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Human Rights and Equality for Women

in the 21st Century

Address by Professor
Alice Erh-Soon Tay,

President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

'Australian Women
Speak' Conference

27-28 August 2001, Canberra

Thank you for the invitation to be with you today.

Before I start, let
me acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this land on which
we are now standing - the Ngunawal people.

The theme of this
Conference - Human Rights and Equality for Women in the 21st Century -
is rich fare for any time of the day. It calls for speculation about the
future and assessment of the past; it invites fresh perspectives and challenges
the imagination; it asks for re-examination of motives and goals.

Let us begin with
a quick trot through history, take a look into the past for an understanding
of the complexity of the human response to the issues of human rights
and the equality of women.



In the 13th century, the good Thomas Aquinas pronounced women "defective
and misbegotten", the product of a defective male seed.

In 1405, in the
Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan, poet and moralist
at the French Court, thought otherwise and said so: If men had stronger
bodies, women had freer and sharper minds - if only they were educated.

Concern about equality
between men and women and the recognition of women's rights, is clearly
not a new invention.

Creator of the Civil
Law system, the only body of law capable of challenging the Common Law
in its complexity and subtlety, a hero of mine, Napoleon Bonaparte at
the height of his military might, drafted a programme for the education
of young French ladies . This programme, without a single qualification,
sharply distinguished education for women from that for men, an education
which would do nothing to open any doors save those into the kitchen and
the bedroom.

For a hundred years,
starting about 1837, national and international suffragette movements
agitated for the vote. Some, like New Zealand and Australia, won it in
1893 and 1902 respectively, though Aboriginal women had to wait until
1968; others, only in the second half of the 20th century. Switzerland
gave women the federal franchise following a referendum in 1971! And some
cantons have still to do so.

High among intellectual
women who have left significant marks on women's rights and equality was
Mary Wollstonecroft who advocated them in her book A Vindication of
the Rights of Women in 1792. In the 1850s, Harriet Taylor and John
Stuart Mill in the 1850s jointly and separately put forward powerful arguments
in the cause of equality.

At the beginning
of the 20th century, Rosa Luxemburg, an early socialist in the feminist
mode, insisted: "The emancipation of the human race will see the
emancipation of women - to enter into a true partnership with men. We
need to work to transform values … [to] maximise the potential of
both men and women and enhance the quality of their lives and their families'
lives".

At about the same
time, Alexandra M Kollontai, a principal Marxist revolutionary publicist
writing in the early decades of the 20th century, complained in her book,
Women's Labour in Economic Development, that "the 19th century
feminists naively attempted to transfer the struggle for women's equal
rights from the firm basis of class relationships into the realm of the
struggle between the sexes. The result was a distorted caricature. Where
they might have assured themselves of success and gained the support of
men in their own class, they lost both by proclaiming at every juncture,
heedless of appropriateness, those one-sided feminist catchwords which
urged equal rights for women, instead of putting forward the demands common
to their class which would by themselves have resulted in a claim for
women's rights." Justice Michael Kirby says much the same thing a
few days ago when giving the Lesbia Harford Oration in Melbourne: Changes
in work hours for women [to enable women barristers to both work and have
families] will only come about with changes affecting men.

For their trouble,
Blutige Rosa as she was known, Bloody Rosa, ended up floating in the muddy
waters of the lake in the Tiergarten of Berlin, while Mme Kollantai, an
early sexual libertarian, made the Russian Bolskeviks, Victorian in their
values and attitudes, blush. Uncomfortable with her exploits, they consigned
her to an ambassadorship in Sweden where her freedom of expression would
not be so remarkable. But both these very intelligent, politically involved
and sensitive women were right, in their days and in ours. The emancipation
of all human kind would of itself emancipate both men and women from the
artificial constraints of bourgeois life that create social distinctions
between the sexes.

One hundred and forty-five
years ago, a march through the streets of New York by a group of women
to protest against abysmal pay and working conditions made March 8 henceforth
the universally recognised International Women's Day. In 1908, 15,000
women marching through New York demanding better pay, shorter hours, voting
rights and an end to child labour, adopted the slogan "Bread and
Roses", bread symbolising economic security and roses a better
quality of life. Ninety-five years ago, an International Women's Day march
in St Petersburg of female textile workers calling for "Bread
and Peace", led to the Bolshevik Revolution which ended the long
Romanov dynasty and inaugurated the socialist transformation of which
Rosa Luxemburg and Mme Kollantai had so much to say.

A few days ago,
Ms Germaine Greer was reported singing peaens of praise to Aboriginal
structures of empowerment of women and urging non-Indigenous women to
learn from their Aboriginal sisters a more holistic, non-materialist mode
of life.

