LA CONFERENZA DEL CAIRO E LE DONNE

Nira Yuval-Davis Women Against Fundamentalism ha partecipato alla Conferenza del Cairo nella sezione riservata alle Organizzazioni Non Governative. Con altre organizzazioni di donne impegnate sia contro il razzismo sia contro le leaderships fondamentaliste egemoniche all'interno delle loro comunità (Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Catholics for a Free Choice, Donne in Nero di Belgrado e l'organizzazione femminista palestinese 'Al Fanar'), ha organizzato un workshop sull' "Uso politico delle religioni, delle culture e dell'etnicità". RECENTLY, Women Against Fundamentalism participated in the NGO part of the UN conference in Cairo on Population and Development. We spoke at a workshop on 'The political uses of religion, culture and ethnicity' which was orga-nized by Women Against Fundamentalism, Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Catholics for a Free Choice, 'Women in Black' from Belgrade and the Palestinian feminist organization 'Al Fanar'- all orga-nizations which are engaged in resisting racism from the outside and hegemonic and fundamentalist lead-ership within their collectives. The workshop was part of a series of workshops on 'Reproductive Rights as Human Rights', which were organized more or less by the same people who organized the women's tribunal on violations of women's rights as human rights' at the UN conference on Human Rights in Vienna last year. The Cairo conference might be a good example to shed light on some of the issues 1 want to discuss in relation to trans-versal politics. One of the most significant aspects about Cairo was the co-option of feminism, especially the slogan of 'women's empowerment' by all sides. The international population control agencies collapsed the use of contraceptives and sterilizations by women (voluntarily, by bribe or by other means) into 'women's control over their own bodies' and the fun-damentalists of all religions collapsed women's not using or being prevented from using them into 'women's dignity' and 'women fighting for the right to keep their moral and cultural values'. Similarly all sides attempted to co-opt the interests of the South. On the one hand, the struc-tural adjustment programs which include population control packages were hailed as the South's way to salvation and modernity. The fact that these same programs usually include savage cuts in public services including health services which are so necessary for the care of women who use hi-tech contraceptives, was not seen as relevant. On the other hand we were given a leaflet by a 'right-to-life' American organization 'the Spread Eagle'. The leaflet describes its membership as 'traditional housewives from Seattle' who are protesting against the racism and imperialism of peo-ple like Jane Fonda and Al Gore who are conspiring to defeat the South by stunting its growth using pop-ulation control measures. Uno degli aspetti più significativi della Conferenza del Cairo è stata la cooptazione del femminismo, e in particolar modo dello slogan sull'"empowerment delle donne", da tutte le parti. Le agenzie internazionali per il controllo della popolazione hanno interpretato l'uso dei contraccettivi e della sterilizzazione da parte delle donne come "il controllo delle donne sul proprio corpo", mentre i fondamentalisti di tutte le religioni hanno interpretato il non uso o la prevenzione contro questi metodi come espressione della "dignità delle donne" o come "la lotta delle donne per conservare i valori della propria morale o della propria cultura". Le femministe che hanno partecipato al nostro workshop hanno cercato di prendere le distanze da entrambe le posizioni, portando tetimonianze e rapporti sugli abusi, le mutilazioni e gli assassini perpetrati ai danni delle donne da entrambe le parti. The feminists who participated in our series of workshops tried to distance themselves from both camps and produced testimonies and reports on abuse, maiming and killings of women by both sides. During the NGO conference a space was also provided to feminist libera-tion theologists who developed interpreta-tions of their religions in which women are encouraged to control their lives and bod-ies and to participate in the public as well as the private spheres. In our own workshop, at least two themes were raised, however, which were virtually ignored by all the other feminist work-shops. One was the question of migration and its relationship to women's reproduc-tive rights. Population control includes, of course, not just the control of birth but also the control of immigration. Interestingly enough, the alliance between the funda-mentalists of all religions disappeared when it reached the question of immigra-tion. On that question, which focused in the official conference on the right of fam-ily members to join those who live in other countries, the division was strictly North -South with the North objecting and the South supporting that right. (The compromise resolution, in the end, which is typical of so many others, is that they have the right 'in principle' 'when possible'). In the NGO part of the conference, the workshops and presentations which related to issues of migration were completely separate and feminists avoided discussing them - they concentrat-ed fully on the issues of reproductive rights. I don't have space here to elaborate on the various ways in which issues of immigration are crucial for feminist concerns and the effects of immigration legislation, for instance on women's lives both as workers and in their family lives, but they have been discussed in this conference by others as well as by me in other places. La questione della immigrazione e degli effetti che la legislazione sull'immigrazione produce sulla la vita lavorativa e familiare delle donne è stata sollevata nel nostro workshop, mentre è stata virtualmente ignorata negli altri workshops femministi. L'altro tema molto poco discusso, eccetto che nel nostro workshop, è stato