Some remarkable images by photographer Liora K:
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More on contraception, rape, abortion and wage discrimination.
Tag Archives: feminism
Gender Discrimination (33): Reversing the Veil
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Here’s an interesting story about the rule, common in many religions, against the exposure of the female body. Many Muslims and ultra-orthodox Jews argue that women should cover their hair with either a veil or a wig and should dress in such a way that their legs, arms, necks etc. are fully covered. Some go even further than this and claim that clothing prescriptions for women are insufficient: women should be segregated on busses, in public spaces, in schools etc. in order to minimize contact between the sexes. It’s assumed that men can only be protected against temptation and that society can only rid itself of the evil of illicit sexual relationships when contact with and exposure of women’s bodies are kept to a minimum.
Apparently, some ultra-orthodox Jews have understood that solving the problem of male temptation by restricting women’s freedoms is unfair. Hence, they are promoting special glasses that blur ultra-orthodox men’s vision, so they don’t have to see immodestly dressed women (source). The glasses are sold for $6. Obviously, they don’t only blur women but everything else as well. Everything up to a few meters is clear so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry — including women. Hoods and shields that block peripheral vision are also being offered.
Other orthodox Jews laugh at this and warn their fellow Jews to buy a crash helmet as well.
Female Objectification, A Collection of Images (2)
(A previous collection is here).
Apparently, Durex thinks women are tunnels
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And just to show that it’s mostly but not always women who suffer this treatment:
Gender Discrimination (30): The Politics of the Female Body
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Exploitation can be beneficial to the exploited, human rights violations can be self-inflicted, and people can internalize stereotypes about them and behave accordingly.
Some examples. Take the case where A and B have unequal bargaining power. A sells bread in an isolated village where the people don’t have the means to produce their own bread. A overcharges for the bread because B doesn’t have the means or the strength to find another seller. The sale of bread makes B better off, because without bread he would be worse off. Yet A takes unfair advantage of the buyer’s condition. A exploits B, yet B is better off and can decide to accept his exploitation.
Examples of self-inflicted human rights violations are school drop-outs, the undeserving poor, contestants in privacy invading reality shows etc. – to the extent that these people’s actions are really voluntary and based on informed consent, they impose rights violations on themselves.
Stereotype threat means that the threat of stereotypes about your capacity to succeed at something negatively affects your capacity: when the belief that people like you (African-Americans, women, etc) are worse at a particular task than the comparison group (whites, men, etc) is made prominent, you perform worse at that task.
Jacques Lacan
These three phenomena converge in the lives of many women in present-day western societies. Few of them are ruthlessly oppressed, few of their rights are grossly violated, and sexist stereotyping has become unfashionable. And yet, it’s arguably the case that many western women show signs of having internalized patriarchal power relations. It wouldn’t be correct to depict these women as unconscious victims who can’t choose for themselves – that would be just as bad as the sexist stereotypes of the past – but there are signs that some of them have been taught to participate in their own oppression and subordination.
How else could we explain the beauty ideal, women modifying their bodies, starving themselves, re-sculpturing their silhouettes and conforming in all possible ways to male expectations and prejudices? It’s like they have internalized the male gaze (in the sense given to that word by Jacques Lacan) and look at themselves the way many men do.
I don’t claim that this internalization of stereotypes is beneficial to women in the sense that some forms of exploitation are beneficial to the exploited, although in some cases that may be true – some women may reap some advantages from conforming to stereotypes. Neither do I claim that the internalization of stereotypes is self-inflicted in the sense of a voluntary act. In most cases we’re probably dealing with some form of indoctrination, and it’s fair to say that women and their bodies are still highly regulated, in a way that’s different from but not unlike the way it is in more traditional societies (for example in some Muslim societies). However, we shouldn’t exclude the possibility that some women do in fact voluntarily accept stereotypes. Again, the view that women are passive victims of indoctrination isn’t much better than or different from the view that women conform to more traditional stereotypes.
More on body politics is here. More on gender discrimination is here. And more on the Muslim headscarf is here.
