Sustainable Human Development Paradigm and gender

Dr. Dileni Gunawardena

The latest Human Development Report (HDR2011), released by the United Nations Development Programme late last year, focused on the theme of sustainability and equity. At first glance, these two themes seem to be strange bedfellows. But according to Sudhir Anand, Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Amartya Sen, 1998 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics and currently Thomas W. Lamont Professor at Harvard University, these concepts are very closely linked.

In a background paper to the 1995 HDR report on Gender 16 years ago (yes, hat’s off to the HDR for being way ahead of their time!), they noted that “the growing concern with “sustainable development” reflects a basic belief that the interests of future generations should receive the same kind of attention that those in the present generation get. We cannot abuse and plunder our common stock of natural assets and resources leaving the future generations unable to enjoy the opportunities we take for granted today. We cannot use up, or contaminate, our environment as we wish, violating the rights and the interests of the future generations.”

However, Sen and Anand did not stop there. They went on to point out that underlying this concern was the principle of universalism as a basis for distributional justice: we wish to protect the well-being of future generations because we believe that people, however different they are, of whatever nationality, race, gender-or generation-should be treated alike-this is the principle of universalism. It is “basically an elementary demand for impartiality--applied within generations and between them. It is the recognition of a shared claim to the basic capability to lead worthwhile lives.

Not working towards guaranteeing the basic capabilities to the future generations would be scandalous, but in the same way, not working towards bringing those elementary capabilities within the reach of the deprived in the present generation would also be outrageous. “

Thus, the HDR 2011 expands the now famous Bruntland Commission Report definition of Sustainable Development (development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs) to one of Sustainable Human Development defined as the expansion of the substantive freedoms of people today while making reasonable efforts to avoid seriously compromising those of future generations.

The interconnections between equity and sustainability are explored in this report at three levels. Firstly, the report presents the disparities between countries in their contributions to environmental degradation. For example, very high HDI countries contribute 4 times as much in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, as high and medium HDI countries do, and 30 times as much as low HDI countries do. Secondly the report looks at disparities in environmental deprivation, across countries, and for deprived populations within countries. Thirdly, the report presents disparities in the burden of environmental degradation or local impacts of global threats.

While poor people are often victims of multiple and often overlapping deprivations, and harder hit by natural disasters and other local impacts of environmental degradation, women, along with marginalized communities are among those who bear the brunt of these deprivations.

For example, inequities related to sources of safe drinking water and energy for cooking are hardest felt by women who in most societies have the traditional role of drawing water and gathering firewood.

While the health risks to the household of drinking unsafe water are greatest for children, the effort of providing safe water--and of caring for children who fall sick from drinking contaminated water usually fall on women. While the burden of gathering firewood falls on women, the health risks from using firewood for indoor cooking are greatest for women and the small children they care for while cooking.

While we might pat ourselves on the back that in Sri Lanka, 85% of households have access to an improved drinking water source (piped water and protected wells) this figure drops to 60% in the estate sector (where over 10% of households must travel a distance of more than 1 km to fetch water) and less than 50% in the Nuwara Eliya district according to the Millennium Development Goals Country Report Sri Lanka 2008/09 (UNDP/NCED/IPS).

According to the same source, while 93% of the population outside the North and East has sustainable access to improved sanitation, this figure drops to 67% in the North and East. Over 80% of Sri Lankans do not use modern energy forms for cooking, with the majority of them in the rural and estate sector. Over 90% of households in the bottom 40% of the population use firewood for cooking compared to 40% in the top decile.

The HDR 2011 report points out that women, elderly and children tend to be at greater risk from natural disasters, and extreme conditions. This is confirmed by other sources. For example calculations in a Sri Lankan study indicate that about 17% more women than men died in the Tsunami in Sri Lanka.

An Oxfam Report from South India indicated that “women across caste, class and occupations were disadvantaged because of pre-existing gender norms and gender-blind state policies.”

