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"Women's human rights" : Educational workshops

TRADITIONS, CULTURE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:

(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of man and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women;

(b) To ensure that family education includes a proper understanding of maternity as a social function and the recognition of the common rsponsibility of men and women in the upbringing and development of their children, it being understood that the interest of the children is the premordial consideration in all cases.

An answer as to what extent culture and traditions support or confront such a widespread phenomenon as violence is crucial for studies on women’s rights. At this point, there are two controversial positions. The first is a contradiction between the interpretation of human rights and relativism. Local figures, who are often lawyers, justify their disagreement with the international instruments of human and women’s rights on a ground of their incompatibility with cultural values. For instance, some states ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women with reservations that some provisions of this document contradicted some cultural norms of respective states. And Islam was mentioned by these states as the basis for these reservations. The questions of correspondence of human rights and women’s rights in particular to international standards and of the sex equality as a generally-accepted political and cultural value in the region are still open.

The second controversial position is interrelation of the public and private spheres. Recognition of equality between sexes implicates recognition of the fact that the private is also public, which requires identification and elimination of woman human right violation in the family. An important aspect of achieving gender equality in the family is based on changes connected with the labour division in household and public production in modern society and resultant changes in hierarchy and relations among male and female family members, as well as on a wish of family members to have such changes in their families.

We shall consider three major problems emerging in the region: state of the art of women’s rights, the impact of religious dogmas on women’s rights and violence against women. They are all interconnected and influence one another. Women’s rights in large measure depend on which form and how the religious revival takes place and what is understood under the term ‘tradition’, for traditions are often predetermined by religious terms and in their content ascend to religious texts. Adherence to religion requires observance of traditions and when women’s rights are violated the explanation is that this is required by traditions.

However, it should be remembered that CEDAW, as the most detailed international definition of women’s rights, contains a provision which obviously calls for state authorities to combat cultural practice leading to discrimination on the basis of sex. As a study on tradition application shows, there is a significant gap between positive interpretation of religious texts in favour of women, from which traditions originate, and a real practice of the discrimination of women which also originates from these very traditions. However, a problem remains as to who determines criteria on how to apply traditions. The answer to this question is the clue to the dispute about women’s rights between universality and cultural relativism. This answer should be definite in what way of acting women may choose or if they only have to perform the specific role of mothers and therefore keep to an unwritten code of behaviour related to this role (norms of dressing, duties, etc.). Apologists of traditionalism and relativism ignore the fact that culture and traditions develop with time and cannot be considered as something static, eternal, not depending on time.

One must not forget that the national revival develops under the slogan of the revival of cultural values and society usually painfully responds to a criticism of traditions regarded as national. Therefore it is very important to develop co-operation between feminist organisations and mass media whose representatives, not having enough knowledge of human rights and being under the influence of the authority of traditions, create a stereotype of a tender and well brought-up woman, implicating that people must follow traditions and thus sanctifying the violation of her rights.

There is another tendency (which originates from the same tradition) in the society to restrict all rights of women to the rights of a mother, and these rights do not apply to women without children and families. From the viewpoint of cultural values, restricting a woman’s role to the role of a wife and mother does not correspond to the concept of women’s human rights — she has equal rights because she is a human. Her rights must not depend exceptionally on her role of a wife and mother of the family and she must be considered a personality with her own rights who should be allowed to find a balance between her family and civil status.

In many cases women prefer suffering violence at home to leaving it, since the latter means that they will turn into social outcasts, lose protection which they have while they are family members and are going to encounter even heavier problems. This happens because women living in this region have no intermediate environment between the family and state that is friendly to them. However, such an environment can be created by the women themselves. But in the traditional society women are zealots and keepers of traditions and are often, as well as men, intolerant to forms of behaviour and lifestyles other than their own (this is does not include amoral behaviour). But currently emerges a different type of women - adherents of new civil values, such as respect to human rights and democracy, whose enthusiasm helps set up new FNGOs, and who do their best to draw the attention of the society to the problem of violence against women.

The problem of violence is also connected with the tradition of inferior position and obedience of women as humans dependent on males - fathers, husbands and their relatives. Therefore, any attempt made by women to assert themselves as personalities and defend their rights or disobey their fathers’ and husbands’ will is quite often followed by psychological or physical violence, and the society is usually apt to blame women for the fact of violence.

There are only a few crisis centres in the region to which women can appeal. The network of shelters for women is not developed yet - they could be more in number. Such shelters should be set up by women themselves, with the support of feminist movements at local, national and international levels. However, the work on the elimination of violence must be conducted not with women only, but also with men. Violence is not a problem restricted only to a family — society suffers from violence, too.

The problem of the religious revival, political overuse of religion for introducing some limitations on women’s rights and justification of discrimination on the pretext of sex differences is a grave threat to women’s human rights in the region. From this viewpoint it would be correct to replace the term ‘religious revival’ with the term ‘reanimation of religion’, for a drop in the status of women takes place as a partial reanimation of the pre-Soviet status of women — the period when the society lived under the law of shari’a and women had only an inferior position, being separated from men by walls of houses. Religion is always used for abuses as an ideological basis to strengthen the opinion of a second-grade nature of women in the family and society.

