for the empowerment of documented women migrants, including women migrant workers; facilitate the productive employment of documented migrant women through greater recognition of their skills, foreign education and credentials, and facilitate their full integration into the labour force;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

As explicitly stated in this set of sections for paragraph 58 of the Beijing Declaration, we can see the need to develop various forms of policies with a gendered lens because of the number of female-headed households. Those homes built by women for their family. The standard image is one man, one woman, and children.

The structures in place for the country become restricted within this context. It is a way in which the economic policies flow from the sociocultural assumptions of women. Thus, the economic policies with a gendered lens would include more modernized and rights-of-women oriented economic policies given not only a changing sociocultural landscape but also the shifts in the emphasis, of equality of women with men.

The development of policies with the context of “economic, social, agricultural” contexts can provide a generalized basis for the improved livelihoods of women. If we look at section (j) of paragraph 58, we see the next developmental stage with the anti-poverty programmes as a broad-based way in which to alleviate the difficulties for women living in poverty conditions.

The issues for many women is the ability to access food in any meaningful sense over a sustainable period. It can be that basic, that problematic. This realization of the rights of women to food, similar to those of women migrants, simply works to recognize the basic humanity of women around the world.

The violence and exploitation of women is a problem. In particular, the women around the world who suffer from a variety of problems to do with lack of home-feeling, of an own-context, of the cultural community, and so on; the basis for a sense of belonging with the rest of the world. It is these forms of deprivation that particularly break my heart for these migrant women.

It is not for lack of striving; it is for the inability to be able to provide for their basic needs because of systemic deprivation, by which I mean the systems in place are not or intended with them in mind. These are the circumstances or the realities for migrant women. Their most basic rights get extirpated at the root upon the removal from their place of origin; their home.

The ability to garner or gain any credentials or education from within their new locale is a difficulty because women tend to lack appropriate resources to integrate into the mainstream workforce. Is this a form of discrimination or barrier of migrant women? Yes, it is a difficulty, which is an issue with real consequences on the overall life trajectory of women.

The questions implied within this particular section of the Beijing Declaration deal with the means by which to improve to alter macroeconomic policies in order for the vulnerable to integrate into the society. This then becomes a sub-category problem within the larger context of women without appropriate resources to be able to participate in a society, because of migrant status.

Most contexts of poverty create more issues for women compared to the men. These questions harken back to the fundamental values of the United Nations. In this sense, the right of to individual men and women to dignity and respect. If this is felt as if not needing implementing for women (or men) because of the state of their being a migrant, or not, then this should be taken into consideration as a discriminatory attitude with consequences – prejudicial ones – for the lives of people who did not want their lives uprooted and destroyed.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 58(e)-(h) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/26

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

e. Develop agricultural and fishing sectors, where and as necessary, in order to ensure, as appropriate, household and national food security and food self-sufficiency, by allocating the necessary financial, technical and human resources;

f. Develop policies and programmes to promote equitable distribution of food within the household;

g. Provide adequate safety nets and strengthen State-based and community-based support systems, as an integral part of social policy, in order to enable women living in poverty to withstand adverse economic environments and preserve their livelihood, assets and revenues in times of crisis;

h. Generate economic policies that have a positive impact on the employment and income of women workers in both the formal and informal sectors and adopt specific measures to address women’s unemployment, in particular their long-term unemployment;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basic necessities of life do not magically appear, nor did they for tens of thousands of years for the hunter-gatherer phases of our species; same with the 12,000-10,000 years of agriculture right into the present with industrial agribusiness methodologies for mass-production of foods including 3-dimensional stacking of crops to improve the volume yield of vegetables and fruits rather than through a 2-dimensional and imperfect methodology in traditional agricultural and farming practices.

The ability of changes, now, for the future is absolutely tremendous. Anyone who says otherwise is, probably, a fool. There are risks, but scientific inquiry can innovate, make more efficient current technologies, and create abundance, possibly, for more people than ever – even, likely, per capita. In the agricultural and fishing sectors, the ability for self-sufficiency is important for the ability of economic independence for many communities.

If the technology is developed or if a community does not want it, they have the right to self-determination to use the technology or not. But the introduction of methodologies to improve the allocation of these resources more equitably can be a powerful move for the implementation of the rights of women. Sae with section (f) dealing with the per household consideration of the distribution as well.

Now, these also tie not only into the resource provisions from the agricultural and fishing sectors for more equitable distributions within households, as per sections e and f, but also into the areas of a set of safety nets and community support systems; that is, these form a strong form of bond through “social policy” to “enable women living in poverty to withstand adverse economic environments.”

Let’s say we remove these supports knowing the consequences of a reduction or elimination of the bulwarks of poor women’s ability to fight against abject poverty, it would seem cruel in entire sectors of the population with a disproportionate impact on, as noted, women and, in particular, women of colour. It becomes a race-consequence in a negative sense – or an ethnic negative derivative. Women of colour become more adversely affected without the programs.

It becomes the consideration of women of colour’s well-being versus some other, which, given the number of citizens impacted some of these policies, would need to be a powerful “some other” because we’re talking about human beings with the same inherent respect and dignity as any other. It is, in this context, the ability to protect “assets and revenues in times of crisis” that becomes the issue for them – as it becomes for many of us.

The final section, (h), deals with some of the interesting aspects of the need for the state to provide supports through economic policies that can support the income generation possibilities of women workers, who continue to disproportionately be not equal with the men of the world. Take, for example, the uneven numbers of the world’s informal workers. Those are far more likely to be women.

The amount of energy and effort spent in the informal economy or in unpaid domestic work impacts women and remains an undue burden on them simply not taken into account by the vast majority of men; this is not institutional but cultural framing of the issue of discrimination against women, which can be changed easily – which will, or at least can, have downstream effects the economic livelihoods of women. Another solution, simply stated, could be economic enfranchisement of women through the provision of pay for those childcare and homecare services.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 58(c)-(d)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/26

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

c. Pursue and implement sound and stable macroeconomic and sectoral policies that are designed and monitored with the full and equal participation of women, encourage broad-based sustained economic growth, address the structural causes of poverty and are geared towards eradicating poverty and reducing gender-based inequality within the overall framework of achieving people-centred sustainable development;

d. Restructure and target the allocation of public expenditures to promote women’s economic opportunities and equal access to productive resources and to address the basic social, educational and health needs of women, particularly those living in poverty;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

With some examination of the macroeconomic policies and the development strategies of the Beijing Declaration, we can see the efforts of the international community, in general, and, granted, to varying degrees, working to improve the lives and conditions for women in poverty, which is the world’s majority poor. The pursuit of sound economic policies within a gender-based or gendered lens is important too.

Because of the lack of consideration of gender will tend to leave women out of the discussion. By leaving women outside of the domain of the conversation, the consequences will be more likely, even as a boilerplate analysis, to leave women’s issues set on neutral or negatively impacted. It happened the structural adjustment programmes. It can happen in other domains as well.

If a nation spends too much on the military, the basis becomes for lack of resources for social services. Similarly, with other economic policies and programs, those which impact the lives of women, typically, in a disproportionately negative way. The sustained economic growth models of the world are the ones in which women’s rights can be respected while, as emphasized in the previous article, the environmental problems can be taken into account too; furthermore, these can help with the overarching problem of the eradication of poverty through the reduction of the cycle of poverty within families of a society.

Those gender-based forms of discrimination, as can be seen, over time, in the discriminatory implementation of rights within a society. Some for the men and not others for the women in societies, e.g., reproductive health rights, rights to education and healthcare, and so on. Many of these can impact the economic viability of an individual woman’s life.

This comes in the aforementioned “overall framework of achieving people-centred sustainable development.” Now, the basis of this can come in a variety of ways. One of the obvious is the targeting and restructuring of the spending of the public dime on the well-being of women in terms of their economic livelihood. It becomes a means of empowerment and, hence, and as many of you know, the phraseology consistently used with the “advancement and empowerment of women.”

This is important as women continue to live in disproportionate levels of poverty compared to the men. This creates problems for their advancement in societies. Some suggestions or recommendations in some documents have been for temporary placement of position quotas in order to achieve the fabled equality desired by many, feared by others, and ambiguously and scantily considered by still others.

But the basic educational and health needs of a society should be the concern of the government; thus, the ability for access to the appropriate productive resources of the society should have some gendered emphasis within women’s rights as the disproportionate recipients of life’s burdens in several contexts. The orientation towards women and those in indigent circumstances can be important for the global move towards greater equality, realization of the human rights of all peoples, and for the respect and right to self-determination of people.

In turn, individuals and groups can not be seen as beasts of burden or tools of the state – whether through work or reproduction – and with the ability to pursue their lives as they deem fit and define for themselves.

It is about the best of the conservative tradition for freedom within constraint within group valuations of the right and reliance on tests wisdom while also on the best of the liberal counterbalance with the emphasis on the individual’s right to deviate from the group and pursue creative and intellectual endeavours – to discover the newer areas of wisdom that will, in time, become part of the conservative fold, as we develop this mutual interplay between the innovative spirit of humankind and the traditional yearning for a yesteryear.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 58(a)-(b)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/25

Strategic objective A.1.

Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty

Actions to be taken

58. By Governments:

Review and modify, with the full and equal participation of women, macroeconomic and social policies with a view to achieving the objectives of the Platform for Action;
Analyse, from a gender perspective, policies and programmes – including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems, taxation, investments, employment, markets and all relevant sectors of the economy – with respect to their impact on poverty, on inequality and particularly on women; assess their impact on family well-being and conditions and adjust them, as appropriate, to promote more equitable distribution of productive assets, wealth, opportunities, income and services;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration begins to pick up steam when paragraph 58 begins to speak on some concrete actions, or requirements, of governments to implement the rights of women. Indeed, there is a general notion of the advancement and the empowerment of women, and another with the full and equal participation of women. This may surprise some, but this is simply not taken as a truism in much of society.

There is a perspective of many people around the world, especially when convenient for the individuals who can garner power and influence over others with it – whether political or economic. The macroeconomic policies that should be taken into account are ones with a gender-perspective and have been noted in earlier writings also in the work of this (rather long) series dealing with some aspects of the structural adjustment programs.

Those never considered women and disproportionately affected them. It is, through these direct economic policy mechanisms, the ways in which women become the world’s disproportionate poor. Also, the processes by which this impacts developing countries more, people of colour more, and so women of colour in developing countries the most, especially in the more rural or outlying areas.

The external debt problems and taxation connect to these gender inequalities too. Same with the problems seen in employment and the markets. Indeed, these programs and systems, as stated, have an impact on inequality – i.e., its increase – and affect women worse than the men of the world. This is what it means to have a lesser status in the world, to have the economic systems disproportionately negatively affect you, as a group.

The programs listed here make some important assessments or, more properly, emphases on the well-being of families and in the conditions for equal distribution of the fruits of the world. Some of this can take the form of the “assets” and others in “wealth” while other can be “opportunities, income and services.” The inability of many women, around the world, circa 1995 and into the present to have equal access to many of these things remains indicative of the grotesque global inequality which comes with an apologist class, even in my own country of Canada.

Pundits and commentators make statements, knowingly, at the detriment of the poor and women and for the benefit of the wealthier, such as themselves, and for the, ultimate, benefit of the ultra-rich – also known as the wealthy. It is in this sense that we can note the ways in which gender inequality comes in not only the forms of attitudes but also in the types of economic systems and situations around the world, where we see, sometimes, religion working tirelessly to reduce the possibility of the flourishing of women.

The benefit of a society with greater equality rather than great inequality is that which was laid out by some of the most ancient philosophers – I guess, philosophers of economics and politics in this sense – wherein the greater the inequality, past a certain point, the worse off the vast majority of people’s lives become, in comparison to the select fraction of a percent.

However, now, the economics of the world remain globally integrated, more than ever; this creates situations in which the issues not only needing addressing in terms of the varieties of externalities but also the means of distribution of the – not means of productions because the philosophy failed, empirically, there – productivity as the increase in wealth of the mean producer should be tracking in line increases in productivity.

Otherwise, it, to a point, becomes unjust taking of labour. If one, as per libertarian philosophy, should believe in something akin to or approximating a meritocracy, then the benefits to the working class should track this argument, where they are compensated for their labour productivity increases proportionately. But this has not happened. More people’s wealth continues to be siphoned off into the hands of the ultra-rich, internationally, which is anti-meritocracy and more akin to plutocratic kleptocracy in a sense of disproportionate taking of labour productivity as financial capital.

This can lead to the greater impoverishment of women compared to men, especially as the ultra-wealthy are far more often men than women – and, even in the households with the working class backgrounds and jobs, the women continue to be given less, globally speaking.

This is, of course, ignoring the issues related to climate change the need to deal with those as well: apart from individuals trying very hard to redirect the appropriate attention of the public to the pressing issues of the time that affect economic livelihood and sustainable growth such as dealing with climate change – seen even in the extreme cases of denial of its reality – but in general in individuals including Bjørn Lomborg, Katherine Hayhoe, Nigel Lawson, Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Christopher Monckton, Andrew Bolt, John Christy, Marc Morano, Richard Lindzen, Steve Milloy, Roy Spencer, Dick Armey, Anthony Watts, Judith Curry, and others.

Then the information which can be seen coming out of organizations including HumanProgress.Com, which is funded by the Cato Institute and the John Templeton Foundation. Do these individuals or organizations have an interest in misinforming, selectively informing, or outright lying to the public for financial gain? I ask you, dear reader.

These forms of representation of climate change as either non-existent, not that big of a deal, or, in fact, a conspiracy of liberals – a “liberal hoax” – prevents getting to work on concrete solutions. By failing to solve it, these, particular, individuals and others harm the long-term public discourse and, in turn, harm those most probable to be impacted by climate change, e.g., the Indigenous, the rural, the women, the poor, and those in developing countries.

Each of these cases will have economic impacts that can change entire lives. It is these cases where, in a way, by harming the public discourse via distracting from the proper debate on solutions rather than outright denying or minimizing it, in fact, harms the lives of individuals in some of the most vulnerable populations – economically, socially, and otherwise.

What they do is not only factually incorrect via their statements, often, but also immoral in its potential consequences based on known scientific facts and reasonable extrapolations from data into the near future, it is not funny or an intellectual game when you’re talking about the lives of people around the world who will be impacted by this. I do not find these cute or amusing. I find these morally reprehensible and potentially criminal.

The economic livelihoods of poor women around the world – the disproportionately poor – are impacted by situations like this, which all relate to the various policies not only in economics but also in the indirect effects on economic livelihoods of women through some of the most impactful, important, and substantial issues of the day, e.g., the aforementioned global warming or climate change problem.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 57 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/25

57. The success of policies and measures aimed at supporting or strengthening the promotion of gender equality and the improvement of the status of women should be based on the integration of the gender perspective in general policies relating to all spheres of society as well as the implementation of positive measures with adequate institutional and financial support at all levels.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration’s paragraph 57 is based on a gender equality or the equality of the sexes basis with the look into policies and measures of progress. The look at the gender perspective is important because of the relevance to international movements and work going on, at least, since December 10 1948 with the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There have been substantial but insufficient efforts to further the statements in the UDHR about the rights of women as persons. This has been heralded under the label gender equality or equality of the sexes. The basic premise of the movement is to provide a basis for the equality of women with men through a variety of measures, which can be seen in several documents at the national level and in international documents including the Beijing Declaration.

The purpose is to develop a set of policies and programs, or at least suggestions based on international discourse, for the means by which to attain the fabled gender equality. Indeed, the policies are stated as being meant for “all spheres of society” with the intention that there should be “adequate institutional and financial support at all levels.”

This is interesting. As the basic premise is gender equality, as an ethic based on universal principles found in the fundamental documents of the United Nations with the generations who founded mostly dead, that is, we inherited the work of the dead, in terms of the universals of ethics founded post-WWII.

Now, the principle or ethic then becomes an empirical question about the efficacy of the equality of women. If we work to keep the equality of women as the principle, and then develop policies and programs for the benefit of women, we can observe the effects over the long term. It is something based on rights. Where if one wants to practice their faith, they can do it; if someone does not want to do it, they do not have to, then each should respect the right of the faithful and the irreligious.

I remember working in the Athabasca University Students’ Union as an executive. It was an interesting experience. One time during a convocation, we, the movers and shakers of the university, went to some big dinner, but we had to pray in public to start the evening a public university. Does this violate secular principles? In some ways, it does; if happening at a postsecondary institution near you, I recommend arguing for the secularization of the campus to be fair to all.

Consider: the case of abortion, if one does not want an abortion based on religious and conscience objections, they should not have the abortion forced on them; if someone wants it, they should have access to it. Each can have their rights and responsibilities balanced and respected in this way.

And so with rights, it is all or none, with a balancing based on the application of every one of them. Indeed, we can not the empirical outcomes in the cases of implementing the rights of women, which, as mentioned, is an empirical question as to the benefit of them to society. As it turns out, with more rights implemented, women tend to be better off.

However, not only the women, but also the children and the family, and so the communities, in societies too, the more women’s rights are respected with women as persons, then the more flourishing of the society. It is akin to the long-term investment in combatting one of our greatest crises, which is climate change.

We need to tackle this problem now, and not later. Same with educating the general public on the safety of GMO foods, of vaccinations, and the inefficacy of prayer – very likely, and so on. But it needs supports. Those institutional bulwarks can provide a basis for the public to be able to flourish more than it would otherwise.

If someone disagrees with the empirical evidence in support of the implementation of women’s rights, and if they do not want a worse quality of life, then the objection will either be ethical – disagreement of rights as a source or part of ethics – or true misogyny, potentially. But the most common objection will be undue skepticism or a disagreement with the ethic.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 55 and 56 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/24

55. Particularly in developing countries, the productive capacity of women should be increased through access to capital, resources, credit, land, technology, information, technical assistance and training so as to raise their income and improve nutrition, education, health care and status within the household. The release of women’s productive potential is pivotal to breaking the cycle of poverty so that women can share fully in the benefits of development and in the products of their own labour.

56. Sustainable development and economic growth that is both sustained and sustainable are possible only through improving the economic, social, political, legal and cultural status of women. Equitable social development that recognizes empowering the poor, particularly women, to utilize environmental resources sustainably is a necessary foundation for sustainable development.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration’s 55th and 56th paragraphs speak to the ability of women to take part in and contribute to, and therefore benefit from, the layers of society’s systems. This becomes especially so in the developing nation context. The nature of productive capacity for women is an important part of the advancement and empowerment of women.

Within this framework, we can see the wide variety of stated areas in which women can become more productive in the systems of societies work with one another to create a way for women to flourish more than would be expected in normal historical circumstances. Indeed, some of the most important – though all are – comes in the form of healthcare and education.

Healthcare in the form of reproductive health rights. Education in the form of postsecondary access for the possibility to train and eventually work in the higher income areas of society. These can help women be able to create a plan for their lives in addition to the possibility for a longer term vision of economic well-being and, in the process, greater productivity within the standard societal frameworks.

The ability to do so impacts the lives of not only the woman but, if a mother then, also the livelihood of the family and, by implication, the chances for a positive outcome for the child. It is in this sensibility of the interconnectedness of various systems within a society where we can not the development of the productive capacities of women as integral to the growth of society.

As described in paragraph 56, this connects not only a ‘sugar high’ form of economic growth and social development, which can crash in short order; but, rather, the development of the “sustainable” form of social and economic growth. This model is the way in which to lift tremendous numbers of people out of poverty over the long term.

It does not happen all at once. It requires stepwise implementation, but it is the means by which to both advancement and empowerment of women and improve the overall economic viability of the state. No growth is eternal or a law of nature; these come about through human choices, often of the powerful, set about in politics, through policies and programs of action.

In turn, these form some of the foundations for the “economic, social, political, legal and cultural” improvements in the lives of women. The notion of socialist or capitalist seem too narrow in this wider related systems perspective, in which the development the individual woman and the collective of society interrelate and work in unison; which, in an essential manner, means the move from feminist, in particular, discourse to rights, in general, discourse, the rights and implied responsibilities of the human person, of a person of a religious faith to freely practice and of non-faith to not practice but also of a conscientious objector to not take part in abortion and of a person in need of healthcare to acquire one.

It is about the core message of the Gospels, of a humanist ethic, and of many others – however faulty the narrative representations and interpretations of asserted or purported holy scriptures at times – for the help of the poor and destitute and, fundamentally, in need of help in some way. The use of the commons, as per ancient Anglo and various Indigenous laws and traditions, for the good of all, which comes back to the rights of women to this too.

The rights of women to be able to use the environmental resources as well, for sustainable development and benefits for all. Any sustainable development should be taking into account the need to advance and empower the women of the world as persons, but also as individuals because of the benefit to the individual and the collective – at its various scales.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 54

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/24

54. In countries with economies in transition and in other countries undergoing fundamental political, economic and social transformations, these transformations have often led to a reduction in women’s income or to women being deprived of income.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Now, paragraph 54 of the Beijing Declaration has an interest to those interested in the economic empowerment of women. The areas where women tend to lack power are in some of the most easily identifiable areas. These tend to be the economic, political, and social arenas. These are well-known with the research into the matter and, more broadly, the documents with stipulations about rights of individuals and groups, responsibilities of states, and the ways in which various systems conspire, whether consciously or not, to the detrimental life outcomes of women.

The changes in the economic situations for countries also lead to problems for the ability of women to not only gain employment but educational opportunities. Consider: what is the stake of a family in the son over the daughter in the context of limited family resources and carrying the family name through the son and not the daughter? This can expand to a number of contexts.

The reduction or deprivation of a woman’s income also impacts the prospects, over the long term, of the potential livelihood of the woman. As described in prior articles, more single parent households are headed by women, so single mothers, and more and more homes are held in the economic power of women – not the majority. This leads to interesting modern contexts, in 1995 and now, regarding the advancement and the empowerment of women.

The deprivation of income for women becomes a reduction in the life possibilities and statistical high quality outcomes of the young coming from those households, not simply the women, because these women invest more in the families but without sufficient funds they will be left bereft – and so for their children and, thus, single parent family unit as a whole.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraphs 52 and 53

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/23

52. In too many countries, social welfare systems do not take sufficient account of the specific conditions of women living in poverty, and there is a tendency to scale back the services provided by such systems. The risk of falling into poverty is greater for women than for men, particularly in old age, where social security systems are based on the principle of continuous remunerated employment. In some cases, women do not fulfil this requirement because of interruptions in their work, due to the unbalanced distribution of remunerated and unremunerated work. Moreover, older women also face greater obstacles to labour-market re-entry.

53. In many developed countries, where the level of general education and professional training of women and men are similar and where systems of protection against discrimination are available, in some sectors the economic transformations of the past decade have strongly increased either the unemployment of women or the precarious nature of their employment. The proportion of women among the poor has consequently increased. In countries with a high level of school enrolment of girls, those who leave the educational system the earliest, without any qualification, are among the most vulnerable in the labour market.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The 52nd and 53rd paragraphs to the Beijing Declaration continue to speak on the disproportionate levels of poverty faced by women compared to others. Indeed, the levels of poverty in many, many countries around the world in 1995 and right into the present indicate, yes a decline in poverty levels overall but also, a continued disproportionate spread of the poverty with far more for women compared to men.

This seems as if a universal. The various social services, often either piddly or non-existent – and if extant sometimes being retracted through various legal and economic means, are insufficient to the needs of women around the world. The question is to what degree people deserve basic survival necessities through the purpose and mandate of a government to serve “the people” or the general population, especially those more often vulnerable, e.g., women and children.

The possibility of poverty becoming a reality of life is far greater for a woman in 1995 and remains so to this day. This becomes a problem for women without much of a pension too, where the social security networks or “nets” are not as good for them. Women have far more interruptions to their work, which creates a series of problems for the economic livelihood of women around the world.

Women have only been seen as equals in some societies only recently, and only by some sectors of the nations by the way. Powerful and rich interests are hard at work trying to deceive and firmly work in order to restrict the economic livelihoods, and otherwise, of women throughout the world. As noted, there are “older women [who] also face greater obstacles to labour-market re-entry.”

Paragraph 53 continues in a similar tone with even the economically advanced nation-states having opportunities for education and professional training of women, which can work to construct some bulwarks against the bias and bigotry against women as professionals. These can work to empower and advance the rights of women, while also including more individuals into the economic system for the financial flourishing of the country.

The women who have been long-term unemployed or stuck in precarious economic situations can be better off than what may otherwise be the case. It is in this sense that we can see the ways in which women can be seen as given lesser status through even subtle drivers into poverty and less well-off economic situations. Often, far more often, this occurs to women and single parents, who, as is known in the demographic analyses, far more likely to be women.

The women or girls who leave education early for a variety of reasons throughout the world; they will be, again far more probable, to be left in poorer and more poverty-stricken circumstances for their entire lives based on the lack of access to or opportunity for bothe advanced or even basic education & jobs with decent economic outcomes. Those jobs, or even hopefully careers, with greater chances for higher pay, benefits, healthcare and dental coverage, and so on.

It is thesecases that need a deeper examination because these continue to be the ways in which there are attacks on the general public through trying to delete or eliminate the options for women, who are more often poor women of color; what will you do?

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraphs 50 and 51 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/23

50. While poverty affects households as a whole, because of the gender division of labour and responsibilities for household welfare, women bear a disproportionate burden, attempting to manage household consumption and production under conditions of increasing scarcity. Poverty is particularly acute for women living in rural households.

