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Spring 1995
World Order
THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN AND MEN
EDITORIAL
THE PROSPERITY OF HUMANKIND
BAHÁ’Í INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
THE ROLE OF MEN IN ESTABLISHING
THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN
HODA MAHMOUDI
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS
MICHAEL L. PENN
World Order
VOLUME 26, NUMBER 3
WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN
THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY
RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY
Editorial Board:
FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
BETTY J. FISHER
HOWARD GAREY
ROBERT H. STOCKMAN
JAMES D. STOKES
Consultant in Poetry:
HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN
Subscriber Service:
RHONDA SPENNER
WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by
the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís
of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette,
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Copyright © 1995, National Spiritual Assembly
of the Bahá’ís of the United States. All
Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804
IN THIS ISSUE
- 2 The Equality of Women and Men
- Editorial
- 4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor
- 7 The Prosperity of Humankind
- A Statement by the Bahá’í International
- Community, Office of Public Information
- 25 Breathless
- poem by Christine Boldt
- 27 The Role of Men in Establishing
- the Equality of Women
- by Hoda Mahmoudi
- 43 Violence Against Women and Girls
- by Michael L. Penn
- 55 A Poem in Plain Speaking
- poem by J. A. McLean
- Inside back cover: Authors & Artists in This Issue
The Equality of Women
and Men
WHEN SPEAKING of the Founders of the world’s revealed religions,
‘Abdu’l-Bahá observed that their true greatness lies not in their
ability to perform miracles or in their personal charisma but in the profundity
and the transforming power of their teachings. These great spiritual
Teachers, each of Whom appeared in a time of deep social crisis, rose
above the welter and tumult of Their time to enunciate principles with
the power not only to revivify souls but to inspire great advances in
civilization. As Matthew said in describing the impact of Jesus’ sermon
on the Mount, “the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught
them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Collectively, these
greatest and holiest of souls are, in the Bahá’í view, the fountainheads
of human progress.
In our age, Bahá’u’lláh (the latest of these universal Prophets to appear) has articulated a comparable and no less challenging set of principles. Addressed to all humanity and set forth in a variety of works, this array of principles provides a comprehensive moral and ethical framework upon which a newly inspired global civilization may be built. Until they are universally accepted and applied, we cannot hope to create a society in which all human souls will be able to flourish.
One of the most challenging and exciting of the new principles enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh concerns the status of women. The Founders of all the religions have in some way addressed the rights, the particular gifts, and the prerogatives of women; but all the Prophets until now have found it necessary—because of the exigencies of Their time—to frame those rights within the context of patriarchal and undeniably male-focused cultures. Though it grates upon a modern sensibility, there were good reasons for doing so. In a world dominated by a warrior culture, where survival usually meant the superior and methodical application of force and strength, the greatest protection for women was the articulation of rules defining their care and promotion by males, whether father, brother, or husband.
But no longer. For the first time in recorded history, the Founder of
a great religion has clearly, unequivocally, and repeatedly, in various of
His works, announced the principle of the unquestioned equality of
women and men not only in spiritual terms (which has happened before)
but in societal terms as well. And He has announced that principle as
a part of divine law applicable to this age—that is, as the desire and
command of God expressed through the inspired and authoritative utterance
of His Prophet. Typical is this statement of Bahá’u’lláh: “In this
day the Hand of divine grace hath removed all distinction. The servants
[Page 3] of God and His handmaidens are regarded on the same plane.”
The profundity of Bahá’u’lláh’s view of the proper relationship between women and men can be fully appreciated only when one realizes that He proclaimed it in the nineteenth century to a world in which there could not be found—anywhere—a culture that promulgated, or advocated, the full equality of the sexes.
Further, no fair-minded person can deny that genuine equality for women remains more dream than reality in our own day and in our own communities. The inferior station of women continues to be sanctioned in the laws and practices of the world’s dominant religions. Injustices, even atrocities, continue to be tolerated in the cultures of the greater part of the world’s population. Even the most enlightened and progressive cultures exist in an environment where residual bias against full participation by women creates unintended paternalism and habits of inequity.
Like every other people, the members of the Bahá’í world community experience daily the difficulty of making genuine equality between the sexes a simple practiced fact. As they explore their own teachings, Bahá’ís have learned the value of asking daily how they might best express this and other core principles in their own lives. In short, this and the other great principles of Bahá’u’lláh—as do the teachings of the great Prophets in every age—make an impact slowly, gradually, and incrementally. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá fully understood the sometimes excruciating nature of that process. His writings and utterances exhort people—women and men together—to strive, to grow, and to progress toward the goal of true equality between the sexes in every area of life.
Given the seriousness of the issue, it should not surprise one that discussions of it are usually sober and often contentious; the path is typically described as thorny and the stages as difficult. But there is another way of looking at the matter. In one passage ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that, “When men own the equality of women, there will be no need for them to struggle for their rights.” In another passage He says the day will come when the men of the earth will turn toward women in a welcoming way and address them with words of praise, admiration, respect, and joy. It may be that the process of inculcating equality is simpler, easier, more natural, and more immediate than even its ardent supporters realize it to be. Bahá’u’lláh described His laws metaphorically not as mere codes but as “choice wine.” Perhaps He meant such principles as this one to work upon the soul the way that a spring rain works upon the earth— refreshing, regenerating, and restoring, simply by inducing it imperceptibly to delight in doing what it knows to be right.
Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR
WORLD ORDER is pleased to offer its readers
three particularly timely articles on
global issues. The first is a new statement
entitled “The Prosperity of Humankind”
prepared by the Bahá’í International
Community’s Office of Public Information.
The statement outlines a Bahá’í concept
of what humanity’s international social
and economic development strategy should
be, defining “the real purpose of development”
as “laying the foundations for a new
social order that can cultivate the limitless
potentialities latent in human consciousness.”
Such a definition moves beyond
meeting individuals’ basic educational and
health needs—as essential as they are—
or establishing a materially prosperous
consumer society—as valuable as that is—
to stress the need for creating a society
where all human beings can express their
spiritual and creative potential.
The statement emphasizes that true development is impossible unless it is based on an unconditioned recognition of the oneness of humankind; a commitment to the establishment of justice as the organizing principle of world society; and a determination to utilize the genius of both science and religion, and the fruits of a healthy dialogue between them.
One of the many themes touched on in “The Prosperity of Humankind” is the equality of women and men. The statement notes that “to any objective observer the principle of the equality of the sexes is fundamental to all realistic thinking about the future well-being of the earth and its people.” Shortly before the statement’s release, the Institute for Bahá’í Studies (an organization sponsored by several agencies of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, including WORLD ORDER, to foster scholarly study of the Bahá’í Faith and to bring its teachings to the attention of academia) held, in late January 1995, a conference on “Women in Bahá’í Perspective.”
The conference was designed to encourage new thinking on the role and status of women as described in the Bahá’í writings. More than one hundred people attended the conference—the maximum the facility could accommodate. They represented a diverse mixture of ethnic, educational, and experiential backgrounds. Of the ten speakers four were men, and at least ten other men attended the conference; their participation and commentary suggested that the issue of sexual equality and partnership is increasingly more important to males.
The arts played a key role in integrating
intellect and emotion into a cohesive whole
during the conference. Paintings and drawings
by and about women were exhibited
and changed during every session to reinforce
[Page 5] the themes of the talks, and various
types of music, dance, and poetry performances
were presented throughout the
weekend program.
Two presentations given at the conference on Women in Bahá’í Perspective are included in this issue of WORLD ORDER. Hoda Mahmoudi’s keynote address—“The Role of Men in Establishing the Equality of Women”—offers an overview of the history of the oppression of women by men, summarizes women’s current conditions worldwide, details the Bahá’í principles relevant to women’s situations, and discusses specific areas where equality must be worked toward urgently.
Michael L. Penn’s article “Violence Against Women and Girls” describes aspects of the global epidemic of violence against females, including the abhorrent and widespread practices of physical and sexual abuse, rape, and genital mutilation. It also outlines four areas of involvement where men can work to assist women in securing opportunities for advancement as well as freedom from senseless, inhumane treatment and other forms of inequality.
* * *
DR. STEVE GARRIGUES, whose photographs frequently appear in WORLD ORDER, has written to say that the photograph on page 8 of the Fall 1994 issue is not his. We apologize for the mistake. The photograph was taken by Nat Daniels.
To the Editor
MORE INFORMATION ON BAHÁ’Í
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Here is further information regarding the House of Worship in Marv, Turkistan. It was received too late to be incorporated into the Winter 1994 issue of World Order.
In a letter dated 4 December 1994, the Research Department of the Bahá’í World Center states that they “located a Tablet by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, written to the Bahá’ís of Marv, ca. January 1908, in which He approvingly welcomes the plans of the friends there to construct a House of Worship. He had received from those friends the floor plan of a building used by the Bahá’í community as a temporary House of Worship, and they had communicated to Him their desire to buy more property and to create a permanent House of Worship, possibly incorporating the existing building as a school and guest house.”
Another belated piece provides information about the exterior inscription over the entrance of the House of Worship in Ashqabat. The words are in Arabic, from the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the first half of verse 115. The inscription says: “Blessed is he who, at the hour of dawn, centering his thoughts on God, occupied with His remembrance, and supplicating His forgiveness, directeth his steps to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár and, entering therein, seateth himself in silence to listen to the verses of God, the Sovereign, the Mighty, the All-Praised.”
I regret that this information was not received sooner, but the readers of World Order can add it now to their mental inventory of information about the experience of the Bahá’í community with building Houses of Worship.
- DUANE L. HERRMANN
- Topeka, Kansas
The Prosperity of Humankind
BAHÁ’Í INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION
TWO simultaneous processes characterize the closing years of the twentieth century:
the disintegration of the old political, economic, and social order and the gradual
emergence of a new world order. The disintegration of the old is ohvious. The growth
of the new can he discerned by those who can read the signs of the times.
As the twentieth century approaches its end there is a marked acceleration in the efforts of governments and peoples to reach a common understanding on issues affecting the future of humanity and its very survival. The Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (1994), the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen (1995), and the forthcoming Fourth World Conference on Women’s Rights in Beijing are as capstones to the myriad activities in various parts of the world, involving both governments and nongovernmental organizations in an urgent search for values, ideas, and particular measures that could advance the peaceful development of all peoples.
Bahá’ís, of course, are heartened by such hopeful trends. They support, and will continue to support, them whenever possible.
WORLD ORDER is pleased to present the paper “The Prosperity of Humankind” published by the Bahá’í International Community, setting forth ideas on the concept of global prosperity in the context of the Bahá’í teachings. This statement, stressing as it does the moral and spiritual dimensions of a fundamental issue that confronts humanity, fills a gap in the current discourse on the social and economic development of humankind.
TO AN extent unimaginable a decade ago, the ideal of world peace is taking on form and substance. Obstacles that long seemed immovable have collapsed in humanity’s path; apparently irreconcilable conflicts have begun to surrender to processes of consultation and resolution; a willingness to counter military aggression through unified international action is emerging. The effect has been to awaken in both the masses of humanity and many world leaders a degree of hopefulness about the future of our planet that had been nearly extinguished.
Throughout the world, immense intellectual and spiritual energies are
seeking expression, energies whose gathering pressure is in direct proportion
to the frustrations of recent decades. Everywhere the signs multiply that the
[Page 8] earth’s peoples yearn for an end to conflict and to the suffering and ruin from
which no land is any longer immune. These rising impulses for change must
be seized upon and channeled into overcoming the remaining barriers that
block realization of the age-old dream of global peace. The effort of will required
for such a task cannot be summoned up merely by appeals for action
against the countless ills afflicting society. It must be galvanized by a vision
of human prosperity in the fullest sense of the term—an awakening to the
possibilities of the spiritual and material well-being now brought within grasp.
Its beneficiaries must be all of the planet’s inhabitants, without distinction,
without the imposition of conditions unrelated to the fundamental goals of
such a reorganization of human affairs.