quello degli effetti dei conflitti etnici e nazionali e delle guerre sui diritti delle donne ed in particolare sui loro diritti riproduttivi. L' evitare queste questioni ha contribuito a proteggere da interferenze il discorso sulle donne all'interno della Conferenza -il vecchio buon discorso sulla "sorellanza globale". C'è stata la tendenza a schivare ogni discussione che potesse mettere in luce il fatto che le donne -più del 50% della popolazione mondiale - non solo sono differenti le une dalle altre e hanno diversi interessi, ma questi diversi interessi non sono sempre conciliabili e potrebbero metterle in clonflitto le une con le altre. The second issue which was discussed very little except in our workshop was the effect of ethnic and national conflicts and wars on women's rights in gen-eral and reproductive rights in particular. Again, I don't have space here to elaborate but they include encouraging/forcing women to have more babies on the one hand and discouraging/preventing them from having them on the other hand, as well as relat-ed policies of mass rape and eugenistic selective breeding. I mention these issues not just because I think they are important issues in themselves, but also because avoiding dealing with them was very con-ducive to tile feminist discourse on women in the conference - the good old 'sisterhood is global' dis-course. It is not that the importance of the specific positioning of women was not recognized or even highlighted in the various testimonies. However, there was a shying away from discussing anything which would highlight the fact that women, as more than 50 per cent of the world population, are not only different from each other and have different interests, but that their different interests are not always reconcilable and might put them in conflict with each other. Moreover, women's rights were discussed as individual rights with not enough recognition that women are not just individuals but also members of collectivities. As I have elaborated elsewhere (Yuval-Davis & Anthias, 1989; Yuval- Davis, 1991), women's membership of their national and ethnic collectivities is of a double nature. On the one hand, women are always included, at least to some extent, in the construction of the general body of members of national and ethnic collectivities and/or citizens of the state-, on the other hand - there is always, at least to a certain extent, a separate body of regulations (legal and/or Customary) which relate to them specifically as women, wives, mothers. This creates an inherent ambivalence within women's politics vis-a-vis their collectivities, on the one hand, and vis-a-vis women from other collectivities, on the other hand. The famous quotation by Virginia Woolf that 'As a woman I have no country' emphasizes the realization of many women that they are positioned in a different place to men vis-a-vis their collectivity and that the hegemon-ic cultural and political projects pursued in the name of their collectivities can be against their interests as women. On the other hand, especially among subor-dinated and minority women, there is a realization that to fight for their liberation as women is senseless as long as their collectivity as a whole is subordinat-ed and oppressed. The struggles of women in Algeria, since the fight against the French and today when so many of them are fighting against the fun-damentalists is a good illustration to this. Feminist politics are affected by this ambivalence. Many black and minority women have pointed out the racist eurocentric and middle class biases which have been at the heart of most feminist agendas, at least until the last few years. As bell hooks claimed (1990:29): The vision of sisterbood evoked by women libera-tionists was based on the idea of common oppression - a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women's varied and complex social reality. There are many examples of this varied and com-plex social reality of women, which, as a result, prob-lematize any simplistic assumptions about what is 'the feminist agenda'. Debates relating to these issues can be found in all areas of feminist politics - whether it is the debate on reproductive rights and prioritizing forbidden abortions vs. forced sterilisa-tions; the attitudes feminists should have towards 'the family' as an oppressive or protective social institu-tion or the extent to which women should come out against all forms of violence or should campaign for participation in the military. The individualistic construction of 'women's rights' as 'human rights' has made it easier for international agencies and the western Right to coopt feminist discourses into their agendas. At the same time it also makes it easier for nationalist and religious fundamentalists who object - as was the case in the recent UN Human Rights con-ference in Vienna - to any international constitutional guarantees for women's reproductive rights, as interference in the collective human rights of their nations which include the right to follow their own 'culture'. There is no space in this article to develop the issues involved. However, central for any alternative feminist agenda would be the recognition that 'culture' is never an essentialist and homogenous body of tradi-tion and custom, but a rich resource, usual-ly full of internal contradictions, which is always used selectively in various ethnic, cultural and religious projects within specific power relations and political discourse in and outside the collectivity. Similarly, it is important to recognize that women are not just individuals, nor are they just members of collectivities. Feminist agendas have to take into consideration the multiplexity and multidimensionality of the identities involved, as well as their continuous restructuring of boundaries. Da: Nira Yuval-Davis: The Cairo Conference, women and transversal politics, WAF Journal no.6 Vedi anche: in MATERIALI: La crociata del Vaticano alla conferenza del Cairo, Carolyne Fourest