51. Women’s poverty is directly related to the absence of economic opportunities and autonomy, lack of access to economic resources, including credit, land ownership and inheritance, lack of access to education and support services and their minimal participation in the decision-making process. Poverty can also force women into situations in which they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Let’s take a look at the division of labour for women in this particular article today, we can see paragraphs 50 and 51 cover a small smattering in word count but a wider coverage in content and implications, shall we begin, or, rather, continue this educational journey?

The poverty affecting women is immense, around the world, especially in the forms and metrics. The worst levels of poverty are more likely to be faced by women. Indeed, the measures on the disproportionate levels of the greatest poverty are faced by women more often, which implies the disproportionate access to the levers of power and the means of influence – even choice – within the society.

This is a global problem to this day, with some variation depending on the region and country of the world taken into account. Now, the ability for open person, more often a woman, to manage a household, as many in some advanced industrial economies know, is extremely difficult and can take, at a minimum, 18 years of good life working and, in core, slaving away at low-wage work to maintain a baseline level of life quality for the family. This is seen in single-parent families.

This becomes a particularly difficult situation for the women living in rural contexts. Those women who lack the ability or the freedom – functionally the same – to sustain themselves and their families in an equitable manner to men because the poorest of the poor, especially within the rural contexts of developing societies. The questions then arise within the context of paragraph 51 – as you can very likely tell with the logical progression as if a tacit argument, of one paragraph to another and one chapter to the next one.

Women become poor for a variety of reasons. One of them is the lack of freedom of choice, restriction in autonomy coming from a wide variety of contexts. One is the restriction in the ability to earn a living and make their way in the world. This creates impacts in the chances for women to become economically independent. That restriction becomes one of the most impactful and consequential not only for the individual woman but for families – and so by logical necessity – and communities and societies as well.

Indeed, arguments in favour of the economic restriction of women amount to arguments, by derivative or consequence based on international evidence, for the impoverishment of women, families, communities, and societies, in general, over time, at least, and especially, more than would be otherwise the case if women had the economic opportunity, access, and freedom.

These can come in a variety of economic restrictions such as the mentioned “credit, land ownership, and inheritance” as direct instances but also with the indirect instances involving the “lack of access to education and support services”; that is to say, the inability to get an education means an inability to acquire decent work and so standard of living for the individual woman, which amounts to an indirect economic restriction on the women in the world.

Then there is the cases of simply being in poverty making getting out more difficult than if one was not in as penurious a circumstance as otherwise could be the case; in fact, this leads to the final point about these women, in particular, being vulnerable to sexual exploitation, which, as a matter of principle, is something the sociopolitical left gets wrong as a moral and ethical issue.

That issue where no matter the context this gets seen as a free economic decision similar to those who may not make a distinction between freedom to choose child labour and enforced child labour with good working conditions; you want to rid the world of child labour – ages 14 to 16 with changes depending on the country, which makes no sense as it is the same species and so should, by implication, be one age across the world and not selective to suit the peculiar dictates of one nation or another – and not simply make the working conditions for child forced into labour better or worse.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraphs 48 and 49

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/22

48. In the past decade the number of women living in poverty has increased disproportionately to the number of men, particularly in the developing countries. The feminization of poverty has also recently become a significant problem in the countries with economies in transition as a short-term consequence of the process of political, economic and social transformation. In addition to economic factors, the rigidity of socially ascribed gender roles and women’s limited access to power, education, training and productive resources as well as other emerging factors that may lead to insecurity for families are also responsible. The failure to adequately mainstream a gender perspective in all economic analysis and planning and to address the structural causes of poverty is also a contributing factor.

49. Women contribute to the economy and to combating poverty through both remunerated and unremunerated work at home, in the community and in the workplace. The empowerment of women is a critical factor in the eradication of poverty.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraphs 48 and 49 continue into the next portions of the section on Women and Poverty of the Beijing Declaration covering a range of topics including the poverty levels with disproportionate numbers of women living in poverty compared to the men. This leads to several questions about the sources and fairness and justice of this. In particular, the ways in which these can be seen as explicit areas of unfairness and injustice.

Those ways in which women, then and now, continue to be the world’s disproportionate poor for a variety of reasons with some stretching right into the areas of the economies in transition, again then and now, and the ways these can lead to disproportionate provisions of power and influence – including monetary – in the hands of the men far more often than into the hands of the women.

There are the often mentioned barriers to women including the ways in which gender roles are perceived to match biological sex and, therefore, women, by the necessity of the ethics of the ascribed gender roles, must adhere to and perform within the narrowly defined performative aspects of the role. If a woman moves outside these domains set about by the culture, this can lead to a social or even a professional-economic punishment for the woman.

This can come before this too, in the ways in which women are prevented from attainment in education or in professional life. Those, even if provided, and even if the woman becomes a productive member in the earning-aspect of society, can still not be enough as the family may, for example, garnish, even in their entirety, the wages of the woman for the family or, more often, for sole deliberation by the man.

The consideration of gender in the policy and program developments of the nation lead to the greater implementation of women’s rights. Without the provisions of the human rights of women in this way, the general international finding – often called the advancement and empowerment of women, as many of you know – is the economic and social development of the nation-state, and so the international system, as a result of the including of women, e.g., more productivity of the nation because of more individuals within the society working.

There is also the ongoing tacit crime of having non-remunerative work done mostly by women compared to the men, in both the workplace and in the community – as noted in the 49th paragraph. The eradication of poverty, in this sense, becomes a women’s rights derivative: if one implements women’s rights, especially in the economic and educational spheres, and if one invests in this over the medium to long term, then the, eventual, outcome slowly over time will be the paying dividends in the wealth of the nation and the health of its citizenry, which seems like a great deal to me.

But this will come with standard retorts to try to prevent this, as an affront to Man or God, or the design of some peculiar and failed economic theory, and so on; the main driver here should be both individual and collective will, sentiment, and interest, which will, as with most plans involving the implementation of women’s rights, pay off in the end if a country is diligent and consistent about it.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 46 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/21

46. The Platform for Action recognizes that women face barriers to full equality and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion or disability, because they are indigenous women or because of other status. Many women encounter specific obstacles related to their family status, particularly as single parents; and to their socio-economic status, including their living conditions in rural, isolated or impoverished areas. Additional barriers also exist for refugee women, other displaced women, including internally displaced women as well as for immigrant women and migrant women, including women migrant workers. Many women are also particularly affected by environmental disasters, serious and infectious diseases and various forms of violence against women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Strategic Objectives and Actions of the Beijing Declaration open with paragraphs 45, covered in the previous article, and paragraph 46. These represent the introductory portions for it. If we look at Paragraph 46, we can see the ways in which the different types of women lead lives of barrier after barrier, not to the same degrees or in the same ways but definitely with somewhat similar outcomes – prevention of access in part or whole.

Now, this is an interesting paragraph in its compactness, concision. The factors taken into consideration are some of the most important in terms of the cross-sections of identities.

For those within the intersectional feminist research community, these intersections of identity tied to the barriers in the “full equality and advancement” of women represent the intersections of oppression based on the various identities of women; to the individualist libertarian academics of a Western philosophical bent, these individual characteristics of the women in the world have consequences based on social, economic, legal, and, at times, religious & cultural systems in which they inhabit, where, even in spite of the meritocracy of the industry in which they partake, they exist with additional barriers based on individual traits of their self, e.g., skin color or gender.

But, of course, merit matters as a high value in all this, as a proper retort to the intersectional feminists. These and other sides of the discussion speak in different vernacular but point to the similar pathologies, problems, in the individuals and in the societal systems.

For example, both want freedom of expression or, as they term it, “free speech,” which remains a sub-categorization and extension of freedom of expression enshrined in the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, it becomes freedom of speech; in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Section 2(b), it remains the freedom of expression; in the UK constitution, it stays as freedom of expression in Article 11.

One calls someone a fascist or an ur-fascist, a Nazi, a racist, a xenophobe, right-winger, alt-right, Status Quo Warrior (SQW), identitarian, or a homophobe, even a transphobe, and so on; another calls the other leftist, Social Justice Warrior, regressive, regressive leftist, left-winger, communist, postmodernist, neo-Marxist, Marxist, identitarian, and so on. Interestingly, the term “identitarian” is hurled from either side, as a humorous minor observation.

But this has real effects. Hate groups from several sides commit violence; then, the government can step in to add state violence, with everyone pointing fingers and not examining their own contributions to violence and the ways in which the government can take this as justification for state repression.

Duly note, the lack of advancement of the conversation or the acknowledgment of the points or the premises in the arguments of the other side, probably as covers for insufficient intelligence and rationality of the leadership to solve the problems facing themselves, especially as some just want their personal status increased alongside their financial advancement as fake victims, and of everyone facing the transition from a unipolar global system to a multipolar global order as, prior to his death, astutely noted by former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew.

That is, this becomes a basis for, even the most famous adults of each grouping who have careers and kids and the most distinguished stations, denigration, disrespect, and degradation of other groups as a whole or individuals as well as the prevention of thought about the other side.

Individuals from these entrenched groupings will lose jobs, careers, finances, be sued, and so on. Congratulations, we’re all worse off, because of a) the thin skins and litigious nature of the leaders of the movements – on either side, for simplicity’s sake – and b) the poor examples set by the leadership, in either of the cases. Then those purporting to walk the fine line between the two prominent sides fail to do it, simply posing and making a pretty penny as faux vanguards or false prophets in Abrahamic terminology.

But back to the main thread of discussion for this paragraph, as many of you know, the classifications are easily identifiable within everyday life. Each with a result of potential discrimination against women as a group and as individuals. As stated, the classifications taken into consideration for barriers against women are as follows: “race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion or disability, because they are indigenous women or because of other status.”

Indeed, it even extends into the parental status of some women, who, for examples, may be single mothers; these exist as the dominant or most populted demographic of the single parent population. It is in this sense that we can see the discrimination against women in a number of domains. This is particularly pronounced in the rural areas in which women lack the ability to have recourse with the injustices facing them, again as individuals to the more individualist Western-philosophical minded and as a group to the more intersectional feminist oriented.

Both make valid points. They might talk some more if they got off their high horses and listened to one another without the vitriolic tone, inherent distrust, ad hominem hurling of insults, or the use of lawsuits to settle academic disagreements, or simply making claims to shut down entire disciplines and lackadaisically work to construct entirely alternative academic institutions.

The power of myth exists, especially in a scientific and metaphysically naturalistic era; the influence of oppression structures exists, especially with mass communications and analysis of personal and interpersonal experiences through the new media. The question for them and several others, now, comes in finding common ground in their respective ideological entrenchments. Of course, these only amount to two of the identified prominent groups.

Now, to the main point of this specific documentation, we can mostly agree with the premise that women in rural, remote, and other areas tend to be impoverished compared to others. It is the demographics here who become the least provided by the national and the international system, as the heart of provisions, for the greatest number of people, tends to be in the city centers and metropolises.

Those other women with refugee status or displacement become important to equality of women because the advancement of women in these conditions create the greatest impact on the lives of the world’s women. The provision of food, finance, and education, as well as choice in reproduction, mark the possibilities for taking a different path in life for women.

However, for those displaced immigrant or migrant women, this is a serious set of issues facing them. These are women in some of the poorest and most destitute circumstances. Their concerns should, potentially, dwarf some of the concerns of the more advanced industrial economies – though important – that comprise the massive amount of emotional energy and intellectual resources seen in some of the aforementioned trivial aspects of popular culture and modern academic life.

These individual women deal with poor or no infrastructure in the cases of “environmental disasters, serious and infectious diseases and various forms of violence against women.” These create problems for many women, not in their limits in freedom of expression but, more properly, in the potential for dignity and respect in communities; even further, the possibility of being alive in the case of an environmental disaster. Their chances are far less with the possibility of greater individual loss of livelihood but also quantity of women as a group. Things to bear in mind, in the proportional consideration of what different people see as problems in the world – and what the practical realities of a large portion of the world’s population, often women, are, regarding livelihood.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter IV: Strategic Objectives and Actions – Paragraph 45

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/21

45. In each critical area of concern, the problem is diagnosed and strategic objectives are proposed with concrete actions to be taken by various actors in order to achieve those objectives. The strategic objectives are derived from the critical areas of concern and specific actions to be taken to achieve them cut across the boundaries of equality, development and peace – the goals of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women – and reflect their interdependence. The objectives and actions are interlinked, of high priority and mutually reinforcing. The Platform for Action is intended to improve the situation of all women, without exception, who often face similar barriers, while special attention should be given to groups that are the most disadvantaged.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The critical areas of concern in the Beijing Declaration, Chapter III, transition into a section on the Strategic Objectives and Actions. Paragraph 45 is devoted to some of the statements around goals and targeted objective, i.e., the “strategic objectives.”The foci here are the principles of development, equality, and peace. Those laid out in the stated strategies for the advancement of women.

The important part in this particular paragraph about a statement of principles, as with others, comes in the form of the acknowledgment of the mutual interdependence of the principles: that is, to get peace then one needs equality, to get equality one needs development, to get development, therefore, one needs both peace and equality, and so on, in the array of possible permutations.

The interdependent combinatorics of values is always fun. Now, with the work towards one, the inevitable rise in another value will emerge based on the interdependence of them. Indeed, the mutual reinforcement is important to consider, as the improvement in the degree of equality will also increase the level of development & peace in a particular society.

They are, also, high priorities within the international community according to this statement. It is an important fact about the nature of the world, especially the global community’s representatives, in the importance of the highest ideals of, for examples, equality, development, and peace. The interdependent nature of the values creates a situation in which the implementation becomes both mutual benefit and priorities, with each of them for a net benefit. But to what?

The aim is for the equality of women in a number of domains. If we look at the situation for women, the main issue has been the barriers in several domains. With the implementation of rights oriented within these three core priority values, the situation for women improves and, in fact, the health, wealth, and social development of the society improves if implemented.

Bearing in mind, of course, the implementation of one value reinforces the others for a continual benefit throughout. In other words, and in conclusion, the implementaton of initiatives, strategies, and plans towards the development of either peace, equality, or development – or all at once – increases the conditions for women around the world, or at least within the locale in which they happen to be actualized to some minimum degree.

The question then becomes the level of improved conditions required, where the answer will show in the statistics and, in matter of the fact, the international data analyzed around the world on what is termed the advancement of women and the empowerment of women – as the big, broad category – improves the overall health and wealth of the society. In any one way, the rest will follow in improvement as well.

In particular, the most disadvantaged groups of women, too, will improve with the implementation of the fundamental human rights for them. It is, in this sense, the basis for women, and especially women of color, around the world as the poorest of the world tend to be women, especially women of color, and the improvement in the social and economic conditions for women coming in the form of the mutually interdependent and beneficial principles of equality, peace, and development produce an environment in which the women, especially women of color, can more readily live happier and healthier lives.

The work to prevent this would seem to amount to a global crime with unspeakable damage to future generations of women, in general, living in some most destitute and penurious circumstances; the basis for the equal rights and status of women will come in the form of more implementation of women’s rights, especially as filtered through the prism of, at least, those three principles of development, equality, and peace.

–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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2022-04-24

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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 43 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter III: Critical Areas of Concern

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

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

43. A review of progress since the Nairobi Conference highlights special concerns – areas of particular urgency that stand out as priorities for action. All actors should focus action and resources on the strategic objectives relating to the critical areas of concern which are, necessarily, interrelated, interdependent and of high priority. There is a need for these actors to develop and implement mechanisms of accountability for all the areas of concern.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration continues to be a good document for marking the equality of the sexes. Looking at the 43rd paragraph, the continued emphasis is the same with the reference of the nation-states or the state actors as the important parties here. There is a level of timescale and the consideration of ethics, too.

This paragraph sets eyes on the specialized concerns with the look at the areas of urgency, hence the timescale. Those same special concerns, probably, apply to this day, as we see the destruction of many women’s lives continue right into the present almost a quarter century past the Beijing Declaration.

The ranking of priorities for the international community is important as the provision of resources from each country remains important; while, at the same time, the problem with the need to deal with some of the strategic concerns of the global community emerges in the prioritization. Some are more urgent than others; still more, they can be dealt with cheaply and quickly; furthermore, another set requirement immediate implementation but take a long time to solve.

As the state actors are the ones to be responsible, in coordination and working in concern, for the management of the prioritized issues, many of those listed throughout the document and commented on in several articles now. Those “critical areas of concern” are to be labeled as, or were labeled as, “interrelated, interdependent and of high priority.”

The problem with some of the actualizations of solutions is not only lack of financial and other resources, and little time to work on them, but also the ability to track the levels of progress of identifiable factors. Those factors or variables become the basis for more accountability. If, for example, the priority targeted objective is to reduce the number of child marriages of women, and if one marks this as a marriage without consent or before the age of consent – so age 18, then the idea is to track these number of child marriages in accordance with prior statistics.

Then you could look at a hypothetical level of progress in the implementation of the human rights of girls in particular and women in general. If there was regress, the accountability would be the state actor, where the identifiable regression would be on the tracked metrics listed before. It is difficult to track the proper implementation of the human rights of people, especially as many state actors who already perform poorly – or don’t care as much – on the actualization of, and so practical respect for, human rights of girls and women.

As noted in some of the recent articles, the estimated numbers of women and girls alive today married as children come to 750 million or 0.75 billion. In other words, and as an easy mathematical experiment, if we look at the total global population of human beings at about 7.65 billion circa September 2018, and if we divide the number by 2, we come to 3.825 billion men or 3.825 billion women.

However, one of the ratios accepted by experts, at the moment, is 102 boys to 100 girls, as the ower estimate ratio. The higher ratio is 107 to 100. But for simplicity’s sake, we can stick with the 3.825 billion women in the world, though in actuality the number is less. So, 3.825 billion women and girls in the world with, as an older estimate mind you, 0.75 billion women and girls married as children alive today, which comes to the simple calculation: 0.75/3.825*(100)=~19.61% of women and girls, around the entire world, married as children. Although, with the high proportion of boys in the world, the denominator would be a smaller number – and with the older estimate on the numerator, the number may, in fact, be higher, though as an argument could be made for lower.

This is a disparity. The percentage may creep above 20%, with some modifications, or more than 1/5 women or girls married as children. If the goal were to reduce the number, then the states of the international community could use this metric as an indicator of the levels of child marriage, as a global percentage of women and girls living today who underwent child marriage. With a failure to reduce the number, we could keep those state actors around the world accountable for their failure in implemention of policy and setting about cultural dialogues for the reduction in the 19.61%.

Accountability becomes the basis for global justice in identifiable areas of concern. Those areas of concern spread across a wide range but run back into the arena of the lack of implementation of the rights of women as persons.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 42 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter III: Critical Areas of Concern

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/19

42. Most of the goals set out in the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women have not been achieved. Barriers to women’s empowerment remain, despite the efforts of Governments, as well as non-governmental organizations and women and men everywhere. Vast political, economic and ecological crises persist in many parts of the world. Among them are wars of aggression, armed conflicts, colonial or other forms of alien domination or foreign occupation, civil wars and terrorism. These situations, combined with systematic or de facto discrimination, violations of and failure to protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women, and their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, including the right to development and ingrained prejudicial attitudes towards women and girls are but a few of the impediments encountered since the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, in 1985.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This part of the Beijing Declaration comes with the background of the second chapter with the emphasis on the overall viewpoint. This paragraph almost opens on a lamentation. Based on the set of strategies set forward from Nairobi at the time, women remained – and to a lesser extent than in 1995 continue to be – less than men on a number of metrics.

Some cannot be fixed but only ameliorated such as those already given infibulation, clitoridectomy, and female genital mutilation. The estimates are in the tens of millions, around 200 million. That’s what is estimated, but that number could be higher. Those non-achievements or un-achievements, or failures to reach projected targets resulted in 1995 as still another year of barriers for women.

Note the descriptor, “most” of the targeted objectives or goals failed to be reached. The barriers continued for women as a result. The barriers are to women insofar as they remain barriers for the empowerment of women – a common phrase in international parlance, of which readers are familiar with, no doubt.

There are a number of ongoing issues politically, economically, and ecologically more than in 1995, especially the increasing severity of the ecological onslaught from climate change due to the impacts of the human industrial activity on the world. The crises are exacerbated by various forms of militancy, which span right into the present with an extended war set in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, by a number of state actors, in the world.

With this chaos and destruction, the ability to exercise rights, let alone implement them. Any instability creates a host of damages to the infrastructure of the society. The stability and internal apparatus of the nation to be able to systematically and comfortable implement the rights of women and, furthermore, the empowerment of women too.

This has cascading consequences for the fundamental freedoms of women too in the exercise of their “civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.” It comes in the furtherance of prejudicial attitudes against women and the inability of the state’s stability to engender these forms of equality for women.

The main issues for women remain the same with the prejudicial attitudes towards girls and women yielding real, verifiable negative impacts on their lives. It is in this context that we can find the destruction of the potential futures of many women, exacerbated by the failure to achieve most set goals or the catastrophes of human destructive activity, and capacities.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter III: Critical Areas of Concern – Paragraph 41

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/19

41. The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation as a women’s issue. They are the only way to build a sustainable, just and developed society. Empowerment of women and equality between women and men are prerequisites for achieving political, social, economic, cultural and environmental security among all peoples.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basic argument in the advancement of women and the international aim for the achievement of equality is the recognition of the human rights of women, which sits atop the more fundamental principle of women and girls as people, persons. Those non-objects deserving of some form of consideration, at a minimum, with the current ideals set for equality with men and boys.

Not an easy task. The moves for a more sustainable society is linked, in this particular article, with the just and developed society. These amount to three principles, which, in fact, produce results. Societies, as a rule, with more equality for women tend to have better wellbeing and productivity. For a couple of reasons, one of the basic: women enter the workforce in droves because women enjoy education and work tied to education.

Work is a great source of meaning. By doing so, the nation produces more because more people enter into the workforce. Typically, this has happened in stages with women restricted to particular roles and then expanded to most or all roles, at least in the legal setting but not necessarily smiled upon in culture, available in the society.

The move towards more women capable of living fulfilling lives creates the basis for more justice. In this sense, human rights are respected as men and women become more equal in societies, in terms of access, education, health and wellness, and opportunities. It may not necessarily reach identical numbers but this does not necessarily, except in truly egregious disparities, imply inequality in opportunity.

The more economic productivity of the society, the more human rights are respected, the more peace and prosperity – in other words – the society comes to appreciate. It is a wonderful thing. Through this, a just society would seem to match more equality, greater peace, better prosperity, and the expansion of possibilities of women – and men, as many of you know.

The Beijing Declaration in this core paragraph, the opening of Chapter III, remarks on the continued need for the empowerment of women and the equality of the sexes. Duly note, the emphasis here is the achievement of “political, social, economic, cultural and environmental security,” which is an interesting term to use: security. Especially as applied to all those domains, the intention appears to be the stability of these systems associated with the operations of a society.

The short of the long here: if you want a long-term developed society, the equality of the sexes should be among the top priorities; if you want a society to live with less development – so less socio-economic development and a decline in the wellbeing of its citizenry, then ignore the plight and concerns of women and work for more inequality, whether conscious policy or not.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 40

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/18

40. Half the world’s population is under the age of 25 and most of the world’s youth – more than 85 per cent – live in developing countries. Policy makers must recognize the implications of these demographic factors. Special measures must be taken to ensure that young women have the life skills necessary for active and effective participation in all levels of social, cultural, political and economic leadership. It will be critical for the international community to demonstrate a new commitment to the future – a commitment to inspiring a new generation of women and men to work together for a more just society. This new generation of leaders must accept and promote a world in which every child is free from injustice, oppression and inequality and free to develop her/his own potential. The principle of equality of women and men must therefore be integral to the socialization process.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The large and growing segment of the world’s population, especially in developing countries and poor communities without access to contraceptives, is a product of better knowledge of the natural world, improved relevant technologies such as those in agriculture and delivery and storage of foods, and implementation of both the upgraded – relative to even the recent past – science and technology of the current period.

This was true in 1995 relative to its past; it is even truer now, as the curve continues to move upward with respect to the advancements of technology. Most of these young, as poor and living in developing countries though are being lifted out of it, are important to keep in mind. These are well-defined demographics – the under 25s.

Young women are more negatively impacted, which implies the need, as a global community, to maintain provisions and plans for women to garner the necessary skills and material resources to live freer lives. It is part of becoming involved effectively at cultural, economic, political, and social level so whatever society the young women and girls happen to find themselves.

The stated emphasis or call for the international community here remains the work for the greater inclusion of women into the levers of power and influence with the explicit purpose of a more just society. The general trend is one of greater equality of women with men. The purpose is to create leaders able to live in greater equality with less oppression, and more justice in their lives.