History has thus far recorded principally the experience of tribes, cultures, classes, and nations. With the physical unification of the planet in this century and acknowledgment of the interdependence of all who live on it, the history of humanity as one people is now beginning. The long, slow civilizing of human character has been a sporadic development, uneven and admittedly inequitable in the material advantages it has conferred. Nevertheless, endowed with the wealth of all the genetic and cultural diversity that has evolved through past ages, the earth’s inhabitants are now challenged to draw on their collective inheritance to take up, consciously and systematically, the responsibility for the design of their future.
It is unrealistic to imagine that the vision of the next stage in the advancement of civilization can be formulated without a searching reexamination of the attitudes and assumptions that currently underlie approaches to social and economic development. At the most obvious level, such rethinking will have to address practical matters of policy, resource utilization, planning procedures, implementation methodologies, and organization. As it proceeds, however, fundamental issues will quickly emerge, related to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social structures required, the implications for development of principles of social justice, and the nature and role of knowledge in effecting enduring change. Indeed, such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad consensus of understanding about human nature itself.
Two avenues of discussion open directly onto all of these issues, whether conceptual or practical, and it is along these two avenues that we wish to explore, in the pages that follow, the subject of a strategy of global development. The first is prevailing beliefs about the nature and purpose of the development process; the second is the roles assigned in it to the various protagonists.
The assumptions directing most of current development planning are essentially
materialistic. That is to say, the purpose of development is defined
in terms of the successful cultivation in all societies of those means for the
achievement of material prosperity that have, through trial and error, already
come to characterize certain regions of the world. Modifications in development
discourse do indeed occur, accommodating differences of culture and
[Page 9] political system and responding to the alarming dangers posed by environmental
degradation. Yet the underlying materialistic assumptions remain essentially
unchallenged.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is no longer possible to maintain the belief that the approach to social and economic development to which the materialistic conception of life has given rise is capable of meeting humanity’s needs. Optimistic forecasts about the changes it would generate have vanished into the ever-widening abyss that separates the living standards of a small and relatively diminishing minority of the world’s inhabitants from the poverty experienced by the vast majority of the globe’s population.
This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it has helped to engender, reflects a profound error of conception about human nature itself. For the levels of response elicited from human beings by the incentives of the prevailing order are not only inadequate, but seem almost irrelevant in the face of world events. We are being shown that, unless the development of society finds a purpose beyond the mere amelioration of material conditions, it will fail of attaining even these goals. That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and motivation that transcend a constantly changing economic landscape and an artificially imposed division of human societies into “developed” and “developing.”
As the purpose of development is being redefined, it will become necessary also to look again at assumptions about the appropriate roles to be played by the protagonists in the process. The crucial role of government, at whatever level, requires no elaboration. Future generations, however, will find almost incomprehensible the circumstance that, in an age paying tribute to an egalitarian philosophy and related democratic principles, development planning should view the masses of humanity as essentially recipients of benefits from aid and training. Despite acknowledgment of participation as a principle, the scope of the decision making left to most of the world’s population is at best secondary, limited to a range of choices formulated by agencies inaccessible to them and determined by goals that are often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality.
This approach is even endorsed, implicitly if not explicitly, by established religion. Burdened by traditions of paternalism, prevailing religious thought seems incapable of translating an expressed faith in the spiritual dimensions of human nature into confidence in humanity’s collective capacity to transcend material conditions.
Such an attitude misses the significance of what is likely the most important
social phenomenon of our time. If it is true that the governments of the world
are striving through the medium of the United Nations system to construct
a new global order, it is equally true that the peoples of the world are galvanized
by this same vision. Their response has taken the form of a sudden efflorescence
of countless movements and organizations of social change at local, regional,
and international levels. Human rights, the advance of women, the social
[Page 10] requirements of sustainable economic development, the overcoming of prejudices,
the moral education of children, literacy, primary health care, and a
host of other vital concerns each commands the urgent advocacy of organizations
supported by growing numbers in every part of the globe.
This response of the world’s people themselves to the crying needs of the age echoes the call that Bahá’u’lláh raised over a hundred years ago: “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” The transformation in the way that great numbers of ordinary people are coming to see themselves— a change that is dramatically abrupt in the perspective of the history of civilization—raises fundamental questions about the role assigned to the general body of humanity in the planning of our planet’s future.
I
THE BEDROCK of a strategy that can engage the world’s population in assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular discourse, the concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents fundamental challenges to the way that most of the institutions of contemporary society carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively consolidated itself over the past two centuries.
In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria over a century ago, and employing an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the organization of a planetary society, Bahá’u’lláh compared the world to the human body. There is, indeed, no other model in phenomenal existence to which we can reasonably look. Human society is composed not of a mass of merely differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one of whom is endowed with intelligence and will; nevertheless, the modes of operation that characterize man’s biological nature illustrate fundamental principles of existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity. Paradoxically, it is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order constituting the human body—and the perfeCt integration into it of the body’s cells—that permit the full realization of the disrinctive capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives apart from the body, whether in contributing to its functioning or in deriving its share from the well-being of the whole. The physical well-being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of biological development transcends the mere existence of the body and its parts.
[Page 11]
What is true of the life of the individual has its parallels in human society.
The human species is an organic whole, the leading edge of the evolutionary
process. That human consciousness necessarily operates through an infinite
diversity of individual minds and motivations detracts in no way from its
essential unity. Indeed, it is precisely an inhering diversity that distinguishes
unity from homogeneity or uniformity What the peoples of the world are
today experiencing, Bahá’u’lláh said, is their collective coming-of-age, and it
is through this emerging maturity of the race that the principle of unity in
diversity will find full expression. From its earliest beginnings in the consolidation
of family life, the process of social organization has successively moved
from the simple structures of clan and tribe, through multitudinous forms of
urban society, to the eventual emergence of the nation-state, each stage opening
up a wealth of new opportunities for the exercise of human capacity.
Clearly, the advancement of the race has not occurred at the expense of human individuality. As social organization has increased, the scope for the expression of the capacities latent in each human being has correspondingly expanded. Because the relationship between the individual and society is a reciprocal one, the transformation now required must occur simultaneously within human consciousness and the structure of social institutions. It is in the opportunities afforded by this twofold process of change that a strategy of global development will find its purpose. At this crucial stage of history, that purpose must be to establish enduring foundations on which planetary civilization can gradually take shape.
Laying the groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation of laws and institutions that are universal in both character and authority. The effort can begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has been wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the responsibility for decision making rests, and when the related principles are propagated through both educational systems and the media of mass communication. Once this threshold is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through which the peoples of the world can be drawn into the task of formulating common goals and committing themselves to their attainment. Only so fundamental a reorientation can protect them, too, from the age-old demons of ethnic and religious strife. Only through the dawning consciousness that they constitute a single people will the inhabitants of the planet be enabled to turn away from the patterns of conflict that have dominated social organization in the past and begin to learn the ways of collaboration and conciliation. “The well-being of mankind,” Bahá’u’lláh writes, “its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.”
II
JUSTICE is the one power that can translate the dawning consciousness of
humanity’s oneness into a collective will through which the necessary structures
[Page 12] of global community life can be confidently erected. An age that sees
the people of the world increasingly gaining access to information of every kind
and to a diversity of ideas will find justice asserting itself as the ruling principle
of successful social organization. With ever greater frequency, proposals aiming
at the development of the planet will have to submit to the candid light of
the standards it requires.
At the individual level, justice is that faculty of the human soul that enables each person to distinguish truth from falsehood. In the sight of God, Bahá’u’lláh avers, justice is “the best beloved of all things” since it permits each individual to see with his own eyes rather than the eyes of others, to know through his own knowledge rather than the knowledge of his neighbor or his group. It calls for fair-mindedness in one’s judgments, for equity in one’s treatment of others, and is thus a constant if demanding companion in the daily occasions of life.
At the group level, a concern for justice is the indispensable compass in collective decision making, because it is the only means by which unity of thought and aetion can be achieved. Far from encouraging the punitive spirit that has often masqueraded under its name in past ages, justice is the practical expression of awareness that, in the achievement of human progress, the interests of the individual and those of society are inextricably linked. To the extent that justice becomes a guiding concern of human interaction, a consultative climate is encouraged that permits options to be examined dispassionately and appropriate courses of action selected. In such a climate the perennial tendencies toward manipulation and partisanship are far less likely to deflect the decision-making process.
The implications for social and economic development are profound. Concern for justice protects the task of defining progress from the temptation to sacrifice the well-being of the generality of humankind—and even of the planet itself—to the advantages which technological breakthroughs can make available to privileged minorities. In design and planning, it ensures that limited resources are not diverted to the pursuit of projects extraneous to a community’s essential social or economic priorities. Above all, only development programs that are perceived as meeting their needs and as being just and equitable in objective can hope to engage the commitment of the masses of humanity, upon whom implementation depends. The relevant human qualities such as honesty, a willingness to work, and a spirit of cooperation are successfully harnessed to the accomplishment of enormously demanding collective goals when every member of society—indeed every component group within society— can trust that they are protected by standards and assured of benefits that apply equally to all.
At the heart of the discussion of a strategy of social and economic development,
therefore, lies the issue of human rights. The shaping of such a
strategy calls for the promotion of human rights to be freed from the grip of
the false dichotomies that have for so long held it hostage. Concern that each
human being should enjoy the freedom of thought and action conducive to
[Page 13] his or her personal growth does not justify devotion to the cult of individualism
that so deeply corrupts many areas of contemporary life. Nor does
concern to ensure the welfare of society as a whole require a deification of the
state as the supposed source of humanity’s well-being. Far otherwise: the
history of the present century shows all too clearly that such ideologies and
the partisan agendas to which they give rise have been themselves the principal
enemies of the interests they purport to serve. Only in a consultative framework
made possible by the consciousness of the organic unity of humankind
can all aspects of the concern for human rights find legitimate and creative
expression.
Today, the agency on whom has devolved the task of creating this framework and of liberating the promotion of human rights from those who would exploit it is the system of international institutions born out of the tragedies of two ruinous world wars and the experience of worldwide economic breakdown. Significantly, the term “human rights” has come into general use only since the promulgation of the United Nations Charter in 1945 and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three years later. In these history-making documents, formal recognition has been given to respect for social justice as a correlative of the establishment of world peace. The fact that the Declaration passed without a dissenting vote in the General Assembly conferred on it from the outset an authority that has grown steadily in the intervening years.
The activity most intimately linked to the consciousness that distinguishes human nature is the individual’s exploration of reality for himself or herself. The freedom to investigate the purpose of existence and to develop the endowments of human nature that make it achievable requires protection. Human beings must be free to know. That such freedom is often abused and such abuse grossly encouraged by features of contemporary society does not detract in any degree from the validity of the impulse itself.
It is this distinguishing impulse of human consciousness that provides the moral imperative for the enunciation of many of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration and the related Covenants. Universal education, freedom of movement, access to information, and the opportunity to participate in political life are all aspects of its operation that require explicit guarantee by the international community. The same is true of freedom of thought and belief, including religious liberty, along with the right to hold opinions and express these opinions appropriately.
Since the body of humankind is one and indivisible, each member of the
race is born into the world as a trust of the whole. This trusteeship constitutes
the moral foundation of most of the other rights—principally economic and
social—which the instruments of the United Nations are attempting similarly
to define. The security of the family and the home, the ownership of property,
and the right to privacy are all implied in such a trusteeship. The obligations
on the part of the community extend to the provision of employment, mental
[Page 14] and physical health care, social security, fair wages, rest and recreation, and
a host of other reasonable expectations on the part of the individual members
of society.
The principle of collective trusteeship creates also the right of every person to expect that those cultural conditions essential to his or her identity enjoy the protection of national and international law. Much like the role played by the gene pool in the biological life of humankind and its environment, the immense wealth of cultural diversity achieved over thousands of years is vital to the social and economic development of a human race experiencing its collective coming-of-age. It represents a heritage that must be permitted to bear its fruit in a global civilization. On the one hand, cultural expressions need to be protected from suffocation by the materialistic influences currently holding sway. On the other, cultures must be enabled to interact with one another in ever-changing patterns of civilization, free of manipulation for partisan political ends.