- Do we cling to stereotypes even when information about the individual is available? (bakadesuyo.com)
- The patriarchy is dead … but the kyriarchy lives on | Nichi Hodgson (guardian.co.uk)
- The Devil is sexist (greedygoblin.blogspot.com)
- The New Sexism (time.com)
Gender Discrimination (28): Occupational Sex Segregation as One Cause of the Gender Pay Gap
It’s common knowledge that women tend to earn less that men, even in countries that pride themselves on their respect for gender equality. Here are the data on the gender pay gap in the U.S.:
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One of the causes of this gap is occupational sex segregation, meaning that women and men tend to work in very different occupations. Coincidentally or not, “men’s jobs” are generally better paid than “women’s jobs”:
(source, click image to enlarge)
Now, “segregation” in this context may be too strong a term, since there are no longer a lot of legal restrictions on the employment of women, at least not in the U.S. Women aren’t segregated into very specific occupations, at least not by law. Cultural pressures may still exist, however. Women often feel obliged to choose occupations that mix well with family responsibilities, and those occupations tend to be less profitable. Such a sense of obligation is not a sign of gender equality.
It’s also not clear to what extent women – voluntarily or not – choose jobs that are less well paid, and to what extent employers decide that jobs chosen by women merit less pay.
And finally, let’s not forget that there’s a gender pay gap even within professions. Occupational sex segregation therefore can’t explain the whole pay gap. Hence, the gender pay gap may be an indication of different types of gender discrimination:
- forcing women into jobs that are less well paid
- paying less for the types of jobs that women tend to choose
- paying women less than men within the same types of jobs
- failing to give women and girls the same opportunities to enter some types of jobs (e.g. because of unequal education, child marriage etc.)
More on the gender pay gap here.
Why Do We Need Human Rights? (23): Privacy, Justifications and Objections
Charlie Brown having some privacy
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The right to privacy has become increasingly important and contested. Here are just a few examples of areas in which violations of privacy have become more common over the last decades:
- Public safety: many governments claim that the war on terror requires the following limitations of the right to privacy (just as it requires limitations of other rights):
- Medicine:
- the debate on abortion is now commonly framed as a privacy issue
- there’s also the issue of genetic patenting
- there’s mandatory drugs testing
- Employment:
- background checks
- monitoring of workers’ activities, either for safety reasons or for productivity reasons
- Transportation and road safety:
- Criminal justice:
- sex offender registers
- satellite tracking for criminals as an alternative to incarceration
- Commerce: sales tracking using fidelity cards or credit cards
- Etc.
Since it’s always good to cite the Universal Declaration when talking about human rights, here’s the article about privacy (#12):
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Types of privacy
Privacy is what is called a cluster concept: it covers many different things, things which may seem unrelated at first sight. So, before I go on, here’s a short and tentative typology of different kinds of “privacies” (I’ll mention later what they have in common):
- Domestic privacy. People have a right to remain secluded and alone in their homes, to keep what happens in their homes and houses to themselves, and to repel intrusion. That’s mostly what is protected by the Fourth Amendment in the US. Issues related to obscenity or pornography laws for example also fall under this type of privacy.
- Personal privacy. People have a right to keep their thoughts, opinions, or feelings to themselves. The secrecy of postal communication for example falls under this type, as does the secret ballot.
- Physical (or intimate) privacy. People have a right not to expose their bodies, as well as a right to repel physical intrusion into their bodies. Abortion and some security checks belong here.
- Informational privacy. People have a right to control what happens to information about themselves (or their families), and to limit involuntary distribution or disclosure of such information. Information here means facts, whether embarrassing or not, rather than opinions. The latter are part of libel law. Information about sexual orientation or salaries is an example of informational privacy.
- Relational privacy. People have a right to keep some of the details about their relationships to themselves. This includes whom they have what type of sexual intercourse with. Sodomy laws violate this kind of privacy, as do laws regulating the use of contraceptives. People also have a right to decide without interference on the type of relationship that suites them best. This covers laws regulating interracial marriages, same-sex marriages etc.
(There’s also the concept of private property, but I think this can be separated from privacy issues, although private property of a home is obviously a necessary condition for domestic privacy, for example).
(source, source, work by Will Varner)
All these types of privacy have something in common: they are all about independence. Privacy protects an individual’s interest in making independent decisions about her life, family, home, lifestyle, relationships, behavior and communication. All these types of privacy are also about the restriction of access or intrusion. Privacy gives an individual the right to deny access or intrusion by others, more specifically access to or intrusion in her body, her home, her relationships, her mind and certain facts about her life. It’s a right to be let alone.
Justification of privacy
Privacy is justified because it restricts access. Some restrictions of access are necessary for personal identity. There is no “I”, no person, no individual without a border between me and the rest of the world. Such a border is an absolute requirement for the basic human need of personhood and individuality. If people have unlimited access to each other, then there simply won’t be any separate people left. People understood as separate entities require some level of privacy protection. The exact level of privacy and the justified intrusions into people’s private lives are not yet determined by this argument, but the need for some level of privacy and some limitations of intrusions is clear. Other justifications of privacy could be based on the interest people have in intimacy, close personal relationships etc. It’s clear that a world without privacy or even without strong privacy rights would be a horrible world indeed.
