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Introduction

Part One:

Cultural Relativism

International Human Rights

International Law and Women's Rights

Part Two: International Issues

Discussion Question One

Part Three: Entrenching Violence

Discussion Question Two

The two most striking features of international violence against women are first; that male violence against women is a cultural constant--it happens in different contexts and under different guises in all cultures all over the world, and second; that the international study of these problems reveals the complicity and systematic toleration of violence against women by governments all over the world. That said, international collaboration on addressing violence against women is crucial in building effective, wide-ranging responses that can strengthen women's rights wherever they may live. From girls seeking educational opportunities in the Taliban, to female infants snuffed out before they even have a chance to speak, to girls whose genitals are mutilated long before they even know what is happening to them, women and girls are subject to an intolerable amount of debilitating violence. The goal of this Module is to increase awareness of these issues, and to formulate possible responses and collaborative thinking.

In Part One, we begin by exploring the problem violence against women in the broader human rights and international law contexts. How do we answer claims that acts that constitute violence against women have cultural significance and sanction in other societies? How is the international women's rights movement different from the global human rights movement? What role does international law play in securing rights for women across borders? Does the current construct of international law hinder efforts to secure women's rights internationally? If so, how can these movements work together to eliminate various forms of violence against women?

Part Two provides background on six different issues of international violence against women. By including these issues, we do not mean to exclude others or suggest it is an exhaustive list. We included these as representative of some of the most pressing and vivid issues. You will take part in a roleplay, assuming the mantel of a delegate to an international convention on violence against women. Participants will choose their roles by researching an area of interest (either through the channels we provide within the module, or by bringing in their own relevant experience). After reviewing the issues presented and choosing one, delegates will prepare a short report to share recommendations for addressing the problem in the future. (Discussion Question One)

Part Three examines ways in which violence against women is entrenched in societies. How much of a role do politics and economics play in shaping women's opportunities? How should we consider more generalized problems of political or economic disenfranchisement disenfranchisement of women in the context of fighting violence against women? (Discussion Question Two)

Any examination of international violence against women should be prefaced by a discussion of the impact of cultural relativism. As we approach a unit on international violence against women, how should we evaluate what constitutes "violence" against women as distinguished from norms accepted in the culture in which they occur? What if anything we should do to affect change in cultures not our own? Is it our business to try?

Cultural relativism is the problem of evaluating acts that constitute violence in one culture that may be accepted and practiced in another cultural and not regarded as violence. Why should one nation or culture impose its values of right and wrong on another? Especially when scars of imperialism are still healing in many developing countries, a fervent movement to resist forms of cultural imperialism has developed around the issue of international human rights. In the violence against women context, for example, cultural relativists mount scathing attacks on the movement to eradicate female genital mutilation. After all, they argue, would Americans take well to foreign countries demanding male circumcision or cosmetic surgery be outlawed? How can members of one culture label the actions of members of another culture morally "wrong" when there is no global consensus on morality?

Many scholars respond that cultural relativism should not stop us in our tracks or paralyze the discussion about basic human rights applied globally. In the excerpt that follows, Arati Rao considers the application of cultural relativist standards on the international women's rights movement. She argues that cultural relativism is too often a political expedient, used by old guard leaders to perpetuate a status quo that condones oppression of women. See what you think.

[The Politics of Gender and Culture in the International Human Rights Discourse, Arati Rao in Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper, Eds., 1995.]

"Can we have an international discussion of human rights in a world of cultural difference? … In United Nations debates, governmental declarations, newspaper editorials, and classrooms, the din of exhortation to greater sensitivity towards differences between cultural groups within countries (and to increased respect for societies elsewhere) has reached unprecedented levels…. And yet, even those who recognize the importance of cultural sensitivity feel that recognition challenged, and even trampled, by an intuitive sense of horror and outrage in the face of human suffering.

"The argument from 'culture' is employed to serve a variety of interests. In international politics, the old insensitive and self-congratulatory voices have risen to a bullying shout today, overriding all who do not subscribe to an unchanged formulation of the established liberalism based vision, with its emphasis on individualism and civil and political rights…. At the same time, extreme and wide-ranging human rights violations by both governments and extra-constitutional groups have continued to be defended, and even justified, on the grounds of cultural difference. At the 1993 Vienna conference, for instance, countries as culturally dissimilar as China, Syria, and Malaysia relied on notions of cultural integrity in their criticism of various aspects of human rights doctrine….

"Some [cultural relativist] defenses are long-lived and repeatedly deployed. For example, when Kenyatta [Kenyan leader] writes that 'it is unintelligent to discuss the emotional attitudes of either side of [female genital mutilation in Kenya], or to take violent sides in the question, without understanding the reasons why the educated, intelligent Gikuyu still cling to this custom'… he seems to be making no more than a call for a sensitive and fair hearing. But when he defends the practice on the grounds that it is 'important to note that the moral code of the tribe is bound up with this custom and that it symbolizes the unification of the whole tribal organization,' we are compelled to question the politics of such a claim, particularly when it is made by a male national leader on behalf of the social group most directly affected by the practice: women. Much-vaunted government reforms often are in reality little more than rhetorical flourishes, toothless legislation, and weak policy measures.

"Cultural sensitivity in the international area is important; it is equally important to retain our awareness of intracommunity gender oppression and, in so doing, fully articulate the painful coexistence of multiple oppressions. For too long, gender has been subsumed by the call to nationalist self-assertion; for too long, gender equality has been asked to take a position secondary to other struggles; for too long women have been required to choose between compartmentalized struggles for freedom. Feminist theory continues to unravel the inextricably connected oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, colonial experience, and the like, showing that (false) hierarchies of seemingly separable oppressions can only generate suspect and incomplete political strategies for attaining freedom and equality. That women often accept such misleading analyses of their predicament is insufficient reason to write off the possibility of uniting amidst their very real differences.

"[T]he notion of culture favored by international actors must be unmasked for what it is: a falsely rigid, ahistorical, selectively chosen set of self-justificatory texts and practices whose patent partiality raises the question of exactly whose interests are being served and who comes out on top. We need to problematize all of culture, not just the perceived 'bad' aspects. When we limit our inquiry to egregious violations, we limit our capacity to ameliorate human pain to just that instance of a 'bad cultural practice.' Without questioning the political uses of culture, without asking whose culture this is and who its primary beneficiaries are, without placing the very notion of culture in historical context and investigating the status of the interpreter, we cannot fully understand the ease with which women become instrumentalized in larger battles of political, economic, military and discursive competition in the international area.

As you consider the issues raised in this week's module, ask yourself whether you feel comfortable imposing your cultural values on members of another country or culture. As Rao cautions, ask yourself also who the cultural defenders are. Are there certain acts or traditions we can comfortably condemn despite cultural relativist blinders?