Something for not only themselves but also their children too. With equality as one principle, this is, at least, one basis for the greater socialization process of the upcoming generations, bearing in mind most of the under 25s in the developing countries of the year 1995 are now adults. It is an interesting consideration, and eye-opening.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 39 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/18

39. The girl child of today is the woman of tomorrow. The skills, ideas and energy of the girl child are vital for full attainment of the goals of equality, development and peace. For the girl child to develop her full potential she needs to be nurtured in an enabling environment, where her spiritual, intellectual and material needs for survival, protection and development are met and her equal rights safeguarded. If women are to be equal partners with men, in every aspect of life and development, now is the time to recognize the human dignity and worth of the girl child and to ensure the full enjoyment of her human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the rights assured by the Convention on the Rights of the Child,/11 universal ratification of which is strongly urged. Yet there exists world-wide evidence that discrimination and violence against girls begin at the earliest stages of life and continue unabated throughout their lives. They often have less access to nutrition, physical and mental health care and education and enjoy fewer rights, opportunities and benefits of childhood and adolescence than do boys. They are often subjected to various forms of sexual and economic exploitation, paedophilia, forced prostitution and possibly the sale of their organs and tissues, violence and harmful practices such as female infanticide and prenatal sex selection, incest, female genital mutilation and early marriage, including child marriage.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The background of understanding and acknowledgement within the Beijing Declaration, and in considerate and evidence-based discussions of gender-based discrimination, is the state of affairs in history with women as property or less than men while the context for men being bad too. The nature of the relationship between the sexes as one of ratios with some forms of discrimination more negative for men than for women – which need vigorous tackling – and other, often many more, for women than for men.

Differences between the sexes, a la biological species, exist; biological differences bound to ideas about, intuitive identifications of, self-concepts of, and manifestations of gender. Similarly, biology emerges from environment and genetics with a variation of heritability by the factor of biology taken into account, whether physiological, psychological, or behavioral – as fact and not as the basis for the oppression of others.

Some groups emphasize naturalisms’ truisms, e.g., biological sex, as a category and not as an act, seen in most species. Others point to sociological truisms, e.g., oppression of women. Both are true. Freedom exists but leashed, because we live as organisms and not angels, in the famous formulation. Thus, we should deal with the world rather than, purely, our ideas about the world.

With history and statistical backgrounds, we can begin to take the new international evidence about discrimination to deal with the real world around us; the ways in which to solve or ameliorate the problems in the modern context, especially in the light of evidence-denial across the political spectrum, within religious and secular communities, and bound in the breakdown of dialogue seen in the stereotyping and abstracting of individuals – as if not human.

The statement within the global community continues to be the work in the proverbial pipeline of assistance to women with the work to include girls in the plans for national and international development, especially as regards implementation of rights, access to education, and, subsequently, opportunities in work. The purpose is for the work on the young to yield benefits over the long term.

For many, the spiritual needs are highly important and should be respected, even if secular looking at the lives of the religious or if the modern types who identify as SBNRs or spiritual but not religious. Based on this document, the extension of consideration of the, according to the individual or group, spiritual needs, whether formally religious or not, of women is important and deserves to be respected. This is part of equal rights.

If a secular individual or a person from another faith believe in the violation of an individual’s freedom of religion and belief, e.g., the current vogue in some secular, in the terms of Lyotard, metanarratives is the inevitable decline and elimination of religion or faith – and the faster the better according to this tiny segment – & reflection of this seen in the hopes for the cleansing of the Earth with the Rapture with the Second Coming of Christ where the faithful are flown to heaven and the damned thrust to hell, then I do not stand with them on this.

As the rights documents stipulate on the equality, there exists freedom of religion and, by implicit implication, freedom from religion, not my place to determine another person’s independent choice of narrative and journey for their life path. The point of the intellectual provisions is akin to this with the inclusion of the rights of the women in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education to prevent the limiting of their intellects in any way.

Next is the material resources, this is in line with the basic equality of women in financial domains, especially with the long history of no access to economic independence for women. All three – spiritual, intellectual, and material – as important for the fulfillment of the implementation of equal rights. For equality with the men, “in every aspect of life and development,” the comprehension of women as persons with the full spectrum of statistical expectations of rotten behavior and gross thoughts to the heights of virtue and admirability in conduct and speech.

The intention of equality of rights comes in the form of respect for the entire lifecycle and the respect for fundamental human rights of women and girls, as persons, and deserving of the same fundamental freedoms as the men. We can see the ways in which women, and poor men, tend to be the recipients of non-rights, the refusal of the provision of rights, or the stripping of rights from them.

It is particularly egregious in the cases of the abuse of children throughout the world, which is important in the recognition of the dignity and work of every girl; for the girls to be able to fulfill their potentials, they deserve the equivalent rights and freedoms as the boys, and protections too. This is the purpose of the paragraph mentioning the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Within this “world-wide evidence,” the other stage, as discussed in some of the Social Interest Group calls, is the violence against women – and girls. The poorer, the younger, and the female are good metrics for seeing the level of violence against people. Women undergo far more violence than many of the men in the world. Men are more often conscripted, especially poor and minority men within nations.

But the physical violence and sexual violence, around the world, is tragically committed far more often against the women than the men, with the physical violence against women, statistically speaking, by men – or even the female genital mutilation by the elder women forced, against consent and while girls, on the young women. Certainly, we sit witness to darkness, pain, and suffering around the world; however, this continues to decline in many, many regards in spite of these tragic aspects of life.

The impacts on women can be seen in the “lack of access to nutrition, physical and mental health care and education” with fewer rights implemented to boot. Where is the equality there? How are men, generally speaking, more denied basics in life than women? The statistics and international documents remain clear, as a general heuristic and statistical phenomenon, about the disproportionate denial and deprivation of girls and women, compared to boys and men.

Some of the more tragic are the forms of combined exploitation – sexual with economic – happening to girls and young women who become used as simply pieces of flesh for use, and abuse, by men, more often. This can come in the cases of pedophilia and prostitution without consent. This sounds like paid sexual assault to me. Chris Hedges seems morally correct to condemn the sociocultural left and the economic libertarians on the issue of abuse and degradation of the bodies and impoverishment of the psychic and emotional lives of women and girls through sex trafficking, pedophilia, forced prostitution, and, as seen pervasively, in pornography in some of its forms.

Women can even be subject to the “sale of their organs and tissues.” It is a long line of identifiable and, as best as can be done circa 1995 or even now, cataloging and statistically analyzing the levels of the violations of women physically, psychologically, and sexually. About 750 million women and girls who have been married to this day have been married prior to the age of consent, or age 18, and so have been enforced into a monogamy of child marriage. More than 200 million women and girls have been subject to female genital mutilation, which dwarves the amount for male genital mutilation (back to ratios).

All these violations through history and lived with into the present are the current generations’ plight. The reduction of these through preventative measures are the means by which to ensure these trends of improved respect for the inherent dignity and worth of individual human beings. This will only be coming with diligence, hard work, solidarity, sympathy, and coalitions without too much fussing about national borders as these rights represent the species – as a statistical universal proposition of ethics. Interestingly, it expands the sphere of the Golden Rule seen in most main faiths to women and girls alongside the men and the boys.

It is something we all share on that plane.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 38 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/17

38. Since 1975, significant knowledge and information have been generated about the status of women and the conditions in which they live. Throughout their entire life cycle, women’s daily existence and long-term aspirations are restricted by discriminatory attitudes, unjust social and economic structures, and a lack of resources in most countries that prevent their full and equal participation. In a number of countries, the practice of prenatal sex selection, higher rates of mortality among very young girls and lower rates of school enrolment for girls as compared with boys suggest that son preference is curtailing the access of girl children to food, education and health care and even life itself. Discrimination against women begins at the earliest stages of life and must therefore be addressed from then onwards.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The continued change in the way people relate to one another based on the alteration in not only their physical landscape and technological playgrounds but also informationally – how they think about and view the world. There does seem to be the issue of the ways in which the idea off “status of women,” as noted in Paragraph 38 of the Beijing Declaration, simply did not exist; women had no status, so no status of women to speak about in a meaningful way.

The entire life cycle for women, globally and historically as a rule of thumb, has been, for the most part, on in which their “daily existence and long-term aspirations are restricted by discriminatory attitudes, unjust social and economic structures, and a lack of resources in most countries that prevent their full and equal participation.” The daily existence can be servile to the men in the home intended only to care for the literal hearth and home – and be the bearer of children as the other major identity.

The long-term aspirations are the more identified ones, where the possibilities for education and work, as per the concerns of Second Wave Feminism, remain restricted even by purported divine mandate in several countries. It amounts to the behavioral, social, and even legal outgrowth of the view of women as lacking agency. Why give a person choice if they cannot think well-enough for themselves? Those are the outcroppings of the discriminatory attitudes.

Then there are the real social and economic structures, such as many aspects of the pay gap – even upon further analysis, representing the discrimination against women as real, but not as severe, and needing to be handled in an ethical and just manner – move for equity in the light of equal qualifications, skill, and effort. The attitudes of women, socially, is to be in the home and not in the workplace. Typically, the poorer the country and less developed the nation, then the more these attitudes crop up, which tells the story. Include women in the economic and social life of the country, the entire nation-state flourishes, e.g., more taxpayers, more rights respected and actualized, and so on.

The ability to make choices in a global system bound by the currency that determines the degrees of freedom means the economic status of an individual woman opens or closes particular doors in this international monetary setup. If women lack the basic resources, then they remain bound to the men in their lives, because of economic privation; within this framework of fewer degrees of freedom, women become less free, even in purportedly equal and free societies.

Indeed, the other discriminations can be seen in the sex selection practices of the society. We find the disproportionate number of women restricted in the ability to exist, not only in professional and educational life but also, in starting life. Societies who want boys to carry forward the name, including secular authoritarian corporate capitalist countries such as China, will choose boys over girls, especially in the context of only one child per family. This creates ripple effects decades down the line with the asymmetry in the population patterns.

Girls have a higher mortality rate compared to the boys and have “lower rates of school enrolment” with the “son preference” as a cross-cultural phenomenon for much of the world’s population. The West, in its fragility of national self and tendencies towards narcissism in a narrow perspective, may not wholly appreciate the number of countries in which son preference is so strongly the norm – potentially, at least, more than half of the world’s cultural populations.

The girls also will get worse provisions in terms of education, food, and health care. All important in the health and wealth of the consideration of inequality. Men and boys languish in some regards but the idea is the comparison and statistical difference in the poor outcomes and negative facets of life, for women compared to men throughout the lifespan.

Any dealing with these issues will require a comprehensive management of not only the discrimination in the pipeline for women but also in the treatment of women throughout their lives in many of the aforementioned ways.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 37 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/17

37. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, by the beginning of 1995 the number of cumulative cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was 4.5 million. An estimated 19.5 million men, women and children have been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) since it was first diagnosed and it is projected that another 20 million will be infected by the end of the decade. Among new cases, women are twice as likely to be infected as men. In the early stage of the AIDS pandemic, women were not infected in large numbers; however, about 8 million women are now infected. Young women and adolescents are particularly vulnerable. It is estimated that by the year 2000 more than 13 million women will be infected and 4 million women will have died from AIDS-related conditions. In addition, about 250 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases are estimated to occur every year. The rate of transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, is increasing at an alarming rate among women and girls, especially in developing countries.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The WHO or the World Health Organization, as many of you know, is an important and reliable international source of information about the health and wellness of the global community. In 1995, it was important. Now, it remains salient, arguably even more so. One of the biggest tragedies is the spread of HIV/AIDS. Unsafe conditions create the world where diseases can spread faster.

As if one does surgery prior to an era of there being the knowledge about germs and, in fact, the washing of your hands with a disinfectant would be a good idea, it would save lives. The idea of preventative measures against the spread of disease match this with the ongoing HIV/AIDS spread around the world. At the time, there were an estimated 19.5 million people infected with HIV. An estimated 37 million people live with HIV circa 2017. The number has almost doubled in other words.

Women, as per many of the negative aspects of life, were, statistically, far more likely to be infected than the men in societies ravaged by it. The young the woman then the more vulnerable the woman. That is to say, HIV/AIDS infection is a risk of the young and of women. If you are a young woman, you are particularly vulnerable to infection and then all the attendant consequences in life coming from it.

Interestingly, and I did not know this, the earlier periods of the global AIDs pandemic came with more men, unfortunately, being disproportionately being affected by it. Then over time, women began to be infected at higher and higher rates to produce the current situation for us. It is an interesting fact of history. Now, more men are infected, which is a travesty and a series of tragedies needing sympathy and compassion. Men need more help regarding the established cases of HIV/AIDS.

The newer cases are more often women. That is, the women of the world will be more probable to be infected by the AIDS virus than the men. In other words, women are more the concern in terms of the new cases coming down the pipe, for those who are potentially going to be infected by the virus. It raises not only women’s rights issues about health and wellbeing but also the human rights in general with different emphases.

For the men, they need help in management and helping cure-finding efforts; for the women, they need assistance with their prevention from the acquisition of the virus, which, as everyone through the cultural zeitgeist of knowledge understands, inflicts lifelong negative health effects and eventually death if not managed. The human body is incredibly fragile and subject to easy death.

The major concern at the time was the rapid rise in the transmission of HIV/AIDS around the world. The young and women are the most often subject to its transmission but also those young women who live in the penurious circumstances of developing nations. This continues to be a major women’s rights concern in terms of potential new cases and a men’s human rights issues for those who already have it.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 36 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/16

36. Global trends have brought profound changes in family survival strategies and structures. Rural to urban migration has increased substantially in all regions. The global urban population is projected to reach 47 per cent of the total population by the year 2000. An estimated 125 million people are migrants, refugees and displaced persons, half of whom live in developing countries. These massive movements of people have profound consequences for family structures and well-being and have unequal consequences for women and men, including in many cases the sexual exploitation of women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

There were several trends noticed in 1995 and marked in the Beijing Declaration’s print. These same trends continue right into the present. The basic group unit recognized by the Beijing Declaration is the family unit. The line in the conceptual sand and interpersonal space has been drawn there.

The international trends, at the time and to this day, impact the ways in which families work to live and stay at a relative level of comfort and quality of life, for them and their children. One of the impacts over the last few decades of the radical changes in the world systems has been migration as a necessity for many people, e.g., because of war, climate change, poverty, terrorism, political or religious disputes, and so on.

Those living in urban city centers rather than in the rural areas of the world was projected to reach under half of the world’s population by 2000. At the time, the number of migrants, refugees, and displaced peoples were sitting at 125 million people. It has only increased, especially with flare-ups in terrorism, war, political strife, and, as we are only beginning to notice strongly, climate change.

Most of these individuals in geographically precarious livelihoods are from developing countries, as they are stuck in a situation in which the infrastructure seen in developed countries does not exist. That is to say, if, or when, a catastrophe hits their nation or community, the internal support mechanisms to ameliorate the impacts simply do not exist, which leave them in worse circumstances compared to the other nations or communities with the proper bulwarks.

As noted in some prior writings, there are distinct disadvantages meted out to women based on climate change, reduction in finances for social services based on excessive spending on militaries and the associated adventurism in foreign countries, and also in the three main forms of violence against women: psychological, physical, and sexual, especially with the latter two.

The impacts of geographic and economic dislocation impacts women, rural and Indigenous especially, more than men, which provides the basis to examine the consequences of it. One is the obvious statistics around the sexual exploitation of women who live in precarious land situations, where they live on the move; they will more likely be subject to sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape.

The shake-up of the family survival strategies through the changes in the various global trends impacts women disproportionately in this way. The standard family structures and level of well-being expected by most peoples for them and their children will be changing, and have been for decades, with the increased tension and pressured put on them through the alterations in the international systems, whether ecological, economic, or social.

We simply live in times of rapid change that disproportionately impact women and children more than men for a variety of reasons including outright sexism to historical inertia to economic policies geared against women to religious injunctions to restrict the possibilities of the futures and capabilities of women (especially in education and paid labour), and so on.

The solution to these issues are multiple and will require vigilance on the multi-correlative nature of the problems. The solutions will need to be multipronged as a result as well. The question before us is how long we actually have to implement each of the solutions before the degradation and chaos ensuing from these changing global situations become uncontrollable with negative feedback loops.

–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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2022-04-24

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraphs 34 and 35

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/16

34. The continuing environmental degradation that affects all human lives has often a more direct impact on women. Women’s health and their livelihood are threatened by pollution and toxic wastes, large-scale deforestation, desertification, drought and depletion of the soil and of coastal and marine resources, with a rising incidence of environmentally related health problems and even death reported among women and girls. Those most affected are rural and indigenous women, whose livelihood and daily subsistence depends directly on sustainable ecosystems.

35. Poverty and environmental degradation are closely interrelated. While poverty results in certain kinds of environmental stress, the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries, which are a matter of grave concern and aggravate poverty and imbalances.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Our environmental situation on the thin surface of the blue-green marble of Earth is precarious as the systems of the planet have been less and less able to manage human waste, as if an overburdened liver. Paragraph 34 of the Beijing Declaration deals with this facet of women’s rights or wellbeing. As with many of the problematic impacts here, we are seeing the disproportionate impacts on women compared men.

The health and wellbeing of women are more negatively impacted because of the environmental degradation from modern pollutants and toxic wastes. These are tied to the removal of the systems capable of renewing the planet’s system, e.g., “large-scale deforestation, desertification, drought and depletion of the soil and of coastal and marine resources.”

These link to one another in the planetary systems. The health problems that emerge out of this context produce worsened health for the women of the world. Even though, as explored earlier, the negative impacts on women continue to be more severe compared to the men in a number of domains.

This leads to questions about the sustainability of ecosystems with the current systems and the motivation to change things. The negative impacts, mind you, are starker for Indigenous and rural women. Thus, the most vulnerable become the most impacted, where the most fortified and resource-rich are the ablest to bear the brunt of the coming catastrophes of environmental degradation spoken about more than 2 decades ago.

Paragraph 35 of the Beijing Declaration continues from the emphasis on the deep interconnectedness of the world’s ecological systems. The ways human industrial activity produces problems for the health of the ecosystem and how this impacts women disproportionately implies the poverty-stricken areas are more impacted by these environmental problems.

Those poverty-stricken areas found, often, to be the rural ones with more Indigenous populations, and in particular more women too. The pockets of penury in the world can produce despair and mental illness. The unsustainable of the current course continues to exaggerate and exacerbate the grotesque social inequalities of the world with disproportionately negative impacts on the women compared to the men.

The solutions for these problems will need – and have needed since, at least, 1995 – to address a number of different issues with emphases on women, the Indigenous, and the rural, based on this most recent paragraph. There have been calls to work for the greater good on this. Furthermore, many of these impacts come from a singular issue for the fate of several, especially coastal and less developed, communities around the world, which is, of course, is climate change or global warming.

The consequences for worse social and economic inequality producing and aggravating the issue plaguing so many of the poor communities of the world can, in part, begin with dealing with climate change. The animal agriculture industry, fossil fuel industry, and others require continuous activism, media coverage, and proposals of alternatives in order to create the idealized form of sustainable development discussed at the United Nations.

By making this transition to sustainability, and to argue for this in a variety of domains, there can be the steady, but rather rapid, transition into sustainability, and so improvements in the health and wellbeing of the general population. It has been done before. In fact, the knowledge of the increased efficiency of the alternative energy sources is becoming more widespread, so the general public is more and more privy to the fact of climate change the ways in which to solve it.

–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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Paragraph 33 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/15

33. In the past 20 years, the world has seen an explosion in the field of communications. With advances in computer technology and satellite and cable television, global access to information continues to increase and expand, creating new opportunities for the participation of women in communications and the mass media and for the dissemination of information about women. However, global communication networks have been used to spread stereotyped and demeaning images of women for narrow commercial and consumerist purposes. Until women participate equally in both the technical and decision-making areas of communications and the mass media, including the arts, they will continue to be misrepresented and awareness of the reality of women’s lives will continue to be lacking. The media have a great potential to promote the advancement of women and the equality of women and men by portraying women and men in a non-stereotypical, diverse and balanced manner, and by respecting the dignity and worth of the human person.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Over time, the technological & information revolutions built into the field of communications and its associated disciplines, which expanded the possibility of human expression into new media; where even several decades into this progression, we do not have an answer as to the best means by which to have these communications technologies work best for us, as a whole. In part, it seems due to the rapid change of the technology curve with its attendant innovations.

The participation of women in media has been non-trivial, and more and more substantial as time progresses. Because women have begun to agitate and demand in not only the public and political arenas but also in the world of media, their voices continue to emerge without the adulterated input of men in media. Of course, 1995 is not late 2018. However, some of this seems to develop more rapidly in the era of justice for legitimate cases of sexual misconduct and violence against women, whether in liberal-progressive bastions including Hollywood or in traditionalist-conservative edifices such as the Roman Catholic Church.

Being heard matters, especially for the, at times, least among us, in vulnerable positions with career-or-not decisions in the hands of Hollywood magnates or holy-or-heathen status in the Caesarian choices of abusive priests, bishops, deacons, archbishops, and, at least, one eventual Pope. The knowledge about women in statistics helps, which speaks to the statement in 1995. Women’s difficulties were more known at the time.

The stories and narratives continue to deluge the airwaves and computer screens in the 2010s. This amounts to an international social cleansing through deliberate cover-ups and conspiracies of silence about the abuse against women. Vigilance in moral uprightness – so not losing sight of the ethical objectives of a fairer and more just society – through these movements can lead to better institutions, whether popular media or religious (also happens in secular communities too). Women have been stereotyped, as noted in the paragraph. Indeed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is quoted as saying, “The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”

That seems true, even self-evident; furthermore, one can extend this to its women in areas where women disproportionately become disadvantaged or mistreated, which functions across political lines and throughout religious-secular communities. Take, for example, the rampancy of abuse of women: psychologically, physically, and sexually – for starters.

The “global… stereotyped and demeaning images of women” impact their accurate representation to the rest of the world. Women, for one obvious example, will lack agency in some way. Then they can fall into a number of tropes. Some minority groups within North American and Western European societies continue to speak out about the problems of the offensive representations.

The expectations for women and the legitimate wants and desires of an individual woman may be isomorphic, with, furthermore, the representations in media reflecting both of the former referents. This would be legitimate. However, with demeaning images and stereotyped portrayals, this reflects a pathology within the media systems akin to the social and structural pathologies in human institutions built and in operation “across political lines and throughout religious-secular communities.”

The purpose, as frankly noted by paragraph 33 of the Beijing Declaration, is “narrow commercial and consumerist purposes.” The tropes, objectification, sexualization, and 2-dimensional depiction of women becomes worth a pretty dollar and garners the attention of advertisers and the audience gobbles it up. It also lies with us, too, in that last point. We purchase and with monetary valuation support it.

The emphasis, in 1995 and still to this day, is the increase in women for technical areas and decision-making in communications and mass media. This includes the arts. Canadians think Margaret Atwood or Lee Maracle; Americans think Joan Rivers or Beyonce. If other people tell the stories of individuals and identifiable groups, then these individuals and identifiable groups do not own the narrative within their legitimate slice of the story of the nation; they, in essence, live represented in ways worse than non-existence: inaccurate existences in the popular minds. This can become the basis for extensive misrepresentation and stereotypes over time.

The lack of proper representation of women with the mass media of the nations of the world continues to be an issue in equality for women because the expectations and demands of women become reinforced in these media outlets; not always malicious or benevolent, the mass media can play an important role in the accurate representation, where accuracy is a necessity, of the lives of women.

With the continued lack of proper representation of women, the media will lack a wider variety of voices from a broader set of backgrounds. The portrayal of women as 3-dimensional and fully-fleshed-out human beings with vices and virtues, as with any particular man, would be integral to the advancement and empowerment of women. Why? As a first thought, this would be in the interests of many women, to not have to fight against the stereotypes, on the one hand, or need to live to – often – unattainable ideals of virtuous conduct and beauty, on the other hand.

However, the battle against this onslaught comes with the difficulties of market forces, historical inertia, and the varieties of purported verities working to prevent women from entering into the professional arenas of the world. These self-same faux and peculiar truisms amount to the roles imbibed by generations of women and taken as matter-of-fact to be imposed by the men.

It comes reflected in much of the religious mythologies with, for a stark example, women as property or chattel to the men in their lives. These have been greatly diluted, for the better, especially with advances in the sciences and implementation of gender equality policies. These have innervated the general culture to create a more pervasive sensibility of the rights of women.

And it shows. Women represent larger swathes of the workers of the world and the educated of the world in spite of the restrictions placed on them from a variety of domains. This should not come without backlash but should also not be done without taste. I see no need in diminishing respect or dignity of others in the work for women’s equality, especially men, or women, who may want this least – whatever the precept is taken as the basis for the disagreement.

But the inclusion of women from a variety of backgrounds within the media is a good means by which to promote “the advancement of women and the equality of women and men.” It does so through the accurate portrayal of the lives and the flaws of women. It can be quite striking, and interesting, as this is the way in which women become perceived more humanely as they achieve more status in the world.

It is an intriguing global development with the broader horizons for women mirroring but not necessarily being causally linked with the more varied definitions of women through mass communications technology. The most important statement within this paragraph may, in fact, come from the final sentence about the “non-stereotypical, diverse and balanced” presentation of men and women with the recognition of the respect, dignity, and worth of each individual as a human being.

These representations may come with arguments about statistics or the impacts of women, so for those who want more quantitative data. Those same individuals, respectfully, may direct attention to conservative sources of information about violence against women. As a class without distinction by nation-state identification, or nationality, we can target the United Nations Women statistics cataloging the disproportionate impacts on women compared to men.

That is to say, the violence against men exists but not even close to the number of women subject to this violence – far more often committed by men against women as well. This becomes a men’s issue, as they are the majority perpetrators. The responsibility of the abuser is to stop abusing, not on the abused to appease them, and on us to prevent the continued abuse and garner justice for the abused. As stated by UN Women, around the world, 35% of women endured “either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. However, some national studies show that up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.”