Objections to privacy
Some argue that there’s nothing special about privacy and that the concept doesn’t merit an independent existence, let alone legal protection. The many different interests protected by privacy can indeed be protected by other means, such as a right to private property, liberty, bodily security and integrity, or independence.
However, I’m not sure that this is true for all the interests protected by a right to privacy. And an independent notion of privacy gives at least an added protection, partly because of the strong roots of the notion in common language and belief.
Karl Marx
Some go even a step further and consider privacy to be detrimental rather than merely superfluous. Marx, for example, viewed privacy as a symptom of an atomized and selfish society, intent on protecting the material self-interest of the haves faced with a possible revolt of the have-nots.
Some feminists as well have forcefully argued that privacy is detrimental to women because of its use as a shield to protect male domination, superiority and abuse. However, it’s not because a right can be abused that it loses all meaning. There wouldn’t be any rights left if that were the case. The challenge is to avoid intrusion in people’s private lives that go too far, while at the same time allowing intrusion that counters abusive private actions. The right to privacy is therefore not an absolute right. But it is a right, and feminists should remember that intrusions into the private sphere can also be detrimental to women (e.g. abortion legislation, forced sterilization etc.).
- The Fourth Amendment: It Has Got to be About More than Privacy (reason.com)
- Q&A: How Do You Define ‘Privacy Harm’? (blogs.wsj.com)
Sexism, A Collection of Images (3)
(Previous collections of sexist images are here and here).
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More on stereotypes, prejudice, feminism, women’s rights and gender discrimination. More collections of images.
- The Nation: Sexism Creeps Up Again For Kagan (npr.org)
- CU’Independent : Sexism [Image] (scaryideas.com)
- Sexism in the Workplace Hurts, New Study Finds (livescience.com)
Political Graffiti (104): Sexism
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More on sexism, women’s rights and gender discrimination. More political graffiti.
Religion and Human Rights (27): Muslim Headscarves – Between Religious Liberty and Gender Discrimination, Ctd.
Once more on the issue of Muslim headscarves (see here and here for previous posts), because the controversy doesn’t seem to be going away. Belgium, my home country, has the dubious honor of being the first western country outlawing the burqa. Other countries like France seem set to follow, or have already interpreted existing laws on masks or police checks creatively in order to impose fines on women wearing a veil. Forcing Muslim women to show their faces is no longer a fringe xenophobic fantasy.
First of all, and before you get upset that a human rights activist such as me doesn’t take a more outspoken position against the veil, let me stress that I do worry a lot about gender discrimination (as regular readers can attest). I do believe that the veil – especially the complete face and body veil such as the burqa or the niqab – is an expression of a culture in which equal rights for women are – to put it mildly – not a priority. That doesn’t mean that every woman who wears a veil does so because of coercion or discrimination, or because she doesn’t have a right not to. Some do, but others wear it voluntarily, although the degree of “voluntariness” is something that’s always difficult to establish given the subtle effects of social pressure, tradition and education that are often difficult to notice – even for the self. However, it can be argued that also those women who wear the veil in a truly voluntary way – if truly voluntary can be something real, which I hope – contribute to an ideology of female inferiority and make it harder for other women who would like to remove the veil to do so.
Moreover, there can be different motives for wearing the veil voluntarily. Women can believe that this is a requirement of their religion (the Quran only seems to require “modest dress”), and that disregard of such requirements amounts to sin. Or women can decide to wear the veil for strategic reasons. They may believe – correctly I think – that wearing the veil enhances their freedom, for example their freedom of movement. One can argue that this strategic use of the veil isn’t truly voluntary, but that doesn’t make it wrong. I’m personally open to the argument that a prohibition of the veil can result in de facto house arrest for some women: their husbands may decide to force them to stay at home if they aren’t allowed to wear the veil in public. Now you might say that one evil doesn’t excuse another, but there is something called a lesser evil (I’ve made a similar point about sweatshops not so long ago). If wearing the veil allows women to venture outside of the home that is undoubtedly a positive side effect of something that in general may be a moral negative.
What about the arguments in favor of prohibition? Some of them are very weak indeed. It’s not because the veil makes some people uncomfortable that it should be prohibited. It’s not difficult to imagine the horror of the place where everything that makes someone uncomfortable is outlawed. Security risks also aren’t a very strong reason for a general ban, since women can be required to lift their veil in specific circumstances. The argument that modern democracies should be “secular” and that this requires the banning of religious symbols in public is indefensible in view of the human right to freedom of religion.