"In earlier times the relationship between international human rights law and women's issues was not a happy one. International law was, after all, state-centered and individualistic in content. Its thrust was basically toward male subjects with only passing reference to women's inequality. It was most important, however, that international law reinforced the division between the public world and private life. By insulating vital aspects of private life such as the family from scrutiny, it ensured that community and private life were not subject to international standards. International human rights law assumed a public sphere where the state and the international system could intervene and a private sphere where state intervention and international scrutiny were prohibited. It was assumed that privacy was a neutral realm of human experience, and that there was no power hierarchy within the private space of the family that affected state interests. As critics have argued, the absence of legal intervention to protect women in the community and in the home devalued women and kept intact the traditional male-dominated hierarchy of the family.

"A revolution has taken place in the last decade. Women's rights have been catapulted onto human rights agenda with a speed and determination that has rarely been matched in international law."

[Radhika Coomaraswamy, Reinventing International Law: Women's Rights as Human Rights in the International Community, Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, 1997.]

For optional reading, you may read the full article on the web at http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/HRP/Publications/radhika.html

The last decade has seen women's human rights, especially the issue of violence against women, emerging as a very important issue on the international agenda. The change in attitude was especially noted at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993 where, after fierce lobbying by several women's groups, women's rights was acknowledged as an "inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights." Consider, however, the following excerpt from a lecture delivered by Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.

"Traditional human rights scholars and activists claim that this breath of scope in the women's human rights movement will destroy human rights and its meaning in the world today. An angry human rights activist once told me, "Now human rights is the kitchen sink." Others such as myself argue that the women's question enriches [the] human rights [dialogue] and is an important part of the flexibility and adaptability of human rights paradigm to meet new challenges."

[Reinventing International Law: Women's Rights as Human Rights in the International Community, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, 1997. (For the full article, see http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/HRP/Publications/radhika.html )]

For a long time, the structure of international human rights laws ignored the specific concerns of women. Women's issues were considered to be private matters better dealt with within the home or community. By drawing a line between the public and private sphere, and by acknowledging only one as worthy of international concern, international human rights marginalized women's issues and created a division that exists till today. Are women's rights the same as human rights? If they are different, does this deny women the freedom and equality guaranteed in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

"… [I]t is, for the most part, women who suffer from torture and ill-treatment within the home. In some states this intimate violence is not a criminal act; rather, it is perceived as an acceptable form of social control within the family. Rape within marriage is still not recognized as a criminal act across the globe. Dowry deaths, although punishable under the law, do not attract the serious attention of law enforcement agencies. Even in those states where intimate violence against women is criminalized, evidence abounds of widespread failure by law enforcement agencies to prosecute offenders, thereby demonstrating and shaping societal attitudes around the issue. In many states, shelters have had their funding cut back or withdrawn altogether, leaving vulnerable women no means of escaping their abusers. The overall picture is, at best neglect, and at worst complicity on the part of the state [End Page 370] and the international community for approaching intimate violence not as a political and a human rights issue, but as a private matter--a social or a cultural practice, sporadic and individualistic in nature. [Realizing Human Rights for Women, Ursula A O'Hare, Human Rights Quarterly, 21.2 (1999)]

Many attribute this problem to the fact that, until recently, the only voices heard at the global level were the voices of men. The exclusion of women from the public world resulted in the development of laws reflecting only the concerns and experiences of men. How different is the situation today? Is it the case that women's voices, when heard in the international arena, are heard only at venues studying and debating women's issues and not within the "mainstream" human rights debate? Ursula A O'Hare in Realizing Human Rights for Women, believes so, arguing that women's issues are "ghettoized" within the United Nations system, as international bodies dealing with women's issues have "limited resources and weaker enforcement procedures than mainstream human rights bodies." As you read about the human rights violations inflicted against women around the globe in this module, think about how different things would be if the boundaries and substance of international human rights were established by women instead.

For Legal Texts, please click here for conventions and declarations on women's human rights: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/un/iinstrum.htm

Discussion Question One:

You are a delegate to an international conference on violence against women representing a culture with a unique form of violence against women. You are thrilled to be part of this conference because it gives you a chance to share your concerns, offer your own recommendations, and gain valuable insights through international collaboration.

Below is a list of prevalent forms of violence against women in several different cultural contexts. Each issue listed has a series of links for further investigation into the topic. To prepare for the conference, you will first decide which cultural context you represent by choosing one of those listed below. Click through the links provided in order to gain background on the factual situation, the internal (national) perception of the issue, initiatives that are being undertaken to address the issue, and possible effects of international efforts.

Once you are ready, please submit a one to two paragraph proposal outlining your recommendation for addressing the problem. After doing so, you'll have a chance to see how other delegates from your culture perceive the problem and solution(s), and engage in discussion among your delegation. You may also find it helpful to explore discussions among other delegations to see if their solutions are applicable to your situation. Submit your proposal as follows:

Group A post your proposals here.

Group B post your proposals here.

Finally, delegates are not limited to representing only countries listed below. If you prefer, choose an instance of violence against women facing women in another cultural context and submit your recommendations for possible solutions (Group A only) here.

Issues to choose from:

1. Female Genital Mutilation in Certain African Countries (click on issue title for links page)

Female genital mutilation, or FGM as the practice is commonly referred to, is a practice occurring today in many African and Middle Eastern communities, despite the fact that most governments do not sanction or support the practice. FGM involves one of several practices ranging in severity from snipping of the girl child's clitoris (clitoridectomy) to full-scale infibulation. Infibulation consists of ' the removal of the clitoris, the adjacent labia and the joining of the scraped sides of the vulva across the vagina, where they are secured with thorns or sewn with catgut or threatd. A small opening is kept to allow passage of urine and menstrual blood. Often, this opening is preserved with a sliver of wood...An infibulated woman must be cut open to allow intercourse on the wedding night and is clased again afterwards to secure fidelity to the husband. She is cut open and stitched closed again many times throughout her life for intercourse and child birth. Each time she is cut open and stitched closed, there is an increased risk of infection, loss of blood or even death...Worldwide the estimates of experts vary from 80 million to more than 127 million females whose genitals have been mutilated. According to a government survey conducted in 1996, 97% of the women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt have undergone the procedure.' (See incest abuse page in selected links for this issue.)

2. Female Infanticide in China: (click on issue title for links page)

Female infanticide (the killing at birth or intentional fatal neglect of female infants) in China is a practice that grows out of deep patriarchal cultural traditions of dependence on male heirs for subsistence in later life. For centuries, daughters left the Chinese home upon marriage, leaving birth parents - mothers and fathers - little incentive to invest in daughters' well being. Sons, on the other hand, especially eldest sons, remained at home after marriage, following time-honored notions of filial piety by serving and caring for their parents needs as they aged. For this reason, a preference for male children developed in China, as it has in many other countries.