750 million women and girls, currently alive, have been married prior to their 18th birthday, which is stating the 9-figure numbers of women undergoing child marriage – partnership prior to the age of consent. About 200 million women have been subject to female genital mutilation. 120 million girls around the world have endured either forced intercourse or forced sexual acts. Women and girls are 71% of the human trafficking victims. 82% of women parliamentarians “who participated in a study conducted by the Inter-parliamentary Union in 39 countries across 5 regions reported having experienced some form of psychological violence while serving their terms.”

This degradation, humiliation, and abuse reflect attitudes about women, often seen in the media portrayals; these impact the perceptions of the women of the world and leads to the need to implement new representations of women if we wish to see a more gender equal world. The conservative sources may indicate particular individuals who lost positions for freedom of speech, which, as a matter of principle, should not happen; however, consider, the balance of scales weighs massively, overwhelmingly in the favor of women as legitimately mistreated around the world compared to a few prominent men taken from posts prior to confirmation of any wrongdoing.

It points to the important distinction of Professor Noam Chomsky with demonstration and allegation with the, obvious, inclusion that most sexual abuse of women goes unreported and underreported. But Chomsky’s point, one can make the charge. Then the next is proving it, as stated:

I think it grows out of a real and serious and deep problem of social pathology. It has exposed it and brought it to attention, brought to public attention many explicit and particular cases and so on. But I think there is a danger. The danger is confusing allegation with demonstrated action. We have to be careful to ensure that allegations have to be verified before they are used to undermine individuals and their actions and their status. So as in any such effort at uncovering improper, inappropriate and sometimes criminal activities, there always has to be a background of recognition that there’s a difference between allegation and demonstration.

Nonetheless, there is a legitimate social pathology observation about the mistreatment of women. The next is verifying the cases because some are lies, as in the Rolling Stone article depicting a false set of allegations as true or real; they later turned out to be false. But even in these cases, as, sometimes, wrongly and unfortunately, happens to conservative and liberal men alike, the evidence leans heavily in favor of the need to deal with the – not only American but – global “real and serious and deep problem of social pathology.”

The media and mass communications constructed democratically with input from women from a variety of backgrounds can be an important part of humanizing women in the media with the open permission to tell honest stories of the successes and failures, vices and virtues, and hopes and fears of women as they live their daily lives and as they project into the future what they want for themselves and others.

Indeed, the responses against the work for better and more accurate, realistic, representations in the media comes in the form of denial of women’s rights, such as reproductive, while accepting their own religious rights. It is all-or-nothing on rights; hence, the universal aspect of them. If you wish to continue practicing the religion freely, you must accept, by logical extension, the rights of others to safe and equitable access to reproductive health services including abortion.

Another angle is a misunderstanding of the phrase “toxic masculinity” to mean all masculinity is toxic: not true/false. The basic premise is some forms of masculinity are counter-productive and negative, or toxic, to the individual and the society and, therefore, need encouragement to be changed. In this manner, conservatives and liberals argue for much the same form of masculine self for males but talk past one another. Of course, everyone loves the men in their lives, but the target is to work together for our better future through work towards better individual conduct. It saddens me, on this one, because both sides agree but remain dogmatic in ignorance on each other’s terminology and firm on vernacular differences to not find that common ground, not even see it.

Another is to invent terms such as “toxic feminism” as either a placeholder through selections of highly unusual and particular deviancies from the core of feminism or women’s rights activism to demonize both feminism with a broad brush and individual women’s rights campaigners. It remains an immature tactic through the transparent usage of oppositional terminology out of context with a bad re-invention and then going from the highly particular to the very general without skipping a beat.

Associated with it, the general use of epithets to demean the opponent in order to delegitimize them without confrontation of the arguments. Same with character assassinations, defamation, guilt by association, and so on. All very common to fail in the attempt to take down a political opponent who argues for the equality of women.

One more is the inclusion of a handful of cases to demonize an entire global movement for women’s equality, which is then extended paranoically into the idea of a conspiracy against academics en masse. The cases can be Matt Taylor, Larry Summers, or Sir Timothy Hunt, for examples. But these are select and not the principle but, rather, a minute set of exceptions; maybe, they could look into the history of Norman Finkelstein as a case study, too. An important person from the other side of the ‘spectrum.’

Conservative commentators and public intellectuals, by contrast, have openly called for the shutting down of entire disciplines and massive defunding of universities because these do not serve the public economically as much as STEM and trades, where this raises questions about their ideas of the proper place of a postsecondary institution in the training of a worker who makes money or in the development of an informed and civically engaged citizen; their opposition has not declared this on theology departments, too – showing their cards and open bias with covert support for, more often, particular brands of Evangelical Christianity there, which shows the inability to even deal with the arguments anymore – simply shutdown through defunding or public threats to shutdown deviant academics, particular disciplines and departments, even whole aspects of universities, e.g., which has effects – as is starting to, potentially, happen in Hungary with gender studies.

The arguments continue to fail; thus, these conservative commentators and public intellectuals, also some as ultra-conservative reactionaries, argue for the radical changes mentioned before. In fact, this shows in the attempts to develop AI for identification of programs against their interests to caution and warn high school students about it, because the arguments appear to fail with a) their colleagues and b) most of their students, so go to the high schools – the pipeline.

When their lies, omissions, and arguments fail, go to demonization and character assassination, then attempts to defund entire disciplines and postsecondary institutions, finally, the targeting of the high school students as even these tactics fail in order to, at least, attempt to indoctrinate some of them.

Recall: the actions against the “leftists” – which has become a catch-all invective for anything against ultra-conservative reactionary forces – in other countries implementing the will of the people or having people’s movements within, for instance, America was assassination with the support of the state or the government in media collusion with ultra-conservative commentators and writers. The same individuals and organizations making excuses for rampant militarism around the world.

Of course, another claim is activists are “whining” or partaking of “victimhood culture” or are, in fact, “victims.” This can be stated against activists from some Indigenous communities, as an example. In Canada, bear in mind, the right to vote for Indigenous men and women only came into effect in 1960. The last residential school closed in 1996. 92% of non-Indigenous adults have a high-school diploma and only 48% Indigenous adults on reserve have them. Indigenous peoples, depending on the group, have lifespans 5-15 years shorter than non-Indigenous Canadians. This is not yesterday and far from the founding of the nation.

Some individuals, and whole peoples and communities, were targets of direct government and religious institution attempts to assimilate children, obliterate culture including languages, and also convert-or-kill the adults. People are still alive. Their children are impacted by the trauma that harmed the entire lives of their parents.

Yes, these can amount to “victims,” but the term is being used to dismiss people rather than confront them – and their legitimate concerns and demands for justice. It becomes easier to justify crimes against others if you can define them as less-than through, within this particular context of words turned, epithets such as “victim.”

It is similar to the issues with the term “postmodernist” and “neo-Marxist” or their admixture. One, the mixture or combination of the terms remains an oxymoron. Two, these people who argue for free speech – which is a misnomer in Canada (should be freedom of expression, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 19 and the Canadian Charter of Rights of Freedoms in Article 2(a)), debate, dialogue, and so on, and against the purported massive underground colonies of neo-Marxists and postmodernists only speak within their own circles.

I am against violent groups/individuals or endorsements, or calls, for violence, as seen in aspects of groups such as Antifa and various hate groups in North America. I support free speech, debate, and dialogue, but I would expect these individuals claiming to be in support of freedom of expression, especially the prominent and well-financed public intellectuals, to debate the purported academic deviants and sociopolitical-academic enemies rather than almost always and only talk about them.

They, almost never, debate any, probably because they do not want to debate them and because their opponents amount to ghosts – phantasmagoria from their paranoia and sense of a changing culture from the young upwards. (Hence, the focus on the high school students.)

These articulations suffice as smoke but, often, not as serious objections. The disproportionate stereotyping of women and negative impacts on the lives of women is a global phenomenon with precursors and real counterparts today. It becomes an ethical issue to rectify these problems. We can do it. The assiduous efforts in more difficult circumstances worked before; it can be successful again.

–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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Paragraphs 31 and 32 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/14

31. Many women face particular barriers because of various diverse factors in addition to their gender. Often these diverse factors isolate or marginalize such women. They are, inter alia, denied their human rights, they lack access or are denied access to education and vocational training, employment, housing and economic self-sufficiency and they are excluded from decision-making processes. Such women are often denied the opportunity to contribute to their communities as part of the mainstream.

32. The past decade has also witnessed a growing recognition of the distinct interests and concerns of indigenous women, whose identity, cultural traditions and forms of social organization enhance and strengthen the communities in which they live. Indigenous women often face barriers both as women and as members of indigenous communities.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraphs 31 and 32 of the Beijing Declaration speak to the number of barriers faced by women, and then often for their gender as well. It is interesting to note the statement about the “diverse factors” without a specific statement. But the message is taken in, as the effect comes through the marginalization and isolation of women who experience it.

In a number of listed domains, women are denied human rights. They are not seen as full human beings. For men, or women for that matter, who argue for this, they get negative feedback as this is simply verboten; although, the vast and overwhelming evidence is in support of the idea of women, as a general sociological principle, bearing the brunt of the negative facets and consequences of the society.

Women, for most of history where men had the access, have been denied access to education and vocational training. That is, from the primary, secondary, and tertiary educational levels, women were simply denied their fundamental right to education and, in turn, the ability to be equals with men, which stands in regression to the stated Sustainable Development Goal of “Gender Equality.”

Another is employment: in prior months, this has been a subject of coverage and probably will be covered in subsequent reportage on the issues facing women. The notion of a right to shelter or a house; something to make a home. It seems as if crucial and fundamental to the basic notion of a human being in the modern world akin to clothing. It amounts to a barrier and protective skin from the outside world.

Here, we sincerely have failed many women in some crucial ways. In so doing, we reduced the potential health and wealth of the nations. The evidence is clear. With the incorporation of programs, in general, for the improved equality of women with men in education, through democratic rights such as voting, with better access and opportunities in work, with equality in family life, reproductive choice in timing and number of children (if at all), and better representation in political and civic life, the health, wealth, and happiness of societies improve drastically over decades for the better on a number of social development indices.

To deny this, it seems akin to the issues of denialism seen on the socio-political “left” with false beliefs about vaccines causing autism, efficacy of alternative ‘medicines’ observed in allopathic or ayurvedic treatments, the health dangers of GMO foods, or – somewhat legitimate (given the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima Daiichi disasters) but definitely hyperbolic – fears about nuclear energy; or the socio-political “right” with incorrect beliefs about evolution – especially Young Earth Creationism standing against mounds of biological, geological, and paleontological evidence, the non-reality of climate change or global warming, literalist interpretations of purported holy texts – to attempt to solve the most pressing scientific issues of the day, the efficacy of abstinence-only sexual education paradigms, and so on – for each of them.

Not only a smart move in terms of economics, the moral reasons match too. More people have their rights respected through real implementation. Paragraph 32 speaks to the continued inclusion of Indigenous women’s concerns too. This is particularly of note in much of the settler-colonial societies in which “identity, cultural traditions and forms of social organization” were things to be erased by conscious governmental policy.

It is in this context that we can see the need to emphasize the needs of Indigenous women and their family, and community, concerns too. These barriers for women become amplified for women of the world. It is the context of injustice and unfairness through simply not providing the formal mechanisms in the society for women to be seen as equals. These are the things that need to change and have altered with mass popular mobilization for other groups around the world for a brighter future. It is not pretty or pollyannish, but it is possible.

–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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Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 30

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/14

30. While the rate of growth of world population is on the decline, world population is at an all-time high in absolute numbers, with current increments approaching 86 million persons annually. Two other major demographic trends have had profound repercussions on the dependency ratio within families. In many developing countries, 45 to 50 per cent of the population is less than 15 years old, while in industrialized nations both the number and proportion of elderly people are increasing. According to United Nations projections, 72 per cent of the population over 60 years of age will be living in developing countries by the year 2025, and more than half of that population will be women. Care of children, the sick and the elderly is a responsibility that falls disproportionately on women, owing to lack of equality and the unbalanced distribution of remunerated and unremunerated work between women and men.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

With the continued decline in the world’s population rate, we can note the still-increasing number of human beings born and dead; where, with the rate of population growth as actual growth meaning more born and, eventually, more dead, the decline also links to the decline in the level of increase in the rate of consumption of the international population.

However, as the world’s population continues to increase and the desire for middle-class lifestyles – in accordance with, for example, North American and Western European standards of the “middle-class” – marches forward too, the increased efficiency of the energy consumption of technological systems in the world and improved alternative energy source production & delivery will be heavily relied upon in this period, along with reliance on the continued decline in the world’s population – seen markedly in East Asian and European countries with some replication in North America.

They note the very young population of the world at the time of writing the paragraph for much of the world’s developing countries’ populations. There are, certainly, indications of higher raw numbers of people being born leading to a greater representation of the very young in the global demographics, especially present in the nations with the highest birth rates as a mathematical truism in these demographic analyses.

This does impact the need to educate those young while, at the same time, other regions of the world have the burden of an increasingly elderly population. One in which the issue is not the education of the young, as much, but in the treatment, care, and visitation of the old during life & burial, burning, or freezing of the elderly after death. These are important problems brought about by the disjunction in the world’s differential rates of population growth.

Indeed, the paragraph firmly states, circa 1995 projections from extrapolated data, “According to United Nations projections, 72 percent of the population over 60 years of age will be living in developing countries by the year 2025, and more than half of that population will be women.” This is an issue for everyone involved, in some way, with the elderly, whether family, friend, or patient.

Once more, the disproportionate impacts will go to the women of the world and in developing countries. That is to say, women of color and in the contexts of developing nations will be some of the worst affected. This is not to sideline the issues of men. Of course, these are extant. However, this in no way diminishes the impacts on women from these forms of projections, which are only 7 or fewer years away from us.

The preparation in the planning and documentation from yester-decades should be pursued now, and with vigor. Much of the responsibility, or burden rather, will fall on the laps of women. As this is The Good Men Project, something intelligent and rational, and wholly ethical, for men to do: help reduce the automatically assumed obligations of women in order for a more flourishing and equitable world, as opposed to open and bitter resentment, hatred, and complaining because, literally, we’re all in this together.

One where, if – or since – women take on far more of the burden, there should be open acknowledgment of the massive contributions of women to some of the most crucial moments of the lifecycle – gestation, birth, and early development, and late life and death – and, even based on this being actual work and often arduous and self-sacrificial labour, getting paid or remunerated in some reasonable manner for the assiduous work more often, than not, done for free.

–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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Paragraph 29 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/13

29. Women play a critical role in the family. The family is the basic unit of society and as such should be strengthened. It is entitled to receive comprehensive protection and support. In different cultural, political and social systems, various forms of the family exist. The rights, capabilities and responsibilities of family members must be respected. Women make a great contribution to the welfare of the family and to the development of society, which is still not recognized or considered in its full importance. The social significance of maternity, motherhood and the role of parents in the family and in the upbringing of children should be acknowledged. The upbringing of children requires shared responsibility of parents, women and men and society as a whole. Maternity, motherhood, parenting and the role of women in procreation must not be a basis for discrimination nor restrict the full participation of women in society. Recognition should also be given to the important role often played by women in many countries in caring for other members of their family.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Women, whether by pressure from culture or individual choice, have remained integral parts of the “basic unit of society.” It is, in this sense, where I see the admixture of scales in the consideration of human identity. The base unit as the individual and the basic group unit as the family; individualism and collectivism do not, by necessity, stand at odds with one another.

That is, the nature of the relationship is one of mutually positive feedback, ideally. The family deserves “comprehensive protection and support.” These are the bases for respect of the fundamental unit in the society, as there is a basic consideration of its integrity and contribution to the structure of the nation. There is also the recognition of the family as a cross-cultural phenomenon. The family as a universal.

The rights and concomitant responsibilities – something of which most already agree on, as these are two sides to the same coin – of the members of the fundamental group unit should be respected. Women have been great guardians and caretakers of families for a long time. In fact, this has been a fundamental force in the protection and maintenance of human societies around the world.

There was even an acknowledgment of the fundamental work of women in the family, and there general lack of full acknowledgment. The paragraph directs attention to the importance of maternity, motherhood, and parenthood in the work of upbringing of the next generation, who themselves will, for the most part, become the guardians and custodians of the family unit – that basic group unit of human societies.

For the protection and proper upbringing of the young, there needs to be work to incorporate the young and their needs into the vision of the society, which comes through the work of the family. The rights and responsibilities come through these considerations of human rights, women’s rights, and the family life of the members of societies.

The important aspect of the document comes not only from the recognition of the role of women needing to be recognized in family life but also the rights of women not being infringed upon for reasons of maternity, motherhood, and so on. The full participation of women in society should not be taking place anywhere. And the discrimination based on maternity or motherhood should, similarly, be condemned as immoral.

Because women have been undertaking the herculena task of bearing children while taking on familial and, now, professional duties. To not support members of society in their efforts to contribute more fully and to live more full lives is abhorrent, women deserve better. Men do, too. The role of men in families lies with the role of women, where the intedependence can provide the basis for free people living lives professionally and familially.

–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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Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 28

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/13

28. Moreover, 10 years after the Nairobi Conference, equality between women and men has still not been achieved. On average, women represent a mere 10 per cent of all elected legislators world wide and in most national and international administrative structures, both public and private, they remain underrepresented. The United Nations is no exception. Fifty years after its creation, the United Nations is continuing to deny itself the benefits of women’s leadership by their underrepresentation at decision-making levels within the Secretariat and the specialized agencies.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration emphasizes the equality of women with men in a number of domains, with some of the recent ones discussed around excessive military expenditures harming potential financing of social programs and the integral role of women in peace and security around the world.

Paragraph 28 speaks to the reflection of an important conference based on the development and implementation of solutions to gender inequality with a tone of lament: “equality between women and men has still not been achieved.” Of the elected legislators around the world, women only represent about 10 percent of them circa 1995 with, probably, some modest but insufficient movements forward to the furtherance of equality.

This representation, or relative lack thereof, can be seen in the “national and international administrative structures” too. Women remain underrepresented in a number of important domains through the countries of the world and their respective administrative positions. By the way, the intriguing aspect of the statement is the specification of not only public, as one would typically expect, but also private administrative structures. This remains both surprising and not surprising.

Without taking advantage of the other half of the human population, we leave ourselves without the possibility of a larger talent pool for committed leaders and the diverse forms of leadership everyone brings to the table, to be able to tackle some of the large problems facing us. It is extraordinarily important to tackle the issues of the day, now. We did not target them as vigorously in the 20th century.

We can do better. As emphasized by the document, and worth repeating verbatim: “the United Nations is continuing to deny itself the benefits of women’s leadership by their underrepresentation at decision-making levels within the Secretariat and the specialized agencies.” The basic premise of gender equality amounts to an expansion of the Golden Rule into the area of sex and gender. Women deserve better treatment.

Indeed, and based on the preponderance of the evidence, more equality of the sexes in the society comes with a number of aforementioned benefits. It is, in this sense, that the questions remain around the means by which to optimize on the human capital options here; rather than, the explicit denial of the evidence and then selectively quoting evidence to try to disprove the mountain of evidence – as if calling a pebble a mountain.

This is the situation with denialism. We have less time and urgent needs based on the convergence of a number of problems in global society. The questions remain about the better and worse ways in which to bring about the fairer and more just society. One means is some of the suggestions in these international rights documents, and the associated conventions, declarations, and so on.

To bury our heads in the sand and deny ourselves of this great opportunity to capitalize on the other have of the human species seems both a travesty and a crime, the denial of the evidence as a sign of ignorance or insanity, and the criminal act in knowing one path can do far better for a set of peoples – most of us – and then choosing to reject it, which would harm the possible livelihoods of others in the future. It is not only the smart thing to do but also the right thing to do; so, we should get to it, and do it.

–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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2022-04-24

Paragraph 27 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/12

27. Since 1975, knowledge of the status of women and men, respectively, has increased and is contributing to further actions aimed at promoting equality between women and men. In several countries, there have been important changes in the relationships between women and men, especially where there have been major advances in education for women and significant increases in their participation in the paid labour force. The boundaries of the gender division of labour between productive and reproductive roles are gradually being crossed as women have started to enter formerly male-dominated areas of work and men have started to accept greater responsibility for domestic tasks, including child care. However, changes in women’s roles have been greater and much more rapid than changes in men’s roles. In many countries, the differences between women’s and men’s achievements and activities are still not recognized as the consequences of socially constructed gender roles rather than immutable biological differences.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Women and men have continued to live in societies of greater and greater quality matched, in part, with more and more equality. The basic emphasis on the status of women, and men relative to women’s lesser status historically, and the ways in which conscious social and economic policy, though most often exclusion, put women at a massive disadvantage is societal life.

Now, as with history deniers such as in Holocaust denial, climatology deniers such as climate change or global warming deniers, biology deniers such as evolution by natural selection rejectors through preference for religious Young Earth Creationism, medicine deniers such as anti-vaccination ideology or assertions – without scientific or medical basis – of a link between vaccines and autism, these emerge once more. The denial of the evidence.

The human rights as ethical, GDP improvement as economic, and social development indices as sociocultural, evidence for the better societal choices in the advancement and empowerment of women, which amount to the denial of the massive preponderance of evidence – not selective and generally international and cross-cultural over decades evidence in support of gender equality.

The conscious work, since at least 1975, has been showing dramatic changes, by which I mean improvements, in the livelihoods of the world’s citizenry while also advancing gender equality. The big improvements have been coming from the increased education of women and then the inclusion of more women into the paid labor markets.

The lines are becoming more fluid and able to accommodate gender role fluidity in many ways, where the women are working more, becoming more educated, and the men are taking on more, but by no means the majority, of the household or homecare and childcare chores.

The rapid shift into a situation where women feel more comfortable and less shamed – and have the educational and professional pathways to head into the job market of higher powered positions – about these high-level careers creates an opportunity for men to expand their potentials in the home, which makes for a more flexible population in some sectors.

The basic premise in paragraph 27 is not entirely biological or social constructionism but, rather, the leaning, in terms of gender roles, more towards the social construction of the roles – because these remain bound in social or interpersonal life – compared to the traditionalist perspective of childcare and homecare as solely the domain of women.

It is a non-trivial switch in the perspective because of the varied ways in which the history of the world has been significantly based on the suppression of simply women owning land, voting, getting educated, or holding a job – all important aspects of being an independent person in a free and open society.

The traditionalist argument for pure biological essentialism tends to argue for these forms of limitation and can come from a number of sources, often from purported religious holy texts for starters – or in the inconvenience to some sexist attitudes about women being inherently inferior to men in cognitive capacity, as seen in someone as brilliant as Aristotle.

He invents logic but has highly regressive attitudes about women and their capacities given the context of the time, which can, in part carry over into the modern day. The work to push back against them and implement the rights of women as persons creates the conditions for the moral advances, ecoonomic growth, and social development indicated by the evidence.

It becomes, as with the evidence for the scientific theories presented above in a variety of fields, not a question about the facts or the theories but more about the preferred, even optimal, means by which to implement these beneficial programs for women’s advancement and empowerment to garner the varieties of benefits.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 26

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/12

26. The growing strength of the non-governmental sector, particularly women’s organizations and feminist groups, has become a driving force for change. Non-governmental organizations have played an important advocacy role in advancing legislation or mechanisms to ensure the promotion of women. They have also become catalysts for new approaches to development. Many Governments have increasingly recognized the important role that non-governmental organizations play and the importance of working with them for progress. Yet, in some countries, Governments continue to restrict the ability of non-governmental organizations to operate freely. Women, through non-governmental organizations, have participated in and strongly influenced community, national, regional and global forums and international debates.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

All the world’s a stage… or an oyster. Or something. Whatever you wish to call it, the globe has been rather unkind to women throughout much of history, also to men without divine mandate, land, or wealth. However, the work of feminists and some men, and now simply women’s rights campaigners and activists generally speaking – tied to the various definitions of feminism now, has been developing larger activist anchors to develop a society with real equality.

This comes with predictable and stale counter-activist efforts of, some, religious organizations and traditionalist oriented professionals and academics, and conservative-centered organizations and spokespersons. However, the moves suggest by them, which means a move back into the traditional roles envisioned by their peculiar past without women as equals, would mean less well-being and wealth for the society as a whole.

I mean this in a literal, empirical sense. The advancement and empowerment of women, by its definition, means more people included in the decision-making of the society, so a greater level of equality. Also, the nation does better economically and in terms of the health of the citizenry too. If you want a healthy, wealthy, and free society, choose women’s advancement and empowerment in other words; of course, there are those working out of a fear of a changing society.

One in which they cannot recognize anything. Things are less handed to them. The competitive market includes the other half of the population, und so weiter. But, the issue with their counter-activism is that this, more often than not, comes with state violence, state repression, and the complete disregard for the law. In the past, these counter-activists with the power of the state overthrew governments and assassinated leftwing activist leaders.

Let’s not get the narrative twisted about these facts. These feminist groups and women’s rights organizations come from the rich tradition of advancing and empowering a larger sector of the population. As important activist incubators and activist organizations, we can see the development of the relationships with the international community organizations to advance and further women’s rights.

One issue noted in the paragraph is the restrictions on the ability of many of these organizations to advance the interests of women, which is a valid concern for many women in the world and for those who want to see their interests advanced. But the work of activists and advocates on the ground as individuals becomes much easier through organizations.

And it is through these formalized institutions that more robust, meaningful, inclusive, and powerful activism can be done, which is why they are far more often targeted for defunding, attempts at delegitimization, and even demonization. Because they work, and can be powerful democratic institutions in more authoritarian societies or against those groups/individuals so inclined.