“The light of men,” Bahá’u’lláh says, “is Justice. Quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men. The ocean of divine wisdom surgeth within this exalted word, while the books of the world cannot contain its inner significance.”
III
IN ORDER for the standard of human rights now in the process of formulation by the community of nations to be promoted and established as prevailing international norms, a fundamental redefinition of human relationships is called for. Present-day conceptions of what is natural and appropriate in relationships—among human beings themselves, between human beings and nature, between the individual and society, and between the members of society and its institutions—reflect levels of understanding arrived at by the human race during earlier and less mature stages in its development. If humanity is indeed coming of age, if all the inhabitants of the planet constitute a single people, if justice is to be the ruling principle of social organization— then existing conceptions that were born out of ignorance of these emerging realities have to be recast.
Movement in this direction has barely begun. It will lead, as it unfolds, to
a new understanding of the nature of the family and of the rights and
responsibilities of each of its members. It will entirely transform the role of
women at every level of society. Its effect in reordering people’s relation to the
work they do and their understanding of the place of economic activity in their
lives will be sweeping. It will bring about far-reaching changes in the governance
of human affairs and in the institutions created to carry it out. Through
its influence, the work of society’s rapidly proliferating nongovernmental
organizations will be increasingly rationalized. It will ensure the creation of
[Page 15] binding legislation that will protect both the environment and the development
needs of all peoples. Ultimately, the restructuring or transformation of
the United Nations system that this movement is already bringing about will
no doubt lead to the establishment of a world federation of nations with its
own legislative, judicial, and executive bodies.
Central to the task of reconceptualizing the system of human relationships is the process that Bahá’u’lláh refers to as consultation. “In all things it is necessary to consult,” is His advice. “The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation.”
The standard of truth seeking this process demands is far beyond the patterns of negotiation and compromise that tend to characterize the present-day discussion of human affairs. It cannot be achieved—indeed, its attainment is severely handicapped—by the culture of protest that is another widely prevailing feature of contemporary society. Debate, propaganda, the adversarial method, the entire apparatus of partisanship that have long been such familiar features of collective action are all fundamentally harmful to its purpose: that is, arriving at a consensus about the truth of a given situation and the wisest choice of action among the options open at any given moment.
What Bahá’u’lláh is calling for is a consultative process in which the individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of view, in order to function as members of a body with its own interests and goals. In such an atmosphere, characterized by both candor and courtesy, ideas belong not to the individual to whom they occur during the discussion but to the group as a whole, to take up, discard, or revise as seems to best serve the goal pursued. Consultation succeeds to the extent that all participants support the decisions arrived at, regardless of the individual opinions with which they entered the discussion. Under such circumstances an earlier decision can be readily reconsidered if experience exposes any shortcomings.
Viewed in such a light, consultation is the operating expression of justice in human affairs. So vital is it to the success of collective endeavor that it must constitute a basic feature of a viable strategy of social and economic development. Indeed, the participation of the people on whose commitment and efforts the success of such a strategy depends becomes effective only as consultation is made the organizing principle of every project. “No man can attain his true station,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s counsel, “except through his justice. No power can exist except through unity. No welfare and no well-being can be attained except through consultation.”
IV
THE TASKS entailed in the development of a global society call for levels of
capacity far beyond anything the human race has so far been able to muster.
Reaching these levels will require an enormous expansion in access to knowledge,
on the part of individuals and social organizations alike. Universal
[Page 16] education will be an indispensable contributor to this process of capacity
building, but the effort will succeed only as human affairs are so reorganized
as to enable both individuals and groups in every sector of society to acquire
knowledge and apply it to the shaping of human affairs.
Throughout recorded history, human consciousness has depended upon two basic knowledge systems through which its potentialities have progressively been expressed: science and religion. Through these two agencies, the race’s experience has been organized, its environment interpreted, its latent powers explored, and its moral and intellectual life disciplined. They have acted as the real progenitors of civilization. With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident, moreover, that the effectiveness of this dual structure has been greatest during those periods when, each in its own sphere, religion and science were able to work in concert.
Given the almost universal respect in which science is currently held, its credentials need no elaboration. In the context of a strategy of social and economic development, the issue rather is how scientific and technological activity is to be organized. If the work involved is viewed chiefly as the preserve of established elites living in a small number of nations, it is obvious that the enormous gap which such an arrangement has already created between the world’s rich and poor will only continue to widen, with the disastrous consequences for the world’s economy already noted. Indeed, if most of humankind continue to be regarded mainly as users of products of science and technology created elsewhere, then programs ostensibly designed to serve their needs cannot properly be termed “development.”
A central challenge, therefore—and an enormous one—is the expansion of scientific and technological activity. Instruments of social and economic change so powerful must cease to be the patrimony of advantaged segments of society, and must be so organized as to permit people everywhere to participate in such activity on the basis of capacity. Apart from the creation of programs that make the required education available to all who are able to benefit from it, such reorganization will require the establishment of viable centers of learning throughout the world, institutions that will enhance the capability of the world’s peoples to participate in the generation and application of knowledge. Development strategy, while acknowledging the wide differences of individual capacity, must take as a major goal the task of making it possible for all of the earth’s inhabitants to approach on an equal basis the processes of science and technology which are their common birthright. Familiar arguments for maintaining the status quo grow daily less compelling as the accelerating revolution in communication technologies now brings information and training within reach of vast numbers of people around the globe, wherever they may be, whatever their cultural backgrounds.
The challenges facing humanity in its religious life, if different in character,
are equally daunting. For the vast majority of the world’s population, the idea
that human nature has a spiritual dimension—indeed that its fundamental
[Page 17] identity is spiritual—is a truth requiring no demonstration. It is a perception
of reality that can be discovered in the earliest records of civilization and that
has been cultivated for several millennia by every one of the great religious
traditions of humanity’s past. Its enduring achievements in law, the fine arts,
and the civilizing of human intercourse are what give substance and meaning
to history. In one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the
lives of most people on earth and, as events around the world today dramatically
show, the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably
potent.
It would seem obvious, therefore, that efforts of any kind to promote human progress must seek to tap capacities so universal and so immensely creative. Why, then, have spiritual issues facing humanity not been central to the development discourse? Why have most of the priorities—indeed most of the underlying assumptions—of the international development agenda been determined so far by materialistic world views to which only small minorities of the earth’s population subscribe? How much weight can be placed on a professed devotion to the principle of universal participation that denies the validity of the participants’ defining cultural experience?
It may be argued that, since spiritual and moral issues have historically been bound up with contending theological doctrines which are not susceptible of objective proof, these issues lie outside the framework of the international community’s development concerns. To accord them any significant role would be to open the door to precisely those dogmatic influences that have nurtured social conflict and blocked human progress. There is doubtless a measure of truth in such an argument. Exponents of the world’s various theological systems bear a heavy responsibility not only for the disrepute into which faith itself has fallen among many progressive thinkers, but for the inhibitions and distortions produced in humanity’s continuing discourse on spiritual meaning. To conclude, however, that the answer lies in discouraging the investigation of spiritual reality and ignoring the deepest roots of human motivation is a self-evident delusion. The sole effect, to the degree that such censorship has been achieved in recent history, has been to deliver the shaping of humanity’s future into the hands of a new orthodoxy, one which argues that truth is amoral and facts are independent of values.
So far as earthly existence is concerned, many of the greatest achievements
of religion have been moral in character. Through its teachings and through
the examples of human lives illumined by these teachings, masses of people
in all ages and lands have developed the capacity to love. They have learned
to discipline the animal side of their natures, to make great sacrifices for the
common good, to practice forgiveness, generosity, and trust, to use wealth and
other resources in ways that serve the advancement of civilization. Institutional
systems have been devised to translate these moral advances into the norms
of social life on a vast scale. However obscured by dogmatic accretions and
diverted by sectarian conflict, the spiritual impulses set in motion by such
[Page 18] transcendent figures as Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and
Muhammad have been the chief influence in the civilizing of human character.
Since, then, the challenge is the empowerment of humankind through a vast increase in access to knowledge, the strategy that can make this possible must be constructed around an ongoing and intensifying dialogue between science and religion. It is—or by now should be—a truism that, in every sphere of human activity and at every level, the insights and skills that represent scientific accomplishment must look to the force of spiritual commitment and moral principle to ensure their appropriate application. People need, for example, to learn how to separate fact from conjecture—indeed to distinguish between subjective views and objective reality; the extent to which individuals and institutions so equipped can contribute to human progress, however, will be determined by their devotion to truth and their detachment from the promptings of their own interests and passions. Another capacity that science must cultivate in all people is that of thinking in terms of process, including historical process; however, if this intellectual advancement is to contribute ultimately to promoting development, its perspective must be unclouded by prejudices of race, culture, sex, or sectarian belief. Similarly, the training that can make it possible for the earth’s inhabitants to participate in the production of wealth will advance the aims of development only to the extent that such an impulse is illumined by the spiritual insight that service to humankind is the purpose of both individual life and social organization.
V
IT IS in the context of raising the level of human capacity through the expansion of knowledge at all levels that the economic issues facing humankind need to be addressed. As the experience of recent decades has demonstrated, material benefits and endeavors cannot be regarded as ends in themselves. Their value consists not only in providing for humanity’s basic needs in housing, food, health care, and the like, but in extending the reach of human abilities. The most important role that economic efforts must play in development lies, therefore, in equipping people and institutions with the means through which they can achieve the real purpose of development: that is, laying foundations for a new social order that can cultivate the limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.
The challenge to economic thinking is to accept unambiguously this purpose of development—and its own role in fostering creation of the means to achieve it. Only in this way can economics and the related sciences free themselves from the undertow of the materialistic preoccupations that now distract them, and fulfill their potential as tools vital to achieving human well-being in the full sense of the term. Nowhere is the need for a rigorous dialogue between the work of science and the insights of religion more apparent.
The problem of poverty is a case in point. Proposals aimed at addressing
[Page 19] it are predicated on the conviction that material resources exist, or can be
created by scientific and technological endeavor, which will alleviate and
eventually entirely eradicate this age-old condition as a feature of human life.
A major reason why such relief is not achieved is that the necessary scientific
and technological advances respond to a set of priorities only tangentially
related to the real interests of the generality of humankind. A radical reordering
of these priorities will be required if the burden of poverty is finally to be lifted
from the world. Such an achievement demands a determined quest for appropriate
values, a quest that will test profoundly both the spiritual and scientific
resources of humankind. Religion will be severely hampered in contributing
to this joint undertaking so long as it is held prisoner by sectarian doctrines
which cannot distinguish between contentment and mere passivity and which
teach that poverty is an inherent feature of earthly life, escape from which
lies only in the world beyond. To participate effectively in the struggle to bring
material well-being to humanity, the religious spirit must find—in the Source
of inspiration from which it flows—new spiritual concepts and principles
relevant to an age that seeks to establish unity and justice in human affairs.
Unemployment raises similar issues. In most of contemporary thinking, the concept of work has been largely reduced to that of gainful employment aimed at acquiring the means for the consumption of available goods. The system is circular: acquisition and consumption resulting in the maintenance and expansion of the production of goods and, in consequence, in supporting paid employment. Taken individually, all of these activities are essential to the well-being of society. The inadequacy of the overall conception, however, can be read in both the apathy that social commentators discern among large numbers of the employed in every land and the demoralization of the growing armies of the unemployed.
Not surprisingly, therefore, there is increasing recognition that the world is in urgent need of a new “work ethic.” Here again, nothing less than insights generated by the creative interaction of the scientific and religious systems of knowledge can produce so fundamental a reorientation of habits and attitudes. Unlike animals, which depend for their sustenance on whatever the environment readily affords, human beings are impelled to express the immense capacities latent within them through productive work designed to meet their own needs and those of others. In acting thus they become participants, at however modest a level, in the processes of the advancement of civilization. They fulfill purposes that unite them with others. To the extent that work is consciously undertaken in a spirit of service to humanity, Bahá’u’lláh says, it is a form of prayer, a means of worshiping God. Every individual has the capacity to see himself or herself in this light, and it is to this inalienable capacity of the self that development strategy must appeal, whatever the nature of the plans being pursued, whatever the rewards they promise. No narrower a perspective will ever call up from the people of the world the magnitude of effort and commitment that the economic tasks ahead will require.