However, unlike other countries, China's population control policies limiting parents to one child per family has drastically exacerbated the problem of female infanticide in China. Constrained to having only one child, the traditional preference for male children has caused a drastic increase in female infanticide in China. The pressure on women created by this official government policy creates an enormous burden to have sons. The practice is now evident in China's unequal gender population, with 121 males to every 100 females.

3. Honor Killings in Pakistan and India (click on issue title for links page)

"'We do not consider this murder,' said Wafik Abu Abseh, a 22-year-old Jordanian woodcutter [of his "honor" killing of his sister], as his mother, brother and sisters nodded in agreement. 'It was like cutting off a finger.' Last June, Abu Abseh killed his sister, bashing her over the head with a paving stone when he found her with a man. He spent just four months in prison. Marzouk Abdel Rahim, a Cairo tile maker, stabbed his 25-year-old daughter to death at her boyfriend's house in 1997, then chopped off her head. He also said he had no regrets. 'Honor is more precious than my own flesh and blood,' said Abdel Rahim, who was released after two months. (See New York Times reading in selected links for this issue.)

Murders of women in the name of "honor" of the family are an age-old practice across the Arab world in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Israeli-Arab and India and Pakistan. Women may be hunted and killed by family members for adultery, sexual misconduct, or any other nonsanctioned behavior. One of the aspects of "honor" killings that distinguishes it from the murder of female family members in other countries is that the criminal justice systems of the countries in which it occurs often tolerate honor killings. In the two instances above, the system released father and brother within a matter of months for brutal, public murders, "honor" in tact.

4. Taliban and Women in Afghanistan (click on issue title for links page)

Half of Afghanistan's population - the female half - is under house arrest at the hands of a merciless political movement called the Taliban. The numerous horror stories escaping from that country bear witness to the extreme violations of the rights of women. Women are forced to cover every inch of bare skin and are threatened with death if they venture from their homes without the requisite amount of coverage, or the requisite male escort. The Taliban excludes once practicing women doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals from employment, and in cruel irony, restricts women from seeking medical attention, personal help, or services from men. Girls are prohibited from seeking education, so they do so secretly in abandoned buildings with blankets on the floor. So far, international efforts to remedy the horrors inflicted on women by the Taliban movement have failed to pierce the wall of cultural relativism amidst anti-Western sentiment.

5. Trafficking of Women (click on issue title for links page)

"During the last couple of decades, prostitution and sex trafficking have reached an alarming magnitude the world over. Each year around 5,000 to 6,000 Nepali women and children, some as young as 9, are trafficked across the border into India. There are around 200,000 Bangladeshi women and girls in sex bondage in Pakistan. It is estimated that Thailand has around 2 million women and children in prostitution. About 100,000 Filipina women and girls are annually trafficked as "entertainers" into Japan’s booming sex industry. So too, prostitution and sex trafficking have acquired new and pernicious forms." See Dhaka Declaration II.

Trafficking in women and girls is a global problem that highlights the extent of sex discrimination and government complicity all over the world. East-Asian sex tourism has established notorious markets in the sex trade in which because of AIDS, the victims sold into it are getting younger and younger. Women in Eastern Europe have increasingly been marketed into forced prostitution. The U.S. Department of Justice has conducted several targeted raids on prostitution rings in which it has been discovered that women were trafficked illegally (and unknowingly to the women) into this country for the sex trade. Women are often tricked into sex trafficking by the promise of employment opportunities in another country, and go there only to learn that they have been sold into some type of prostitution arrangement. Sometimes they can buy their freedom by turning 'tricks'. But the often wind up in countries where they do not speak the language, have uncertain immigration status, and do not feel they can access any help through law enforcement to escape their imprisonment. Some governments receive direct benefits (financial) from maintaining an active sex tourism trade.

Internationally, the same components exist that allow trafficking to flourish: women in poverty, men who use violence and deception to control them, and governments who might promise but actually fail to deliver protection to women. As you read through the trafficking materials, keep in mind the similarities in the conditions that exist structurally that contribute to the perpetuation of this problem.

6. War Crimes: Sexual Violence as a Tool of War (click on issue title for links page)

The motivations may vary from notions of women as "spoils" of war to part of a genocidal strategy. The stories however, of the rape camps in Bosnia, the gender violence in Rwanda and the systematic violation of East Timorese women, all tell of violence on a scale so large, and on a level so horribly violent, that it has shocked the international community beyond belief. The following excerpt from Catharine A. MacKinnon's article, Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace provides us with a powerful analysis of this phenomenon.

"This is ethnic rape as an official policy of war: not only a policy to defile, torture, humiliate, degrade and demoralize the other side; not only a policy of men posturing to gain advantage and ground over other men. It is rape under orders: not out of control, under control. It is rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill or make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, to make you leave your home and never come back. It is rape to shatter a people, to drive a wedge through a community. It is the rape of misogyny liberated by xenophobia and unleased by official command."

In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sentenced former mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity as well as rape and encouraging widespread sexual violence. This landmark case marked a turning point in the recognition of sexual violence against women in armed conflict and set the stage for more rape indictments in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Despite this success, practical problems have plagued the progress of these tribunals and one can't help but question how effective the response by the international community has been.

Discussion Question Two:

So far, we've focused on physical acts of violence against women in international contexts: female infanticide, trafficking in women, etc. But such atrocities take place in broader contexts of political and economic disenfranchisement. How should we categorize non-physical violence against women resulting from economic, political, and social structures within their communities? Does this discussion belong in this module? Why? (You may wish to review the materials below before posting your response.)

Group A post your answers here.

Group B post your answers here.

Consider the limitations placed on women in political structures and their inability to effectively voice their ideas, concerns, and opinions when they are excluded from this valuable forum of participation. Because women are unable to voice their opinions, needs, and concerns due to their under-representation in political structures (even in the United States where women make up nearly 52% of the population, their representation in Congressional, judicial, and executive bodies doesn't come close to approaching that percentage), they suffer from an inability to force action and support for women's rights issues. Can this indirect violation of rights be considered violence against women?

Think about the limitations women endure with regard to economic participation in society because their housework and childbearing have not been recognized as economically valuable, or because the comparable work they do is not paid at wages equal to those received by men. Despite the fact that more and more women are entering the "work force" each year, the fact remains that many families choose to "keep mothers at home, raising the children" while sending the father off to work. Women's work in the home is not valued in the market and women therefore do not receive compensation for the valuable child-rearing activities in which they participate. Even when women elect to work outside the home, they often suffer from an inability to "climb the corporate ladder" because superiors worry that promoting a woman will not be as profitable given the high likelihood that she will retire, or at least take a significant leave of absence, in order to devote time to her family.

