Being there: A woman nursing her child during a political rally in Tokoza, South
Africa.
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If you say, “I’m for equal
pay,” that’s a reform. But if you say, “I’m a feminist,” that’s atransformation
of society.
Gloria
Steinem,
American writer and feminist (1934-)
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Women may have entered public
life on a massive scale, but they are still on their own when it comes to running
the household. A new balance must be struck if there is to be genuine democracy
 At the dawn of the 21st century,
states and the international community can no longer refute the fact that humanity
is made up of two sexes, not just one. This discovery, a precious legacy of the century
that just closed, has brought women’s existence into the limelight. One of the great
democratic challenges for societies over the next century will be to mature so that
both sexes are able to live their lives on an equal footing, with all their differences,
contrasting history and culture, but also with equal rights and responsibilities.
Women’s rise to power and their participation in politics are the vital signs of
a healthy democracy. If only this vision that emerged from the 1995 Beijing Women’s
Conference could spread worldwide! I would call it a radicalisation of democracy.
When women take part in the public arena, contributing to the ongoing, shared effort
to shape better ways of living together, a qualitative leap occurs. Their participation
fills a gap which has until now prevented the emergence of a truly democratic culture.
Archaic
attitudes
Equal sharing
of decision-making by men and women is a pre-requiste for democracy. In Brazil, women
hold half the civil service jobs (they are more qualified than men), but only 13
per cent of supervisory positions. The ultra-modern buildings in the federal capital,
Brasilia, stand in sharp contrast with the persistence of intellectual and emotional
outlooks which hark back to the 19th century and hinder women’s empowerment.
But attitudes are not the only obstacle to women’s ambitions. The structure of society
and the way men and women run their daily lives are other stumbling blocks.
The Inter-American Development Bank has had the good idea of giving the Institute
for Cultural Action, an NGO in Rio de Janeiro, the task of setting up a pilot programme
to train Brazilian women for positions of political and social power, an experiment
which is to be extended to the rest of Latin America. Participants include trade
union and NGO leaders, key figures from the black and indigenous communities, company
executives, civil servants and policymakers.
These women of different ages, educational backgrounds and ethnic origins are all
aware of one fact: they are paying a very high price for a social contract that was
negotiated when women were in a position of weakness, and agree that this has to
change.
Re-mapping
the division between public and private life
Women account
for 46 per cent of Brazil’s working population and hold 51 per cent of the university
degrees, but still perform almost all tasks at home, in the private sphere. A study
of 300 women in positions of responsibility by the Centre for Women’s Leadership
(CELIM) in Rio de Janeiro revealed the difficulty they had in making choices, their
temptation to give up and the risk of pulling back in the face of increasing obstacles.
Their difficulties show that there is an urgent need to re-organize the use of time,
to strike a new balance between responsibilities and to re-map the division between
public and private life. Household tasks must be recognised as time-consuming, socially
and economically vital and a serious check on women’s ambitions.
Women in positions of power must constantly prove that they can behave like men.
They keep quiet about having to look after children, run a household and care for
elderly parents. Bringing those issues out into the open would mean admitting “flaws”
that men do not have, for the simple reason that they delegate such work to their
wives.
By drawing a veil of silence over their home life as if it were something illicit,
women are allowing a basic fact to be hidden: the world of work relies on a domestic
zone run by them. Women have changed, but the world of work has not and they are
reaching the point of exhaustion. Filled with a deep sense of injustice, they are
asking themselves: “Where did I go wrong?”
Understanding that humanity is composed of two different but equal sexes has several
implications. Society must redefine itself because women are turning up in public
carrying children in their arms and breast-feeding them, and because they have their
own awareness and language that come from life experiences which are different from
those of men.
An
untenable double burden
Articulating
issues affecting public and private life is complicated, but that does not mean the
equation is impossible or that the problems they raise should be brushed aside—especially
since the two worlds of public and private life are intertwined and mutually supportive.
The balance between the two has now been upset. Women have entered public life on
a massive scale, but the organization of home life—how time is used and who is responsible
for what tasks—is still the same, as if nothing had changed. And yet such a world,
where women are expected to soldier
on just as before, “simply” adding to their lives experiences hitherto reserved to
men, is called egalitarian.
That misunderstanding is fueled by an age-old tradition of dismissing the world of
women, even by women themselves. Because society does not consider what they do in
the home as having any major social significance, it fails to add this part of their
lives to the other side of the equation.
This is why the massive migration of women from the home to the public arena is occurring
without societies having to think seriously about how and by whom domestic work will
be done in the future (and which women still do, but at what cost!). The double burden,
resulting from an outdated social contract, is putting women under mounting pressure
by speeding up their lives to an untenable pace. We are facing a social problem that
society as a whole must solve and not, as many think, a problem that women must settle
by working even harder.
As new areas of power open up to women, both sexes must take a fresh look at how
they use time. Re-arranging it is a challenge to society’s imagination. But has this
necessity sunk into the minds of decision-makers? I do not think so. This poses a
major problem because it is a missing building block in the construction of our democracies.
The everyday work of CELIM is proof of this. Women must put these issues on the political
and economic agenda, thereby contributing to a more radical definition of democracy.
Feminism’s new demand for a different sharing of time also opens a debate that goes
beyond the interests of women alone. In the final analysis, time and its constraints
define the limits of our own lives and the range of choices we make, in accordance
with the meaning we give to our own existence.
The equality equation is increasingly complex. It is not enough to wipe out the last
traces of discrimination in public life. A new definition of equality will emerge
when both sexes start sharing responsibility in the private realm. Otherwise, the
issue will be distorted and women will lose all chance of succeeding in public life.
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