There is ample evidence from various states on the growth of the religious conscience among women: young women quit secular education to join religious sects or move to Arabic states to get religious education. They support men’s rights to polygamy and an idea of gender-discriminating legislative acts based on shari’a. Mass media, also represented by women, highlights gender-based discriminating restrictions. They are under the spell of sexism because of having a biased notion of the feminist movement which took place in the time of Soviets. Nor do they know the scale and actions of the feminist movements in South Asia and the Middle East and follow men in their scornful attitude towards the feminist movement. The state cannot always pay attention to the violation of women’s rights by fundamentalist religious groupings, and therefore the objective of feminist organisations is to work with journalists and draw the attention of the state bodies to facts of the violation of women’s rights disguised as a care for preserving national traditions.

Violence against women is a specific and widespread violation of their rights. There are numerous instances of various forms of violence against women, such as domestic violence, violence during armed conflicts (mainly in Tajikistan) and rapes. On the other hand, there are forms of violence that have historic roots, and they are mainly restricted to families, but they turn to a wider social problem from the standpoint of observance of human rights. However, it has not become a subject for in-depth analyses in media publications and does not therefore stir concern in the society. Domestic violence is a problem of sex inequality in the family — women have to suffer violence not only from spouses, but also from the other male family members, parents-in-law and the like. Women are also major victims during armed conflicts, for they not only lose their family members, but become refugees as well. Society traditionally divides between the public and private spheres and, what is more, it attempts to prevent the private sphere from criticism, particularly criticism of traditions in the family.

An important setback to an effective solution of the problem of violence is the unwillingness of women to express their experience — this also originates from the tradition of the division between private and public spheres, as well as a tradition to blame women for all family problems. A traditional behavioural code of women prohibits them to speak about their problem out loud beyond their homes. This creates problems in collecting reliable statistical data on violence against women. The way to collect such data is through the systematic information amassment from shelters for women. For instance, Turkey has already gained experience of collecting reliable statistical data on violence against women by means of surveys launched by local feminist groups after they have received a respective education and improved their awareness of this problem.

Another problem contributing to the violence against women is their legal illiteracy and economic dependence. Passing the laws on equality is important, but they are practically impossible to implement if women do not have an access to information on legislation. The protection of women’s rights is hindered due to the lack of economic independence and growing unemployment: these are the major setbacks in their fight for their human rights. In each case it is important for women to have not only the access to information on legislation and necessary skills for the labour market, but also develop their consciousness to be self-confident which will enable them to find new solution to their problems.

In 1995, Central Asian FNGOs started working on establishing hot lines, crisis centres and shelters. The first crisis centre was set up in Bishkek. In Uzbekistan, the first hot line and crisis centre Sabr were set up in Samarkand in 1996, and in 1998 a hot line was set up by Society Mehri in Tashkent.

Major institutions promoting women’s rights are governments, NGOs and international organisations that deal with three problems, namely women’s rights, religious revival and prevention of violence against women.

The governments take measures in order to:

- disseminate legal literacy at a family level, using such available tools as community councils in Uzbekistan;
- include the subject of women’s rights into religious education, where it is available;
- take stricter measures at the executive level against violators of women’s rights;
- pass special laws within the Civil Code against specific forms of violence against women, e.g. domestic violence or violence during armed conflicts;
- implement reforms of the Family Code in favour of greater equality of sexes, e.g. prohibition of polygamy;
- train officials, who will supervise the observance of laws, to the means of handling cases of violence against women;
- set up shelters, rehabilitation and crisis centres for women with appropriately trained professional personnel (questions as to whether this problem should be resolved by independent FNGOs were realised);
- collect and disseminated statistical data regarding violence against women in their respective states;
- distribute governmental reports on the status of women among concerned NGOs and agencies and provide NGOs with available data.

Non-governmental organisations include measures into their programmes in order to:

- develop and introduce education and campaigns on legal literacy of women ( ); release awareness-raising information, printed and audio-visual materials on women’s human rights, violence against women and legal literacy ( );
- establish hot line for women victims of violence ( );
- influence mass media to make the society realise women’s rights and to develop skills of maintaining links with mass media ( );
- conduct studies and act as independent sources of information among women, in particular in the sphere of violence against women ( );
- protect and lobby actions for the government and governmental agencies to change legislation and policies towards women ( );
- initiate campaigns on the conscience-raining and training among men;
- improve links among FNGOs in Central Asia and other states for information exchange and technical co-operation;
- maintain links with feminist groups in other Muslim states to launch actions of solidarity (WLUML was cited as an example of the existing international community of solidarity ( );

International organisation work in that direction in order to:

- provide financial support to FNGOs;
- assist in the distribution of the information and experience among FNGOs;
- help to form communities among groups of women doing the same work;

Transitional period is a time of social transformations and it must comprise new interrelations between culture and development. Part of this new culture must be a refusal from traditions which date back to medieval times and have brought to violation or restriction of women’s rights. New culture should envisage open discussion of interrelations between traditions and human rights which are recognised as a universal value now.