What relationship does economic discrimination have to violence against women? To what extent are limitations placed on women in these areas - political, economic, and social - perpetuating forms of violence against women around the world? Or are political and economic disinfranchisement separate and distinguishable issues? Should we be considering these issues when we talk about violence against women and attempt to overcome its negative effects?

Read through some of the following links as you form your opinion on this issue, and share your thoughts with the class:

For a general resource page dealing with economic, political, and social issues, in addition to violence, see: http://www.now.org/

For a discussion relating to the political participation of women, focusing on women's roles in Parliamentary governments, see: http://www.int-idea.se/women/release2.htm

For a list of links to issues of political participation of women in developing countries, see: http://women3rdworld.miningco.com/newsissues/women3rdworld/msub42.htm

For an informative keynote address on the economic disadvantages faced by women, suggesting a relation between economic participation and empowerment, see: http://www.runet.edu/~gstudies/keyecon.html

These are just a small sampling of the many resources available on these issues. Feel free to bring additional information into your analysis in answering Discussion Question Two above.

For an introduction to the practice of female genital mutilation, see: www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/fgmintro.html

To access Amnesty International's resource page on FGM, see: www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm1.htm

For a discussion of the role of cultural relativism in addressing FGM, see: http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Centers/Ethics/publications/iie/v8n3/rightsandcultures.shtml

To learn more about the practice of FGM in Egypt and learn about an Egyptian court's decision to overrule a state-mandated ban of FGM, see: http://incestabuse.about.com/health/incestabuse/library/weekly/aa070797.htm

To read about new alternatives to FGM that have been proposed in one Kenyan community, see: http://www.fgm.org/chelala.html

Additional Links

For a Pulitzer prize winning photo-documentary of a girl preparing for the tribal ritual and then undergoing FGM operation, see: http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1996/feature-photography/works/page-01.htmlTHESE PICTURES ARE RATHER GRAPHIC. PLEASE VIEW WITH DISCRETION.

If you are interested in more reading on FGM, see: http://www.ippf.org/fgm/index.htm

For a comprehensive overview of female infanticide in China with special attention to legal barriers to addressing its eradication see: Sharon K Hom, Female Infanticide in China: The Human Rights Specter and Thoughts Towards (An) Other Vision, (1992)

This page provides links to other pages featuring information about female infanticide in China and other countries: http://home.westshore.cc.mi.us/jbwolff/mgac/chinainfant.htm

For a view of internal efforts to secure women's rights within China, see: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/gissues/wacch.htm

For a review of the issue of human rights in China more broadly, delivered by a prominent scholar in the field, Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, see: http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/EVENTS/COMMUNIQUE/interview.html

For an overview of the practice of honor killing, see: http://women3rdworld.miningco.com/newsissues/women3rdworld/library/weekly/aa011299.htm

To get a sense of the greater problem of violence against women in Pakistan, including honor killings among other problems, see: http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/oct/pakpr.htm

For an article from Jordan dealing with "honor" and the family, see: http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/chastity.htm

To read a short position paper on honor killings suggesting possible means of addressing the issue, see: http://www.mwlusa.org/pub_hk.shtml

For a newspaper story on women's league attempts to end "honor killings" and save women, see: http://www.conservativenews.org/InDepth/archive/199903/IND19990308e.html

For general information on the women in Afghanistan, see: http://www.phrusa.org/research/exec.html

For basic information on the status of women in Afghanistan today, see: http://www.state.gov/www/global/women/fs_980310_women_afghan.html

To check out facts relating to Afghanistan, published by a feminist organization, see: http://feminist.org/afghan/facts.html

For a story on Afghan women under the Taliban, see: http://mosaic.echonyc.com/~onissues/su98goodwin.html

To view the U.S. Resolution addressing women's rights violations in Afghanistan, see: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c106:./temp/%7Ec106UGfYCf%20

For a Fact Book on global sexual exploitation, see: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/catw/catw.htm

For information on the trafficking of women and children in the Mekong Sub-Region, see: http://www.unifem-eseasia.org/Resources/Traffick2.htmll

For an article addressing the "West's Sex Industry" in Ukranian slaves, see: http://www.captive.org/Information/WorldBeat/EasternEuropeandFormerSovietUnion/bird_July_6_1998.htm#

For the U.S Government's position on the trafficking of women, see: http://secretary.state.gov/www/picw/trafficking/index.html

For a statement from the Regional Asian Conference on "Organising Against Sexual Exploitation": The Dhaka Declaration, see: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/catw/dhakadec.htm

For a statement from the Regional Asian Conference on "Organising Against Sexual Exploitation": The Dhaka Declaration II, see: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/catw/dhakdec2.htm

To listen to the experiences of women in Burma and the Dominican Republic, please select program 9820 - Trafficking in Women, available at this site: http://commongroundradio.org/

To access a statement on the need for human rights standards for the treatment of trafficked persons, see: http://www.hrlawgroup.org/site/programs/traffic/No2.htm

For information on war crimes in Rwanda: Breaking the Silence, see: http://www.echonyc.com/~onissues/f97rwanda.html

For a feature on East Timor: Raping the Future, see: http://motherjones.com/east_timor/features/women.html

For the United Nations Response to Sexual Violence And Armed Conflict, see: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/cover.htm

For an article regarding the atrocities that took place during war in Yugoslavia, see Todd A Salzman, Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Responses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia

RAPE CAMPS AS A MEANS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING: RELIGIOUS, CULTURAL, AND ETHICAL RESPONSES TO RAPE VICTIMS IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, Todd A Salzman

Human Rights Quarterly 20.2 (1998) 348-378

Currently, the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, is trying indicted war criminals in the Bosnia-Herzegovina war. During this conflict an estimated 20,000 women endured sexual assaults in the form of torture and rape. Although these atrocities were committed on all sides of the warring factions, by far the greatest number of assaults were committed by the Serbs against Muslim women, though Catholic Croats were targeted as well. While in past conflicts rape was sometimes considered an inevitable byproduct of war, and thus largely ignored when it came to punishing the perpetrators, the Bosnian conflict brought the practice of rape with genocidal intent to a new level, causing an outcry among the international community. Evidence suggests that these violations were not random acts carried out by a few dissident soldiers. Rather, this was an assault against the female gender, violating her body and its reproductive capabilities as a "weapon of war." Serbian political and military leaders systematically planned and strategically executed this policy of ethnic cleansing or genocide with the support of the Serbian and Bosnian Serb armies and paramilitary groups to create a "Greater Serbia": a religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogenous Serbian nation.

Serbian governmental and military powers appear to have utilized systematic rape as a weapon of war to serve their overall objective of "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism for genocide. According to a Commission of Experts appointed by former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the expression "ethnic cleansing" is relatively new. "Considered in the context of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, 'ethnic cleansing' means rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area." Ethnic cleansing is accomplished through the use of "concentration camps, torture, sexual violence, mass killings, forced deportations, destruction of private and cultural property, pillage and theft, and the blocking of humanitarian aid."