These organizations are integral to the inclusion of all nations, regions, and the world to become more equal and fair, which is, at bottom, the basic sentiment and move of the women’s rights organizations throughout much of the history of the last few decades, certainly much of the 20th century too.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 25

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/11

25. The Fourth World Conference on Women should accelerate the process that formally began in 1975, which was proclaimed International Women’s Year by the United Nations General Assembly. The Year was a turning-point in that it put women’s issues on the agenda. The United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) was a world-wide effort to examine the status and rights of women and to bring women into decision-making at all levels. In 1979, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which entered into force in 1981 and set an international standard for what was meant by equality between women and men. In 1985, the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace adopted the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, to be implemented by the year 2000. There has been important progress in achieving equality between women and men. Many Governments have enacted legislation to promote equality between women and men and have established national machineries to ensure the mainstreaming of gender perspectives in all spheres of society. International agencies have focused greater attention on women’s status and roles.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

There has been a continued effort of the world’s systems to include more voices and incorporate more women into the power matrices of nations and regions, not a small task and, indeed, quite important for the move towards the furtherance of the implementation of human rights. If we take into account the ways in which the world’s belief and political systems, typically, endow a supernatural mythology around limited, prescribed, and subordinate roles of women, we can note the threat to these prevailing mythological superstructures through the inclusion of a reason-based, science-based, evidence-based, and human rights-oriented perspective on women.One in which women are given the equal play, equal consideration, and equal access and opportunity with men. As this began to happen several decades ago, and as we have seen the historic ascendance of women, we can observe the overt pushback against this advancement and empowerment of women through a variety of means, whether ethnic hate groups, authoritarian elements of societies and concomitant xenophobia rising, attempts at diversionary tactics to prevent proper attention on real activist efforts – and, of course, the direct attacks on the right to bodily autonomy of women in reproductive health rightsThe points of reference in the paragraph are important for the considerations even to this day. Women’s issues are more and more on the agenda to not only the benefit of the women but of the men of the world willing to look at the evidence too, in observing the quality of life and wealth of most nations implementing these various equality measures. Some documents, such as the CEDAW or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, have been sincerely considered within this framework and remain one of the bases for the prevention of discrimination against women.Much of the legislation is of a positive nature through the legitimate pathways or “machineries” of the state or governments within some of the international community for the promotion of the equality of women with men. Indeed, the expansion of the possible gender perspectives comes to a head with the traditionalist mythologies from times of slavery, war, superstition, oppression of women, divine right of kings, and not knowing what an atom or a germ was for examples, but these come into conflicts – the narratives from the mythologies – with the modernized work to expand the set of human potentialities not simply for the few but for the many and even the most.This is a long struggle going back to the pre-scientific eras in attempts to move the leadership systems to include more people and to move from the superstitious into the more secular, scientific, and reason-based. Now, more than two decades past the statements of the Beijing Declaration, we can note the development of more progress than, probably, ever before; however, we can see the doubling-down efforts to try and restrict the life and livelihoods of women, indeed intellectually through a re-packaging of the oppressive myths, in the modern period starting in some of the 2010s. But the focus by the international agencies may be an important marker of the continued progress through hard work of individual citizens of the globe aimed at the common good rather than the uncommon – often rich and privileged – good alone.–

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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 24 for the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/11

24. Religion, spirituality and belief play a central role in the lives of millions of women and men, in the way they live and in the aspirations they have for the future. The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is inalienable and must be universally enjoyed. This right includes the freedom to have or to adopt the religion or belief of their choice either individually or in community with others, in public or in private, and to manifest their religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. In order to realize equality, development and peace, there is a need to respect these rights and freedoms fully. Religion, thought, conscience and belief may, and can, contribute to fulfilling women’s and men’s moral, ethical and spiritual needs and to realizing their full potential in society. However, it is acknowledged that any form of extremism may have a negative impact on women and can lead to violence and discrimination.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Freedom of religion is one of the most cherished and vital rights for so many people around the world. To most of the world, the idea of a transcendent reality means a lot and is believed to be true. The belief systems that amount to total worldviews and suggested practices can comprise the entirety of an individual’s life.

Indeed, this makes the freedom of religion a non-trivial thing. Its associated principle of freedom from religion remains important too. It is in these contexts that we can find the general right for the non-religious or the secular to live their lives without the imposition of religion as well. The benefit to all parties from this right is a sense of respect for the other individual to live their life and believe as they wish, as a fundamental human right.

This, the statements in the first parts of paragraph 24 are true. In fact, they seem unassailable on the issue of the issues of human rights, which means the millions of men and women around the world have the right to believe and live within this belief structure as they deem necessary (full stop).

This incorporates the other freedoms of thought and conscience, in public or private and in community/as an individual. The fundamental right of individuals to enjoy these rights is important, as women, as already with men, should garner more support in their individual rights to believe as they see best for them.

For the forms of ethical, edificative, and spiritual fulfillment desired by many people around the world, these rights are integral to the maintenance of not only women’s rights but human rights in general. Because without the respect for one of the rights for one person while only respecting your own rights. Does this not reject the principle of universality, where everyone can enjoy them?

The ability of free human choices is salient and relevant here because of the specific indications of the rights of persons to believe, think, and worship, or not, as they see best for them. The Beijing Declaration, with an emphasis on the rights of women, is reiterating these fundamental rights. Women have the right to disagree with, for example, religious or belief-based reasons given for the discrimination and violence against women – or in the denial of fundamental human rights.

The forms of extremism around the world, religious or secular, harm women. They cause damage to peaceful discourse, dialogue, and debate necessary for, at a minimum understanding of where other people are coming from. Indeed, the forms of violence against women can come from secular state entities and formal religious organizations bound by purported transcendant law.

The basis for moderating the extremist affects are through conversation and solid measures stated in rights documents about what is and is not a right, and how these rights conflict and balance with one another.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 23 for the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/10

23. Recognizing that the achievement and maintenance of peace and security are a precondition for economic and social progress, women are increasingly establishing themselves as central actors in a variety of capacities in the movement of humanity for peace. Their full participation in decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution and all other peace initiatives is essential to the realization of lasting peace.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The ability of the international community to work together through declarations such as the Beijing Declaration is an important marker of much of the common sentiments – though, at times, unwillingness – of the representatives of the global system to advance fundamental human rights for women, for equality with men.

This is both heartwarming and indicative oft he long-term trends in our societies. Where there has been a recognition of not only the moral strength in representing women more and more in the international system, and by implication the national ones, but also the economic and social development benefits of the inclusion of women into the world’s decision-maker apparatuses and power levers, whether these are political or economic, these stand the empirical test of outcomes.

Countries with more equality for women do better. Nations without these rights implemented tend to do worse. Indeed, and even in 1995 and still, women bear the brunt of the cuts to the social programs, which could benefit the least among us, including most often women. it is abundantly clear women are the world’s poor far more often than the men.

The facts about this can’t be confronted directly, so we’re seeing deliberate attempts at mockery, ridicule, caricaturing, and character assassinations to prevent direct discussion on the facts because, probably, those opposed to women’s equality for a variety of reasons simply do not have the arguments anymore.

The focus becomes purported cultural Marxists, postmodernists, and others deemed epithet worthy. Those purporting to represent rationality hurling epithets, resorting to magical thinking and appeals to emotion, and politically dismantling protections of human rights or the rights of the citizenry – again, probably because they do not have a proper response or an argument anymore, or the preponderance of evidence in most cases either.

Now, to paragraph 23 in particular, there has been a substantial achievement in the maintenance of peace and security around the world. This has come under some question, recently. However, we have seen both the achievement of peace and then the maintenance of it as well. Both substantial and laudable global achievements, broadly speaking though major crimes of the superpowers continue afoot.

The ability of nations and its citizenry to move forward in the quality of life and democratic ideals requires peace and security. The longer the period of peace and security, then the longer the timespan for economic and social progress, as indicated in paragraph 23. Women continue to become more and more central actors in the work to establish peace and security around the world.

This involves the work for further inclusion in “decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution” and the entire suite of associated peace processes. One can expect new voices and perspectives to impact the means by which peace is accomplished, and the ways in which the established power brokers cannot unilaterally decide on particular measures.

The inclusion of more voices will lead to a democratization of decision-making and the ways to deal with peace and security and how to maintain it, too. The world has more democratic institutions than at any other time in its history. But we stand at a precipice of a global, not shift but, decision if we want to move to magical thinking, hyper patriarchal institutions, and authoritarianism or further democratization and the development of more open societies; the former conforms to furthermore closed societies and fewer voices in the political arena and the latter accords with more open societies with more and more voices included more equitably in the decision-making processes and apparatuses of the societies.

We do not have a lot of time as a cascade of converging possible catastrophes are upon us, where we need to take immediate actions or face the possible consequences of the extinction of many species on the Earth, including ourselves as part of the natural order. Of which, the maintenance of peace and security and the prevention of conflicts and war is one, as modern weaponry is incredible precise and powerful in its destructive capabilities.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraphs 21 & 22

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/10

21. Women are key contributors to the economy and to combating poverty through both remunerated and unremunerated work at home, in the community and in the workplace. Growing numbers of women have achieved economic independence through gainful employment.

22. One fourth of all households world wide are headed by women and many other households are dependent on female income even where men are present. Female-maintained households are very often among the poorest because of wage discrimination, occupational segregation patterns in the labour market and other gender-based barriers. Family disintegration, population movements between urban and rural areas within countries, international migration, war and internal displacements are factors contributing to the rise of female-headed households.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The basic nature of equality is enunciated in a variety of ethical doctrines, whether ingrained through religious upbringing, in many circumstances, or taught in postsecondary education through training in the rights of persons. The basic notion or sentiment is an expanded sphere of concern, consideration, and compassion into the world of women rather than simply the touted world of legalities and literalist religious statements about men as owners, women as owned, and the world to be dominated instead of nurtured and tended to – as if an organism itself.

The 21st paragraph of the Beijing Declaration describes, succinctly, the basic nature of the role of women in the economic viability of a nation, where the economic stability and stable growth of a country are important for the “combating poverty” efforts. One powerful consciousness-raising effort could be in the recognition by the leaders, and the men, of the world of the idea that housework and childcare is work and deserves some form of remuneration including monetary.

The possibility for a variety of education-guarded, or not, work opportunities remain integral for the financial or economic independence of women. These provide less power-over by the men compared to the women.

Now, paragraph 22 remarks on an incredible statistic about 1/4 households, when taking the international statistics into account, around the world are headed by women. This does not seem as if a commonly held fact or piece of knowledge. These also coincide with the fact that even many male-headed households are dependent on female income, in the case, I assume, of the dual-income households.

Among the households that are the poorest, you will, almost inevitably, find the women-lead homes as the poorest in the world. There are a variety of known reasons for this. Some involve issues around the disproportionate impacts of the structural adjustment programs on women as well as the fewer social services for the poor, mostly women, when there are excess societal resources spent on the military budget on wasteful wars.

This can lead to consequences of wage discrimination and then the occupational segregation patterns too. These are found inside of the labor market. These also connect to a variety of other gender-based barriers. Now, the consequences of poverty are also likely to lead to women becoming single parents or the heads of the household. One of which is family disintegration in poor areas.

Other events that can cause programs from within a nation are international migration and war. Bearing in mind, these are still relevant, and in the case of migration in particular, increasing problems. Then the instability of poorer nations, usually, is also an issue leading to further consequences of women leading homes.

These have ripple effects for many, many years because the children from these situations are left to be raised with far fewer resources than others within the world, such as those with two educated parents who are income-earners. It is the comparison there, which is the most striking. But again, the world’s poor are women; the most poverty-stricken families, and often probably least considered by the policies and programs for the international economic system, are women-headed families.

Because the poverty for women is global with a series of known sources, where these simply do not impact men as much; there should be robust international programs put in place in order to reduce the impact on women from poverty and, as a result, increasing the health and wealth of societies over time and, in fact, the wellness of families, children, and communities.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 20

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

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

20. Macro and micro-economic policies and programmes, including structural adjustment, have not always been designed to take account of their impact on women and girl children, especially those living in poverty. Poverty has increased in both absolute and relative terms, and the number of women living in poverty has increased in most regions. There are many urban women living in poverty; however, the plight of women living in rural and remote areas deserves special attention given the stagnation of development in such areas. In developing countries, even those in which national indicators have shown improvement, the majority of rural women continue to live in conditions of economic underdevelopment and social marginalization.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The degree to which a society’s women are provided advancement and empowerment can be, in good measure cross-culturally, a key indicator of the social development of the society and the economic well-being of its citizenry; the more advancement and empowerment of women, then the more flourishing of the society as a whole on a number of markers of social and economic health.

The 20th paragraph of the Beijing Declaration speaks to the big and small view of policies and programs set for the improvement of the economic functioning of the world’s national economic systems. This includes some of the prior conversations around the impacts of these structural adjustment programs not taking into account the hardships on the women and the “girl children” or girls of the world.

There are two common types of defined poverty. One is the absolute poverty metric. The other is the relative poverty measure. In both of these measurements, women who lived in poverty in 1995 in relation to prior periods had increased in most regions of the world. The same quite possibly holds true now. This is the basis for the exploitation, especially economic, of women by others.

The women who live in the urban settings are much more likely to be living in poverty, in the penurious and precarious circumstances unknown – by comparative standards – to much of the point of the developed nations’ views and experiences. Indeed, it can be a peculiar narcissism of culture, geography, and economic development of “The West” to view other peoples from the around the world as other and not deserving equal consideration.

The argument seems easy to make on the grounds of the same species. That is to say, if an individual were born in another place, would they not act and think almost the same as others in those circumstances? Quite possibly, the linguists state this about one of the fundamental features of being a member of homo sapiens.

The rhetoric from “The West” seems to provide cover to ignoring, in a practical sense, the moral obligation to help the least among us, with various forms of assistance, especially those rural women with fewer rights and resources to be able to assert themselves in life. It amounts to not fulfilling the moral or ethical duty, standing back, and then either ignoring or making harsh judgments about the plight of these women.

When the more rational approach would be to work on the projects and initiatives already ongoing for the advancement and empowerment of women at the time – 1995, and only built upon more now, these give a basis for furtherance of the economic, and so social, equality of women in these societies in the “developing” category.

Even with the nations that have begun to show, or in fact already do represent, large-scale changes in a short amount of time, the continued disproportionate provision of resources is typically for the rich and the men and not for the women and the poor – an often overlapping dual-set of populations.

These are issues that should be dealt with in an assertive way, and paragraphs such as these provide an explicit and clear description of the areas of needed improvement for the provision of the livelihoods of women in our societies.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 19 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

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

19. Economic recession in many developed and developing countries, as well as ongoing restructuring in countries with economies in transition, have had a disproportionately negative impact on women’s employment. Women often have no choice but to take employment that lacks long-term job security or involves dangerous working conditions, to work in unprotected home-based production or to be unemployed. Many women enter the labour market in under-remunerated and undervalued jobs, seeking to improve their household income; others decide to migrate for the same purpose. Without any reduction in their other responsibilities, this has increased the total burden of work for women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Now, as per some of the recent articles about the Beijing Declaration, the general idea is the economic recession consequences – probably any – affecting the livelihoods of women and developing countries more than others. The various restructuring programs or initiatives for the long-term benefit through the transition of the developing countries impacts women more than men.

In other words, women are considered either last or not at all in these calculations as the countries or nations move to more and more developed statuses or when economic recessions hit the global or the national economies. Our next questions become, if biased in the favour of the improvement of the least among us – globally – in the population or unprovided for women, the ways in which to include women within the economic recession protections, the jobs programs, and in the central discourse around structural adjustment programs for the benefits of the most women.

It is not an easy problem to solve because a) it is global and b) has forces working against it. The economic access of women with a society is indicative of the level of advancement and empowerment of women. Indeed, the ways in which access to financial assets provides choices in the societies means there are more ways a particular citizen or group to garner forms of power and influence within the society.

The idea of freedom, autonomy, and then the women being left with “no choice but to take employment that lacks long-term job security” provides an insight into the nature of what has been stated by Professor Noam Chomsky, formerly at MIT and now at Arizona State University, as the global precariat or those living in precarious circumstances; this extends across the globe, and as noted in the documentation and paragraphs’ respective articles before, relates to excess militarism and associated military expenditure, and the structural adjustment programs without women even in mind.

Women bear this brunt. They get in the negative wave and cycle of these plans and initiatives, where they are not considered and then live without prospects for decent, long-term employment. It leaves them with little job security and then has them have no choice but to take these poor working conditions employment ‘opportunities’ and live more penurious lives than they would, otherwise. This defines one more of unfairness and injustice – to promise freedom and deny the levers and access to the opportunities for full flourishing through it.

Then the women who do these precarious employments have worse pay and fewer or no benefits, with the jobs that tend to garner less prestige and so this does not improve, at least substantially, the economic prospective of the entire household. These create problems in the cycles of the poverty of women, and their children and so familial cyclical poverty. Again, we come more to intergenerational injustice and unfairness in this sense.

The total burden on women increases in this world order and the supports are not there to help them in the cases of needing them, where, if a global majority of the world’s poor, amounts to the international set of women who are more prone to need the supports than the men. It burdens women unduly; whereas, the structures, such as the structural adjustment programs, are set in motion with the richer and the men in mind by implication.

But why? Or how? Women are more often impacted negatively in a variety of ways, who are most often the poor; that is to say inversely, men more positively and the rich more positively compared to women and the poor, whether in net income or in the employment opportunities – and so life prospectives. These are international crimes on large swathes of the population as an implication of conscious economic policy.

–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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2022-04-23

On Being a Woman Pioneer in the European Skeptical Community

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/08

Claire has a background in law and psychology, and is currently working on her degree in Religious Studies. She has been involved in the skeptic movement since 2013 as co-organizer of the Czech Paranormal Challenge. Since then, she has consulted on various projects, where woo & belief meets science. Claire has spoken at multiple science&skepticism conferences and events. She also organized the European Skeptics Congress 2017, and both years of the Czech March for Science.

Her current activities include chairing the European Council of Skeptical Organisations, running the “Don’t Be Fooled” project (which provides free critical thinking seminars to interested high schools), contributing to the Czech Religious Studies journal Dingir, as well as to their online news in religion website. In her free time, Claire visits various religious movements to understand better what draws people to certain beliefs.

Claire lives in Prague, Czech Republic, with her partner, and dog.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your position? How did you earn it? Are you the first woman to hold it?

Claire Klingenberg: I am the president of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations. This organization has been active since 1994. Throughout this whole time, it was chaired by men. Women have been on the board.

However, there was a change needed. The board was looking for a change. I am not only the first woman but the youngest person to hold this person.

Jacobsen: Wow.

Klingenberg: My enthusiasm and get-things-done attitude were what was needed for the organization. That is why I was chosen for the role.

Jacobsen: How does it feel?

Klingenberg: It feels wonderful, but it is a huge responsibility. I appreciate that I can do this and make the European Council of Skeptical Organizations a bigger player internationally and help each of our member organizations be more influential in their own countries.

Of course, that is an ambitious project and will take a lot of time. Fortunately, I can be re-elected as many times as the board sees fit [Laughing]. So, I hope that I have more than my first two years to get things done.

Jacobsen: You are also skeptical about term limits too.

Klingenberg: [Laughing] We were reading the constitution. I agree that it should only be two years with limitless re-election possibilities because you never know what crazy person will end up there [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Klingenberg: The reason it happens every two years is that the Congress of the European Skeptics Council happens every two years. So, it makes sense to have it every two years. We have a couple of projects starting.

I can see later this year those becoming active and more unifying projects that will bring the member organizations together and will help them with their own work in their countries.

Jacobsen: What is the main initiative or the main goal for the next 5 years?

Klingenberg: The main goal is to become partners with the European Union. That our opinion will be heard and taken seriously about medical care, about farming, about growing GMO crops.

That is our main goal, to be a partner that is going to be heard.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Claire.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 18 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/08

18. Recent international economic developments have had in many cases a disproportionate impact on women and children, the majority of whom live in developing countries. For those States that have carried a large burden of foreign debt, structural adjustment programmes and measures, though beneficial in the long term, have led to a reduction in social expenditures, thereby adversely affecting women, particularly in Africa and the least developed countries. This is exacerbated when responsibilities for basic social services have shifted from Governments to women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the international economic system, the developments up until the mid-1990s continued to represent – and probably still represents – the degraded status of women, the lower status of women, as indicated by outcomes on these economic metrics. Women are half, or even slightly more than half, of the population of the world.

The bounded nature of their treatment provides an insight into our societal consideration of the proper place of women. It seems as if a sad commentary on the nature of our treatment of not only the natural environment but of women, too – as described astutely by Canadian author and speak Lee Maracle. One need merely look at the treatment of the natural world and then reflect on the rest of the equation.

The disproportionate impact on the lives of women and children indicate and self-describe our consideration of the economic livelihoods of, more often than not, the most economically, and otherwise, vulnerable among our global populations. We can see this in the attempts too prevent the rights provisions for women in the form of equal consideration in the structures of power and influence, and the rather explicit attempts to try to denigrate and outright prevent the work of women to enter the mainstream of dominant political power.

The majority of the world’s poor, living in the poorest nations of the planet, are women and children. There is a great deal of debt and “structural adjustment programmes and measures” utilized for the long-term benefit, purportedly. However, the consequence tends to be in the reduction, as noted in prior writings, the provisions for the populations least of us. It is a serious issue, and even more so now than in simply 1995.

The least among us, whether women or developed nations, show the most need; yet, the greatest levels of international inequality and lack of consideration and resource provisions. The economic issues around the globe, at the time and easily arguably now, create a situation in which women and the developed nations with disproportionate numbers of poor women bear more and more of the burden of the society in light of the poverty and the reduced provisions of the government for women.

This negatively impacts women and children, reduces the rights and freedoms of women, produces contributory factors to the cycle of poverty, and reduces the quality of life overall for the citizens of the country as the main predictor of the wellbeing and wealth of, at least a developed, nation is the advancement and the empowerment of women.

This is an important paragraph because it highlights the ways in which women are disproportionately impacted by economic hardships and problems in the world of not only 1995 but also reflect in the modern period as well. It is integral to the solutions of global poverty to bear in mind the issues of the women of the world, as they comprise the majority of the poor of the world.

With these demographic insights, the solutions can be targeted from a global perspective at the women of the world, in terms of their concerns; but also, they can then segmented per region and nation with the religious, cultural, and socio-political peculiarities in each region or nation while keeping the global perspective of the greater plight of women in view.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 17 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/07

17. Absolute poverty and the feminization of poverty, unemployment, the increasing fragility of the environment, continued violence against women and the widespread exclusion of half of humanity from institutions of power and governance underscore the need to continue the search for development, peace and security and for ways of assuring people-centred sustainable development. The participation and leadership of the half of humanity that is female is essential to the success of that search. Therefore, only a new era of international cooperation among Governments and peoples based on a spirit of partnership, an equitable, international social and economic environment, and a radical transformation of the relationship between women and men to one of full and equal partnership will enable the world to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The commons phrases for these sections of the Global Framework of the Beijing Declaration speak to not only the forms of poor living – abject poverty, absolute poverty, and so on – but also to the ways in which the majority of the poor, then and now, are women. This is termed the feminization of poverty. Interestingly, it relates to a variety of other, typically considered, negative outcomes for the society.

For example, if we look at the ways in which the unemployment rates of the world, or impacts on the unemployment – and probably underemployment too – disproportionately impacts the women of the world. Indeed, we can further see this in the increased fragility of the world’s ecosystems and capacity to deal with human junk and waste.

The violence against women and then the widespread exclusion of, approximately, half of the world’s populations leads to questions about the legitimacy of some aspects of the world system, even, perhaps, most of it. The ways in which the exploitation of the environment and the vulnerable becomes a basis to prevent individuals from flourishing.

Continuing into the document, we find stipulations about the need for both the power systems and the governance structures provide a stronger, or more robust, set of bases upon which to move the course of the world towards greater equality. Some of the key terms here are development, peace, and security. Those amount to identifiers of things including sustainable development.

Our basis for much of the history of the world has been the decreased ability of participation of the vulnerable groups. As per the previous paragraphs, the excess expenditures of military expeditions around the world or the build of arms, the lack of assistance to the women of the world in the structural adjustment programmes, and other issues relate to the prevention of the full flowering of the species, in a real sense, through the deprivation current or to be expected on these premises of the international order.

The sustainable and human-centred development of societies provides a basis to work towards a more positive future. One in which the world’s global governance and power systems include everyone, where, for much of history, they tended to only include a few through non-accidental and conscious policy and programme development for the most powerful and privileged among us.

Women are integral to this future. Now, if we examine some of the areas of international cooperation with national governments, the aim, though not always achieved goal, is to engage in partnership with equitable distribution of decision-making and power brokerage rather than the complete centralization based on the already powerful, the richest, and the well-established powers of the world.

These are radical notions, especially in an era of rising attempts to quash the developments for democratization and equality of the public systems, per nation and so – ideally – the world. This radical notion of equality of the sexes can be seen as far back as 1995, or the 1800s with John Stuart Mill. Our basic systems have been, through hard work and sacrifice from the bottom-up, moving more and more towards democratic decision-making at all levels of the society.