This quick trot through
time reminds us that perceptions about equality have varied enormously.
It was sometimes seen as innately unachievable or even not to be attempted;
sometimes as a flawed logic or ideology that can be easily corrected given
the will or a political revolution; sometimes, it is the result of a fundamental
socio-economic (read class) distinction that will disappear with the abolition
of the economic conditions that give them nourishment. This historical
excursus also brings out the variety of foci that women's rights and equality
have taken: some claims are very specific - as for, literally, bread;
some are universalist demands - political rights; some are derived from
ideological perspectives targetting economic, biological and cultural
causes; some carry proposals for direct and others for indirect solutions,
etc.

The single, simplified
moral to be extracted from all this is: there was - and there still is
- no single, simple, claim for or against recognising and implementing
equality or human rights for women. Only social conditions determined,
and will continue to determine, the form and format of demands.

The recognition of
women's rights is the culmination of not just decades, but centuries,
of cultural development and influence. But the second half of the 20th
century saw that movement take a broad and universalist step forward.
For the 21st century, we must recognise that women's issues and their
social contexts have become even more diverse and subtle, and "equality
between men and women", now more than ever before, cannot be seen
as having one simplistic one-size-fits all solution.

In some senses, we
can say, together with the Virginia Slim advertisement, Women, you have
come a long way. But have we come far enough?

Statistics suggest
still not: Not when women make up 70% of the world's poor; 60% of the
world's illiterate and over 80% of the world's refugees; when they work,
in countries considered models of economic success, 14 and 16 hours a
day in sweat shops, six or seven days a week, for 40% of male pay. In
Ms Greer's idyllic community of Aboriginal women, we learn from the 1996
census that a mere 22% of Indigenous women obtained a post-school qualification
compared with 36% of women in the total population (itself not a statistic
to boast about) and that Indigenous men fare not much better at 26% (Cwlth
OSW, 1999, p.69); employment rates for Indigenous women stand at 20% that
of the general population; life expectancy at birth for Indigenous Australians
to be 56.9 years for males and 61.7 years for females compared with 75.1
years for other males and 81.1 years for females. Low-birth weight babies,
stillbirths and neonatal deaths are all about twice as common among births
to Indigenous mothers than among births to other mothers. Of course, it
can be argued, as I am sure Ms Greer would, that such figures refer to
situations created by foreign intrusions into an inherently better structured
community. But we live in and act on the world that is, not the world
we wish we could be in. I, for one, prefer, indeed value, for all the
imperfections of the human world, the society of my fellow beings to that
of even my very own geese.

Let us return to
another theme I have hinted at: That of Bread and Roses and Bread and
Peace, which are much the same thing.

In all advanced industrial societies and some developing ones, the Bread
part of the equation has been incrementally fulfilled: women in those
lucky countries have had formal civil and political rights; access to
tertiary education and to most professions and vocational employment;
they can own and dispose of property in their own name; etc. In 1948,
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made the first statement
of a truly universal character recognising a set of indivisible human
rights applicable to men and women of all races, religion, creed, and
pressed the nations of the world to recognise, respect and promote these
rights. Adopted without dissent, the Declaration marked the start of a
significant social and cultural shift, and the decades that followed saw
important progress for Australian women, as for the women of many other
countries, especially in relation to economic advancement.

Unarguably, the greatest
development in the articulation of women's rights came in the 1970s, with
the development of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). As you all know, Australian
women played a crucial role in the development of that Convention. Adopted
by the United Nations in 1979, CEDAW is a clear and unambiguous statement
of the rights of women around the globe. It prohibits discrimination on
the grounds of sex, marital status, pregnancy and maternity. It provides
women with the right to participate equally within the political, social,
economic and cultural life of their country. And it obliges governments
to take specific and positive steps to secure and protect the rights of
women. In 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women, 40,000
participants attended to formulate strategies and plans For Action, Development
and Peace. The ball that has been set rolling has not stopped.

Australia signed
the Convention in July 1980 and ratified it three years later. The passage
of the federal Sex Discrimination Act in 1984, giving domestic effect
to the Convention, was yet another milestone for Australian women.

That the legislation
was passed was, in itself, a victory.

It was one of the
longest and most passionately debated Bills to go before the federal Parliament.
Objections included that it defied nature, that it would destroy the family
and push women into the workforce against their will - even that Shakespeare
and the Bible would need to be rewritten to remove sexist language.

Well, some 17 years
on and still the sky has not fallen in on Australian society.