According to Ruth Seifert, "[a] violent invasion into the interior of one's body represents the most severe attack imaginable upon the intimate self and the dignity of a human being: by any measure it is a mark of severe torture." This violent invasion has occurred against the women on all sides of the conflict in Bosnia: Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. What differentiates the Serbian practice of rape and sexual assault from other assaults is that it is a systematic military policy conceived and planned before the outbreak of the war to effect the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Serbian territory. On the subject of rape and sexual assault, the United Nations Commission of Experts concluded that "the practices of 'ethnic cleansing,' sexual assault and rape have been carried out by some of the parties so systematically that they strongly appear to be the product of a policy." In a follow-up report, the United Nations General Assembly asserted that it was "[c]onvinced that this heinous practice [rape and abuse of women] constitutes a deliberate weapon of war in fulfilling the policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and . . . that the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing was a form of genocide."

Perhaps the strongest indication of a Serbian systematic policy is reflected in the five patterns of rape documented by the United Nations Commission of Experts. These patterns required logistical coordination, especially within rape camps where rape was used to impregnate Muslim and Catholic Croat women.

In the first pattern, sexual violence occurred with looting and intimidation before widespread fighting broke out in a particular region. As ethnic tensions grew, those in control of the local government would encourage paramilitaries, individuals, or gangs of men to initiate a policy of terrorizing local residents. These people would break into homes, steal property, and torture and sexually assault the inhabitants, oftentimes in front of other family members or in public.

The second pattern of sexual violence occurred during fighting. In the process of attacking a town or village, the forces would rape or sexually assault some women in their homes. Once the town was secured, the forces would gather the surviving population and divide them according to sex and age, selecting some women for rape or sexual assaults. The forces then transported the remaining population to detention facilities. The psychological impact of these atrocities is evident. Through fear and intimidation, victims and witnesses would be hesitant to return to the scene of such events.

The third pattern of sexual violence occurred in detention facilities or other sites referred to as refugee "collection centers." After the population had been divided, men of fighting age were either tortured and executed or sent off to work camps while women were generally sent to separate camps. There, soldiers, camp guards, paramilitaries, and civilians raped or sexually assaulted many of the women. Generally, these sexual assaults occurred in one of two ways. The most common practice involved selecting women from crowded rooms, taking them to another location, raping them, and either murdering them or returning them to the collection center. Another, though less frequent practice, entailed raping and sexually assaulting women in front of other detainees, or forcing detainees to rape and assault one another, thus humiliating the victims and instilling terror in the witnesses. In this setting, gang rapes were frequently reported as being accompanied by beatings, torture, and other forms of humiliation.

A fourth pattern of sexual violence occurred in rape camps established in buildings such as hotels, schools, restaurants, hospitals, factories, peacetime brothels, or even animal stalls in barns, fenced pens, and auditoriums. No one was exempt from the punishment in these camps. Frequently, the Serbian captors told women that they were trying to impregnate them. In so doing, they would create "Chetnik babies" who would kill Muslims when they grew up. Furthermore, "they repeatedly said their President had ordered them to do this." One woman, detained at a rape camp in the northern Bosnian town of Doboj, reported that women who became pregnant had to remain in the camp for seven or eight months. Gynecologists examined the women and those women found pregnant were segregated from the rest and received meals and other "special privileges." Only after it was too late for these women to get an abortion were they released and usually taken to Serbia. The frequently reported intent of Serbian soldiers to impregnate Muslim and Catholic Croats, the presence of gynecologists to examine the women, and the intentional holding of pregnant women until it was too late to legally or safely procure an abortion all point to a systematic, planned policy to utilize rape and forced impregnation as a form of ethnic cleansing.

A fifth pattern of sexual violence occurred in "bordello" camps. Rather than a form of punishment, women were held in these camps to provide sex for men returning from the front lines. While many of the women in the other camps were eventually exchanged for other civilian prisoners, these women were generally killed.

[I]t [is] impossible to arrive at any accurate statistics on the number of rapes, the number of rape survivors, and the number of pregnancies that resulted from those rapes. Estimates vary anywhere from 20,000 rape survivors reported by the United Nations Special Rapporteur to as many as 50,000-70,000 reported by the Bosnian government. The Bosnian government estimated that some 35,000 women, primarily Muslim but also Croat, became pregnant from rape. Given medical estimates of the percentage of pregnancies from rape, this would indicate some 3,500,000 incidents! This shocking statistic reveals another shortcoming to obtaining accurate information on the number of rapes and pregnancies resulting from rape; namely, the use of statistics for propaganda to incite the masses. Though the statistics vary, sometimes radically depending on the source, what is undeniable is that the practice of rape, [End Page 363] and in particular rape with the intent to impregnate the victim, was both widespread and systematic among the Serbian forces, paramilitary groups, and civilians.

FEMALE INFANTICIDE IN CHINA: THE HUMAN RIGHTS SPECTER AND THOUGHTS TOWARDS (AN) OTHER VISION Sharon K. Hom, Columbia Human Rights Law Review; Sharon K. Hom

Cite as: 23 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 249 Columbia Human Rights Law Review Summer, 1992

I. FEMALE INFANTICIDE: SPHERES OF VIOLENCE AND GHOSTS AT THE WELL

"You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as she had never been born." [FN15] A. Overview: Female Infanticide in China Defined narrowly, infanticide is the deliberate killing of a child in its infancy, and includes death through neglect. [FN16] It "has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity . . . . Rather than being the exception, it has been the rule." [FN17] Although not viewed as cruel or violent by the societies that practiced it in the past, infanticide is now considered a crime by national governments all over the world. [FN18] Because there are very few cases of preferential male infanticide, as a universal social practice, female infanticide is a reflection of the deadly consequences of the cross?cultural domination of patriarchal [FN19] values and culture.