The interesting aspect of this, the general societal system continues to function in such a way as to create systems of alternative media and understanding of the world apart from the radical propaganda systems for individual global citizens to self-educate and see through the lies sold to them en masse.

We can see this in the political rhetoric in North American and Europe. We can, definitely, observe this in the cultural guardians & the dramatic media system and public relations of America in particular. Of course, this exists in other regional systems bound by autocrats, authoritarian regimes, theocratic regimens, and so on.

However, the radical notion enunciated by John Stuart Mill may represent the greatest threat to this system in the provision of equal consideration and rights for the women of the world commensurate with the men. It means more independent, and not faux ones, citizens bound more by common human sentiment.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 16

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/07

16. Widespread economic recession, as well as political instability in some regions, has been responsible for setting back development goals in many countries. This has led to the expansion of unspeakable poverty. Of the more than 1 billion people living in abject poverty, women are an overwhelming majority. The rapid process of change and adjustment in all sectors has also led to increased unemployment and underemployment, with particular impact on women. In many cases, structural adjustment programmes have not been designed to minimize their negative effects on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups or on women, nor have they been designed to assure positive effects on those groups by preventing their marginalization in economic and social activities. The Final Act of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations/10 underscored the increasing interdependence of national economies, as well as the importance of trade liberalization and access to open, dynamic markets. There has also been heavy military spending in some regions. Despite increases in official development assistance (ODA) by some countries, ODA has recently declined overall.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In regards to the ways in which economic recession cause damage to not only the central victims of the decline in an aspect of the economic, apparently, this effects a wide variety of individuals within the economic and labour networks connected or linked up with the economic system that went in decline. This was stated in 1995 and existed prior to a number of popped bubbles, probably most notably the housing bubble crash in the mid-2000s.

This is almost 10 or more years ago now. But it is something to bear in mind with respect to the statements here. The widespread economic recession and political instability within some regions can create problems for some regions – not simply a country or a couple of countries. With even a glance at some of the effects or reading some of the generalized reportage about the effects of the economic recessions, we can see the “expansion of unspeakable poverty.” This seems to take the modernist’s view of time. But certainly, these recessions triggered through the global economy can create waves of misery, especially among the already penurious living in precarious lifestyles if these circumstances can be called that.

At the time, more than 1 billion people lived in what was termed “abject poverty.” The majority of these individuals, at the time, were women. Furthermore, this seems easily expandable to this period too. Women and children remain the main population of the world’s poor, even more so for the world’s extreme or abject poor.

The cycle of poverty can continue with the increase in unemployment and underemployment. As repeated, the impacts, according to the experts who research this issue, are disproportionately harming the world’s women more than the men. Intriguingly, there appears to be an open admission, based on an evaluation, that the world’s “structural adjustment programmes” of the time – potentially even now too – continue to fail at the minimization of these negative effects on the poor and, in particular, the world’s women.

The same for any positive effects. In short, the programmes for structural adjustment simply do not take into account the effects on women or on marginalized groups of the world. This does lend credence to the notion of some populations, sometimes half of the world’s population, being seen as simply superfluous to the programmes designed around the possibilities of economic recessions..

“The Final Act of the Uruguay Round” for multilateral trade negotiation showed the international interdependence of economies, with, as well, a note described in some of the more recent paragraphs about the ways in which military excess expenditure has been a problem in some regions of the world.

The issue with the structural adjustment programmes and the excess spending on militarism mean, in the latter case, fewer resources to e able to be spent on the social services and programs that could benefit the poor; and then in the former case, we have the structural adjustment programmes without the considerations on the effects on women and marginalized groups in the societies.

The military adventures are the focus and most of the public – if only taking into account women and marginalized groups – are not the focus. Here we see the problem in the international system circa 1995, one may, possibly, extrapolate a worse system in some regards on these metrics for women and with increased expansion of military expenditure to the detriment to the most vulnerable in the society. This decline is even in spite of the investments in the official development assistance or ODA resource provisions.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 15

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/06

15. A world-wide movement towards democratization has opened up the political process in many nations, but the popular participation of women in key decision-making as full and equal partners with men, particularly in politics, has not yet been achieved. South Africa’s policy of institutionalized racism – apartheid – has been dismantled and a peaceful and democratic transfer of power has occurred. In Central and Eastern Europe the transition to parliamentary democracy has been rapid and has given rise to a variety of experiences, depending on the specific circumstances of each country. While the transition has been mostly peaceful, in some countries this process has been hindered by armed conflict that has resulted in grave violations of human rights.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The global move towards more and more democratization may have been more clear in the past than in the present. Indeed, we appear to have more open societies and democracies than at any prior point in history. However, with some of the recent, conscious, chaos created in the wake the American 2016 presidential election, the Brexit vote, and so on, there have been fundamental challenges or at least relatively basic ones to the structures of democracy with the society – or the democratic organizational processes of nations.

This raises issues about the basic premise in this paragraph, about the long-term viability of democracies. Nonetheless, if we assume the premise of an optimistic future circa 1995, we can note the increased political processing opening of several nations in addition to the participation of women within the levers of decision-making power of our societies. These are tremendously hopeful and heartwarming developments in our societies.

They continue to demarcate the modern period in contrast to the past where women did not even have the right to vote, as far as I know, in any nation only two centuries ago, even, potentially, a century and a half ago. These make the strides in democratization real and palpable. The questions, in the present, may be the extent to which these may undergo a temporary reversal; the environment of 1995 would propose the ways in which these can be expanded, to further respect the rights of persons and the human rights of women in particular given the context of this series.

In the representation of the South African case, slowly dwindling in our societal memory banks, there was an institutionalized racism known as apartheid that was dismantled and then a democratic revolution began to sweep through the nation. This is something extended into the note of Central and Eastern European nations developing parliamentary democracies.

These were seeing “rapid” rises depending on the domain in question and the specific country to be considered. Nonetheless, most of the nations rose into formal democratic statuses, apparently, more or less peacefully while some were and remained in conflict in the process, which coincided with “grave violations of human rights.” Not a small detail but not the glaring issue if taken in a larger geographic and historical contexts, even now, we see more and more democracies or democratization and peaceful transition to them and peace amongst and between them.

–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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Paragraph 14 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/06

14. In this context, the social dimension of development should be emphasized. Accelerated economic growth, although necessary for social development, does not by itself improve the quality of life of the population. In some cases, conditions can arise which can aggravate social inequality and marginalization. Hence, it is indispensable to search for new alternatives that ensure that all members of society benefit from economic growth based on a holistic approach to all aspects of development: growth, equality between women and men, social justice, conservation and protection of the environment, sustainability, solidarity, participation, peace and respect for human rights.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The emphasis of this paragraph is the social development of the nation, where there can be effects on the wealth and wellbeing of some demographics of the country with the inequitable distribution of resources within the nation. Some of the contexts of the accelerated economic growth can create problems for the levels, as noted, of social inequality and marginalization. Indeed, this can impact the poorest sectors even worse.

Furthermore, many of these populations tend to be women, too. The issue, then, the best ways in which to harbour a society where all can benefit to a greater rather than lesser degree from the wealth of the nation. The alternative models and the economic issues of the mid-1990s were recognized and being considered among those who were creating the Beijing Declaration.

We, some argue, see worse inequality and even worse relative socio-economic outcomes in the population at large, where the non-holistic economic growth models remain unsustainable if the greater wellbeing of the public is to be taken into account. Indeed, we can note those general ways in which the total aspects of the development of nations are being proposed within the paragraph.

From the equality of the sexes, to general growth, social justice, the maintenance of the environment and the social systems, and the ability of humans to prevent war and keep in mind human rights, all these reflect a deep respect for the general documents that tend to deal with these issues include this Beijing Declaration and the science indicating these metrics of social development.

Nothing absolute but the relative precision of the indicators of development make the case, and this document proposes a moral stipulation, for explicit moves to change the socio-economic system for greater equality; for those with an interest in women’s equality and the well-being of children, the improvement of the livelihoods of the lowest income earners and social assistance programs for poor children as well as good educations would be good means by which to improve the livelihoods of these people.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 13

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/05

13. Excessive military expenditures, including global military expenditures and arms trade or trafficking, and investments for arms production and acquisition have reduced the resources available for social development. As a result of the debt burden and other economic difficulties, many developing countries have undertaken structural adjustment policies. Moreover, there are structural adjustment programmes that have been poorly designed and implemented, with resulting detrimental effects on social development. The number of people living in poverty has increased disproportionately in most developing countries, particularly the heavily indebted countries, during the past decade.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration also speaks about the expenses of wars. The military travels into a variety of areas of the world. If we look at the recent history, we can see this. If we also observe the historical record, we can note the profound levels of waste and misery left in the wake of war and after war. There appears to be no question as to the often illegitimacy of war and the committing of war crimes against others around the world.

Often, the dominant powers of the time, the so-called “superpowers,” are the empires influential enough to commit atrocities without question and also the resources to divert the public at home, especially in the era of mass media and technological enchantment – or in more authoritarian setups with the threat of imprisonment or violence against the internal population by the hands of the state.

The resources diverted to war have created an unviable long-term situation for the species. We lie at a legitimate crossing point of whether or not we will choose to survive as a species from multi-variate problem with conflict, among others converging on a closing set of viable possible futures for humanity. But the debt and economic difficulties in the modern period have gone even farther since 1995.

Indeed, we can see the effects on social development and even on indicators of social trust in a society. Those societies with greater levels of development and faster ones tend to have better trust in the society among its citizenry. Things are on the up-and-up, so why not let this influence the perspective of other citizens. However, the costs of war take away funds from the possible investment in the families, the communities, and even the educational and cultural institutions of a nation.

The detrimental effects influence the ways in which we see one another but also show in the slower development relative to other countries. More people live in poverty. These precarious lives and forced-upon-people lifestyles create all of the attendant problems of poverty of a nation. The issues of poverty tend to affect women, especially single mothers, more than other populations.

Because of this, we also see the ripple effects in families and communities and future generations left with fewer resources: the broken homes, the drug abuse, the alcoholism, the domestic abuse, the addictions to pornography and video games in the children, the inappropriate age of first sexual encounter of the attendant children, the lower educational attainment, the elevated stress hormone levels of parent and child, and so on.

These create tremendous strains on individuals, on families, and on communities. The funds that could help pay for feeding the children, educating the next generation, re-educating the current generations, and upgrading the infrastructure of the nation’s communities get funneled into the pathways of militarization at home and abroad. These systems impact one another. It is one of the great ironies that those who harbor the most family values support the militarism abroad the most, where this drains the national funds and deprives potential funding for those at-home institutions intended for the benefit of the general public.

We can see this in numerous examples. It can be seen, especially and as per the final statement of the document, within the developing or non-developed nations without any of the programs in place. Or if they are present, then they are repealed rather rapidly. These are our problems. These create the issues of cycles of poverty and, in part, due to the wasteful spending on militarism and, oftentimes, exercises outside the nation’s borders in war for national pride or proud-boasting about the greatness of one’s own national identity. This is a poison, spiritual and otherwise.

As a result, women’s rights and livelihood are deprived too, as all these problems inflict women much more than men and those in charge making the decisions tend to be men – though the poor, men and women and children, become the main victims. Not to mention innocent casulties in the midst of wars.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 12 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/05

12. The maintenance of peace and security at the global, regional and local levels, together with the prevention of policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing and the resolution of armed conflict, is crucial for the protection of the human rights of women and girl children, as well as for the elimination of all forms of violence against them and of their use as a weapon of war.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

International peace and security remained tied to women’s rights issues in a number of direct and indirect ways. One comes in the maintenance, in the global security apparatus, international peace. If we think of the main ways in which conflicts start, they can be myriad. Same with the impacts. But some of the big outcroppings can be aggression and ethnic cleansing.

These can emerge from a hatred and seeing other people as “The Other.” The dreaded beings who have evil intent towards you. The protection of the rights of women and girls tend to fly out the window at these times. It is in these moments, of which comprise the vast majority of humanity’s time – with most of humanity at war in its history at around 5-10% of its recorded history; that we find the capacity for evil and the automatic, almost, deprivation of the rights and livelihood of women.

The forms of violence against women, as a fundamental violation of rights and freedoms, lies with mostly men. Good men do not make excuses or should not perpetrate these actions. Good men work together to reduce and ideally eliminate these actions while also working within the justice system for fairness in all parties involved to garner proper justice. There can be an excuse-making aspect to much of the violence perpetrated against women, or simply a pointing of fingers elsewhere in order to distract attention from a proper issue.

One of the main tools in war, for a long time, has been rape and other violence against women and girls for the purposes of demoralizing one’s enemies in war. In combat conditions, these innocent civilians, often women and girls, become subject to a variety of ill-treatment that, in any civilized society or set of them, would not take place at all. However, any society can crumble economically, socially, and morally.

The systems in place for the protection of the rights of women and girls and for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women are crucial in order to work for the proper “maintenance of peace and security at the global, regional and local levels.” Which, as acknowledged in the paragraph, amount to collective efforts, those long-term efforts to solve the problems of violence against women.

The issues lie with us. The concerns sit with us. Indeed, and as a “but,” the inflicted pain and misery goes with the women mostly, and potentially attendant children if no abortifacients available or if this stands against the ethical code of the woman who may have been raped and become pregnant as a result. These are difficult issues. They are not simple to solve, as they appear encoded into a violent human nature.

But the ease of modernity, breadth of current education, knowledge of the world through science, and formalization of thought with logic, we can move the dial, as we have with documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our world is modern by many of these criteria. Our efforts to move more in this direction amounts to the move for modernization.

Inside of these efforts, also, we can note the improvement in the implementation of the rights of women as an important, integral aspect of the basic equality of the sexes and the efforts to reduce, at least in some domains to a relatively reasonable low level, violence and, in particular, violence against women as perpetuated through the cycles of violence and war.

The improvements in the material comforts of life may mask the violent tendencies of human beings, but the efforts for the consideration of the equal dignity and respect for all is a moral advance in some domains. One in which the regression could move backward faster than its move forward as our baser natures beckon onward to call us back to baseline, regression to the violent mean – where women and girls are barely people and more often than not property or chattel. The future of peace and prosperity is, in some fundamental sense, a human choice, one-by-one and collectively.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 11 – Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/04

11. The end of the cold war has resulted in international changes and diminished competition between the super-Powers. The threat of a global armed conflict has diminished, while international relations have improved and prospects for peace among nations have increased. Although the threat of global conflict has been reduced, wars of aggression, armed conflicts, colonial or other forms of alien domination and foreign occupation, civil wars, and terrorism continue to plague many parts of the world. Grave violations of the human rights of women occur, particularly in times of armed conflict, and include murder, torture, systematic rape, forced pregnancy and forced abortion, in particular under policies of ethnic cleansing.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

With the end of the Cold War came another phase in the eras of the geopolitical situation for much but not all of the world, these changes had impacts, especially, on the super-powers of the time, the nations connected with them, and the individual citizens too. Interestingly, we can note the impacts on the lives of men and women of the time too.

These changes in societies can, sometimes, result in the clamping down on the individual citizens, especially so regarding the reproductive rights of women. None of this is a far cry from the distant past. In fact, right before our parents’ eyes, we can see the work in Romania with Decree 770. Reproduction matters to authoritarian regimes. The collapse of some former superpowers remains important in the history of women’s rights too.

There came with the diminution of the superpowers a decrease in the level of the desired competition between them. A decrease in the threat of armed conflict all over the world ensued as well. This increased the potential or prospects for peace through an improvement in international relations. Now, we can, along with the concomitant decline in colonialism and its impacts, look at the rights of women and the degradation and maltreatment of women at the same time.

Rape has been a weapon of war. Domestic and violence physical violence have been used to control women or oppress them. The question about toxic masculinity amounts to the elimination of that form of masculinity. The idea of masculinity, in part, imagined by many of the conservatives. They talk past one another. The toxic masculinity spoke of by progressive and liberal commentators comes in the form leading to “murder, torture, systematic rape, forced pregnancy and forced abortion” and even, unfortunately sometimes, ethnic cleansing.

These violations of the basic humanity and recognition of the need for the inherent dignity of others comes from the religious and the national, the governmental. These tendencies in some of the extremes of human behavior exhibit a cognitively complex animal capable of a variety of profoundly cruel and unjust, and just unfair, behaviors and treatment of not only human beings but the natural world upon which we need to survive and are inextricably a part.

These make international forms of conflict one and the same with the work of women’s rights and their actualization, as the violent conflicts of nations and individuals tend to have repercussions with women seen as tools of war. The men in charge of the wars need more children to become soldiers and the men who abuse women feel the need to resort to violence for a variety of reasons, with one of the large ones almost certainly coming in the form of control.

The implementation of women’s rights would provide a basis to consider the greater equality of women. It would connect to the issues of war and conflict. The attribution of the same decision-making abilities to women as we already assume of men, so women can partake of civic and political life, and the military, in order to potentially influence the ways in which these wars take place if at all.

I do not attribute an angelic nature to women and a demonic one to men, but I do attribute a moderating effect to a democratic system with the incorporation of more voices into the finalization of the collective choices, typically, issued in responsibility to only a few powerful men regardless of the level of skill, quality of situational and ethical judgment, or academic qualifications or even autodidactic educational status.

With this, we could mitigate, potentially, some of the harms of massive wars, and, in fact, incorporate the concerns of women as a result of war including rape as a weapon of war and the issues surrounding women’s reproductive rights.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 10

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/04

10. Since the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, held at Nairobi in 1985, and the adoption of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, the world has experienced profound political, economic, social and cultural changes, which have had both positive and negative effects on women. The World Conference on Human Rights recognized that the human rights of women and the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community. The World Conference on Human Rights reaffirmed the solemn commitment of all States to fulfil their obligations to promote universal respect for, and observance and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, other instruments related to human rights and international law. The universal nature of these rights and freedoms is beyond question.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration is intended to be a basis for the implementation of women’s rights. One of them is the core aspects of human rights that emerges in the form of universality, where the basic premise of human rights to have them for everyone. All people within the species. That includes women.

In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a highly progressive document and fairminded in the inclusion of women into the moral sphere of consideration, where, historically and still at present in various areas, women were not thought of as being worth any ethical basis because men were the main players of the world worth that valuation.

Now, if we look at the contents of this particular paragraph, I am noticing the core factors for equality enshrined in the perspective of development and peace, which is important. Even more than two decades ago, these individuals saw these as valuable parts of the solution to gender inequality. Of course, if we glance at the stipulations throughout these international documents, we can garner an insight into the nation of the situation.

That being, the ways in which some of the worst situations for the world are harbored within the larger context of the mal- and mis-treatment of women. This makes the solutions to these problems in some ways easier and in other ways harder. They become easier because the undergirding issue is superordinate. They emerge from a larger more but not quite singular source.

It becomes harder because it adds an additional superordinate factor to the problem of dealing with the issues of women’s rights and the problems of peace, war, human rights, international law, and so on. As stated in this particular paragraph, there are recognitions about one decade prior to 1995, which was the year of the Beijing Declaration. There were, even then but not as much as now, “profound political, economic, social and cultural changes.”

These forms of changes are different but similar now. These produce a variety of changes to the world system with impacts for women. This creates issues in response. That is, how do we best move forward to consolidate the wins and improve on them, and remediate the losses and repair of their damages? It is not a simple issue. Indeed, we are coming to a head of sorts similar to that time. But the full and equal participation of women within the world system is something non-trivial and needs to be dealt with in a serious way.

Then if we look into the various areas mentioned in this and other documents – the economic, civil, political, social, and cultural lives of women, there is a genuine series of attempts, over decades, to work towards women’s equality in a variety of ways. By doing so, the equality of women can be more secure. In that, we can see the development of greater peace for women and men through the increased inclusion of women into the decision-making operations of the society, to give women some power in their ability to control their own lives and make policy recommendations from the perspectives of women on issues uniquely affecting women including issues of reproductive health.

All these provisions, statements, and and action plans, set about and built on for decades, have been the basis for the furtherance of the values of universality, dignity, and respect for all peoples and individuals through the actualization or realization of human rights including the work of the instantiation of women’s rights connected too many of the other issues plaguing the world.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 9 – Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/03

9. The objective of the Platform for Action, which is in full conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, is the empowerment of all women. The full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women is essential for the empowerment of women. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms./9 The implementation of this Platform, including through national laws and the formulation of strategies, policies, programmes and development priorities, is the sovereign responsibility of each State, in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the significance of and full respect for various religious and ethical values, cultural backgrounds and philosophical convictions of individuals and their communities should contribute to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights in order to achieve equality, development and peace.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Charter of the United Nations is the documented orientation of the Beijing Declaration. The purpose of the Platform for Action is to further international law and the Charter. The thrust for those three points of contact is the empowerment of women: the Charter, the Declaration, and international law. This is the basis for stating the realization, instantiation, actualization, or implementation of human rights and the fundamental freedoms for women and girls.

That no woman should be left out in the light of this – and the empowerment of women is the highest ideal for the equality of the sexes, as mostly and historically women have been at a disadvantage compared to men and often considered a piece of property of chattel. With the full acknowledgment as to the diversity of women, there is also recognition of the obligation, morally speaking, of the governments of the world to work within their own borders to improve the livelihoods and statuses of women.

If all human rights are to be respected, the single largest group for inclusion into the moral sphere of rights would be women. Statistically, this makes the most sense. Then in terms of the international lack of provisions, this grouping continues to have less in societies – fewer rights, fewer opportunities, insufficient finances, fewer chances to have freedoms within the family. Any improvement in their livelihood can improve the status all over the world.

This is reflected in the principles of this paragraph with the declaration for all human rights and fundamental freedoms for women to be implemented for the empowerment of women. Then there are the national and regional particularities mentioned, which simply implies – along with the other descriptors – the individual and unique experiences and backgrounds of each woman while acknowledging the general situation for them around the world.

The final statements relate to the various policy and program recommendations around the world for the greater equality of women. The purpose is to incorporate the unified religious and ethical values – such as the Golden Rule variations mentioned in other articles – necessary to be invoked for the furtherance of the equality of the genders. This is not an easy task or a short implementation period.

But, rather, a long-term effort for the equality of the sexes because we have all of the past to deal with. All of history has moved us to the present, and only the conscious efforts and technological conveniences of the present provide the ability for rights to be implemented more and more. It is within this modern framework that the advancement and empowerment of women make the most sense.

Within this framework of enjoyment of the full rights of women, the dial moves in the modern progressive direction, which contains morally desirable outcomes but also economically more viable societies with increased lifespans, better quality of life, and, in general, more equality of the sexes at all levels of society – more peace, too.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 8

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/03

8. The Platform for Action recognizes the importance of the agreements reached at the World Summit for Children, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the World Conference on Human Rights, the International Conference on Population and Development and the World Summit for Social Development, which set out specific approaches and commitments to fostering sustainable development and international cooperation and to strengthening the role of the United Nations to that end. Similarly, the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, the International Conference on Nutrition, the International Conference on Primary Health Care and the World Conference on Education for All have addressed the various facets of development and human rights, within their specific perspectives, paying significant attention to the role of women and girls. In addition, the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People,/4 the International Year of the Family,/5 United Nations Year for Tolerance,/6 the Geneva Declaration for Rural Women,/7 and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women/8 have also emphasized the issues of women’s empowerment and equality.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

This particular passage or paragraph of the Beijing Declaration is rather substantial but important as it references a large number of the documents and conferences relevant to the equality of the sexes – remembering, of course, that the purpose of these coverages of the paragraphs, stipulations, and statements is not comprehensive reflection on every point but to provide commentary, explanation as needed, and a biased perspective of someone in favour of the principles of human rights and the implementation of equality of women with men through the provision and instantiation of women’s rights and fundamental freedoms in all societies.

It is in this sense: I want freedom for everyone. The summits, conferences, and so on, mentioned provide a light not only into the various kinds of emphases of the international community – some – here. But it also gives an insight into the level the community of women’s rights campaigners is willing to go in order to further women’s rights. This is important, to me at any rate. These have helped bring women’s rights concern to the fore.

Similarly, there have been a number of documents written to incorporate the various facets of gender equality with different domains of consideration in economics, political and civic life, family and social arenas, and so on. All part and parcel for the increased empowerment of women. It is important to do something, but it also helps to provide a grounding upon which to argue for women’s equality when they are crystallized, nearly completely, in some international rights documents.

Those same documents also, happily, give some basis in recommendations and suggestions for the equality of the sexes. It is all exciting and important. For more information on these, the links in the paragraph at the top can give a decent glimpses in what has been considered as important for the equality of the sexes.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 6 & 7

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/02

6. The Fourth World Conference on Women is taking place as the world stands poised on the threshold of a new millennium.

7. The Platform for Action upholds the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women /3 and builds upon the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, as well as relevant resolutions adopted by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly. The formulation of the Platform for Action is aimed at establishing a basic group of priority actions that should be carried out during the next five years.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Today’s paragraphs will include 6 and 7 of the Beijing Declaration in the second chapter entitled Chapter II: Global Framework. The Declaration is a large-scale document intended to provide some bases upon which to tackle some of the most difficult rights and equality problems in the modern world. At the time, it was an era of looking at the new millennium coming forward, as the document was being written in 1995.

It is relatively straightforward regarding the 6th paragraph, which speaks to the conference associated with the document – the Fourth World Conference on Women – with the main purpose being to reiterate a stance. A position or orientation for the future. One where equality can be better achieved for women with men. It references one of the documents already covered in this non-expert series.