Some claim that the ban on the burqa is just one of many existing and undisputed restrictions on how people can dress in public: people can’t walk naked in the streets; or wear stockings on their heads inside bank buildings etc. But this confuses types of dress that are not religiously inspired with types that are. Religion does receive special protection in the system of human rights, and this special protection should be recognized if human rights are to be respected. Conflating religious dress with dress in general does not allow you to fully respect human rights. That doesn’t mean that the burqa can’t be banned in specific circumstances where there’s a good reason to do so – in Court rooms, in schools etc. But these exceptions don’t justify banning it altogether. (The justification for a ban in Court rooms is obvious and doesn’t need spelling out. A ban in schools – for both teachers and pupils – is justified on the grounds of the need for adequate education. In addition, there’s a phenomenon of peer pressure in some schools, where girls who wear the veil force others to comply).
How about the argument based on gender equality? That seems a lot stronger at first sight. But isn’t it true that gender equality wouldn’t be advanced a whole lot by a burqa ban? (Maybe a ban would even be bad for gender equality, if it forces women to stay home). And isn’t it also true that other measures in favor of gender equality, such as better education, stricter laws and better enforcement on domestic violence etc., would prove much more effective?
There’s another argument in favor of a ban, and it’s a pretty strong one, although you hardly ever hear it. A democratic community requires a common citizenship and a public space in which people can deliberate freely on their preferred policies. If democracy was just an exercise in voting, it would be compatible with the veil. It would even be compatible with complete solipsism and individuals never meeting each other. But it’s more than that. The burqa and niqab are – to some extent – incompatible with deliberation. One could argue that this only justifies a partial ban, namely a ban in places where deliberation occurs, and when it occurs. Just like the partial ban in Court rooms is justified. The question is of course whether proponents of the veil can accommodate a partial ban. Perhaps their religious belief requires the veil in all circumstances. However, we are allowed to require some level of flexibility of them. Rights often come into conflict with one another (take for example the right to free speech of the journalist wishing to expose the private life of a politician). And that’s the case here: the right to democratic government and the right to religious liberty should be balanced against each other, and maybe the former should take precedence. After all, not everything is justified on the grounds of religious liberty: for example, no one in the West argues that mutilation as a punishment for crime is justified, not even when it is prescribed by a religion.
More on headscarves, gender equality, dress codes, migration and religious liberty.
The Causes of Human Rights Violations (18): Stereotype Threat and Michel Foucault
There’s an interesting phenomenon called the stereotype threat, or, in other words, the threat of stereotypes about one’s capacity to succeed at something: when the belief that people like you (African-Americans, women, etc) are worse at a particular task than the comparison group (whites, men, etc) is made prominent, you perform worse at that task. (Some say that this is a type of confirmation bias, a tendency for people to prefer information that confirms their existing preconceptions – they selectively collect new evidence, interpret evidence in a biased way or selectively recall information from memory. But I’m not convinced).
A typical example of stereotype threat manifests itself when a categorical group is told or shown that their group’s performance is worse than other groups before giving them a test; the test results are often abnormally lower than for control groups. For example, on a mathematics test, if you remind a group of girls that boys tend to do better on this type of test, it is likely that the girls will do more poorly on the test than they would have had they not been told. (source)
Here’s another example:
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[Irwin] Katz found that Blacks were able to score better on an IQ test, if the test was presented as a test of eye-hand coordination. Blacks also scored higher on an IQ test when they believed the test would be compared to that of other blacks. Katz concluded that his subjects were thoroughly aware of the judgment of intellectual inferiority held by many white Americans. With little expectation of overruling this judgment, their motivation was low, and so were their scores. (source)
Indeed, that could be one explanation of the stereotype threat. Or it could simply be that people score worse because they are anxious about confirming the stereotype, and that this anxiety provokes stress because of the will to do well and prove that the prejudice is wrong. Ironically, they score worse: this anxiety and stress makes them less able to perform at normal levels. Or it could be something more sinister: something like internalization of oppression. People who suffered prejudice for centuries can perhaps convince themselves of their group’s inferiority. When this inferiority is made explicit beforehand, they are reminded of it, and somehow their recollected feelings of inferiority tweak their performance.
So inferior test results – compared to control groups who haven’t been exposed to explicit stereotypes before the test – can be caused by
- a lack of motivation to disprove entrenched and difficult to change prejudices
- stress and anxiety, or
- recollected feelings of inferiority.
Or perhaps something else I’m not thinking of at the moment.