Female infanticide [FN20] in China existed as early as 2,000 B.C. "Girls were the main, if not exclusive victims of infanticide and tended to have a higher infant mortality rate in times of poverty and famine." [FN21] Yet despite the view of infanticide as homicide throughout the different Chinese dynasties, there appears to be little evidence in the recorded texts of actual liability imposed upon parents who killed their infant children. [FN22] Since the public re?emergence of female infanticide in the post?Mao era, there have been prosecutions in the early 1980's of only a few well publicized cases. [FN23]

Despite Chinese official condemnation and outrage [FN24] at the crime of female infanticide, and despite legislative pronouncements prohibiting the practice, [FN25] the reality remains that female infanticide continues. [FN26] Although the extent of the practice is difficult to document [FN27] and quantify, and many reports, both foreign and official Chinese, differ in their analysis of the extent of and responses to the problem, [FN28] Chinese government officials do not deny the reemergence of what they regard as a shameful legacy of feudal China. [FN29] In addition to outright infanticide, there are other indicators of abuse: deliberate neglect, malnutrition, higher mortality rates for female infants, and abandonment. In 1988 and 1989, there were reports of infants, usually handicapped [FN30] or female, being abandoned in railway stations or other public places in major cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. [FN31]

Although female infanticide in China is arguably a crime within the existing legal framework of domestic civil and criminal law, and is clearly officially condemned by Chinese leaders, the tendency to narrowly define female infanticide in isolation from the broader question of gender inequality and violence against women limits the analysis of the problem and the possible responses. Both Chinese literature and official rhetoric and the Western analysis of the problem focus on the persistence of feudal thought and practices and reflects a tendency to characterize female infanticide as the "unfortunate consequence" of Chinese population control and modernization policies. This narrow definition and its resulting explanations, however, need to be re?examined. How the problem is conceptualized filters our capacity to imagine solutions and alternative visions which might inform these approaches. [FN32] Expanding and contextualizing female infanticide more broadly, therefore, may help break the hold of the coercive hegemonic narrative about Chinese women's lives dictated by the authoritarian power? holders and promote a questioning of the assumptions of legitimacy held by the existing social institutions and practices.

B. Reconceptualizing Female Infanticide as Social Femicide

Maxine Hong Kingston has written powerfully and eloquently to break the silence in her family about the past, about the past in which women who broke the social rules paid for their "transgressions" with their lives. In the story of No Name Woman, Ms. Hong's aunt, impregnated by a man whose identity she protects with her life, is violently attacked and terrorized by the villagers. Finally, overwhelmed by desperation and the exhaustion of giving birth in a pigsty, she throws herself and her new born female infant into the family well. In the suicide and the "infanticide", there is not only a killing of (an)other, but a killing of the self, an acceptance of the diminished value of female life, her daughter's and her own. And tragically, these two deaths are limited not only to Ms. Hong Kingston's semi?autobiographical memories of a family past, but are reminders of the difficulty of eradicating this violence on a domestic, national and global sphere.

Because the impact of particular incidents of violence have ramifications beyond the individual victim, [FN33] female infanticide must be reconceptualized as more than a privatized prohibited social practice whose causes stem from the remnants of feudalism. The killing of girl?infants is a form of violence against the infant herself, the mother, and all women in the society in which the practice occurs. Female infanticide is no less than a gender based discriminatory judgment about who will survive.

At the familial and societal level at which the mother is subjected to enormous pressure to bear a son or face the consequences of abuse and humiliation, [FN34] female infanticide is a form of policing and terrorist practice of control over women to keep them in their prescribed reproductive role as the bearers of sons. Reminders of the reality of the persistence of female infanticide are present in media stories, in official pronouncements, and in the content of the numerous education campaigns to eradicate these abuses. In the insidious and implicit ideological message conveyed under the explicit condemnation of these abuses, female children, women, and men may be conditioned to accept the legitimacy or perhaps worse, the inevitability of the devaluation of female life. [FN35]

At the same time, it is important to clarify the actors involved and not leave my proposed re?conceptualization adrift in a sea of unmediated social forces or faceless individuals, institutions, or ideologies. If viewed narrowly as the killing of female infants, the guilty responsible parties appear to be the mother herself, or the father, relatives, midwives or medical workers [FN36] who might get involved. An appropriate "solution" to this privatized conception of the problem would be to criminalize this behavior and to focus on education, deterrence, and punishment of individuals. This "solution" in fact describes the Chinese government's approach. In addition to general criminal and civil prohibitions against female infanticide and the maltreatment of children, education and propaganda campaigns are the Chinese government's primary strategies in responding to the persistence of the female infanticide problem which continues to haunt the implementation of China's population control policies. [FN37]

Although legal prohibitions and protections are clearly significant in terms of norm building and contributing to a climate of equality for girls and women, the isolated privatized criminalization of the problem is not enough to eradicate the practice or the underlying ideological and structural causes of the problem. If viewed as a form of social femicide [FN38] which occurs as a result of the existence of spheres of violence against women, female infanticide would be viewed as more than a crime committed by individuals. Within a "spheres of violence conceptualization," female infanticide, the forced abortion of fetuses against the consent of the pregnant woman, [FN39] the abortion of supernumerary children, the abuse of wives who "fail" to bear sons, suicides by despondent women, and malnutrition of female versus male children are all forms of the devaluation of female life.

All of these forms of abuses against females are in fact inevitable and foreseeable gender?based consequences of official Chinese policies adopted in the context of the existing structural, ideological, and cultural realities. Nor is this the first time Chinese policies have had foreseeable and disastrous consequences for women. After the introduction of marriage and divorce reforms in 1949 and 1950, there followed an alarming rise in the number of deaths and acts of violence against women who had attempted to use their newly guaranteed "rights" to filefor a divorce. [FN40] Although the authorities were supportive of women's rights and social reforms in the family sphere, their failure to prepare or educate the masses to accept such legislative changes and policies resulted in women bearing the costs of the resistance to these changes. Government leaders cannot simply point to a formal system of law and policy to avoid responsibility for promulgating policies which have deadly gender based consequences and for failing to adequately plan for the inevitable resistance and reaction of the Chinese people.

As social femicide, these cultural practices and abuses implicate government policy?makers and leaders at the institutional and ideological level, and raise questions about the locus of responsibility for the impact of these policy decisions. Re?conceptualization of the problems as social femicide urges the reframing of a more appropriate social response.

[FNa1]. Associate Professor of Law, City University of New York School of Law at Queens College, Fulbright Professor, People's Republic of China (1986? 88), New York University School of Law, J.D., Sarah Lawrence College, B.A. A draft of this article was first presented to the East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School, February 6, 1992. I thank Ninotchka Rosca who first suggested that I write about female infanticide and that I try to write about these difficult issues "with a human voice." I owe a special debt of the heart and spirit to all my Chinese students, colleagues and friends. I thank my father for his many stories; Kevin P. McCarthy for sharing his enduring faith in our human/divine capacity for transcendence; the following friends and colleagues for reviewing drafts and providing valuable comments and suggestions: Bill Alford, Xin Chunying, Ruthann Robson, Joyce McConnell, Vivien Ng, Celina Romany and Bill Zarit; my research assistants, Cynthia Green, David Hyland, Donna Russell, Marisa Steffers, and Marinda van Dalen for their dedicated efforts; Debbie Udit, Pat Tynan, and Joan Berke for life?saving computer and administrative support; and Helena Lai, Julie Lim, and Kathy Williams for expert library research support.

[FN15]. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts 3 (1975).

[FN16]. Williamson, supra note 3, at 62?63.