[Page 20]
A challenge of similar nature faces economic thinking as a result of the
environmental crisis. The fallacies in theories based on the belief that there
is no limit to nature’s capacity to fulfill any demand made on it by human
beings have now been coldly exposed. A culture which attaches absolute value
to expansion, to acquisition, and to the satisfaction of people’s wants is being
compelled to recognize that such goals are not, by themselves, realistic guides
to policy. Inadequate, too, are approaches to economic issues whose decision-making
tools cannot deal with the fact that most of the major challenges are
global rather than particular in scope.
The earnest hope that this moral crisis can somehow be met by deifying nature itself is an evidence of the spiritual and intellectual desperation that the crisis has engendered. Recognition that creation is an organic whole and that humanity has the responsibility to care for this whole, welcome as it is, does not represent an influence which can by itself establish in the consciousness of people a new system of values. Only a breakthrough in understanding that is scientific and spiritual in the fullest sense of the terms will empower the human race to assume the trusteeship toward which history impels it.
All people will have sooner or later to recover, for example, the capacity for contentment, the welcoming of moral discipline, and the devotion to duty that, until relatively recently, were considered essential aspects of being human. Repeatedly throughout history, the teachings of the Founders of the great religions have been able to instill these qualities of character in the mass of people who responded to them. The qualities themselves are even more vital today, but their expression must now take a form consistent with humanity’s coming-of-age. Here again, religion’s challenge is to free itself from the obsessions of the past: contentment is not fatalism; morality has nothing in common with the life-denying puritanism that has so often presumed to speak in its name; and a genuine devotion to duty brings feelings not of self-righteousness but of self-worth.
The effect of the persistent denial to women of full equality with men sharpens still further the challenge to science and religion in the economic life of humankind. To any objective observer the principle of the equality of the sexes is fundamental to all realistic thinking about the future well-being of the earth and its people. It represents a truth about human nature that has waited largely unrecognized throughout the long ages of the races childhood and adolescence. “Women and men,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s emphatic assertion, “have been and will always be equal in the sight of God.” The rational soul has no sex, and whatever social inequities may have been dictated by the survival requirements of the past, they clearly cannot be justified at a time when humanity stands at the threshold of maturity. A commitment to the establishment of full equality between men and women, in all departments of life and at every level of society, will be central to the success of efforts to conceive and implement a strategy of global development.
Indeed, in an important sense, progress in this area will itself be a measure
[Page 21] of the success of any development program. Given the vital role of economic
activity in the advancement of civilization, visible evidence of the pace at which
development is progressing will be the extent to which women gain access to
all avenues of economic endeavor. The challenge goes beyond ensuring an
equitable distribution of opportunity, important as that is. It calls for a fundamental
rethinking of economic issues in a manner that will invite the full
participation of a range of human experience and insight hitherto largely
excluded from the discourse. The classical economic models of impersonal
markets in which human beings act as autonomous makers of self-regarding
choices will not serve the needs of a world motivated by ideals of unity and
justice. Society will find itself increasingly challenged to develop new economic
models shaped by insights that arise from a sympathetic understanding of
shared experience, from viewing human beings in relation to Others, and from
a recognition of the centrality to social well-being of the role of the family
and the community. Such an intellectual breakthrough—strongly altruistic
rather than self-centered in focus—must draw heavily on both the spiritual
and scientific sensibilities of the race, and millennia of experience have prepared
women to make crucial contributions to the common effort.
VI
TO CONTEMPLATE a transformation of society on this scale is to raise both the question of the power that can be harnessed to accomplish it and the issue inextricably linked to it, the authority to exercise that power. As with all other implications of the accelerating integration of the planet and its people, both of these familiar terms stand in urgent need of redefinition.
Throughout history—and despite theologically or ideologically inspired assurances to the contrary—power has been largely interpreted as advantage enjoyed by persons or groups. Often, indeed, it has been expressed simply in terms of means to be used against others. This interpretation of power has become an inherent feature of the culture of division and conflict that has characterized the human race during the past several millennia, regardless of the social, religious, or political orientations that have enjoyed ascendancy in given ages, in given parts of the world. In general, power has been an attribute of individuals, factions, peoples, classes, and nations. It has been an attribute especially associated with men rather than women. Its chief effect has been to confer on its beneficiaries the ability to acquire, to surpass, to dominate, to resist, to win.
The resulting historical processes have been responsible for both ruinous
setbacks in human well-being and extraordinary advances in civilization. To
appreciate the benefits is to acknowledge also the setbacks, as well as the clear
limitations of the behavioral patterns that have produced both. Habits and
attitudes related to the use of power which emerged during the long ages of
humanity’s infancy and adolescence have reached the outer limits of their
[Page 22] effectiveness. Today, in an era most of whose pressing problems are global in
nature, persistence in the idea that power means advantage for various segments
of the human family is profoundly mistaken in theory and of no
practical service to the social and economic development of the planet. Those
who still adhere to it—and who could in earlier eras have felt confident in
such adherence—now find their plans enmeshed in inexplicable frustrations
and hindrances. In its traditional, competitive expression, power is as irrelevant
to the needs of humanity’s future as would be the technologies of railway
locomotion to the task of lifting space satellites into orbits around the
earth.
The analogy is more than a little apt. The human race is being urged by the requirements of its own maturation to free itself from its inherited understanding and use of power. That it can do so is demonstrated by the fact that, although dominated by the traditional conception, humanity has always been able to conceive of power in other forms critical to its hopes. History provides ample evidence that, however intermittently and ineptly, people of every background, throughout the ages, have tapped a wide range of creative resources within themselves. The most obvious example, perhaps, has been the power of truth itself, an agent of change associated with some of the greatest advances in the philosophical, religious, artistic, and scientific experience of the race. Force of character represents yet another means of mobilizing immense human response, as does the influence of example, whether in the lives of individual human beings or in human societies. Almost wholly unappreciated is the magnitude of the force that will be generated by the achievement of unity, an influence “so powerful,” in Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “that it can illuminate the whole Earth.”
The institutions of society will succeed in eliciting and directing the potentialities latent in the consciousness of the world’s peoples to the extent that the exercise of authority is governed by principles that are in harmony with the evolving interests of a rapidly maturing human race. Such principles include the obligation of those in authority to win the confidence, respect, and genuine support of those whose actions they seek to govern; to consult openly and to the fullest extent possible with all whose interests are affected by decisions being arrived at; to assess in an objective manner both the real needs and the aspirations of the communities they serve; to benefit from scientific and moral advancement in order to make appropriate use of the community’s resources, including the energies of its members. No single principle of effective authority is so important as giving priority to building and maintaining unity among the members of a society and the members of its administrative institutions. Reference has already been made to the intimately associated issue of commitment to the search for justice in all matters.
Clearly, such principles can operate only within a culture that is essentially
democratic in spirit and method. To say this, however, is not to endorse the
ideology of partisanship that has everywhere boldly assumed democracy’s name
[Page 23] and which, despite impressive contributions to human progress in the past,
today finds itself mired in the cynicism, apathy, and corruption to which it
has given rise. In selecting those who are to take collective decisions on its
behalf, society does not need and is not well served by the political theater
of nominations, candidature, electioneering, and solicitation. It lies within the
capacity of all people, as they become progressively educated and convinced
that their real development interests are being served by programs proposed
to them, to adopt electoral procedures that will gradually refine the selection
of their decision-making bodies.
As the integration of humanity gains momentum, those who are thus selected will increasingly have to see all their efforts in a global perspective. Not only at the national, but also at the local level, the elected governors of human affairs should, in Bahá’u’lláh’s view, consider themselves responsible for the welfare of all of humankind.
VII
THE TASK of creating a global development strategy that will accelerate humanity’s coming-of-age constitutes a challenge to reshape fundamentally all the institutions of society. The protagonists to whom the challenge addresses itself are all of the inhabitants of the planet: the generality of humankind, members of governing institutions at all levels, persons serving in agencies of international coordination, scientists and social thinkers, all those endowed with artistic talents or with access to the media of communication, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. The response called for must base itself on an unconditioned recognition of the oneness of humankind, a commitment to the establishment of justice as the organizing principle of society, and a determination to exploit to their utmost the possibilities that a systematic dialogue between the scientific and religious genius of the race can bring to the building of human capacity. The enterprise requires a radical rethinking of most of the concepts and assumptions currently governing social and economic life. It must be wedded, as well, to a conviction that, however long the process and whatever setbacks may be encountered, the governance of human affairs can be conducted along lines that serve humanity’s real needs.
Only if humanity’s collective childhood has indeed come to an end and
the age of its adulthood is dawning does such a prospect represent more than
another utopian mirage. To imagine that an effort of the magnitude envisioned
here can be summoned up by despondent and mutually antagonistic peoples
and nations runs counter to the whole of received wisdom. Only if, as Bahá’u’lláh
asserts to be the case, the course of social evolution has arrived at one of those
decisive turning points through which all of the phenomena of existence are
impelled suddenly forward into new stages of their development, can such a
possibility be conceived. A profound conviction that just so great a transformation
in human consciousness is under way has inspired the views set forth
[Page 24] in this statement. To all who recognize in it familiar promptings from within
their own hearts, Bahá’u’lláh’s words bring assurance that God has, in this
matchless day, endowed humanity with spiritual resources fully equal to the
challenge:
- O ye that inhabit the heavens and the earth! There hath appeared what hath never previously appeared.
- This is the Day in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into all created things.
The turmoil now convulsing human affairs is unprecedented, and many of its consequences enormously destructive. Dangers unimagined in all history gather around a distracted humanity. The greatest error that the world’s leadership could make at this juncture, however, would be to allow the crisis to cast doubt on the ultimate outcome of the process that is occurring. A world is passing away and a new one is struggling to be born. The habits, attitudes, and institutions that have accumulated over the centuries are being subjected to tests that are as necessary to human development as they are inescapable. What is required of the peoples of the world is a measure of faith and resolve to match the enormous energies with which the Creator of all things has endowed this spiritual springtime of the race. “Be united in counsel,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s appeal,
- be one in thought. May each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday. Man’s merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches. Take heed that your words be purged from idle fancies and worldly desires and your deeds be cleansed from craftiness and suspicion. Dissipate not the wealth of your precious lives in the pursuit of evil and corrupt affection, nor let your endeavors be spent in promoting your personal interest. Be generous in your days of plenty, and be patient in the hour of loss. Adversity is followed by success and rejoicings follow woe. Guard against idleness and sloth, and cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether high or low. Beware lest ye sow tares of dissension among men or plant thorns of doubt in pure and radiant hearts.
“Within the very breath of such souls as are pure and sanctified
far-reaching potentialities are hidden. . . . The breath of such a
man is endowed with potency, and his words with attraction.”
—Bahá’u’lláh
Breathless
- How close can one be to the Prophet?
- As close as His words;
- As close as His breath, laden with potentiality
- On this night of His ascension
- I reflect upon that last holy exhalation
- His final potent breath upon this lowly plane
- Is there yet left one molecule of that sanctified air
- Once surrounded by those mortal lungs—those all-too-human organs
- That breathed divine life into this dying world, inspired us all?
- May I live so long as to inhale one atom of that quintessence,
- Let that potentiality become realized in my life, come to fruition,
- Become a spotless deed, a prayer of praise,
- A legacy exhaled unto the next breathing soul
—Christine Boldt
Copyright © 1995 by Christine Boldt
The Role of Men in Establishing
the Equality of Women
BY HODA MAHMOUDI
Copyright © 1995 by Hoda Mahmoudi. This essay, which is to appear in the forthcoming book entitled Towards the Most Great Justice: Elements of Justice in the New World Order, ed. Charles Lerche (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1995), is reprinted with the kind permission of the publisher. The paper was the keynote address at the Conference on Women in Bahá’í Perspective, January 27-29, 1995, sponsored by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. The author thanks Windy Heller for her suggestions.
