Women and the Rio Declaration

A FEATURE FROM NGONET AT RIO

Pam Simmons

Principle 20 of the Rio Declaration promises women full participation in environmental management and development. There are, however, two unwritten conditions. Women are not given the option to refuse to participate, and their participation is to be channeled by states. Both conditions create problems for women. How is UNCED going to ensure women's participation? Agenda 21 says women are to be "empowered" to be environmental "managers"; women's status is to be improved; their potential is to be tapped and catalyzed into appropriate, consensual action; and their essential role in sustainable development will be recognized.

This is what is intended to *happen* to women. This is what women will be allowed to do. But where are the women in this? Where are the active, dissenting, powerful, self-respecting women? Many of these women do not want to be labeled "managers" or to have their "potential" exploited. And many would resist being assisted to take "appropriate consensual action." Status will not, cannot, be passed out like manna from heaven. Status will be, and has been, fought for and gained through women's many specific battles, for votes and for trees, against violence and discrimination. *This* is participation.

Who exactly will gain from women's participation in development? Official development projects do not address the exploitation of women in export-

processing zones, the sex tourism industry or agribusiness. They do not question the basic sexual and international divisions of labour. Instead, they reinforce them, to ensure a source of cheap labour and economically dependent women.

Around the world, women are demanding an end to the schemes that have flooded their land, destroyed their forests, separated children from parents and grandparents, divided men from women, and ridiculed their religions, philosophies and ways of life. These women are not demanding the right to be included. They want to be allowed to decide for themselves what is wrong and how to put it right. The key to their success is self-definition: the opposite of a development model that measures every country and every person on one single line of progress.

It is clear from UNCED rhetoric and agreements that governments and inter-governmental bodies will be responsible for steering us along the road to sustainable development. This is a problem for women. Such bodies are steeped in a patriarchal tradition that has not only excluded women from participating but has also mostly ignored women's interests except where they echoed men's.

In too many instances the state has acted as an instrument of oppression against women, either by refusing to intervene in private matters such as "domestic" violence or by unnecessarily interfering and harassing women who dare to speak or act without the patronage of men.

Some change will have to be negotiated through state channels but women are rightly cautious about cooption and token representation. They will also rightly resist having their participation defined for them.

The Rio Declaration puts 18 principles before women are mentioned. Each principle assumes the existence of benevolent, neutral, representative states. Most states, if not all, represent particular interests and certain groups of people. Are we to rely on these bodies to act against their own interests in devolving power to women? Robert Goodland of the World Bank, one of these "neutral" international bodies, in writing on the need for state intervention in population control, states that "poverty, abandoned babies, unwanted children, starvation, massive deforestation, extinctions and irreversible environmental abuse are greater evils and dangers than freedom of choice for women." But freedom of choice for women is a prerequisite for solutions to any of the above: something made clear by the Women's Caucus at Rio in their call for measures to ensure the rights of women to decide the number and spacing of their children. Women will play a vital role in future social change. But the role will not be conferred on them by official delegates at international conferences. The real issues will not be addressed by delegated management and participation within set parameters. The parameters are the issues, and women themselves will carve out their role in their everyday battles to conserve their environment and to win respect. (ends/ngonet in rio/13/6/92/2)

source: en.unced.general, pegasus electronic conference.

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