[FN17]. Id. at 61. Williamson points out that infanticide has satisfied important familial, economic, and societal needs. In Imperial China, Japan, and Europe, it has been practiced as a method of controlling population growth, and avoiding starvation and social disruption.

[FN18]. Id. at 72.

[FN19]. I use the term patriarchy, deriving from the Greek, "the rule of the father," in this discussion to refer to the fundamental and universal status of male dominance, authority and control exercised by men over women, embodied in social institutions of power (such as the family, law, and government) and their legitimating ideologies. See, e.g., Lerner, supra note 10, at 239. Mary Daly has more critically defined patriarchy as the "society manufactured and controlled by males; FATHERLAND; society in which every legitimated institution is in the hands of males and a few selected henchwomen; society characterized by oppression, repression, depression, narcissism, cruelty, racism, classism, ageism, objectification, sadomasochism, necrophilia; joyless society, ruled by Godfather, Son, and Company; society fixated on proliferation, propagation, procreation, and bent on the destruction of all Life." Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi, Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language 87?88 (1987).

[FN20]. I use the term to mean the induced death (euthanasia) of infants by suffocation, drowning, abandonment, exposure, or other methods. In China, reported methods also include crushing the infants skull with forceps as it emerges during birth or injecting formaldehyde into the soft spot of the head. Maria Hsia Chang, Women, in Human Rights in the People's Republic of China 260 (Yuan?li Wu et al. eds., 1988).

[FN21]. Elisabeth Croll, Feminism and Socialism in China 24 (1980).

[FN22]. Historically, infanticide was viewed as a crime although there appears to be very little evidence of actual criminal punishments imposed. However, feticide was not regarded as a crime and abortions appear to have been common. During the Qin dynasty (221?207 B.C.), infanticide was viewed as homicide. During the Han dynasty (202 B.C.220 A.D.), infanticide was viewed as ordinary homicide with the death penalty given in some cases. By the Southern Sung (1133 A.D.), there was a provision which provided for a three year imprisonment for infanticide. In the Yuan dynasty (1279?1368 A.D.), the penalty was only the confiscation of one?half the guilty parents property. By the Qin (1644?1911), there did not appear to be a specific punishment in the Criminal Code for infanticide. Julie Jimmerson, Female Infanticide in China: An Examination of Cultural and Legal Norms, 8 UCLA Pac. Basin L. J. 57?62 (1990).

[FN23]. See Dep't of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1983, at 754 (1984) (reporting that perpetrators of female infanticide are punished with prison sentences ranging from 3 to 13 years). This Report is submitted annually to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, in accordance with Sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended.

[FN24]. See Dep't of State, State Department Country Reports for 1990, at 851, 853 (1991) (reporting that despite strong government opposition to infanticide and the prosecution of offenders, the government has not been able to eradicate the practice, and the practice "persists in some impoverished rural areas").

[FN25]. "Infanticide by drowning and other acts causing serious harm to infants are prohibited," Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China (1980) ch. III (Family Relations), art. 15; "Maltreatment of old people, women and children is prohibited," Chin. Const. (1982) ch. II (Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens), art. 49. Although the Criminal Law (1979) does not explicitly forbid infanticide, Chapter VII (Crimes of Disrupting Marriage and Family), art. 182 prohibits abuse of a family member and Chapter IV (Crimes of Infringing Upon the Rights of the Person and the Democratic Rights of Citizens), art. 132 proscribes the death penalty, life imprisonment or not less than ten years of fixed?term imprisonment for the intentional killing of another. For the text and English translation of the Marriage Law, the Constitution and other Chinese Laws, see Law in the People's Republic of China (Ralph H. Folsom & John H. Minan eds., 1989) (providing only a descriptive and superficial commentary on Chinese law in general, but useful as a one volume reference for translations and texts of Chinese laws) [hereinafter PRC Laws].

[FN26]. In early 1990, Reuters reported that the practice of drowning girl babies had revived again in China's Guangxi province resulting in a ratio of newborn girls to boys of 100 to 121. Surge in Girl Baby?Killing, Chi. Trib., Feb. 22, 1990, at 19. In June 1991, an American journalist reported once again that female infanticide may be a cause of the apparent disparity of girls to boys. See Nicholas D. Kristof, A Mystery from China's Census: Where Have Young Girls Gone?, N.Y. Times, June 17, 1991, at 1, which suggests that newly released 1990 official Chinese census data "support previous suspicions that 5 percent of all infant girls born in China are unaccounted for."

[FN27]. The difficulty of accurate reporting of the number of female infanticides is in part attributable to the fact that about 80 percent of the Chinese people live in poor, rural areas where the only effective deterrent to infanticide may be the willingness of neighbors to report suspicious circumstances.

[FN28]. In 1985, Michael Weisskopf, an American reporter, extrapolated from demographic information compiled by a 1982 Chinese national census, and suggested that there were almost 300,000 cases of female infanticide during 1982 and 345,000 in 1983. Michael Weisskopf, China's Birth Control Policy Drives Some to Kill Baby Girls, Wash. Post, Jan. 8, 1985, at A1. Although the Renmin ribao (People's Daily), Apr. 7, 1983, at 4, had already reported in 1983 ". . . the phenomenon of butchering, drowning, and leaving female infants to die is very serious," and numerous official references to the problem can be found in the Chinese media, the Chinese government nevertheless demanded a retraction from Weisskopf. The Chinese government claimed that the reports were exaggerated and that there were only rare cases which were checked and corrected immediately. Shi Chengxun, Family Planning: The Chinese Embassy Replies, Wash. Post, Jan. 15, 1985, cited in Dae Chang, supra note 2, at 257.

[FN29]. The city of Chongqing reported 2,800 cases of female infanticide in 1984. Fang Fu Ruan, The Nation, June 18, 1988, at 848?49. See also Jonathan Mirsky, One Child Per Family (No Girls): The Infanticide Tragedy in China, The Nation, July 2, 1983, at 12?13 (referring to the Anhui Women's Federation analysis of infant mortality rates in its own and a neighboring province and concluded that the likely number of girls killed at birth was 709).

[FN30]. A Chinese Eugenics Society (Zhonghuo Yousheng Xiehui) was established in 1988. Fazhi ribao (Legal System Daily), May 26, 1988, at 1. Perhaps reflecting an inevitable consequence of the focus on a eugenics approach to "improving the quality of the population," 22.6 percent of the abandoned children were deformed or handicapped. Jimmerson, supra note 22, at 73.

[FN31]. See Alison E.W. Conner, Child Protection Legislation in China, Law Inst. J. 519 (1990) (citing the Guangdong Province Nanfang ribao (Southern Daily), Jan. 1981, as reporting that the abandonment of female infants was a common occurrence and that midwives were used to drown or suffocate female newborns). In 1989, reports from Guangdong indicated that of the 10,000 infants abandoned, 90 percent were female. Jimmerson, supra note 22, at 73. See also Maria Chang, supra note 20.