THE GOAL of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh
is a just global order founded on the
principle of the oneness of humankind. The
implementation of this concept demands not
merely new structures and institutions. It
demands a profound shift of values, outlook,
and conduct on the part of each individual.
It demands that the individual abandon all
forms of prejudice—“race, class, color, creed,
nation, sex, degree of material civilization,
everything which enables people to consider
themselves superior to others.”[1] Such prejudice,
in effect, is the false rationale for separateness
and inequality that has served as the
justification for injustice.
Thus at the heart of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh is the connection between the establishment of world peace and the application of justice in the treatment of oppressed populations. So important is the attribute of justice as a requirement for the well-being of humankind and so great the need for more of it as a desperately needed remedy for contemporary ills that a sizable segment of the Bahá’í writings is devoted to it. Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, declares that “Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men.[2] From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.” In another passage He writes: “Be fair to yourselves and to others, that the evidences of justice may be revealed through your deeds. . . .” “And if thine eyes he turned towards justice,” declares Bahá’u’lláh, “choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself.” Elsewhere He asserts, “We hope that thou wilt cause the light of justice to shine more brightly. . . . Justice is a powerful force. It is, above all else, the conqueror of the citadels of the hearts and souls of men, and the revealer of the secrets of the world of being, and the standard-bearer of love and bounty.”[3]
One of the populations long subject to
injustice based on attitudes of superiority is
women. Thus a prerequisite of world peace
and of a truly just social order is the achievement
of full equality between women and
men. The fulfillment of this principle calls
[Page 28] for the elimination of sex-based prejudice,
that habit of mind that has underwritten the
subjugation and unjust treatment of women
worldwide. The principle’s fulfillment also
insists that full equality between the sexes
will only be attainable when women receive
equal opportunity and education. The accomplishment
of these goals is not something
that can be achieved by legislation alone
but requires personal individual commitment
and responsibility for carrying out the teachings
of Bahá’u’lláh in everyday life. It is the
individual response, the internalization of the
attribute and the habit of justice that is vital
to the achievement of full equality between
women and men. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s
son and His appointed successor and authorized
interpreter of His writings, explains what
such an approach implies in practice:
- [An] attribute of perfection is justice and impartiality. This means to have no regard for one’s own personal benefits and selfish advantages, and to carry out the laws of God without the slightest concern for anything else. . . . It means, in brief, to regard humanity as a single individual, and one’s own self as a member of that corporeal form, and to know of a certainty that if pain or injury afflicts any member of that body, it must inevitably result in suffering for all the rest.[4]
Thus, with respect to the issue of gender equality, attitudes of self-centeredness and superiority, preoccupation with “personal benefits and selfish advantages” at the expense of others (something that in terms of gender relations translates into domination and exclusion of women), and a general indifference and lack of response on the part of the individual to the laws of God are all, implicitly, acts of injustice, for they place individual interests and desires above those of others.
But why place such importance on the principle of full equality between the sexes in relation to justice? ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that until “women . . . become the peers of men, and until this equality is established, true progress and attainment for the human race will not be facilitated.”[5] According to the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing and legislative body of the Bahá’í Faith:
- The denial of such equality perpetrates an injustice against one-half of the world’s population and promotes in men harmful attitudes and habits that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations. There are no grounds, moral, practical, or biological, upon which such denial can be justified.[6]
Oppression of Women
THE HISTORY of humanity is brimming with examples of the oppression of women, the specifics of which are well documented. Women have been treated as chattel, confined to a narrow sphere of activity (the home), excluded from participation in and deprived of a voice in public life, denied educational opportunities, and subjected to the further indignity of being forced to support and maintain the same patriarchal systems that treated them as second-class beings, as subhumans, embodiments of sin, witches, or “soulless” entities.
The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh radically
change the importance placed on the role of
women both at home and in society. For the
[Page 29] first time in religious history a Prophet of
God summons humankind to set aside the
customs and traditions that have served as
the grounds for oppression by promoting
distinctions and rank among people. He
explains that
- Ever since the seeking of preference and distinction came into play, the world hath been laid waste. It hath become desolate. Those who have quaffed from the ocean of divine utterance and fixed their gaze upon the Realm of Glory should regard themselves as being on the same level as the others and in the same station.
“It behoveth you,” Bahá’u’lláh writes, “to abandon vainglory which causeth alienation and to set your hearts on whatever will ensure harmony. In the estimation of the people of Bahá man’s glory lieth in his knowledge, his upright conduct, his praiseworthy character, his wisdom, and not in his nationality or rank.”[7]
Instead of personal power or rank, the highest Station for which the individual Bahá’í strives is service to others. The purpose of life for the individual Bahá’í is to be spiritually transformed by internalizing spiritual attributes and values within the human heart and demonstrating them in daily life and social relations. However, such personal transformation does not of itself result in a peaceful, harmonious world. Nor will it accomplish full equality between the sexes or eliminate racism, class, and other prejudices until transformation is spread throughout society and reinforced by institutions and social structures that promote the values of unity, equality, and justice, based on the principle of “unity of rank and station.” From a spiritual perspective, woman and man are equal and unified in rank and station. Bahá’u’lláh states that “In this Day the Hand of divine grace hath removed all distinction. The servants [men] of God and His handmaidens [women] are regarded on the same plane.”[8] This principle removes the foundation for all gender-based prejudice and attitudes of superiority that have been used to rationalize domination of women by men.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that in past ages the concept of the need for full equality between the sexes was not known to nor understood by humankind in general. Therefore, its realization was not possible. He explains that “The realities of things have been revealed in this radiant century, and that which is true must come to the surface. Among these realities is the principle of the equality of man and woman—equal rights and prerogatives in all things appertaining to humanity.”[9] This century is momentous, for in it the “realities of things”—their hidden potentialities—have been “illumined,” a theme that appears throughout ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s public discourses during his 1912 trip to North America. “The outer sun,” according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
- is a sign or symbol of the inner and ideal Sun of Truth, the Word of God. Inasmuch as this is the century of light, it is evident that the Sun of Reality, the Word, has revealed itself to all humankind. One of the potentialities hidden in the realm of humanity was the capability or capacity of womanhood. Through the effulgent rays [Page 30]
of divine illumination the capacity of woman has become so awakened and manifest in this age that equality of man and woman is an established fact. In past ages woman was wronged and oppressed.
In an address given before a women’s suffrage meeting in New York City, He affirmed that
- Today questions of the utmost importance are facing humanity, questions peculiar to this radiant century. In former centuries there was not even mention of them. . . .
- One of these questions concerns the rights of woman and her equality with man. In past ages it was held that woman and man were not equal—that is to say, woman was considered inferior to man, even from the standpoint of her anatomy and creation. She was considered especially inferior in intelligence, and the idea prevailed universally that it was not allowable for her to step into the arena of important affairs. In some countries man went so far as to believe and teach that woman belonged to a sphere lower than human. But in this century, which is the century of light and the revelation of mysteries, God is proving to the satisfaction of humanity that all this is ignorance and error; nay, rather, it is well established that mankind and womankind as parts of composite humanity are coequal and that no difference in estimate is allowable, for all are human.[10]
Thus, while it is true that the spirit of this age is imbued with the reality that women and men are equal, the realization of this spirit through individual acts, which in turn transform social institutions and structures at large, is yet to be realized in practice. At present the behavioral revolution required for the achievement of gender equality remains largely unachieved.
The Status of Women
AN EXAMINATION of the status of women throughout the world reveals that, in spite of the publicity that gender equality has received —publicity that has often tended to trivialize serious problems or split them off as “women’s issues”—the reality of vast inequities and deprivation of the basic human rights of women remains. The current conditions reflect not only the depth and tenacity of traditional prejudices and habits of injustice toward women but the extent to which such habits of mind are perpetuated by the systematic exclusion of women from full participation and decision-making in personal, family, community, political, civil, cultural, economic, and social life—an exclusion that virtually assures the continuance of the status quo, of injustice, as well as of the disintegration and disorder that have increasingly come to characterize the present moribund global system. That system’s continuing failure to respond to basic human rights and social development needs of all peoples, particularly of women, is symptomatic of a failure in the basic structure of the order itself.
In the area of health care, half of all women
of child-bearing age in developing countries
have nutritional anemia, and ten million
malnourished women bear malnourished
babies.[11] According to the United Nations World
Economic Survey 1990, one out of every two
deaths among women of reproductive age in
parts of South Asia is pregnancy related. This
trend accounts for a total of one-third of one
million maternal deaths each year in that
region. In Africa, among women of childbearing
age, one in twenty will die in childbirth
as compared to the ratio of one in two
thousand women in industrialized countries.[12]
[Page 31] Over the past few decades female life expectancy
has actually declined in Ghana, Kenya,
Liberia, Niger, and the Philippines.[13] According
to the United Nations, every year approximately
half a million women worldwide
die from various pregnancy-related causes “of
whom roughly 200,000 die from illegal abortions,
most performed by unskilled attendants
under unsanitary conditions or self-inflicted.”[14]
In spite of the well-known fact that women tend to live longer than men, a United Nations report found that “Of the world’s 5.3 billion people in 1990, fewer than half (2.63 billion) are women. Indeed, in many countries there are fewer than 95 women for every 100 men.”[15] Among the reasons given for this disparity is the less well-known fact that large numbers of women throughout the world are inadequately nourished. In fact, often when the difficult decision needs to be made in terms of which child to feed, a boy is preferred over a girl. It is the custom in many societies for the adult men to eat first, leaving women and children the less nutritious food—and sometimes simply less food. A consequence of such cultural patterns of male superiority is the increased vulnerability of women and children to death and disease. Anthropologist Robert B. Edgerton cites “A particularly macabre example” of one society in Papua New Guinea, “where men so monopolized access to animal flesh that women and children sought to supplement their diets by eating the flesh of deceased relatives. As a consequence they contracted kuru, a deadly neurological disease caused by a slow virus communicated through cannibalism.”[16]
Other factors contribute to the dismal condition of women throughout the world. For example, female infanticide, dowry deaths, bride burning, rape, and domestic homicide are still widespread. Ironically, marriage increases the incidence of violence against women. According to Edgerton, wife beating has been sanctioned in virtually every traditional society.[17] In the United States wife assault accounts for approximately 25 percent of violent crimes; every eighteen minutes a woman is beaten, but only 1 in 100 cases of domestic violence cases are reported.[18] In India official figures indicate that 5 women are burned in dowry-related disputes each day.[19] In Austria in 59 percent of 1,500 divorce cases, domestic violence was cited as a cause of marital breakdown.[20] In parts of Papua New Guinea 67 percent of women are victims of marital violence. In Bangladesh half of the 170 reported cases of women murdered between 1983 and 1985 took place within the family. According to a United Nations report on domestic violence, “the extent of violence against women in the home has been largely hidden and widely denied by communities that fear that an admission of its incidence will be an assault on the integrity of the family.”[21]
Finally, the practice of female circumcision,
or infibulation, in some parts of Muslim
North and West Africa is another form
of violence against women. That this practice
of genital mutilation is a form of torture has
[Page 32] been long ignored or dismissed by anthropologists
on the basis of its being a cultural
norm and on the assumption, which has been
increasingly questioned, that cultural practices
must be adaptive for the society as a
whole and, therefore, must have a good reason
for their existence. The reason advanced
for the practice of female genital mutilation
is female purity and family honor. However,
Edgerton writes that,
- In addition to inflicting great pain, these procedures carry a considerable risk for infection, infertility, and even death. Nevertheless, anthropologists have commonly chosen to interpret infibulation as an adaptive practice because the people who practice it zealously defend it. . . . That most societies in the world, including most Islamic societies, have managed to cherish female purity without practicing infibulation is rarely acknowledged.[22]
As Edgerton further points out, the sole purpose served by female circumcision is to reinforce male domination over women. Many such cultural practices subject women to pain, deprivation, misery, and suffering, both physical and psychological, and although men “sometimes sought to justify their actions by referring to religious ideology, taboos, or women’s health . . . very often there were no justifications, only a transparent sense of their superiority and their lack of concern for women’s welfare. The same unconcern sometimes underlay practices such as foot binding, female genital mutilation, selling daughters into prostitution, gang rape, and wife beating.”[23]
Within the arena of politics, women are similarly confronted with serious obstacles as a result of traditions that reinforce and perpetuate systems characterized by hierarchy, dominance and aggression. Currently fewer than 10 percent of the representatives in the highest positions of government throughout the world are women.[24] In ninety-three countries there are no women in ministerial positions, and among the top positions in international organizations such as the European Community and the United Nations they hold less than 5 percent of the posts.[25] The exclusion of women from decision-making at the highest levels hinders the development of balanced policies incorporating women’s perspectives, experiences, and needs in areas such as health care, housing, education, economic and community development, employment security, and other vital issues. A United Nations report recently expounded on this dilemma, stating, “Even where women are appointed to top government positions, they are predominantly assigned to specific areas such as education, health and social welfare. This has the effect of ‘ghettoization,’ prolonging women’s ineligibility for traditionally male preserves.”[26]
Educational data indicate that in 1990,
33.6 percent of the female population was
illiterate as compared to 19.4 percent of the
world’s male population. In developing countries,
the illiteracy rate for women is 45
percent.[27] Education is directly associated with
a woman’s chance for employment, earning
capacity, health, decisions about fertility,
family size, and the education, health, and
well-being of her family. For example, according
to a U.N. report, “It has been found
that women with seven years or more of
education tend to marry on average four years
later and have 2.2 fewer children statistically
than women with no schooling.”[28] The education
[Page 33] of women also plays a key role in child
survival. Offspring of mothers with less education
have a higher mortality rate than
children born to mothers with some schooling.