Some say that this is all crap, and an extreme example of the file drawer effect or publication bias: those studies that find positive results are more likely to be published, the others stay in the file drawer. I don’t know. I do think it’s true that whatever the reality of the stereotype threat, talk about it can have perverse effects: differences in test scores are considered to be wholly explained by the threat, and real education discrimination or differences in economic opportunities are removed from the picture. In that way, the stereotype threat functions as a solidifier of prejudice and stereotype, quite the opposite of what was intended.
Michel Foucault
Assuming the threat is real, Michel Foucault comes to mind. Foucault wrote about power and the different ways it operates. Rather than just force or the threat of force, he found “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving subjugation”. If you can convince people of their own inferiority you don’t have to do anything else. They will take themselves down. Or at least you may be able to convince people that it’s useless to struggle against prejudice because it’s so entrenched that you may as well adapt your behavior and confirm it. Also, Foucault’s claim that “power is everywhere” can be used here: power over people is even in their own minds. For Foucault,
power is not enforcement, but ways of making people by themselves behave in other ways than they else would have done. … Foucault claims belief systems gain momentum (and hence power) as more people come to accept the particular views associated with that belief system as common knowledge. Such belief systems define their figures of authority, such as medical doctors or priests in a church. Within such a belief system—or discourse—ideas crystallize as to what is right and what is wrong, what is normal and what is deviant. Within a particular belief system certain views, thoughts or actions become unthinkable. These ideas, being considered undeniable “truths”, come to define a particular way of seeing the world, and the particular way of life associated with such “truths” becomes normalized. (source)
The stereotype threat is a good example of a system that makes people behave in other ways, and of a belief system (based on prejudice) that becomes common knowledge, even among those targeted by the prejudice. Even they see it as unthinkable that their own inferiority is prejudice rather than knowledge.
More on prejudice, stereotypes, racism, gender discrimination, and Foucault.
Human Rights Maps (80): Percentage of Women in State Legislatures in the U.S.
Equal political representation and an equal share of women in parliaments and the executives is obviously a human rights issue. In a representative democracy, one can reasonably expect to have a parliament that is roughly representative of the population in general: poor people should have their representatives or delegates just like rich people, women just like men, minorities just like majorities. This “representativity” or “representativeness” isn’t an absolute requirement. One can have a democracy without it. The people, after all, may decide that their views are best represented by an all-male, all-white body of parliamentarians for example.
However, it seems statistically unlikely that this would be their decision in each consecutive election in each democratic country. Imbalances in the demographics of parliament that persist over time and space are probably not the result of the choices of voters but of other factors, such as discrimination, unequal opportunities etc. If that’s the case, we are dealing with an imperfect democracy because democracy means equal influence and an equal chance to get elected (art. 21 of the Universal Declaration and art. 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
And that seems to be the case. Some people, therefore, propose “pink quotas” which impose minimum numbers of female representatives (something like affirmative action or positive discrimination). I’ll discuss the desirability of such quotas another time.
In the meantime, more data on equal representation, also for other countries, are here. Other human rights maps are here.
Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (40): A Suffragette’s Suicide
Emily Davison after throwing herself under a racing horse owned by King George V of England
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At the Epsom Derby, on 4th June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913), a suffragette, gave her life for her cause by throwing herself under King George V’s horse.
Here’s a video of the event (not very clear I’m afraid):
And this is Emily:
Emily Davison
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More on the suffragette movement. More on gender discrimination and women’s rights. More iconic images of human rights violations.
Human Rights Maps (76): Gender Wage Gap in the U.S.
women's earnings compared to men's, gender wage gap in the US
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Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work (art. 23 of the Universal Declaration). So unequal pay is a human rights issue, and is probably an indication of a deeper kind of discrimination. However, unequal pay is an indication of wage discrimination, not proof. If men and women, on average receive unequal pay, it’s only discrimination if they perform equal work, which isn’t necessarily the case.
More data here. More on gender discrimination in general is here.
Female Animalization, A Collection of Images
Female animalization is the depiction of women as animals, or as hybrid human-animals. It’s in fact a subgenre of female objectification, which is itself a subgenre of dehumanization (see also here). Depicting a woman as an animal means taking away her human characteristics and can lead to gender discrimination. It’s easier to deny the rights of an animal than the rights of an individual human being.
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snake woman
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frog woman
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pig woman
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Hillary Clinton as a pig
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dog woman
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And of course there’s this infamous example of Michelle Obama’s face turned into a monkey face:
Michelle Obama monkey face
(source, examples of Bush and Osama bin Laden as monkeys are here)
Some time ago, this image was the first to appear when people googled for images of Michelle Obama. Because of this Google issued this statement:
Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.
Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.
The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.
We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
At this point, I should probably mention that men as well can be animalized, and have been to great political effect throughout history. Here’s one example:
More examples featuring hated outgroups here.
More on advertising.
Sexism, A Collection of Images (2)
(See the previous collection of sexist images here). More on sexism, feminism, gender discrimination and women’s rights. Other collections of human rights images are here.
(this example is in fact also a case of objectification)
(an unusual example of sexism targeting males)
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(source, for the innocent among us there’s an explanation here)
gender discrimination in paper routes
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Political Graffiti (78b): Save Me From Objectification
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More on objectification of women here, here and here. And here is something on the Kantian rule regarding the instrumentalization of human beings. More political graffiti here.
Gender Discrimination (21): The Politics of the Body
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(Thanks to Eva Declercq for unwittingly suggesting this topic).
The politics of the body, or “body politics”, is a concept, originally used by early feminists I believe, to describe government policies or laws and cultural or social practices used by society to regulate and control the human body. Feminists focus on the female body but the case can be made that society controls both the female and the male body, obviously not always in the same way. The concept is also used to describe the opposite: the struggle against the social and political powers that try to control the body and the act of reclaiming bodily self-control, or corporal self-determination. Body politics has therefore a positive and a negative meaning: it’s both subordination and emancipation.
Corporal self-determination is obviously an important value. People should, in general, be able to do with their body what they want, free from interference by the state, by individuals or by groups in society.
Here are some examples of body politics:
Abortion
Whether or not you believe that abortion should be allowed, you have to accept that legal prohibition and moral dissuasion of abortion are examples of body politics. In both cases, women who want an abortion lose their power to decide autonomously what to do with their bodies; society imposes rules on what individuals are allowed to do with their bodies; and power – legal or moral – is used to enforce these rules. You may believe that these rules are necessary in order to protect an overriding value that trumps the value of self-determination, in this case probably the value of the life of the unborn infant, or perhaps even the right to self-determination of the unborn infant. But you can’t dispute that you engage in body politics.
Organ trade
Photo by Jonathan Cook
Similarly, legislation or social taboos prohibiting the free trade of organs (see also here) impose restrictions on the things people can do with their bodies. However, the analogy with abortion isn’t perfect, because proponents of restrictions can arguably claim that the sale of organs isn’t an expression of self-determination but of the lack of it: it’s typically poor people who are driven to the extreme of organ sale as a means to stay alive, while the richer you are the easier it is to get an abortion. Organ sale is then not an expression of the freedom to do with your body what you like, without paternalistic interference, but an expression of necessity and lack of freedom. Whatever the merits of this argument, restrictions on organ trade are clearly an example of body politics.
Capital punishment, corporal punishment, imprisonment
The state uses power in order to enforce or enact criminal punishment, and this is often power directed against the body of the convicted criminal and eliminating the criminal’s corporal self-determination (see here and here). There’s also the quasi-institutional practice of prison rape.
Sex trafficking and slavery, sexual violence, arranged marriages
Cultural norms regarding the acceptability of sexual violence (e.g. rape as a form of punishment, or female genital mutilation), of arranged marriages (which can be labeled a form of sexual violence), of the sale of children or wives for the purpose of prostitution are also examples of body politics. The women and children in question obviously lose their corporal self-determination.
Gender discrimination
Gender discrimination, the inferior treatment of women, and the imposition of gender roles, whether legally sanctioned or not, are other examples, although with a twist. Gender discrimination can remove the power of corporal self-determination of the women who fall victim to it – e.g. in the case of gender discrimination as expressed in sexual violence or in rules restricting the freedom of movement of women. But it doesn’t have to. For example, gender discrimination in wages (the wage gap) doesn’t affect corporal self-determination.
The body politics inherent in gender discrimination is more evident in the origins of discrimination than in the results. Gender roles, which often result in gender discrimination, are based on certain convictions regarding the physical inferiority of women (e.g. their lack of physical strength), or on the belief that the female body is made for specific tasks, and is perhaps even better than the male body for these tasks.
Likewise, rules that discriminate against women and restrict the things they can do, are generally based on dubious theories regarding the nature of the female body. Women are said to promote carnal lust, and their equal participation in life would have disrupting and destructive consequences.
Homophobia
Similarly, legislation or social taboos against homosexual relationships remove corporal self-determination and are based on certain beliefs about the nature of the human body.