While the report does a somewhat comprehensive job of showing how women and other marginalized groups are disproportionately deprived and bear a disproportionate share of the burden of environmental degradation, it ignores the trade-off between gender empowerment and environmental degradation.

Consider that many of the very high and high HDI countries are also high GDI countries. Crucial in the process of the expansion of opportunities outside the home and freedoms for women in these countries, was the replacement of female labour within the home with energy intensive appliances: the washing machine, the dishwasher, and the vacuum cleaner were all developed at the same time as women made major inroads into the marketplace.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say gender empowerment was obtained at the cost of sustainability of the environment. Don’t get me wrong. I am not arguing for women to go back to washing clothes by hand and going down on their knees to scrub floors (though many in our part of the world are constrained to do so). Rather, I want to point out that more environmentally-friendly lifestyles were often sustained in the past by gender inequity.

And - as the report does point out, it is power relations (even within the household) that determine who gets the short end of the wedge-whether it is scrubbing the floor, or walking great distances to collect water and gather firewood.

Just as humans in general have tended to take it for granted that the next generation will have a better quality of life than theirs, women too have hoped, if not believed, that their daughters will have more freedoms and opportunities than their mothers and grandmothers before them. The prospect of a finite world and limited resources casts doubts on both these sets of aspirations.

The writer is a senior lecturer in Economics, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Peradeniya.

Germany’s female journalists call for women quotas in media

Helen Pidd in Berlin

Pro Quote campaign demands 30% quota across media as calls for more representative leadership grows in Germany

Hundreds of top female journalists in Germany are demanding the introduction of a quota to ensure at least 30% of all executive positions across the whole German media industry are filled by women.

In a letter sent to around 250 editors and publishers across the country, the signatories from the Pro Quote campaign claimed that at present only 2% of all editor-in-chiefs of 360 German daily and weekly newspapers are women. Just three of the 12 bosses of the public service broadcasters are women, said the letter, with the highest echelons of news magazines are “almost exclusively” filled by men.

Female journalists in Germany have called for the media to introduce a 30% quota for female staff in top positions

“It's time to change that,” said the group. “We demand that within the next five years, at least 30% of the executive jobs in editorial departments should be filled by women – and on all levels of the hierarchy. Can you manage that?”

Anne Will, one of Germany's foremost political chat show hosts, said the paucity of women in top editorial jobs demonstrated a “catastrophic failure”. Without a quota, “clearly nothing will change”, she said in support on Pro Quote.

The letter was prompted in part by the introduction last year of a 30% quota of women at Handelsblatt, a well-respected financial daily. “Women are not the problem, but the solution,” said Gabor Steingart, the male editor-in-chief, when he announced the initiative. “It's not just about fairness but it also makes economic sense.”

In 2010, Deutsche Telekom became the first company listed on the Dax stock exchange to introduce a 30% quota.

Sandra Maischberger, a prominent TV presenter, said of the quota: “A few years ago, I was still completely convinced that it was only a matter of time before the glaring absence of women in the executive class in our industry would be rectified.

In some areas – for example, at [public broadcaster] ARD, which is now run by a woman – some things have changed. But there is lot still to be done.

“Sometimes, when a new replacement is being sought for a position you do shake your head thinking, why not bring a capable woman into the team rather than always opting for the typical type of man who promises the moon?”

Dagmar Engel, long-serving editor-in-chief of Deutsche Welle, Germany's equivalent of the BBC World Service, offered a concise message of support.

“Look at me,” she said. “It works.” Ines Pohl, editor of the leftwing newspaper taz, is a rare example of a woman at the helm of a German daily newspaper. She said she was given the job because her newspaper aimed to promote women.

“Don't be afraid of quotas. I'm a quota woman. For me it's no problem. Because of taz's women target, I have been able to finally show what I'm made of. I'm sure the same would be true for many other women,” she wrote on the Pro Quote site.

Pohl told the Guardian on Monday that at least half of the taz editorial team has to be filled by women, with the same stipulation for executive roles. More radically, the editor-in-chief must always be a woman, supported by two deputies, one male and one female.

