Friday, Aug 29, 2008
Some Iraq warriors insist women's rights can wait until later, but democracy and development flourish when women are treated as equals.
Aug 31, 2005 | Commenting last week on Iraq's drafting of its constitution, President Bush hailed it as "an amazing process" that "honor's women's rights, the rights of minorities." But whether Iraqi women will achieve full participation in Iraqi society in the ultimate version of their country's contentious draft constitution remains very much in question.
That Iraqi women's rights matter should not be in question. Yet on "Meet the Press" recently, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA official, said that while he hoped the Iraqi constitution would protect women as much as possible, "women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy." He added that 100 years ago, the United States was a democracy but women did not have the right to vote, and said, "If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled."
The comment was in particularly bad taste, coming just before Women's Equality Day on Aug. 26, which celebrated the 85th anniversary of women's securing the right to vote in America. Lowering the bar for success in Iraq to America in the 1900s, when women and minorities suffered great inequality and discrimination, was an insult not only to the brave men and women who fought for social progress over the past century but also to the brave U.S. soldiers fighting today for a better Iraq, not to mention the women of Iraq.
Why "Meet the Press" thought Gerecht's views worthy of a prestigious national platform (now director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century, he left the mid-ranks of the CIA in 1994) can charitably be attributed to the difficulty of booking knowledgeable individuals in August in Washington. However, we can be thankful that President Bush and his administration so far have not dismissed the need to protect women's rights in Iraq.
Women's rights are in fact key to the evolution of democracy, as well as to long-term peace and stability. Although a direct correlation between increased rights for women and decreased conflict is hard to establish because so many other factors are involved, the trend is clear. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (passed in October 2000) recognizes the important role women play in preventing conflict, encouraging reconciliation and helping to rebuild conflict-ridden societies. Countries that early on gave women the right to vote -- such as New Zealand (1893), Finland (1906) and Norway (1913) -- have been among the most stable democracies. What's more, the U.N. Development Program's groundbreaking Arab Human Development Report found that "society as a whole suffers when a huge proportion of its productive potential is stifled."
A democracy consists not only of the checks and balances against tyranny instituted by our Founding Fathers (but not Founding Mothers) but of the right of all citizens to decide the rules by which they intend to live. But women's equal rights alone do not ensure a democracy. For instance, in many former Soviet bloc countries, women had equal rights, but the population as a whole was denied access to decision-making processes. And while in most Arab countries (except Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) women have the right to vote, in none of them do women enjoy equal rights or opportunities with men. As the UNDP report noted, the "utilization of Arab women's capabilities through political and economic participation remains the lowest in the world in quantitative terms, as evidenced by the very low share of women in parliaments, cabinets, and the work force, and in the trend toward the feminization of the unemployed." Thus, for democracy to succeed in Iraq, there must be both strong democratic institutions and full protection of the rights of women. In Iraq, both are now at risk.
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