[FN32]. See, e.g., Joyce McConnell, Beyond Metaphor: Battered Women, Involuntary Servitude and the Thirteenth Amendment, 4 Yale J. L. & Feminism 201 (1992) for a radical and creative framework for analyzing the theoretical, doctrinal, and factual connections between involuntary servitude and intimate violence. By focusing on the 13th Amendment prohibition against slavery, the institution of slavery, contemporaneous Congressional debate, and judicial interpretation of the Amendment and criminal statutes, and challenging the public/private dichotomy which places slavery in prohibited "public" marketplace sphere and battering in a protected "private" sphere, Joyce McConnell lays the foundation for a new discourse on domestic violence.

[FN33]. At a meeting called by the Secretary General of the United Nations, attended by 29 experts from 24 countries, including China, the problem of family violence was discussed. Violence against women in the family was identified (once again) as "a serious issue, both in magnitude and effect" including traumatic effect on the women victimized, the long term development of women and children, and the achievement of peace. See Dae Chang, supra note 2, at 153?54.

[FN34]. Maria Chang reports that women in China are systematically abused and discriminated against for giving birth to girls. Maria Chang, supra note 20, at 264 (citing Renmin ribao (People's Daily), Jan. 31, 1983, at 3). Two examples she cites include a Tianjin woman who suffocates her female infant and then commits suicide after repeated physical abuse by her husband and mother? in?law for giving birth to a girl (citing Guangming ribao (Guangming Daily), Mar. 3, 1984); and the murder of two daughters and his wife by a Chinese man who declared that he was too young to be condemned to a life without sons. He was a brigade leader and delegate to the People's Congress (citing Jiankang ribao (The Health daily)) Id. Chang points out that these Chinese accounts of abuse are also corroborated by Western journalists, such as Weisskopf. Women are blamed for the female sex of the child, and "unsuccessful wives have been posioned, strangled, bludgeoned and socially ostracized . . . .[Some have been driven] to suicide, others into mental institutions . . . . The pressure on women is so great that many openly weep on learning they have given birth to a girl." Id. (citing Weisskopf, supra note 28).

[FN35]. I have suggested elsewhere that both Chinese socialist ideology and the two key social institutions of power, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese family, reflect authoritarian and hierarchal assumptions which legitimate the supremacy of a male engendered vision of the "natural" order of society. Hom, supra note 9.

[FN36]. See Maria Chang, supra note 20, at 260 (discussing "state sanctioned" infanticide performed by hospital doctors and medical personnel).

[FN37]. The educational approaches of family planning are reflected in the ongoing forums, conferences, and meetings to "discuss" the need to raise consciousness regarding the responsibility of Chinese citizens to practice family planning and to root out feudal ideas about the preference for sons over daughters. See, e.g., National Forum on Family Planning Held, Lanzhou Provincial Service, Aug. 17, 1990, reported in FBIS?CHI?90?162, Aug. 21, 1990, at 20; Jiangxi Couples Learn to Limit Family Growth, XINHUA, Aug. 19, 1990, reported in FBIS?CHI?90?162, at 32; Song Ping Stresses Family Planning Work, Beijing Renmin ribao, Mar. 3, 1991, reported in FBIS?CHI?91?045, Mar. 7, 1991, at 10.

[FN38]. I use the term social femicide to suggest the implication of the role of an existing social order in practices which result in death and devaluation of female lives. For an international example of attention to the problem of the impact of social practices on women, see U.N. Report on Traditional Practices, supra note 5. The Working Group on Slavery of the Sub? Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (Working Group) identified various traditional practices which have an adverse impact on the health of women. These practices include female circumcision, traditional birth practices, and preferential treatment for male children. In selecting these practices as priority problems, the Working Group considered the extent of the phenomenon, the mortality and morbidity rate and other factors. The Working Group's report suggest a clear link between preferential treatment of boys and the excess morbidity and mortality among girls. It estimated that about one million female children per year die as the result of neglect. As one of the consequences of son preference, female infanticide reflects the deadly impact for female children of the value systems and "preferences" of patriarchal societies, and thus is a form of social femicide.

[FN39]. Induced abortions are viewed by the government as an important component of the national effort to reduce the rate of population growth. Abortion, together with vasectomy, tubal sterilization and insertion of an intrauterine device, is one of the four planned birth operations. For women between the ages of 15?44, the abortion rate jumped from 23.1 per hundred in 1971 to 61.5 in 1983. See Christopher Tietze & Stanley K. Henshaw, Induced Abortion: A World Review 1986, at 31 tbl.2 (6th ed. 1986). For a demographic survey, see Virginia C. Li et al., Characteristics of Women Having Abortion in China, 31 Soc. Sci. Med. 445 (1990). Many western observers correctly point out that female infanticide is not a coercive measure condoned by the authorities to limitpopulation growth, but instead is a reflection of resistance to the policy on the part of rural population. See, e.g., Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Resistance to the One?Child Family, 10 Modern China 345?74 (1984). However, this analysis is problematic because it accepts an implicit public/private distinction in terms of spheres of responsibility. See infra notes 196?99 and accompanying text.

[FN40]. In a survey by the Women's Association, of 59 counties in Shanxi province in 1949, out of 464 female fatalities, 97 percent were related to the women's efforts to get a divorce. These fatalities included suicides by women denied divorces (40 percent), suicide because of abuse inflicted upon women by their families for initiating divorce proceedings (20 percent), death as a result of their family's torture and abuse (25 percent); and suicide in relation to family disputes about divorce (12 percent). This pattern was repeated in other parts of China, resulting in more than 10 thousand female fatalities in central and southern China alone. Maria Chang, supra note 20, at 252 (citing Beijing Renmin ribao (Beijing Daily), Mar. 8, 1950, at 2; Ma Tieding, Changjiang ribao (Changjiang Daily), June 10, 1951, at 3).

[FN41]. Boys were clearly more valued than girls in traditional China. Resources were viewed as wasted on girls who marry and become part of their husbands' family. Girls were often described as goods you lost money on. In a society which traditionally and even today lacks a pension security system for more then 80 percent of the population, it is not surprising that boys are referred to as "like heavy cotton quilts in the winter; if you don't have one, you will freeze to death." Steven Mosher, The Broken Earth: the Rural Chinese 260 (1983). Rural families want male children so badly, that an education propaganda play depicts one mother of daughter after daughter naming her daughters Yin?erh("Bring forth a son"),Chao?nan("Call forth a boy"), and Lai? ti ("Come little brother"). This son preference is also present in other parts of Asia and in North Africa, resulting in high female mortality, delay in care, higher female malnutrition, and lower female literacy. U.N. Report on Traditional Practices, supra note 5, at 24?34.