Heyzer Speaks on Gender Justice

To achieve "gender justice," women must make governments and capital markets more accountable to the critical needs of women in developing countries, said Noeleen Heyzer, director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), at the Kennedy School last night.

Addressing a near capacity crowd at the ARCO Forum, Heyzer described how nation states and markets ignore the condition that women bear an unequal share of poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment in developing countries. The first step in creating more awareness in these institutions, she said, is to define a "Women's Development Agenda for the 21st Century," which was the title of her speech.

Heyzer told the audience that poverty usually has a "female face," citing the statistic that women make up 60 percent of the world's one billion people in poverty.

In developing countries, women are especially affected by the brunt of poverty, Heyzer said. In addition to shouldering the bulk of the burden for keeping their families fed and clothed, she said, women are consistently short-changed in the distribution of the scarce resources which they themselves gather.

Governments and markets support a structure which allocates resources unequally to women, according to Heyzer. In South Korea, one of the world's fastest developing countries, women receive only 60 percent of male wages, she said.

In poorer countries, burdens of debt and structural adjustments fall heavily on women, Heyzer said. Structural adjustments which are often a condition for international loans or debt-restructuring usually entail the reduction of food subsidies, health services and formalized work for women, she said.

Because females in African and Asian societies are already at the bottom of the heap in the gender hierarchy, the effects of such cuts are felt more acutely by women, Heyzer said.

She told the audience that in times of deprivation and war, women lose their access to food, health care and education before men do. Women are even disadvantaged before birth, Heyzer said, because in some societies, 100percent of aborted fetuses are female.

In the face of the bleak picture she painted,Heyzer at the same time emphasized the power whichgovernments can wield in achieving "genderjustice." The Malaysian government, Heyzer said,significantly improved the lives of females bydeveloping a policy to educate rural women. Whenwomen migrated to urban centers, she said, theirskills and education allowed them to be easilyintegrated into the formal workforce.

In contrast, Heyzer said, the government ofThailand focused on growth in the central plains,relying on a trickle effect to rural areas. Theresult, she said, was that when migration to bigcities occurred, women had no avenues of entryinto the formal workforce, but were instead forcedto take up "casual" work, usually prostitution.

Other countries should follow the Malaysianexample, Heyzer said. But for this to happen, shesaid, women must continue to apply pressure togovernments, non-governmental agencies andfinancial markets to take into account the effectsof their policies upon women.

Heyzer's speech kicked off the women'sconference titled "Toward Beijing: Priorities`95", which begins today. The conference willfocus on the agenda of the United Nations FourthWorld Conference on Women to be held in thePeople's Republic of China later this year.

Heyzer gave her speech as this year's RamaMehta lecturer. The annual lecture, named afterIndian diplomat and writer Mehta, was endowed byJohn Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg professor ofeconomics emeritus, and his wife Catherine AtwaterGalbraith, who coauthored a book with the lateMehta

In the face of the bleak picture she painted,Heyzer at the same time emphasized the power whichgovernments can wield in achieving "genderjustice." The Malaysian government, Heyzer said,significantly improved the lives of females bydeveloping a policy to educate rural women. Whenwomen migrated to urban centers, she said, theirskills and education allowed them to be easilyintegrated into the formal workforce.

In contrast, Heyzer said, the government ofThailand focused on growth in the central plains,relying on a trickle effect to rural areas. Theresult, she said, was that when migration to bigcities occurred, women had no avenues of entryinto the formal workforce, but were instead forcedto take up "casual" work, usually prostitution.

Other countries should follow the Malaysianexample, Heyzer said. But for this to happen, shesaid, women must continue to apply pressure togovernments, non-governmental agencies andfinancial markets to take into account the effectsof their policies upon women.

Heyzer's speech kicked off the women'sconference titled "Toward Beijing: Priorities`95", which begins today. The conference willfocus on the agenda of the United Nations FourthWorld Conference on Women to be held in thePeople's Republic of China later this year.

Heyzer gave her speech as this year's RamaMehta lecturer. The annual lecture, named afterIndian diplomat and writer Mehta, was endowed byJohn Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg professor ofeconomics emeritus, and his wife Catherine AtwaterGalbraith, who coauthored a book with the lateMehta