Women quotas have become a hot topic in Germany after the work minister, Ursula von der Leyen, called last year for quotas of women for all company boards.

Von der Leyen's call in January 2011 was printed in Der Spiegel, which ran a cover feature admitting that at that point more of its section editors were gay men than women. The gender balance has reportedly improved over the last year.

Responding to the letter on Monday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung said only two of its 22 section editors are women, although women make up half of the editorial department. In December, the Guardian journalist Kira Cochrane caused a stir after calculating that in a typical month, 78% of British newspaper articles are written by men, 72% of Question Time contributors are men and 84% of reporters and guests on Radio 4's Today show are men.

-Guardian.co.uk

Horrific consequences of sex-selective abortions

Kishwar Desai

UK doctors who allegedly offer sex-selective abortions should look to India to see the emotional and social disaster they create

The claim that doctors in the UK have been caught agreeing to conduct sex-selective abortions is extremely shocking – but certainly not surprising. At a time when doctors are becoming more and more interventionist in fertility rites – even creating designer babies on demand through assisted reproduction – why would the sex be left out? And if there is a deeply negative social impact of these abortions, they appear unaware of it.

Maintaining that they are merely being sensitive to their clients, doctors say they are responding to a need, even if the solution (sex-selective abortions) is illegal. In an apparent display of empathy, ethics are buried under the easy money charged.

But if, as has happened elsewhere in the world, there is an inbuilt parental bias from certain communities for a child of a particular sex – this can lead to a dangerous gender imbalance. That doctors can break the law and not realise that their decision could rip up the very fabric of family life is very, very disturbing.

This is exactly the sort of behaviour that was noticeable in India in the 1980s among doctors who, very sympathetically, allowed women to abort baby girls – and keep the male child.

This has meant that over 30 million girls are missing in India today – leading to a completely skewed gender ratio. While researching my book on female foeticide and infanticide, I met some Asian families in the UK and discovered that they still carried the cultural baggage of the “male child preference”. One young, working, British woman of Indian origin told me that, as a teenager, her father had asked her to look after her sister, while he took her mother for a sex-selective abortion.

He did not want a third daughter in the house. The young woman's trauma was considerable, as she and her sibling felt they were the unwanted sex – but that was of no consideration to her father.

How is it possible that every time doctors perform sex-selective abortions they don't realise the immeasurably costly consequences – both emotional as well as social?

Recently, in India, the poignant case of a battered two-year-old girl, Falak, grabbed the headlines. The baby, who had been brutally bitten, burnt and grievously wounded, became a shameful representation of a growing problem that the country has ignored for years: the neglect and maltreatment of girls, not just by men, but by women as well.

Baby Falak now lies with broken arms and legs in India's most prestigious government hospital in Delhi, undergoing her fourth brain surgery – and there is very little hope that she will ever fully recover. In a country that still practises female foeticide and infanticide, her story opened up the shocking dimensions that the growing gender imbalance has led to. After all, if a country continues to kill its baby girls, there can never be any real respect or security for its women, at any age.

With many more men than women in India, it is not surprising that there has been a steady rise in the instances of violence against women, both young and old – including heinous crimes like rape and acid attacks. The trafficking of women as well – the buying of brides – has also become a profitable business.

In fact, when Falak's story was investigated, it was found that her mother, Munni, had been forced to abandon her by two “agents” who promised her a better life.

The agents presented Munni (the mother of three children) herself as a prospective “virginal” bride to a man who had been unable to get married due to the increasing shortage of women. As the story has unravelled, it has become clear that the impact of the gender imbalance has been thus far exploited by everyone for their own advantage – and even women (such as the two agents) are party to it. Few corrective measures have been taken – and few are, perhaps, even possible.

The tragedy is, just as not a single doctor in India who helped pregnant women get rid of their girl children will ever be held accountable for what has become an enormous social problem, it is doubtful if any UK doctors will ever feel a twinge of guilt over sex-selective abortion either, regardless of the consequences.

-Guardian.co.uk