Here, we can see the CEDAW or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women intended to provide a rights-basis for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence and other forms of discrimination against women. Then there are references to a variety of resolutions regarding these rights too. Within the Platform for Action, ths 7th paragraph is one speaking more to the development of a series of groupings of importance. Some stipulations or statements for women’s rights become more important than others in the context of the particular tageted activist objectives.

Those goals where some rights and actions get naturally grouped together for the setting of action items or priority actions for the implementation of equality. It was based on a 1995-2000 framework, apparently, with the “next five years” as the timeline for the development of these priority actions. All part of the general move towards more equality of the sexes.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 5 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/02

5. The success of the Platform for Action will require a strong commitment on the part of Governments, international organizations and institutions at all levels. It will also require adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels as well as new and additional resources to the developing countries from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources for the advancement of women; financial resources to strengthen the capacity of national, subregional, regional and international institutions; a commitment to equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal opportunities and to the equal participation of women and men in all national, regional and international bodies and policy-making processes; and the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms at all levels for accountability to the world’s women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Platform for Action of the Beijing Declaration provides a basis for the consideration of the commitments of governments to work towards the equality of women with men through the cooperation and coordination of the international organizations and institutions at all levels. With these three working in alignment, not even all or necessarily well, the progress for a reduction in the inequality of the sexes can be substantial and continues to be important.

We are seeing a blatant pushback against the rights of women with the restriction on abortion access, reproductive health rights, economic freedoms, and the questioning of educational efforts in a variety of no-so-subtle ways. The mobilization of the national and international resources stipulated in paragraph 5, applied to a modern example, could be used to work in the defense of women rights in and freedoms in the aforementioned domains.

The nations wanting to develop should keep in mind the areas of development for women in a variety of ways. And the ways in which those developments provide for the overall flourishing of the society, non-zero sum thinking is necessary here, as the general thinking is that the inclusion of women into the workplace will create a lack of employment opportunities for men across the board.

But this isn’t necessarily true or the proper orientation, where this is simple and unremarkable with women and men competing on a more equal footing. The footings built through successive efforts for equality with a funding mechanism, multilateral and bilateral relationships and then private sourcing of resources for equality of the sexes. All this comes with the advancement and empowerment of women.

If one wants to make a direct or indirect argument against the efforts to fund and support women, it seems important to bear in mind the empirical findings. Does the work to advance and empower women to improve societal health and wellbeing? The answer is an almost unequivocal, “No.” Women with more rights and freedoms, so more equal with men in terms of access, produce more efficacious societal results. Equality works, bottom line.

This is in terms of the national, subregional, regional and international institutional analyses. It is the drumbeat reiteration of the evidence being found for greater equality leading to the more prosperous societies rather than the other way around, where the “equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal opportunities” for women tied to equal participation in the societies leads to healthier societies, so more just, fair, and, in religious terms, righteous – and not self-righteous, hopefully – nations.

Those countries that do not and continue to inherit the superstitions, injustices, inequalities, religious fundamentalisms, and oppression of women create countries where fewer people flourish and are education – and so understand less and less about the ways in which the real world works. The bodies of the world for policy-making are incredibly integral to these modernization practices, especially with the mechanisms built through the implementation of already-in-place policies for keeping men and women accountable to the rights violations and freedom restrictions of women.

It is important for the flourishing of those nations to get these rights and freedoms correct, as they open the window into the possibility of the Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality or the longer-term phrasing of the same initiative in equality of the sexes. And, again, the evidence is well on the side of equality, whether moderation of religious fundamentalism or more freedoms for women with the right to vote, earn money, own land, get educated, and control their own reproduction.

It is these international rights works that comprise a great deal of writing for me because the writing is on the proverbial wall. The benefits are clear. The morality is true insofar as the empirical truths represent the eudaimonic actualization in the real world without recourse to the otherworldly – other than, maybe, rights.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 4 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/01

4. The Platform for Action requires immediate and concerted action by all to create a peaceful, just and humane world based on human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the principle of equality for all people of all ages and from all walks of life, and to this end, recognizes that broad-based and sustained economic growth in the context of sustainable development is necessary to sustain social development and social justice.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Observing the developments of the modern world, of the last couple to few decades of global history, we have seen unprecedented levels of education for women, equality for females with males, and implementation of the full rights of the women – not in full but with continued work towards their instantiation in all areas. Individuals pushing against them, of which there are plenty, are a continual force for the reduction in the equality of women in societies, whether for mythological, religious, or sex-based reasons.

The collective and concerted effort for more peace and justice in the world comes in the form of human rights and freedoms. People capable of making decisions as to what they deem best for their lives rather than imposed from the top-down onto them; and the same with the women of the world. This has been the continual fight for the equality movements. And they have effects. But there is a modern pushback seen with whipping up hysterias about postmodernists and Marxists from decades prior to implement and justify regressive social and cultural movements.

One based on the instantiation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This principle of equality comes in a variety of forms with one of the more poignant generalities with the inclusion of all people of all ages, and every walk of life. If any person is left out of these considerations, then the idea of “human” in human rights becomes unjustifiable as the idea of human rights comes from a principle of universality.

There is a basis for the implementation of the Platform for Action in human rights and equality considerations for the sexes. But I like the emphasis in this paragraph with the declaration of economic growth with sustainable development. We could not have the proper level of development of the societies without the idea of a sustainable development plan. We see this more and more in the conversations about the reality of climate change, the inability of the natural systems of the environment to manage our total waste products, the continued influence of non-biodegradable materials including plastics, and the massive amounts of waste from non-renewable manufacturing and energy sources.

Our generations alive now have a colossal set of problems ahead of us. However, this should not prevent the implementation of our rights and others. And the future that we were given by our forebears should be similar, as a matter of principle, survival of the species, and ethics, be handed down to the next generations. Plus, we will be living in the environmentally degraded world well into the future as well if we do not get our collective acts together regarding the climate and the ecosystem deterioration through active work on sustainable economic growth and development.

It can help provide a basis for social justice too, as women and the minorities of the populations tend to get the short ends of the sticks in the provisions of the societies in which they inhabit. There will always be women and always be statistically smaller proportions of the society. The question then becomes the basis upon which to create a fairer, more just and equitable society.

One of the basic means by which to do this is to take note of the principles of equality and universality seen in the orientation of the human rights and the fundamental freedoms of the United Nations. Then once taken into account, these can form a basis for the further equality of the genders in societies. Besides, with more people involved in the economic livelihood of the culture, there is more net productivity as a boon to an economic conservative point of view and more freedoms and economic inclusion of women as a positive to the social liberal point of view.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement – Paragraph 3

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/01

3. The Platform for Action emphasizes that women share common concerns that can be addressed only by working together and in partnership with men towards the common goal of gender* equality around the world. It respects and values the full diversity of women’s situations and conditions and recognizes that some women face particular barriers to their empowerment.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration deals with a broad range of statements of values and of action items. The ways in which to effectuate certain kinds of change or the transition towards a more gender equal world. The asserted premise at the outset is the shared concerns of women. With some reflection, the concerns or issues for women are not completely the same, but there are for sure statistically sufficient universals in which women face challenges or issues in life either not experienced at all by men or to the same degree by men.

These values for a higher plane of equality or a greater instantiation of the Golden Rule produce a marked difference to the centuries and millennia of consideration of women as lesser-than, incapable of rational thought or even if having the capacity then the ability as having non-primacy in mental life, and, therefore, worth fewer social privileges and legal rights within society. This is the long march of the realization of human nature in its more positive, magnanimous manifestations, where women are provided with more equality and the societies begin to flourish as science and greater accuracy in knowledge about the natural world emerge and begin to inform our view of the world rather than having the religious texts informing the view of the world.

The purpose through the Declaration and its Platform for Action is to more instantiate the common concerns of women with the recognition and crystallization of their rights and responsibilities as persons, but also to make these the ‘jumping off’ point for the great implementation of equality of the women in the world’s societies. Iceland is far ahead of others. Canada is doing decent. Saudi Arabia is doing terribly. Bt in an international cooperative effort, pressure could be put on the governments of the world to further the interests of the women of the world.

This can mean the difference between a more equitable and just world and a world in which women are not seen as capable of entering into the workplace based on the purported necessity of traditionalism. A world with the inability of men to work with women who wear makeup, the ways in which an enforced heterosexual monogamy is needed to keep society going where women’s free choices in relationships and so on should be curtailed in order to prevent men from becoming violent, and the movement of women outside of the home can be seen as simply a historical accident and non-necessity since the 1960s, at least in North America.

The respect and values given to men and women is, objectively, a better world because the most important metrics to most modern people on the health of a society improve, which creates the empirical argument – cross-cultural and over decades – for the necessity of the implementation of gender equality. Otherwise, we could move to the era in which religious fundamentalism, the Divine Right of Kings, and so on. The individual rights overriding the collectivism found in much of traditional culture and Abrahamic – and other – religions stands opposed to the rights of the individual and the family enshrined in international rights documents.

The same documents providing a bargain between the religious and the non-religious, where there is, for an example, the freedom of and from religion. This makes a democratic and equal society possible with the ability of the individual citizens to be able to live their lives as they deem fit for worship or non-worship in a place of worship or not. It is the nobility of these ideals that make a treaty between the historically opposed groups.

In a similar manner, the equality of women with men comes not from the totality of historical precedents but from the work of people who instantiated the notion of women’s personhood in international documents, where their equality becomes non-trivial, non-negotiable and something to strive towards – for the good of all. While working towards the implementation of the rights, it becomes a proper reflection to identify the ways in which women are prevented from being seen as full human beings or as equals with men, whether through statistics, open policies, workplace culture, or laws, or statements of leaders.

These can provide windows into the ways in women are prevent from attaining full equality with men.

–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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2022-04-23

Paragraph 2 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/31

2. The Platform for Action reaffirms the fundamental principle set forth in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, /2 adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights, that the human rights of women and of the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. As an agenda for action, the Platform seeks to promote and protect the full enjoyment of all human rights and the fundamental freedoms of all women throughout their life cycle.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Platform for Action remains an important part of the development of an equal global system for women with men, which benefits, apparently to the people studying the development of nations, the health and wealth of the nations and their populaces. Looking at this particular paragraph within the more substantive portions of the Beijing Declaration, we can see the work alongside, and statements concomitant with, others including the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.

Most of the documents come with an associated meeting of some kind, which then becomes the basis for the parties or the States Parties present to be able to sign it; this one comes from the World Conference on Human Rights. It has an emphasis on women and girls and the empowerment of them through the recognition of them as a person. That is, people worth equal consideration with the others in the society at all levels.

It seems important to note the status of the rights as follows: “inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.” They cannot be or should be violated, or they become privileges and not rights. They are integral, as in basic or fundamental to the status of persons. Consider the right to vote, does a person count as a legal person in a democracy without the right to vote or have a say in the operations in the society via its policies and programmes proposed by the various parties on offer in the nation?

Then the indivisible part of it. The idea being that if one wants one for oneself and then no right for another person; this divides the rights and makes them selective for personal benefit or gain, or the oppression of others through non-recognition of their equal full personhood, in a way, through denial of the same indivisibility principle of rights for them.

This makes for an interesting dynamic on a number of debates, not to be explored here. Now, the basic premise of the Platform for Action comes from the direct tone and statement of the title of the document. It is present as a basis upon which to take action and effectuate some level of change for the general public’s benefit – “general” here meaning global society’s citizenry. This will need to be a collective effort, not even every nation needs to partake of the efforts for equality to begin to create some positive feedback loops in the global system to produce a more equitable, fair, and just world.

I particularly like this paragraph because of the enjoyment and protection of the human rights and freedoms not simply within a select period of time for the women but for their entire lifetime. It is, in a real sense, a highly advanced ethical statement akin to the highest level of morality idealized in aspects of the religious traditions of the world and particular brands of Utilitarianism emphasizing the Golden Rule – not trivial but rather substantive.

These are then enshrined throughout – or are supposed to be – throughout the life cycle. I am sure each ofus has gone through through a period of imposition or indignity, or restriction of personal freedoms, and felt the sense of betrayal and pain coinciding with this; I am also relatively certain this leaves a stamp on the psyche for much of rest someone’s life. We value freedom and dignity – and so rights – that much.

This second paragraph of the Beijing Declaration in its Mission Statement is no different from these experiences, sensibilities, and reflections; this, as with others, simply reflects the codification of the fundamental human rights and freedoms of everyone and not only as statements but a true desires: people want to live their lives as freely and openly as possible, to worship as they please or not, to try and work hard to acquire an education or not, and to work to build a future for themselves and potentially their progeny or not. It is the aspect of being a person, choice, throughout the life cycle to be respected and enshrined in stipulations such as these.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement Paragraph 1

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/31

1. The Platform for Action is an agenda for women’s empowerment. It aims at accelerating the implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women /1 and at removing all the obstacles to women’s active participation in all spheres of public and private life through a full and equal share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-making. This means that the principle of shared power and responsibility should be established between women and men at home, in the workplace and in the wider national and international communities. Equality between women and men is a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and is also a necessary and fundamental prerequisite for equality, development and peace. A transformed partnership based on equality between women and men is a condition for people-centred sustainable development. A sustained and long-term commitment is essential, so that women and men can work together for themselves, for their children and for society to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Platform for Action represents one of the large pieces of the Beijing Declaration after the Annex covered in several articles prior to this one. If we look at the opening statement, the emphasis remains the empowerment of women, which, I would argue, amounts to the greater realization of the Golden Rule envisioned in prominent religious ethical systems and in Utilitarianism built on by John Stuart Mill with the extension or recognition of women as fundamentally persons, human beings, deserving the same consideration as men and freedom/autonomy as men in modern societies.

The Platform for Action is important for not only the empowerment of women but also, in accordance with the metrics of national development, the health and wellbeing of the society. Obviously, this connects to the health and wellbeing of the nation-state too, and of men in fact. If families do well, then the men and women, on average, will do well too.

The purpose is to take the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women and begin to implement them. With the strict purpose to take away the restrictions of the livelihoods of women around the world, the obstacles, this includes both the professional and personal, the public and private, lives of the women in order to create a world in which the power and influence is more shared in the “economic, social, cultural and political decision-making” spheres of life.

Whether the further power and responsibility of women come from the national or the international communities, or the equality is seen as fundamentally a human rights and social justice issues, the active participation of women in societies can improve their status and lead to a more just and equal world for all. Indeed this may be one of the core pre-requisites for the desired equal and peaceful world by many or most; wherein the equality of the sexes leads to greater quality of life in nations, it seems straightforward to need to create the foundations for this in a non-pollyannish manner.

Now, the partnership between men and women in multiple societies, often based on tradition or fundamentalist religion, has been one between master and slave, owner and owned. Within this unfortunate relationship, we constructed a number – naturally and non-consciously, probably – of myths convenient for the perpetuation of the old relationship, which can, at times, become crystallized in religious texts and the formal mandates of even a secular society.

The proposal is for a people-centered society and not one for organizations, corporations, or religions, but of the people. Then a society that is sustainable for not only one, two, or three generations for the long-term survival of civilizations and peoples. Without sustainable development, we lose the capacity for a world for the future generations, or possibly one not worth living.

The equality of the sexes is and can continue to be an important part of this, especially we meet those challenges of the 21st century.

–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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2022-04-23

Annex I(38) of the Beijing Declaration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/30

38. We hereby adopt and commit ourselves as Governments to implement the following Platform for Action, ensuring that a gender perspective is reflected in all our policies and programmes. We urge the United Nations system, regional and international financial institutions, other relevant regional and international institutions and all women and men, as well as non-governmental organizations, with full respect for their autonomy, and all sectors of civil society, in cooperation with Governments, to fully commit themselves and contribute to the implementation of this Platform for Action.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Declaration or the 1995 Beijing Declaration starts with Annex I. As seen above in Annex I(38), and built further in prior articles, this final section looks at the ways in which the governmental systems bound to the nation-state identity should work to provide a perspective on gender within the work done by it. If we look at the policies and the eventual programs of a government, this raises questions about the nature of the international system in relation to pressing the governments to “adopt and commit” themselves to the stipulations of the Beijing Declaration.

It is, granted, not a small task, nor even a large one, but a truly gargantuan project akin to the colossal problem of climate change or science miseducation or denial in general. These are big problems need Swiss Army Knife and bold solutions. Of which, the solutions of the states in the world should be working towards solving, e.g., looking at the courageous work of Iceland to implement broad-scale levels of gender equality through the nation.

Now, as you well know, the main phrase floating around is the advancement and empowerment of women, in particular, the empowerment of women. Often, this is a tagline or blanket statement to encapsulate the general content of the policies, rights, initiatives, documents, and programs intended to be brought to bear to tackle the problem of global equality of women with men.

With the equality of the women with the men as the ideal, and as the metrics determine through international analysis, the trend is greater wellbeing for the society as a whole as the citizenry move more and more towards the implementation of programs of action devoted to greater access for women to jobs and education. Gender is a non-trivial aspect of equality of the sexes.

At present, as seen in North America and less so in some other nations, there appears to be deliberate obfuscation and, potentially misinformation about the distinction between sex and gender in order to delegitimate, in the eyes of the general public who wants to believe these as they fit a particular political and social narrative, the work of the women’s movement, the sexual orientation and gender identity movement, and others.

But gender is an easy concept, but is becoming more complicated as we create proper terms for minority phenomena – not in the language of disorder, as was done with homosexuals, but, rather, in the language of acceptance, tolerance, and greater understanding. Throughout the financial sector of the economies, the global and national systems are urged here, and men and women individually, to respect the right to freedom of choice to one’s life and for the implementation of the Platform for Action.

As a non-trivial inclusion, the next articles will cover the Platform for Action and other parts of the Beijing Declaration in order to combat the various areas of the global system where women are given short shrift through lack of access to some of the basic rights and privileges already, automatically, afforded to the men of the world. The wealthier nations have achieved greater equality, and belong to much of the Western world, and this should be praised for being real achievements; however, this should not, as has been done in some conservative and progressive commentary, be taken as the right to denigrate other religions, cultures, peoples, or governments simply for not making the progress in human rights made by other nations. It would exhibit, and does represent, a blatant disregard for the state, often more difficult and arduous, of other peoples of the world and can, at times, be seen as nothing short of chauvinistic, proud boasting, and condescension to others for the mere fact of being in more unfortunate circumstances.

It takes a humble approach and consistent proactive set of implementations in order to work together as a global community to achieve the desired equality by many, the better lives wanted by many, and the freedoms so desperately desired so many of our forebearers, who wanted the better lives for us that we have achieved in many ways; but these are neither historical accidents nor permanent states of purported perfect but, instead of these, a better place relative to our forerunners that took lots of work and sacrifice and takes even more to maintain and improve upon – as we identify particular small problem and large issues and work to solve them, including the helping of other nations through initiatives such as the Platform for Action.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Declaration: Annex I(37)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/30

37. Ensure also the success of the Platform for Action in countries with economies in transition, which will require continued international cooperation and assistance;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration from 1995, in Annex I(37), speaks to the need for the implementation of the Platform of Action for not only the advanced industrial economies seen in a few dozen nations. But also, the nations sometimes labeled undeveloped, developing, or underdeveloped. Those countries without the technological and social, and even governmental and legal, infrastructure probably necessary for the full implementation of calls to action such as the Platform for Action.

The Platform of Action, which will be covered in more depth starting in the next few days. It is something worth considering, as this provides in-depth and actionable areas for implementing the human rights of women. The need for other countries to insist on cooperation on the relevant superpowers of the world to help with the development of some of the nations least among us is an ethical imperative.

Because without that help, there will unlikely be the desired development of many of these in transition countries, which may, without the relevant help, in fact, be in transition nations but, rather, those Member States that could have developed but did not in the end. The richest countries in the world, by implication and direct statement of multiple human rights documents stipulation, have a moral obligation to the countries with populations among the least among us.

The international cooperation aspect of this particular statement in one of the last annexes is important because this orients the notion of a truly global network bound to one another, in order to reduce the level of noise and increase the degree of fidelity or signal in the provisions for the peoples of the world – to increase the signal to noise ratio of the work of the international community.

Also, this cooperation through the practical implementation of assistance could be debated, considered, and then reworked for proportionate contributions to the transitions of these “economies in transition” of the various nations of the United Nations. There is not an explicit mention here, but, in general, there is an acknowledgment of the need to include women into the central economy in order for the countries in transition to develop more completely and comprehensively.

It is not limited to economics, politics, social life, legal issues, cultural norms, and religious or irreligious status of the majority of the population; it is something interconnected, woven together in a national tapestry to warm the national melting pots for greater development of quality of human life for the inhabitants or citizens of any particular economy in transition.

The empowerment of women remains an important part of this. Indeed, without the inclusion of women in the policymaking and decision-making apparatuses of the world, this can lead to the degradation of national development. Most studies into the main means by which to improve the livelihood of the general population include the women of the nations being empowered.

The Beijing Declaration, the Platform of Action, and the international assistance and cooperation are important parts of this. Where this can become a problem is in the unwillingness of traditional cultural norms, sexist workplace rules and regulations and social mores, a religious and institutional law preventing women from full and equal access to the important levers of power in the society, these working individually or in tandem can be national preventatives, whether conscious or unknowingly, for the full advancement and empowerment of women efforts through the international cooperation and assistance.

Thus, this takes an order change of how the globe has been set, built, and processed for the entirety, or much of, modern industrial and pre-industrial-and-post-agricultural societies and civilizations, which is in the favour of men in general, ethnic majority men in particular, and the religiously dominant classes and the wealthy/royal sectors of the society. These new steps are being taken but there is an obvious pushback against the equality of women with a rise in concomitant xenophobia, racism, sexism, restriction of women’s rights as persons, and authoritarianism.

Each with attempts to divide nations and its citizenry in order to wrest back power from the public, to undermine public solidarity, prevent the construction of social service programs for the public, and to try to have women back in the home and with the children – lots of them. The international order is in flux, but the cooperation and assistance from the world seems one of the more plausible and direct routes to equality of the sexesin the end, in spite of the rise in explicit barriers cynically exploitative of base human tendencies.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Declaration: Annex I(36)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/29

36. Ensure the success of the Platform for Action, which will require a strong commitment on the part of Governments, international organizations and institutions at all levels. We are deeply convinced that economic development, social development and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development, which is the framework for our efforts to achieve a higher quality of life for all people. Equitable social development that recognizes empowering the poor, particularly women living in poverty, to utilize environmental resources sustainably is a necessary foundation for sustainable development. We also recognize that broad-based and sustained economic growth in the context of sustainable development is necessary to sustain social development and social justice. The success of the Platform for Action will also require adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels as well as new and additional resources to the developing countries from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources for the advancement of women; financial resources to strengthen the capacity of national, subregional, regional and international institutions; a commitment to equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal opportunities and to the equal participation of women and men in all national, regional and international bodies and policy-making processes; and the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms at all levels for accountability to the world’s women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Here we come to a rather large stipulation about the rights of the women in accordance with the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action. Looking at the basic template stipulated in the first statement, we have the recognition of the need for both government and institutions to work together for the success at all levels.

This can potentially bring questions to mind about the nature of the issues and the targeted objective for success. The obvious questions in mind are the ways in which economic development, social development, and environmental protection are interrelated. In fact, the Sustainable Development Goals and other international objectives relate to this triplet of action.

The goals for a more sustainable future relate directly to the world of a future where, for example, climate change is tackled and the social and economic structures are put in place to be able to deal with the global warming crisis in a sustainable way, in order to provide a world worth living in for future generations.

This would remain in spite of individuals or groups in denial of the and knowingly or unknowingly pressing the species towards the proverbial cliff. These three domains working in unison for the better future can rise many tides through mutual reinforcement. For example, the development of the next wave of economic growth in the energy sector, which will be sustainable energy, can be an economic and sustainability boon while also stabilizing communities with good, high-paying jobs.

This raises the health of the surrounding environment and the of the communities benefiting from these technological productions and economic activity. One of the target populations for this form of growth can be women in poverty or penurious circumstances. The use of the economic and environmental resources from these economic activities could be used to improvetheir livelihoods and circumstances.

Indeed, there does seem to be good reason to believe the investment in women improvements the lives of children, families, and communities more than simply the investment in the men on international metrics of the issue. These efforts sustained over time lead to the forms of social justice and social development desired by many citizens, especially the social justice of equity for women and people of color.

With the work ahead of us, this will also mean the multinational cooperation in order to create the leverage for the advancement of women. They reiteratethe power in the financial resources being strengthened for the national to the international interests, institutionally. This comes, happily, alongside the commitment to equal opportunities, responsibilities, and rights.

Furthermore, these create the basis for the greater involvement of men and women in both the bodies and decision-making entities relevant for the full equality of men and women. The equality of women with men should not be hollow, which is where the final portion of the stipulation comes into play; where the equality of the sexes comes in the form of open and transparent accountability of actions of the institutions of the world to women, this creates the foundation for the real local justice through international means.

–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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2022-04-23

Annex I(35) of the Beijing Declaration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/29

35. Ensure women’s equal access to economic resources, including land, credit, science and technology, vocational training, information, communication and markets, as a means to further the advancement and empowerment of women and girls, including through the enhancement of their capacities to enjoy the benefits of equal access to these resources, inter alia, by means of international cooperation;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

For the equality of the sexes, one of the most desired things is the ability of women to have the equal access to the resources of the society. The Beijing Declaration lists a large number of the ways in which the rights of women are recognized and respected in accordance with a variety of international considerations about the meaning of resources.