Clearly, this isn’t a complete list of all possible cases of body politics, but it can serve the purpose of illustration (other examples could include rules prohibiting interracial marriage, bestiality taboos, legislation against assisted suicide etc.). What is also clear is that every case isn’t equally detrimental for self-determination. Some cases can even be justifiable from a liberal perspective. Self-determination, after all, isn’t the only value, and neither is it a value that necessarily trumps other values.
Overview
Perhaps it’s useful to put these examples of body politics in a drawing:
Female Objectification, A Collection of Images
Female objectification (male objectification also exists, but is much less common) occurs when you regard or treat a woman as a thing or an object, separate from her personal and human attributes or characteristics. It’s often but not always sexual objectification, the reduction of an individual to a sexual object or instrument with no other purpose than the sexual gratification of male subjects. Sexual objectification and female objectification in general are tools of gender discrimination. It’s easier to deny the rights of an object than the rights of an individual human being. Objectification is a concept that’s closely linked to dehumanization (see also here).
Here are a few examples of objectification:
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More on objectification here and here. Here‘s a collection of images on the related topic of sexism. And here are other collections of human rights images.
Gender Discrimination (19): Violence Against Women On Television
The infamous rape scene from "A clockwork orange"
Prime time television shows in the U.S. are depicting significantly more scenes and stories including violence against women. The overall incidence of violence on television hasn’t increased.
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The depiction of violence against women can be exploitative, but also educational. Impossible to say on the basis of these data if TV shows include depictions of violence against women in order to attract a particular kind of audience, or in order to educate the audience. In fact, this distinction is hard to make even for individual cases of depiction of violence.
TV may not have become more violent, but movies sure have:
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This graph includes all types of killing, not just the killing of women.
More on violence against women in general here, here and here. More on violence in the media in general is here.
Human Rights Maps (70): Gender Equality in Government
share of women in parliament, change between 1997 and 2011
Here’s another version:
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And yet another version:
National parliaments can be bicameral or unicameral. This map covers the single chamber in unicameral parliaments and the lower chamber in bicameral parliaments. It does not cover the upper chamber of bicameral parliaments. Seats are usually won by members in general parliamentary elections. Seats may also be filled by nomination, appointment, indirect election, rotation of members and by-election. Seats refer to the number of parliamentary mandates, or the number of members of parliament.
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And this is the detail for the U.S.:
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Parliament is obviously just one part of government. How about gender equality in other parts?
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Read more about the reasons why this is a human rights issue.
The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (9): Gang Rape as a Form of Criminal Punishment
Mukhtar Mai, Image by © Andreea Angelescu/Corbis
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Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman, suffered a gang rape as a form of honor revenge, on the demands of tribesmen — or by some accounts, on the orders of a tribal council.
Her adolescent brother Shaqoor was suspected and accused by a rival clan of adultery with one of the girls of this clan. Shaqoor was then abducted by her relatives, and sodomized by them, I guess as a form of punishment. The police freed Shaqoor and his family proposed to settle the matter with the other clan by marrying Shakoor to the girl he supposedly had sex with, and by marrying Mukhtar – his sister – to one of the men of the other clan. The offer was refused and the rival clan demanded revenge for the adultery. Mukhtar’s gang rape was the revenge. After the rape, all claims were withdrawn.
The week after the events, a local Muslim imam condemned the rape in his sermon, informed a local journalist, and persuaded the family to file charges against the rapists.
By custom, rural women are expected to commit suicide after such an event. Instead, she spoke up, and using word of mouth, took her case to court where her rapists were arrested and charged. She took settlement money provided to her by the government following the court case, and opened a center for refuge and education, the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization. (source)
However, it seems that all is not going well for her:
Mukhtar is … in danger, and many people in the feudal class would like to kill her; even with an armed bodyguard, Mukhtar doesn’t dare go more than 100 feet from her compound. I’ve told Mukhar to set up a steel gate to make it harder for gunmen to get to her. (source)
Types of Human Rights Violations (3): Lighthouse Violations and Searchlight Violations
violence against women cartoon
(source, cartoon by Angel Boligan)
I think it may be helpful to distinguish two types of human rights violations. Or, to be more precise: two types of effects of human rights violations, because many violations will show characteristics of the two types. I’ll call the two types “lighthouse violations” and “searchlight violations”. To clarify these weird sounding names, I have an example.
In the UK, about 85.000 women were raped in 2006. In the US, during the same year, 92.455 rapes were reported. Real numbers are much higher, of course, because there are many unreported cases. In South Africa, one in four men admits to having raped someone. One in 8 more than once. Rape, as well as other types of violence against women (but not only women), is obviously a wide-spread social practice and not merely acts of sick individuals. (More on rape here).