Finally, education enables women to make
sound decisions about the well-being of their
children and family and helps to eliminate
superstition, prejudice, sexual stereotyping,
and discrimination. Education also affords
women opportunities to participate more
effectively in public life and community development.
Shifting the Balance
IN THE Bahá’í perspective the harmful, unjust conditions encountered by women are but manifestations of the disintegrating influences at work in a dying global order in which “hollow and outworn institutions, the obsolescent doctrines and beliefs, the effete and discredited traditions . . . have . . . been undermined by virtue of their senility, the loss of their cohesive power, and their own inherent corruption.”[29] The established social structures worldwide are by and large paralyzed, incapable of accommodating the needs of humanity such as the achievement of full equality between the sexes. Even where women do succeed in entering predominantly male-dominated arenas, the assumption is that they will adjust to the demands of the existing system—in effect behave like men— rather than change the system to respond to the real needs of humanity. This pattern is precisely the reason for the ongoing breakdown of the social fabric of society. It is the unresponsiveness of individuals and institutions to real issues and obstacles facing humanity that continues to further degrade the general condition of humankind.
The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, in contrast, is concerned with the process of integration and the restructuring of human society on the principle of unity and equality. As Bahá’u’lláh writes, “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established” and “The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men.”[30] The principles of unity, equality, and justice are universal standards in the light of which cultural traditions and social norms including gender stereotypes are to be evaluated. It is only within such a framework that the fulfillment of the principle of the equality between women and men can be achieved.
The twentieth century, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has said, is the century in which the reality of the rights of woman and her equality with man have been made manifest. The Bahá’í writings set forth the practical steps for the achievement of this principle. A profound statement made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is of immense significance:
- The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities of both body and mind. But the balance is already shifting—force is losing its weight and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals—or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.[31]
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s statement implies that a change
has already taken place whereby qualities such
as force and aggression have lost their importance
in relation to the requirements of social
order. Similarly, male domination over women
[Page 34] is no longer in keeping with the spirit of this
age. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that the characteristics
essential today and for the future are
“mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual
qualities of love and service, in which woman
is strong. . . .” Elsewhere He speaks of woman’s
“mercy and sympathy,” “moral courage,”
philanthropy and responsiveness “toward the
needy and suffering,” and love of peace.[32]
Women already show strength—more strength than men—in these essential attributes needed for the new emerging civilization. Therefore, to achieve a balance between the “masculine and feminine elements,” the qualities of force and aggression, in which until now men have typically excelled, must give way to the spiritual qualities in which women already show capacity. This does not imply that any of these qualities is intrinsically “masculine” or “feminine.” It simply implies that they have been cultivated disproportionately along the lines of gender until they have become incorporated into gender role “identity.” The idea that such qualities are essentially—that is, metaphysically— “feminine” or “masculine” is contradicted by the Bahá’í teaching that “human virtues belong equally to all” and that “God hath created all humankind in His own image, and after His own likeness. That is, men and women alike are the revealers of His names and attributes, and from the spiritual viewpoint there is no difference between them.”[33]
The required shifting of balance away from behavior traditionally prevalent among men and the increasing permeation of society by “feminine ideals” cannot occur if half the world’s population continues to cultivate maladaptive behavior that has created the current state of imbalance. The emphasis on equality as a “women’s” issue tends to obscure the fact that the responsibility for change rests, to a considerable extent, with men and that it is largely through their own efforts to alter their own behavior, attitudes, and values that change will be effected. Men, in fact, have a greater role and responsibility in this regard, to “shift the balance” by replacing ideals of dominance and aggression with attitudes of equality and cooperation. “When men own the equality of women,” states ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “there will be no need for them [women] to struggle for their rights.”[34]
How is a radical change to take place? By what means will man champion the qualities “in which woman is strong”? It would be missing the point altogether to think that such a change could be imposed by force— in effect, by means of the same dominance and aggression that such values are intended to replace. Thus the notion of responsibility as voluntary action, of sacrifice of self-interests for the welfare of others, is central to the process of change. The means is, in a sense, also the end. In a letter to the American Bahá’í community, the Universal House of Justice has pointed out individual responsibility as indispensable in fulfilling the laws and principles ordained by Bahá’u’lláh. The Universal House of Justice explains that
- To accept the Prophet of God in His time and to abide by His bidding are the two essential, inseparable duties which each soul was created to fulfill. One exercises these twin duties by one’s own choice, an act constituting the highest expression of the free will with which every human being has been endowed by an all-loving Creator. . . .
- Within this framework of freedom a pattern is set for institutional and individual behavior which depends for its efficacy not so much on the force of law, which admittedly must be respected, as on the recognition of a mutuality of benefits, and on the spirit of c00peration maintained by the willingness, the courage, the sense of responsibility, and the initiative of individuals—these being expressions of their devotion and submission to the will of God.[35]
Only through the individual’s voluntary “submission to the will of God” can the choice to foster the advancement of justice and equality among human beings and in society become a reality. Obedience is no longer conceived of as coercion by superior force but as a spiritual process wherein the individual, out of an internal sense of responsibility and of love for God, willingly submits to the will of God, becoming thereby a strong agent of social change.
In contrast, in today’s society, the intransigence of male domination continues to block the achievement of equality between the sexes while male attitudes of domination, superiority, and condescension toward women remain generally invisible to men. When they are brought to men’s attention, the reaction is often one of surprise, denial, or refusal to believe that their behavior provokes such reactions in women or a genuine lack of awareness or sensitivity to the feelings and reactions provoked in women. These patterns seem so prevalent in male/female interaction that Deborah Tannen concludes that men and women belong to two different cultural groups as a result of their socialization in “sex-separate” peer interactions throughout childhood.[36]
In spite of the passage of laws aimed at protecting the rights of women, great injustices and disparity persist because individuals can always find alternative means to undermine the laws in their pursuit of domination and oppression over women. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá advises men in particular to act in a way that encourages rather than blocks and oppresses through suggestions that reinforce negative stereotypes and expectations:
- In brief, the assumption of superiority by man will continue to be depressing to the ambition of woman, as if her attainment to equality was creationally impossible; woman’s aspiration toward advancement will be checked by it, and she will gradually become hopeless. On the contrary, we must declare her capacity is equal, even greater than man’s. This will inspire her with hope and ambition, and her susceptibilities for advancement will continually increase. She must not be told and taught that she is weaker and inferior in capacity and qualification.[37]
‘Abdu’l-Bahá is calling for men, through their actions, to accept their responsibility toward the advancement of women. Properly considered, men’s promotion of equal rights for women is equally in the best interest of men, as it helps the advancement of both sexes. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states that, “As long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities, so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness which might be theirs.”[38] This view explodes the traditional notion characteristic of dominant hierarchical thinking that if one group flourishes or benefits it must necessarily be at the expense of another group’s well-being.[39]
[Page 36]
The duty of men to promote the advancement
of women necessitates a deliberate
examination of assumptions, attitudes, and
behavior that either subtly or overtly impede
that goal. Likewise, women must be conscious
of their own outlook on equality and
of traditional patterns of subservience so that
they do not compromise their own commitment.
The emphasis on responsibility implies a greater degree of individual maturity and a concept of identity that is increasingly other-centered —eventually “world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.”[40] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written that for Bahá’ís— men and women alike—
- the honor and distinction of the individual consist in this, that he among all the world’s multitudes should become a source of social good. Is any larger bounty conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find that by the confirming grace of God he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No, by the one true God, there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight.[41]
Such an attitude implies caring about the others whose interests one is advancing, in other words—love.
The power of love in advancing the affairs of humanity is a seldom acknowledged truth, but it is a repeated theme in the Bahá’í writings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes that “Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.” Elsewhere, he explains “that love is the cause of the existence of all phenomena and that the absence of love is the cause of disintegration or nonexistence. Love is the conscious bestowal of God, the bond of affiliation in all phenomena.” Therefore, individual effort toward the realization of any of Bahá’u’lláh’s principles must embody this central concept. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s exhortation to the individual to “Strive to become the manifestations of the love of God, the lamps of divine guidance shining amongst the kindreds of the earth with the light of love and concord” proclaims that there is a direct relationship between the power of love, individual spiritual transformation, and the creation of a just society.[42]
Equality in the Family
THE PROCESS of shifting the balance to assure the equality of women and men begins within the most important social institution—the family, wherein patterns are inculcated. The Bahá’í writings are explicit on the achievement of equality within family life. “According to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh,” states ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “the family, being a human unit, must be educated according to the rules of sanctity. All the virtues must be taught the family.” He then points out the importance of individual responsibility and the interdependence of rights and responsibilities:
- The integrity of the family bond must be constantly considered, and the rights of the individual members must not be transgressed. The rights of the son, the father, the mother—none of them must be transgressed, none of them must be arbitrary. Just as the son has certain obligations to his father, the father, likewise, has certain obligations to his son. The mother, the sister and other members of the household have their certain prerogatives. All these rights and prerogatives must be conserved, yet the unity of the family must be sustained. The injury of one shall be considered the injury of all; the comfort of each, [Page 37]
the comfort of all; the honor of one, the honor of all.[43]
Parents must strive to become models of unity and equality, imparting spiritual attributes and skills to their children. If equality between the sexes is the aim, this implies a reevaluation of cultural norms that dictate roles typically assigned to the wife/mother and the husband/father. Such cultural norms are often grossly unbalanced and unequal, with disproportionately large demands and responsibilities being placed on women. Rather than being a set of inflexible rules, the Bahá’í approach consists of the application of general spiritual principles in the light of the requirements of individual circumstances. An example of this approach is found in the advice given to an individual by the Universal House of Justice:
- With regard to your question whether mothers should work outside the home, it is helpful to consider the matter from the perspective of the concept of a Bahá’í family. This concept is based on the principle that the man has primary responsibility for the financial support of the family, and the woman is the chief and primary educator of the children. This by no means implies that these functions are inflexibly fixed and cannot be changed and adjusted to suit particular family situations, nor does it mean that the place of the woman is confined to the home. Rather, while primary responsibility is assigned, it is anticipated that fathers would play a significant role in the education of the children and women could also be breadwinners. As you rightly indicated, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged women to “participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world.”[44]
Thus husbands need to take an active role in the affairs of the home. Moreover, who does various domestic tasks cannot be determined by sex or cultural expectations but by the requirements of equality and justice depending upon the circumstances of each family and the parents’ other responsibilities. In general this means that men need to adjust their view of their roles to incorporate assisting in more domestic tasks than was expected of them under traditional norms, which across cultures tend to favor men and place inordinate burdens for child care, domestic work, and even providing basic subsistence on women.[45]
Fathers must also take a keen interest and invest time in the socialization of the children. This includes engaging in expressive and nurturing interaction with their children. Obviously, the mother is the first educator of the child, and this early bond is vital to the child’s well-being. “That the first teacher of the child,” writes The Universal House of Justice, “is the mother should not be startling, for the primary orientation of the infant is to its mother. This provision of nature in no way minimizes the role of the father in the Bahá’í family. Again, equality of status does not mean identity of function.” However, fatherhood is also an essential influence on the child’s healthy development. It implies a similar shared involvement by the father and mother in the care of infants, babies, and children. Although the mother is the first educator, the father’s responsibility for educating the children is “so weighty that Bahá’u’lláh has stated that a father who fails to exercise it forfeits his rights of fatherhood.”[46]
Sociologist Ralph LaRossa asserts that the
tendency for fathers to be “technically present
[Page 38] but functionally absent” poses serious problems
for the wellness of the institution of the
family and society at large. He suggests that
“Only when men are forced to seriously
examine their commitment to fatherhood (vs.