The Sex Discrimination
Act continues to successfully provide legal guidance, education and redress
for thousands. Internationally, the Act is held in high regard and provides
a model for many nations initiating similar legislation.

It would appear,
however, that there are some in Australia today who would be more comfortable
with a return to a previous time in our past and who firmly believe the
Act, and other legislation like it, 'rot the fabric of society'.

But the regular stream
of complaints that cross my desk indicates otherwise - it tells me that
we have the legislation for good reasons. The volume and the nature of
complaints that I receive show the Act is essential in addressing discrimination
on the basis of sex, marital status, pregnancy and potential pregnancy.

We have come a long
way so far on an extraordinary journey.

But I would suggest
that, as we stride into a new century, we need a deeper cultural change
if we are going to progress further to achieve not just full equality,
but also quality of life.

We also need to deepen
our thinking if we are going to successfully grapple with the challenges
at hand.

The time has come
to shift our focus from purely economic concerns and to recognise the
importance of cultural growth and quality of life.

Despite our many
achievements, we still have much in common with the 15,000 women who marched
through the streets of New York on International Women's Day in 1908 with
their slogan of 'Bread and Roses'. I want to talk about Roses, a better
quality of life. I do this with some humility and hesistancy. No one knows
more than a philosopher how difficult it is to quantify quality, how we
justify one set of preferences against another.

The need for material
"betterment", while not to be neglected, requires no special
emphasis these days - such betterment is pursued by more and more people,
more and more of the time. The need for taking stock of our moral and
intellectual life, of our values, our principles, aims and capacities
to feel and understand, now demands greater attention. For these qualities
too, are part of women's quality of life.

If we are to have
roses as well as bread, we must recover a more complete picture of culture
and its innumerable connections with our full humanity. A culture rich
in contrasting values; one that recognises the full range of human potentials;
one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place. As the
famous line of a Russian children's poem says: "one needs all kinds
of mothers" - raznii mamii nyzhdnii. Life provides
many experiences.

What does this mean
for women struggling with multiple roles and wrestling with competing
demands, in conditions of sweeping changes, in a seamlessly shifting world?

Any particular woman,
like any particular person, belongs "essentially" not to one
social group but to many. She will have many, often competing and conflicting,
loyalties, needs and characteristics.

Women are often presented
as constituting one single group rather than many groups of women with
a great deal of diversity and difference amongst them. Differences are
not merely cosmetic or superficial. There is a clear need to challenge
this misleading and unhelpful, artificial unity of women's experience.
Women simply do not constitute such a group. To see women solely as the
oppressed victims is an illustration of a blatant distortion which denies
our histories and cultures and greatly underrate our ongoing contributions
to economic, social and cultural life. Alliances and divisions of class,
religion, sexuality, history, ideological differences, etc are ever present,
significant and interesting. "Gender", "race" and
"class" are not static categories or fixed factors, but rather
dynamic social processes in which everyone is located - they give rise
to interactions between different parts of the self, different paths of
choice and different forms of oppression.

Identity itself is
not a static concept. As we grapple with the issue of identity as expressed
in religion, nationalism, racism, ethnicity and gender, it can be difficult
to unravel the many strands, even within oneself. Each of us has multiple
identities within us. Identity does not stem only from being women. It
comes from ethnicity, from politics, from religion, from family. It is
important to allow for these multiple experiences and expressions of our
identity because it enables us to challenge the stereotypes of who we
are as women.

Put simply, we need
to acknowledge, confront meaningfully, respect and represent women's difference,
from each other as much as from men, not deny or minimise it.

We live in the best
of times and the worst of times, in an age of increased moral sensitivity
and in an age of strident self-assertion, both national and individual,
and frequent moral savagery. We have seen the dismantling of taboos and
limitation on thought and action, coupled with a loss of intellectual
force and cultural confidence. We are in short, in an age of fragmentation,
confusion and uncertainty in spite of our material power and benefits.

Discrimination does
not always happen in neat little categories. We need to be mindful of
the myriad of factors that impact on the lives of women and restrict their
opportunities to participate in society - their racial or ethnic background,
their disability, their age, their sexual orientation, just to name a
few. As Aristotle urges about doing Justice, Treat like cases alike and
unlike cases differently, according to their differences, with equality
between the sexes, we must address different needs differently and same
needs equally. We must take time to think through what equality really
looks like.

We might also consider
the words of Aung San Suu Kyi:

The quintessential
revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction
of the need for change in mental attitudes and values. Without a revolution
of the spirit, the forces that produced the iniquities of the old order
would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process
of reform and regeneration.

I trust this 'revolution
of the spirit' will help inspire us all in our work. THANK YOU.

Last
updated 1 December 2001