As with any case of widespread rights violations, one can understand this in two ways. One can believe that these violations are what I call lighthouse rights violations. In our example, the very fact that rape is a widespread phenomenon makes women aware of the dangers and forces them to adapt their behavior so that they limit the risks. (I talked about human rights and risk here). So the optimist view would be that there are certain automatic restrictions operating in order to limit the number of human rights violations.
The other, more pessimist view, would call widespread human rights violations searchlight violations. If we take the same example, the widespread occurrence of rape can give (certain) men the impression that the practice is normal and acceptable. As a result, the practice becomes even more widespread. Moreover, the practice not only benefits those men who actively engage in it, but men in general because it creates uneven gender relationships, female subjugation, inferiority complexes in women etc. Hence, also women who are not directly victimized by rape tend to be harmed by the practice. Rape shapes cultures, mentalities, gender roles etc.
This is of course a “glass half full or half empty” thing. Rape is both a lighthouse and a searchlight human rights violation. However, I think the more optimist view is probably more correct. If not, we would have to see ever increasing numbers of rights violations, which isn’t the case (at least that’s the intuitive conclusion; human rights measurement is still not a very sophisticated field of research).
More on violence against women. More on feminism.
The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (5): The Rape of Young Iranian Girls Prior to Their Execution
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From the Jerusalem Post:
Founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 as a “people’s militia”, the volunteer Basiji force is subordinate to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and intensely loyal to Khomeini’s successor, Khamenei.
[Members of the Basiji] temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death. In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin… Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard – essentially raped by her “husband”. (source)
The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (4): Punishment for Being Raped
photo by Salman Masood
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Under the Hudood Ordinances introduced by the former Pakistani dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, rape victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime – a ridiculous requirement. If they didn’t, they faced prosecution for adultery, a crime that potentially carried the penalty of death by stoning. This law has been repealed, but local custom still drags behind (source). And the law is an empty shell anyway. If a woman cannot prove she has been raped – how on earth can you prove this? - she could still fall foul of the adultery laws and she may be tried by either civil or Sharia courts.
More on rape.
Sexism, A Collection of Images
Nikon detects up to 12 faces
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sexist Disney rejection letter from the 1930s
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More on women’s rights and gender discrimination. More collections of images.
Gender Discrimination (14): HIV-AIDS by Gender
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Worldwide, two-thirds of the 5.5m people aged 15-24 living with HIV are female.
The reasons for this depressing statistic aren’t hard to find. In most places in the world, but particularly in Africa and developing countries in general, women are less well educated, less literate, and more poor than men (see here and here for example). Men’s sexual domination and domination in the household are also likely to lead to lower levels of AIDS protection for women.
What is Democracy? (38): Equal Representation and the Share of Women in Parliament
In a representative democracy, one can reasonably expect to have a parliament that is roughly representative of the population in general: poor people should have their representatives or delegates just like rich people, women just like men, minorities just like majorities. This representativity or representativeness isn’t an absolute requirement. One can have a democracy without it. The people, after all, may decide that their views are best represented by an all-male, all-white body of parliamentarians for example.
However, it seems statistically unlikely that this would be their decision in each consecutive election in each democratic country. Imbalances in the demographics of parliament that persist over time and space are probably not the result of the choices of voters but of other factors, such as discrimination, unequal opportunities etc. If that’s the case, we are dealing with an imperfect democracy because democracy means equal influence and an equal chance to get elected (art. 21 of the Universal Declaration and art. 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
And that is the case. Take the share of women in parliament for instance. In almost every major democracy of the world, election after election, women are a (tiny) minority in parliament. It’s very unlikely if not impossible that women are systematically less competent than men to serve in parliament, or that the voters sincerely, rationally and objectively believe this to be the case. There must be other, more deeply embedded psychological motives for such a choice, related to the generally inferior position of women in patriarchal societies.
Here are some data:
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A complete up-to-date data set is here. More on women’s rights in general here.
Gender Discrimination (1)
Women are probably more likely victims of human rights violations than man, and not only in Islamic societies. Perhaps the violations of women’s rights are more visible in Islamic countries, paradoxically because of the relative invisibility of women there.
Most of the violations of the rights of women can be addressed by normal human rights, and do not require special and new women’s rights, rights specific to women. Non-discrimination, equality, the right to education and work etc. are standard human rights which can be used to counter most if not not all the oppression suffered by women.
However, it can be possible that some situations require specific and new rights destined exclusively to women, e.g. rights related to reproduction…
Here are some data on gender discrimination. And here’s a post on discrimination in general.