their commitment to their jobs and avocations)
can we hope to bring about the kinds
of changes that will be required to alter the
division of child care. . . .”[47]
A similar challenge exists in dual-career families. Although this type of family is on the rise, there has been no significant adjustment to equalize domestic division of labor with women still responsible for the majority of the work at home.[48] Especially troubling is the dramatic rise in single-parent families, in which women shoulder the full burden of child care and education, domestic work, and breadwinning. This has implications not only for justice but for the survival of society itself. An inescapable implication of Edgerton’s review of maladaptive cultural practices in Sick Societies is that societies that place disproportionate burdens on some of their members or the practices of which are so fundamentally unequal and unjust that they serve the interests of a few at the expense of creating misery for the majority eventually become extinct or are absorbed by other societies. Placing inordinately large burdens on women, which impairs their health and their ability to function as mothers, may serve the short-term interests of reinforcing male notions of superiority but it inexorably undermines the viability of the entire society.[49]
The parents’ level of commitment to exemplifying equality in their family life and the effectiveness with which they uphold the Bahá’í spiritual principles are fundamental not only to the education of a generation of children who will be liberated from the blight of sexual inequality but to the health and survival of human society itself.
Equality in Childhood Socialization
IN addition to assuring equality within the family, childhood socialization patterns also need to change to instill basic attitudes of equality in both sexes. Findings show that behavioral sex differences are absent in newborns, making it “extremely difficult if not entirely impossible” to “label a newborn as male or female on the basis of its behavioral characteristics.” Nevertheless, parents have different expectations as to the personal qualities they desire for their sons and daughters.[50] When adults who had at least one child were asked what kind of person they wanted their sons and daughters to become, “For sons, parents focused on career or occupational success and said they wanted their boys to be hard-working, ambitious, intelligent, educated, honest, responsible, independent, strong-willed, successful, and respected in work,” while for daughters, “the themes more often centered on kindness or unselfishness, being loving and attractive, having a good marriage, and being a good parent.”[51]
Generally speaking, sex-role differences
grow as children get older, and the experiences
of girls increasingly diverge from those
of boys. The different ways in which girls and
boys are socialized through various pressures
and expectations causes significant differences
in behavior, attitudes, and abilities. Girls are
expected to play with toys that seek the
[Page 39] approval of others and involve domestic
activities. In contrast, boys are generally given
toys that offer problem-solving activities,
construction, manipulation, or movement.
The literature and media to which boys and girls are exposed underrepresent girls in major roles and overrepresent them in passive and limited roles. For the boys, however, heroism, adventure, problem-solving, and imaginative roles are the norm. Boys are also depicted in a variety of occupational roles and are prized for achievements and cleverness.
In school, boys tend to receive more attention from teachers than do girls. A study of U.S. public school teachers (kindergarten through the twelfth grade) found that both male and female teachers believe
- female students tend to be very emotional, to not hide their emotions, easily express tender feelings, are very easily hurt, cry easily, are very affectionate, very gentle, very quiet, and not at all aggressive . . . very aware of the feelings of others, very understanding of others, very helpful . . . enjoy art and literature very much, dislike math and science, are not adventurous . . . are very interested in their appearance.[52]
A variety of studies indicate that girls’ self-esteem is critical, especially as they reach adolescence. In the beginning years of school, girls show the same level of skills and aspiration as boys. But as they approach adolescence, their confidence, expectations, and abilities noticeably decrease.[53] Another study concluded that,
- Without a sense of self, girls will enter adulthood at a deficit; they will be less able to fulfill their potential, less willing to take on challenges, less willing to defy tradition in their career choices, which means sacrificing economic equity. Their successes will not satisfy and their failures will be more catastrophic, confirming their own self-doubt. . . In order to raise healthier girls, we must look carefully at what we tell them, often unconsciously, often subtly, about their worth relative to boys’. We must look at what girls value about themselves—the “area of importance” by which they measure their self-esteem—as well as the potential sources of strength and competence that, too often, they learn to devalue.[54]
A healthy self-esteem instills in the individual a sense of confidence and capacity. The sense of self-worth allows the individual to approach the world with the attitude of having something of personal value to offer to others. Yet prevalent views of women and their contributions remain traditional and confining. “We live in a culture,” according to Orenstein, “that is ambivalent toward female achievement, proficiency, independence, and right to full and equal life. Our culture devalues both women and the qualities which it projects onto us, such as nurturance, cooperation, and intuition.”[55] It is noteworthy that these are the very qualities that the Bahá’í writings advocate for both men and women.
Individual responsibility in changing unfounded
and dysfunctional gender stereotypes
must be supported and reinforced by institutional
corrective measures. One of these,
[Page 40] enunciated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is that equality
implies an identical curriculum: “there must
be no difference in the education of male and
female in order that womankind may develop
equal capacity and importance with
man in the social and economic equation.”[56]
Equality in the Workplace
BY THE time women reach the workplace, the obstacles and stereotypes imposed on them from the moment of birth have become deeply ingrained, self-perpetuating, and reinforcing. Sex segregation in employment commonly places women who have the same level of education as men in certain jobs and segments of organizations, excluding them from positions generally dominated by men, and offers them fewer advancements. In all occupations and professions in which women and men are represented, men enjoy more prestigious, powerful, and better-paying jobs. Overall, employed women receive less pay than men, thus creating a wage gap wherein women of color end up earning the least of all.[57]
Women’s achievements at work are devalued in almost every field. Attitudes prevail that women cannot do certain jobs well and certainly not as well as men can. Male managers tend to believe that “men are more likely to possess the characteristics necessary for managerial success.”[58] Women’s absence from managerial positions has created a strong “distinction between the private world of women and the public world of men.”[59]
Because women have always worked in the home unpaid, their real economic contributions implicit in such work tend to become invisible and have led to lower wages for women once they enter the work force. According to historian Sara Alpern, “Free black and white women were employed in domestic work, and both free and slave black women did agricultural work. When some white women began factory work, they encountered a ‘de-skilling’ process that forced them to abandon the skills formerly required to create a complete product. Their work was reduced to a simple task, creating a small portion of the product.”[60] Today’s largely male corporate world remains unsupportive of women’s additional responsibilities in relation to pregnancy, child-care, and related matters. Change is slow in the elimination of exploitation and unjust treatment of women in the labor force throughout the world.
Conclusion
MANY PATTERNS that perpetuate female oppression and injustice have developed over the course of centuries. They are symptoms of the “dis-order” that besets human society and threatens its survival. The principle of the oneness of humanity has, as the Universal House of Justice writes,
- widespread implications which affect and remold all dimensions of human activity. It calls for a fundamental change in the manner in which people relate to each other, and the eradication of those age-old practices which deny the intrinsic human [Page 41]
right of every individual to be treated with consideration and respect.[61]
The implementation of the principle of the oneness of humanity consequently calls for a continuing evaluation of actual behavior in the light of the ideal so that both women and men become aware of the “age-old practices” continuing to prevail in society, in one’s own community, and in one’s own home that deny women their intrinsic human rights. Are young girls encouraged to take on roles that defy typical stereotypes? Are they given the same “educational opportunities or course of study” as boys? Is there a tendency to dissuade girls from pursuing opportunities that allow them to “develop the same capacity and abilities” as boys?[62] Are young boys receiving training in the understanding and promotion of equality between sexes so that they will put an end to those “harmful attitudes and habits [in men] that are carried from the family to the workplace, to political life, and ultimately to international relations”? How does the individual respond to the spiritual standard that Bahá’u’lláh summons His “true followers” to aspire to when He counsels: “And if he met the fairest and most comely of women, he would not feel his heart seduced by the least shadow of desire for her beauty. Such an one, indeed, is the creation of spotless chastity.”[63] And what is the individual’s attitudinal and behavioral response to the following principle in all its implications:
- The use of force by the physically strong against the weak, as a means of imposing one’s will and fulfilling one’s desires, is a flagrant transgression of the Bahá’í Teachings. There can be no justification for anyone compelling anorher, through the use of force or through the threat of violence, to do that to which the other person is not inclined.
- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Bahá’í men have the opportunity to demonstrate to the world around them a new approach to the relationship between the sexes, where aggression and the use of force are eliminated and replaced by cooperation and consultation.[64]
Only through such conscious, persistent effort on the part of the individual and the community at large to set an example through the application of spiritual principles can harmful traditional patterns be replaced by new ones that embody the reality of equality and that provide a solid foundation for an inherently just global society.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace: To the Peoples of the World (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1985) 29.
- ↑ Whenever the words “man, men,” or “mankind” appear, they refer to the generic humankind.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, trans. Shoghi Effendi, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988) 13; Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing TruSt, 1983) 278; Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle 30, 32.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, trans. Marzieh Gail and Ali-Kuli Khan, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990) 39.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912, comp. Howard MacNutt, 2d ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982) 375.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, Promise of World Peace 8.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, quoted in the Universal House of Justice, letter dated 27 March 1978 to all National Spiritual Assemblies; Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh et al., 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988) 67-68.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, quoted in the Universal House of Justice, letter dated 27 March 1978 to all National Spititual Assemblies; Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice, Women: Extracts from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice (Thornhill, Ontario: Bahá’í Canada Publications, 1986) 3, No. 3.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 283.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 74, 133.
- ↑ Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1991, 14th ed. (Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1991) 9.
- ↑ United Nations, World Economic Survey 1990, Department of International Economic and Social Affairs (New York: United Nations, 1990).
- ↑ Engendering Adjustment for the 1990’s, A Report of a Commonwealth Expert Group on Women and Structural Adjustment (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989) 18.
- ↑ United Nations, The World’s Women 1970-1990: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations, 1991) 57.
- ↑ United Nations, World’s Women 11.
- ↑ Robert B. Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony (New York: The Free Press, 1992) 81-82, 82.
- ↑ Edgerton, Sick Societies 82.
- ↑ Women: A World Report, A New International Book (New York: Oxford UP, 1985) 64; Newsweek 16 Jul. 1990, quoted in United Nations, Women: Challenge to the Year 2000 (New York: United Nations, 1991) 57.
- ↑ United Nations, Women: Challenge 67.
- ↑ United Nations, World’s Women 7.
- ↑ United Nations, Violence Against Women in the Family, V.89-56940, Oct. 1989, 11, 18. 17.
- ↑ Edgerton, Sick Societies 37, 9-10.
- ↑ Edgerton, Sick Societies 82.
- ↑ United Nations, Women: Challenge 52.
- ↑ United Nations, World’s Women 31, 23.
- ↑ United Nations, Women: Challenge 53.
- ↑ United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Literacy Year, Information document (New York: United Nations, June 1989).
- ↑ United Nations, The State of the World Population 1990, United Nations Population Fund (New York: United Nations, 1990).