Let’s take the example of the land, something crucially needed for the ability to have or own a house to make a home, to farm the land, and to take advantage of potential local resources. However, without a lack in this domain, many women can simply be left out in the proverbial cold because of this. In that, the main owners of the land throughout history have been the royal classes and, even more often, the males.

If we take the examples of North America, the main owners of the land were only to be the wealthy, the white, and the male. The land conferred even further wealth of course. This leaves the women of the continent in direr straits compared to the rest of the men because of the ownership of land by the wealthier men and the privileges, especially financial and social, leveraged over the women of the society.

Another is credit. If a woman or a collective of women do have access to the land, and if they want to found a business or a farm on the aforementioned land, then they will need to have some form of credit to be able to purchase the required upfront expenses of the farm or business, especially as most are not in any way independently wealthy.

Indeed, one of the next markers is important for this, as the education of women in science and technology continues to be a barrier to the fulfillment of women’s and girls’ potentials. The land and credit problem appears to be more of a problem for the women in the poorer areas of the world compared to the richer parts, where the rich countries have a problem with education and that means science and technology for the women.

Other factors for education applicable to the middle range of the income scale is vocational training, where the women of the world have the ability to access, at times, the vocational schools but neither the inclination nor the social permission and encouragement to enter into the traditionally male dominated fields. Also, the phrase “male dominated fields” used to mean all fields rather than science and technology and trades as now.

Then there is the issue of information provided to women to be able to know which fields or disciplines may be available to them in the light of restrictions or not, which can bea significant issue for many women the world over. The tother areas in need of equal access links much of the former points together with the equal access for women to communication networks and markets.

It can be in their respective nations. It can be in the obscure areas of the world. The point is the inclusion of women into these networks to have a fairer and more just chance, and evnetually equal, chance with the men in contrast to much of history in which the communications networks and markets were restricted for women, particularly poor women and women of color.

These, as noted, are parts of the advancement and the empowerment of women and girls. Through the implementation of measures to increase wome’s access in these areas, there could be a marked increase in the capability of women and girls to further achieve their potentials and then enjoy the equal access to the earned resources around the world, which will, in fact, require the long-term commitment of the international community for both coordination and cooperation.

–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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2022-04-23

Annex I(33)-(34): Beijing Declaration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/28

33. Ensure respect for international law, including humanitarian law, in order to protect women and girls in particular;

34. Develop the fullest potential of girls and women of all ages, ensure their full and equal participation in building a better world for all and enhance their role in the development process.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Annex I(33) and Annex I(34) of the Beijing Declaration stipulate the need for women and girls to have protection within the confines of the rule of law, and in particular international law and humanitarian law. The ability of a state to impose its will on the women of the population can be easily seen in history textbooks and even now.

The question then becomes the ways in which women can be more fully integrated into the power structures of the society and then have appropriate protections through the international legal order. This is not a an easy problem. Women and girls have the rights and protections listed in a variety of ways. However, we still maintain a sense of the vulnerability of the females of the species given the statistics about violence alone.

This raises important questions about the reality of the situation for women and girls and then the rights and protections stated for them in the first place. This is not an easy problem to even quantify within that context. But then, how to best move forward for the international legal protections of women, it is something of which people were aware of in 1995 on the international scene.

However, the respect for international law is something in question for several decades too – with the decrease in respect for international law through war crimes and other violations of international law carried out by major nations in the global order while also having a power of veto to prevent proper democratic voting procedures to have actions taken against the major violators of human rights and, in particular, women’s rights.

Annex I(34) covers more of the potential of women and girls through all ages. The key phrase is “fullest potential” because not every nation is at the same stage of socio-economic development, which should, in a realistic sense, limit expectations – though outliers exist in every nation and generation – about the meaning of fullest potential for the people involved there.

As we can see in many developing nations, the simple right to vote or the provisions of the basic necessities of life begins to reach the upper echelons and gifts of the society to the public, to the women of the country. The fullest potential of one nation-state or even subculture is not the same as the other. Life remains relative.

For the women and girls of all ages, the intent is to ensure their rights and privileges are kept, not revoked, by any personal, familial, national, or international actor or agent. This, as per the international research, coincides with the development of nations and the greater well-being of women – the increased respect and expansion of women’s rights being implemented for the benefit of all.

This helps not only the individual nations taking part in it. Indeed, it helps with the enhancement of the full process of development because, in an obvious way, the nation works within its 100% capacity through the inclusion of women rather than at half-mast through denial of women and girls, regardless of age, the equal opportunities as the men.

The next question then becomes the places in which this can better be implemented and supported through international law protections. Because the force of a global legal order and rights framework can pressure entire states or nations to behave more properly and within the confines of the norms of the international community idealized in its international rights documents and enshrined in its legal frameworks.

–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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2022-04-23

Maya Bahl on Morphology, Sex, Race and Skin Color

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/28

Maya Bahl is an editor and contributor to The Good Men Project with me. She has an interest and background in forensic anthropology. Curious, Passionate, and Adventurous she would hope to make life more live-able! She writes poetry and narrative, and can be found at Times of Maya and Maya Bahl respectfully.

As it turns out, I hear the term race thrown into conversations in both conservative and progressive circles. At the same time, I wanted to know the more scientific definitions used by modern researchers including those in forensic anthropology. Then I asked Bahl about conducting an educational series. Here we are, part two.

To start the second part of the series, I asked Bahl about race in the public and then in the professional circles. Where the facial morphology becomes qualitatively realizable to most people, hence, the general heuristic used for prejudice, for example. The morphology to distinguish someone’s race may differ from skull morphology, and may differ from hip morphology used to determine the sex rather than the race of the person.

Bahl explained, “Aspects of the face and hips are indicators in telling the difference between men and women posthumously, where forensic anthropologists take measurements in providing an accurate reading. The nasal arch, forehead, jawline, and what is known as the mastoid process that is behind the jawline are indicators of race, although, it’s also the case where individuals of a race could show features that are distinguishable of another race.”

She went on to describe the way in which hip morphology is used to determine the sex of the person. With the birthing process for biological females and not for biological males as described in the forensic anthropological and biology community, the role of giving birth given, anatomically, to the female of the human species.

Then the questions moved into questions about race being determined by bone structure. Some may think of infering about bone structure or morphology and then about skin color if race relates to morphology and skin color relates to race. Bahl responded on the possibility of prediction and generation of an image of an individual in order to infer skin color from bone morphology. This remains within the realm of possibility.

“Many times image technicians have done so whether it’s to help law enforcement identify a perpetrator or victim or to bring closure through identification of a loved one. Even outside of Anthropology, facial and skeletal reconstruction has also aided historians and researchers in seeking the truth, like with reconstructing ‘Otzi’ or the Iceman that was found in the Swiss Alps. Without image processing software though, one couldn’t determine race by bone structure,” Bahl stated.

The other questions were about race differing from ethnicity based on expert opinion. As well, the inferences one can make about race through bone morphology.

“Race captures the scientific rigor of genetics and biology whereas ethnicity attempts to group perceived ancestry, ethnicity by definition is more specific as it goes deeper in linking people together. One may have an Asian Ancestry for instance, but have a Khmer Ethnicity from Cambodia,” Bahl said. “I would also turn the question around and just point out that variation among people are surfacing each day, where the distinct shapes of one’s face or nose is now not enough to claim someone’s race. There is 1 in every 1,666 births of identifying as a Transgendered individual, according to the 2000 study in the American Journal of Human Biology, where variation would undoubtedly be found.”

–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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2022-04-23

The Beijing Declaration’s Annex I(31) and (32)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/27

31. Promote and protect all human rights of women and girls;

32. Intensify efforts to ensure equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all women and girls who face multiple barriers to their empowerment and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, or disability, or because they are indigenous people;Beijing Declaration (1995)

Looking through these sections of the text, we can see the continuous reiteration of the fundamental need to further implement women’s rights for the promotion of equality, dignity, respect, and so on; the Beijing Declaration is in line with the other rights documents seen throughout the historical record of the 20th century.This cannot be understated. Women have had an extraordinarily hard time compared to the men relative to their historical period and geographic area based on the records of the world. The places where women and girls are better treated, as equal members of the society; this shows in the socio-economic development of the countries.Investment in women and girls is, statistically speaking, a greater boon to the men and the society, the families and communities, more than the simple investment in the fathers of the families. The promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls remain within this set of considerations. They produce concrete, positive, and lasting results.Annex I(32) speaks more to the efforts for equal enjoyment of the rights and freedoms of women and girls regardless of personal identity factors. A woman or a girl who is of a particular age. She should not be discriminated against or not provided the equal rights and freedoms. Same in the case of a woman being of any race or speaking any language. The same goes for a woman’s ethnicity or ethnic background.It is identical as a consideration to simply not discount a girl or woman based on their culture or religious background either. These are non-factors; same with disabilities, born or acquired. It is the same for Indigenous women and girls too. As we know in my own country, and several nations throughout the world, Indigenous women tend to be subject to more violence than the men.This is psychological, physically, and sexually. Where there are several international rights documents speaking to the need to work to achieve the reduction and eventual elimination of the prejudice and bias against women and girls, the ways in which men, and some women, see men, or other women, as simply less than enough to grant them the right to physical, psychologically, or sexually abuse them.Truly, the main word of emphasis in this last section for consideration today is the emphasis on “intensify.” The furtherance of efforts for women’s equality is not something to be delayed or done with a lackadaisical mindset. It requires a serious effort by the main movers and shakers of the world. By which I mean, the people who are dirt poor farmers, Indigenous women and girls, and those kept on the margins of the global system but who have a voice yet to be seen, felt, and only marginally heard in the global community in the recent past.Our collective effort should be to intensify efforts for these people to feel some form of empowerment and advancement, especially in regards to the rights of women. The benefits of an equitable society in the form of the outcomes and the lofty ideals preceding them. The ethical standards, high ones, set in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated documents decades ahead of it.These amount to negations of the history of the divine right of kings, religious oppression, and the absolute forms of monarchy. Rights for all rather than some, whether royalty or religious alone; these provide the transition from the right to rule doctrines of the past into the rights of all to determine their own lives, individually and collectively, apart from royal lineage and religious dominance.It is a good thing too, as we have seen the most rapid increase in the quality of life for people only in the periods since the rejection of religious oppression, absolute monarchies, and the divine right of kinds. The idea of all having the rights and freedoms decided upon by the international community and show in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents. These remain remarkable achievments in moral philosophy.–

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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2022-04-23

Annex I(29)-(30): Beijing Declaration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/27

29. Prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls;

30. Ensure equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and health care and enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health as well as education;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls is an important part of the international conversation and an integral component of the international rights documents including the Beijing Declaration. We can see this exemplified in Annex I(29), wherein it is stated that the prevention and eventual elimination of violence against women and girls is a priority.

It is not even an afterthought but, rather, a core piece of the international rights framework with the inclusion of a single statement of the first Annex of the document. Interestingly, we can see this reflected in some of the other international rights documents covered in some earlier writings, in which the foundational right of dignity and respect as a person can be upheld through not being violated psychologically, physically, or sexually.

Annex I(30) continues the same reasoning with the provisions for women not in explicit support for the prevention and elimination of violence against them. The stipulation orients more towards the general purpose of having the basics of life given to women in the world. If we look at the ensuring equity of access, as with the men usually in these societies, then the women can fulfill their potential as the men can too.

I do not mean to diminish the importance of the support for boys at the bottom and women at the top in the current period; however, I want to recognize the glass ceilings placed on women for centuries, at least, and only, truly, motivational ceilings placed on boys now, who become the unmotivated young men of the modern era. We see these happenings around the world.

The women are mature and focused and want to get ahead in life through education and a good job while the men do not seem to be that interested in all of this. It is an interesting asymmetry in the level of self-development of women by women and men simply opting out of what may seem to them as a world unrecognizable to their fathers and grandfathers. Because life is less handed to them, now, especially in contrast to the deep past.

The provisions for women listed in this section look at the equal treatment of women and men in not only education but also health care. The former is important with primary and secondary education, as well as equitable access to postsecondary schooling. The norm has been and arguably has remained, the simple restriction and barring of women from the levels of higher learning seen in the many nations of the world.

The questions then become what can be done to reduce and eventually eliminate those barriers to women in higher education. Our collective will need to work for the better access to the other half of the population into the areas of education, especially as the expansion of the knowledge economy truly plays on the strengths of women.

The other part is the provision of health care as a fundamental right. This is seen in several rights documents and international organizations for decades. There are many developed nation commentators stating that medical care and health care is not a fundamental right; these are either ignorant or lying individuals misleading the public and misinforming them in either case.

The ability of women to get their health care as they need it is an important part of the conversation around the right to health and wellbeing of women, and so children and families more often than if simply the men. The basic emphasis throughout much of the international community is the need to provide for the necessities of life for the general public.

Anything else, or most else, comes from deliberate propaganda and public relations designed to misinform the public about the nature of the rights and the ones extant, especially those relevant to the health and wellbeing of the general population including women and children. Pay attention, these are the folks for sale and often bought and sold to sell a particular brand of snake oil with a tinge of sophistication. Trust your nose.

–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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2022-04-23

Annex I(25)-(28) of the Beijing Declaration

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/26

25. Encourage men to participate fully in all actions towards equality;

26. Promote women’s economic independence, including employment, and eradicate the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women by addressing the structural causes of poverty through changes in economic structures, ensuring equal access for all women, including those in rural areas, as vital development agents, to productive resources, opportunities and public services;

27. Promote people-centred sustainable development, including sustained economic growth, through the provision of basic education, life-long education, literacy and training, and primary health care for girls and women;

28. Take positive steps to ensure peace for the advancement of women and, recognizing the leading role that women have played in the peace movement, work actively towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and support negotiations on the conclusion, without delay, of a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty which contributes to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

With the Beijing Declaration, as with the innumerable areas of the international rights scene, we can see the increasing relevance of women’s rights alongside a concomitant increase in the pushback – quite explicit – against women’s rights. The purpose is to redirect attention and energy to irrelevant topics, enact sabotage to prevent social organization and community work for the movements needed for – for instance – reproductive health rights of women.

No matter how bold, how ignorant, how ahistorical, how irrelevant, or even illogical, the concerns are brought forward to attempt to, in essence, assault the civilian population’s minds, of which the money for these media come, at times, from the public coffers, so, as Noam Chomsky describes, they are paying to have their minds destroyed – correction: we are paying to have our minds destroyed at a crucial moment in the history of the world in which women are seeing unprecedented levels of equality.

The questions then arise about the relevance of the Beijing Declaration to this, where today we will also be looking, a little, into Annex I(25) to (28). In the first, the emphasis is on the encouragement of the men in the society in terms of their contributions to the nation and the family, and the community for equality.

One argument put forward may propose that women are a privileged class within our societies through the inclusion of the equality rights arguments, documents, and implementations; furthermore, this may coincide with the increase in arguments against face valuation and explicit intention of the two phrase “empowerment of women” and “advancement of women.”

Of course, the ahistorical note is the ignoring of the ways in which various societies have, in more ways than one, empowered men – sometimes white, or landowning, or rich, or royal blood, or higher caste, or religion leader men – at, quite often, the disadvantage of the women within the society.

This brings the sharp focus on the first statement to the bridge of our collective and proverbial noses. We cannot miss it; we look silly if we claim to have missed it, too, by the way.

Annex I(26) continues in a similar line with the economic independence of the women of a society. One of the best predictors of the health of a society is the degree to which women are empowered and their interests are advanced; it is not something to be taken lightly but, rather, an important core feature off the advanced industrial economies the nations that are beginning or have already started moving more in those directions have begun, apparently, to show some of the same positive trends with the minute changes dependent on the particulars of the country – history, dominant religious mythology, degree of post-colonial status, the degree of separation of place of worship and state, and so on.

The improvements in the economic livelihoods of women are no small feat and a necessary feature of the freedom of women as money permits individuals to do things that they would, otherwise, not be able to accomplish. The proposal in this second statement is in a restructuring of the associated mechanisms dealing with economic access and distribution within the society.

The emphasis is on the equal access including, and especially, the rural enclaves of the world without centralized access to some of the fundamental provisions more easily accessible in the metropolises and city centers of the world, the urban areas, and greater surrounding areas.

Women, in these stipulations, are seen as “vital development agents” in which the provisions of the nation aim at the women more than the men for the greater economic and social development of the society. Again, and this can not be understated, these are robust findings around the world on the level of development of a society. If women are more equal with the men, the society is, statistically speaking, more probably to be a developed nation.

Annex I(27) continues to state that the orientation of the society should be towards one of the people. One with the best interests of the people in mind, which remain almost universal and easily identifiable through survey data or some of the psychological-anthropological data too. It is in this sense the development of a society towards greater equality is not something to be taken lightly or trifled with in any way.

One of the key drivers of women’s advancement in the current era is the mandatory provision of basic education plus the ability to equitably access higher levels of education including secondary and postsecondary. It is within this framework that a Member State of the United Nations can grow more, faster, and more equitably because women have more choice in their lives. Men tend to not have these same barriers to access to the society compared to the women.

The other provision is for health care for both girls and women, where the giving of a proper and high-level healthcare for women and girls can assist in the work, for example, of family planning. Altogether, this is one of the bases upon which greater equality can be seen; the ability of girls to have safe sex if they choose to without coercion, with proper contraceptives, and then the provisions of reproductive health services in the society for the women to be able to plan their families if they want one.

Annex I(28) speaks more to the ways in which there are more positive steps in the society for the advancement of women through peace measures. It sounds vague because it is amorphous. But the more equitable societies tend to be less likely to engage in war, typically speaking.

The importance of women in peace and men in war, historically and at present cannot be understated as the long-term history of the world with a variety of justifications has been war with less than 10% of the recorded history of the world as in peace-time. This raises issues about human nature and the possibility of the emancipation of not only blacks in America, Indigenous in Canada, women around the world, and so on, but of every single human being now and into the future.

My extrapolation is a great promise if we can get past the issues of climate change and nuclear catastrophes – including wars and winters – then we have a bright life ahead for everyone. But these remain open questions and convergence problems. We need consensus and a real ethical framework to work through the problems now.

Women have a crucial role to place in not only the global peace movements but also the disarmament of the world arsenal with “strict and effective international” control, even as many countries seem to prepare more, and more, for an international or global conflict with declining hegemony and a post-primacy world possibly sooner than any of us may expect now.

The interesting, and rather nuanced consideratiions in this stipulation is the inclusion of the negotiations to be supported for “universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nucelar-test-ban.” That is a stunning statement. It is something of note in terms of the firmness, according to those present for the Beijing Declaration in 1995, in which nuclear arsenals and testing are considered extraordinarily dangerous and needing immediate reeling and reining into control by the international control.

Women play a crucial role here or could more into the future. Any nuclear disarmament will work for a prevention of the proliferation of a weapon that could result in the near instantaneous extonction of the species. That is not an understatement. These remain some of the most dangerous problems in the current context.

Where can women play a role in all this, in an equitable way “without delay” regarding the immediate concern of nuclear disarmament, I would ask the women and then look into the ways in which men began – and then start there.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Declaration (1995): Annex I(22)-(24)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/26

22. Intensify efforts and actions to achieve the goals of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women by the end of this century;

23. Ensure the full enjoyment by women and the girl child of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and take effective action against violations of these rights and freedoms;

24. Take all necessary measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and the girl child and remove all obstacles to gender equality and the advancement and empowerment of women;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Annex I(22) to (24) of the Beijing Declaration deals with the intensified efforts for the women to enjoy full rights and elimination of discrimination. Not a small task to accomplish for the international community; however, it is definitely doable within the provisions of the document and of the international community.

The problem is not documentation via rights, or the government, but the best means by which the international community can coordinate for more equality in rights. The first section to be discussed today, Annex I(22), looks into the need to up the ante on the efforts for the goals of the advancement of women throughout the 21st century.

Depending on the document, some will be immediate efforts, long-term efforts, even indefinite articles with the intention to pursue equality until achieved. It is an interesting sight. Nonetheless, the general move is for more equality with an increased emphasis on the long-term future for equality of women with men.

The next look into the “full enjoyment” a not-too-obscure phrase when looking at women’s rights, where the ability to live in a free way apart from the fear of rights being revoked or violence begins inflicted. Throughout the life cycle from girl to woman, there is a general issue in the physical, psychological, and sexual violence disproportionately impacting girls and women.

Sometimes, it is associated with resentment over women as equals in the society in the ability of women to make free sexual choices, or of girls finally having equal education with the boys; where, in a way, the boys and men feel deprivileged from a prior higher state, when, in fact, the equality is simply providing for the other (approximate) half of the population.

The point provides a recognition of the need to prevent the rights of women and girls from being revoked because this can form the basis for terrible repression against women and girls. The best means by which to better provide for women and girls is recognized, implement, and retain their fundamental human rights.

Annex I(24) speaks to the need to take the requisite actions as individuals and states for the rights of women and girls to be free from the possibility of human rights violations. The first people to lose their rights in a regressive period of a nation tend to be the women and the girls, which raises questions about the means by which to prevent it.

One of the best ways is vigilance and prudence, even hypervigilance about education and inculcation of the values enshrined in various international rights documents emphatically stating the rights of women and girls. It is not something to be overstated or to be taken lightly. Rather, it is something to consider from the point of view of everyone deserving and reserving the right to equal treatment and status – all else considered – within the society.

There have been obvious regressions in a number of different areas of the world for women’s rights. But one of the most striking is the Global Gag Rule on abortion and other funding starting with the United States of America. It is something reflected in a number of regressive actions within the international community regarding the rights of the people to have safe and equitable access to abortion.

Religious individuals hold the right to freedom of religion, belief, and conscience, but not to restrict reproductive rights of other people; that is to say, these former mentioned rights can be invoked for the prevention of an abortion on themselves, as a religious woman, or within their family decision-making structure, if a religious home, but not for other citizens in the society who do not harbour those restrictions.

It remains an important part of the creation of a just and equal, and fairer, international society and global community. It starts with us. It starts with areas of emphasis. It begins with education and continual re-education of the next generations. To drop the ball would be to disservice all those dead and gone who made their sacrifices by giving their lives away for our better futures, we owe the same to the next generations, whether or not we have a personal future generation ourselves; it takes everyone.

–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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2022-04-23

Beijing Declaration (1995): Annex I(19)-(21)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/25

19. It is essential to design, implement and monitor, with the full participation of women, effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes, including development policies and programmes, at all levels that will foster the empowerment and advancement of women;

20. The participation and contribution of all actors of civil society, particularly women’s groups and networks and other non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations, with full respect for their autonomy, in cooperation with Governments, are important to the effective implementation and follow-up of the Platform for Action;

21. The implementation of the Platform for Action requires commitment from Governments and the international community. By making national and international commitments for action, including those made at the Conference, Governments and the international community recognize the need to take priority action for the empowerment and advancement of women.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Beijing Declaration (1995) Annex I(19)-(21) speak to a large number of considerations about the equality of the sexes and the relevance of women’s organizations.

In Annex I(19), we observe the nature of participation of women within the society with women seen as needing to be empowered and advanced within the society through a variety of mechanisms. One of these is a sensitivity in the design of the participation of women in the society. As with any grouping, there are ways in which to ease and expedite areas of contribution to society – areas previously kept from women and only very, very recently providing some advantage for them, e.g., education.

The next is the implementation of the designed programs with the women of the world in mind as well as the monitoring of the progress of those programs of action. Tied to the design and eventual implementation, if approved, we can see the tracking of the progress. If things happen to work better than before, or better than alternatives, then, obviously, the pathways for women’s participation in society – for full contribution – should be taken into account there.

The purpose is for an “effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive” set of policies and programmes. In this sense, the design and implementation are dealing with the chronological development from policy to program, to the enactment of in the real world. All levels of the society and every nation bound to the Beijing Declaration should be considering this.

Annex I(20) works from a comprehensive perspective of the ways in which all major members of the society can contribute to it. The means by which women are able to be members, agents, or “actors” within the democratic system. The purpose remains development of the full capacities of women. One of the ways in which this can be done is through the inclusion of women’s groups and women’s networks, and non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations, in the fundamental decision-making framework of the empowerment and advancement of women.

It remains a tall order. However, the restrictions on the livelihoods of women have been a continuous history for thousands of years, not in some general manner because different cultures and periods raised and plummeted the status of women depending on the need of the state or the empire as they did with men; nonetheless, the continuous pattern retains the characteristic of men almost universally with more social privileges and legal rights than women. This can change; it is altering, for better and worse relative to international rights stipulations.

The purpose is to keep women with their autonomy intact and able to contribute to society as they deem fit onward in the expansive track. This all aligns with the Platform for Action (Please Google.). The effective implementation of the Platform for Action comes from the recognition of the contributions of the aforementioned organizations to the full equality of women.

Annex I(21) speaks more to the actual implementation of the Platform of Action with the necessity of the contribution of the governments of the world. Without the governmental assistance for the advancement and empowerment of women, the progress of women can only remain a pipe dream and retain a theoretical existence.

The purpose of the 21st statement is a reminder of the trust in nation-states around the world taking part in the international community’s general consensus on the need to incorporate women more into the levers of power in the society and also the provisions of checks & balances to prevent women from being penalized for wanting both a family and a career. All part and parcel of the empowerment and advancement of women.

–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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