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: Selected Letters, 1st ps ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991) 170.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh 203; Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh 67.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Women 13, No. 25.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Women 13, No. 25; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks: Addresses Given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Paris in 1911, 11th ed. (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969) 184; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Women 40, No. 87; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 284, 375.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks 162; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Committee at the Bahá’í World Centre and Marzieh Gail (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1978) 79-80.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks 163.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, Individual Rights and Freedoms in the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: To the Followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the United States of America (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1989) 4-5, 9.
- ↑ Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: Ballantine, 1990) 42-47.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 76.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks 133.
- ↑ See Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco: Harper, 1987).
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings 94.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Secret of Divine Civilization 2-3.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections 27; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 255; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections 28.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 168.
- ↑ On behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual, letter dated 9 August 1984, in Women 33-34, No. 74.
- ↑ See Edgerton, Sick Societies 81.
- ↑ On behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual, letter dated 23 June 1974, in Women 31, No. 68; on behalf of the Universal House ofJuStice to a National Spiritual Assembly, letter dated 23 December 1980, in Women 33, No. 71.
- ↑ Ralph LaRossa, “Fatherhood and Social Change,” in Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner, eds. Men’s Lives (New York: Macmillan, 1992) 533.
- ↑ See Sarah Berk, The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households (New York: Plenum Press, 1985); Laurie Davidson and Laura K. Gordon, The Sociology of Gender (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1979); and Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift (New York: Knopf, 1989).
- ↑ Edgerton, Sick Societies 48, 113.
- ↑ Lyberger-Ficek, quoted in Bernice Lott, Women’s Lives: Themes and Variations in Gender Learning (Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole Publ., 1994) 36.
- ↑ Lott, Women’s Lives 34.
- ↑ George W. Wise, “The Relationship of Sex-Role Perception an Levels of Self-Actualization in Public School Teachers,” Sex Roles 4: 609.
- ↑ See American Association of University Women, Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America: Full Data Report (Washington D.C.: American Association of University Women, 1990); Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girl’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990); and Peggy Orenstein, School Girls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap (New York: Doubleday, 1994).
- ↑ Orenstein, School Girls xxviii.
- ↑ Orenstein, School Girls xix.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 108.
- ↑ See Evelyn N. Glenn, “Racial Ethnic Women’s Labor: The Intersection of Race, Gender and Class Oppression,” in C. Bose, F. Feldberg, and N. Sokoloff, eds., Hidden Aspects of Women’s Work (New York: Praeger, 1987) 14-45; Peggy Schmidt, “For the Women, Still a Long Way to Go,” New York Times 24 Mar. 1985: Sec. 12, 14-15; and Camille Colatosti, “Making 65 c on the dollar,” Labor Notes (7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, Mich. 48210) in Lott, Women’s Lives 245.
- ↑ Virginia Schein, Ruediger Mueller, and Carolyn Jacobson, “The Relationship between Sex Role Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics among College Students,” Sex Roles 20: 103-10.
- ↑ Sara Alpern, “In the Beginning: A History of Women in Management,” in Ellen A. Fagenson, ed., Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Managerial Diversity 19-51, vol. 4 of Women and Work: A Research and Policy Series (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications, 1993).
- ↑ Alpern, “In the Beginning,” 46.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, letter dated 24 Jan. 1993 to an individual.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation 281.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings 118.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, letter dated 24 Jan. 1993 to an individual.
Violence Against Women and Girls
BY MICHAEL L. PENN
Copyright © by Michael L. Penn. This essay is based on a paper presented at the United Nations Preparatory Meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Vienna, Austria, 11-21 October 1994 and at the conference on Women in Bahá’í Perspective, held in Wilmette, Illinois, 27-29 January 1995.
Introduction
THE psychosocial well-being of women and girls has become a matter of international moral and legal concern. It is reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Resolution 48/104), adopted by the General Assembly in February 1994 and enshrined in the rights and privileges delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Moreover, public awareness of and accountability for the physical and sexual abuse of women and girls, clearly among the most serious threats to women’s health and development, are gradually increasing.
But the need to go beyond awareness to prevention has been stressed by United Nations officials, by many U.N. Non-Governmental Organizations, and by women’s rights groups throughout the world. Such a need becomes all the more obvious when one considers that many forms of violence against women have increased dramatically during the past decade.
The critical need to secure women’s basic human right to live free from violence is most likely to be realized as men, at all levels of society, begin to play more active roles in preventing gender-based violence and other forms of exploitation and abuse.[1] The goal must be to replace the present patterns of conflict and domination with family and societal processes that reflect men’s and women’s interdependence.
In addition to a consciousness of interdependence, a lasting foundation for the unfettered development of women will be provided by the establishment of greater economic, political, educational, and social equality. The links between gender-based violence and conditions of inequality have been well documented. It is thus unlikely that gender-based violence will be eliminated until gross disparities in male/female income, opportunity, and sociopolitical participation are also reduced. Furthermore, to ensure a lasting foundation for the equality of men and women, the importance of moral and spiritual prerequisites for the establishment of viable human relationships cannot be ignored. Within the context of these realizations, a brief review of the complexity, globality, and severity of gender-based violence delineates the role inequality plays in its perpetuation and suggests ways in which men can assume a more active role in its eradication.
[Page 44]
A Global Epidemic
IN THE United States battering is the single most common source of serious injury to women, accounting for more injuries than road accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.[2] In the overwhelming majority of cases the batterer is not a stranger but a husband, a boyfriend, or an “ex.” In 1991 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) recorded 106,593 rapes. That is equivalent to 292 rapes each day, 12 rapes each hour, 1 rape every five minutes in America alone. Furthermore, the number of rapes reported by the UCR has risen steadily over the past twenty years. Thus from 1972 to 1991 there has been a 128 percent increase in the number of reported rapes.[3] During that same period the rate of forcible rapes per 100,000 inhabitants increased by 88 percent. As with battering, intimates (husbands, boyfriends, ex-spouses) committed 70 percent of these sexual assaults.[4]
The high rates of physical and sexual abuse are not restricted either to the United States or to adults. A large-scale London study found that 17 percent of the women surveyed had been raped.[5] In a New Zealand sample 14 percent of the college undergraduates questioned reported a completed rape, and another 25 percent, an attempted rape.[6] In Asia, Africa, and the Middle East sexual slavery of women and girls is rapidly increasing.[7] In Cochabamba, Bolivia, nearly 80 percent of the child prostitutes questioned reported that they had run away from homes in which male relatives had beaten and raped them. In Bosnia no less than twenty thousand Muslim women have reported being raped by Serbian soldiers in organized rape camps. In a highly publicized case in Kenya seventy-one high school girls were raped and severely beaten by boys from their own school when they refused to join a strike against the school’s headmaster. In Montreal, Canada, fourteen female engineering students were killed by a male student who justified the murders by stating that the victims were studying “a male profession.”[8] Clearly, the frequency of gender-based violence has reached epidemic proportions. While a detailed account of the various types of abuse to which women and girls are subjected is unnecessary here, the gravity of the problem can be illustrated by a brief sampling of the various forms of physical, sexual, and other abuse such violence has taken in various parts of the world.
Physical Abuse
Battering. Wife beating, the most common form of family violence, poses a serious threat to the quality of women’s lives in nearly every culture and society. It takes place with regularity in approximately 85 percent of all cultures and is severe enough to cause death or permanent injury in most of the societies in which wife beating is present.[9]
M. A. Straus, a social-science researcher,
reported that of 47 million couples in the
[Page 45] United States “in any one year approximately
1.8 million wives are beaten by their husbands.”[10] More recent data suggest that the
number may be closer to 18 million.[11] Of
these between 2,000 and 4,000 are beaten to
death.[12] In India spousal abuse often takes
the brutal form of wife burnings or “dowry
deaths.” The United Nations reports that in
1985 alone there were 999 documented cases
of dowry deaths. These rose to 1,319 in 1986
and to 1,786 in 1987.[13] Data from Peru reveal
that 70 percent of all reported crimes consist
of the battering of women by their partners.[14]
In Canada, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Thailand
more than 50 percent of all females
murdered were killed by family members.[15]
Referring to these statistics, Charlotte Bunch
and Roxanne Carrillo, researchers in women’s
studies, noted that “domestic battery figures
range from 40 percent to 80 percent of women
beaten, usually repeatedly, indicating that the
home is the most dangerous place for women
and frequently the site of cruelty and torture.”[16]
Female Genital Mutilation. That the home is a frequent site of cruelty and torture is shown by the high rates of clitorodectimies, excisions, and infibulations performed without anesthesia on millions of girls throughout the Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Egypt, Sierra Leone, India, and other countries, including the United States.[17] Not only are such practices extremely painful, but they are frequently life threatening. Common complications include hemorrhaging associated with laceration of the dorsal artery of the clitoris, shock, acute urinary retention, urinary infection, septicemia, fever, tetanus, pelvic infections, dysmenorrhea, cysts and abscesses, painful intercourse, and, oftentimes, death. It is estimated that as many as 100 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to genital mutilation. Furthermore, approximately 6,000 additional girls and women are subjected to this practice each day.[18]
Female Infanticide. UNICEF recently estimated
that as many as 77 million females are
missing and feared dead as a result of female
infanticide, deliberate malnutrition, selective
abortions, and outright violence against girls.
Congressman Tom Lantos of California, in
testimony before the Committee on Foreign
Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives,
noted that “The combined totals of females
missing in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, India,
Pakistan, and China exceeds 77 million human
beings. The way this figure is arrived at is
obvious. On the basis of actuarial figures
there should be so many adult women and
[Page 46] so many adult men. There are 77 million
adult women who are not there because they
were killed as infants or were the victims of
gender violence in later years.” Lantos went
further to point out that this is more than the
combined populations of California, New
York, Texas, and Florida.[19]
Sexual Abuse
Incest. Incest, one of the most common forms of sexual abuse, poses a serious threat to the psychosocial well-being of female children. The Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center reported that 29 percent of all forcible rapes recorded in their study took place when the victim was less than eleven years old. Another 32 percent occurred between the ages of eleven and seventeen. The overwhelming majority of these rapes were incestual, having been committed by fathers, stepfathers, brothers, or other close relatives.[20]
Incest is most likely to happen in individualistic, as opposed to collectivistic, societies; in cultures with nuclear, as opposed to extended, family kinships; in indulgent or permissive cultures; and among cultures with high rates of divorce and remarriage. Reconstituted families have the highest rates of incest since stepfathers are more likely than biological fathers to abuse female children sexually. Although incest is more likely to occur in western, industrialized nations, the limited data available for India, Africa, South America, and Central America suggest that incest poses a major health risk for female children everywhere.
Sexual Slavery. Sexual slavery, the sale of women and children, especially girls, into prostitution and forced marriage is escalating in many countries. In Asia, Africa, and the Middle East such practices are common. In the Philippines, Thailand, and Sri Lanka “sex tourism” industries have fueled a crisis in the sexual exploitation of female children that is unmatched in history. The Bangkok-based international organization ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) reports a half million prostitutes sixteen years old or younger in Thailand, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, and another 50,000 who are under thirteen.[21]
P. Ehrlich, a Reader’s Digest correspondent, notes that the child-sex industry is fueled by tens of thousands of pedophile tourists from wealthier nations—including the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. “They fly to southern Asia for child sex,” writes Ehrlich, “knowing they face little risk of being caught and small penalty if they are. The lure of tourist dollars leads government and law enforcement officials in these countries to look the Other way.”[22] Anti-Slavery International, a London-based human-rights organization, reports sexual slavery among poor Turkish women, Mozambiquan refugees in South Africa, and women from Bangladesh who are shipped as “mail-order brides” to the United States and Europe.[23]
Rape and Sexual Abuse by Armed Forces. On 21 January 1993 Amnesty International issued a report on abuses against women, including rape, in the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The testimony suggested widespread, systematic, and prolonged sexual violence against women that appeared to have the implicit or explicit approval of political and military leaders.
Sexual violence against women and girls
[Page 47] has been a part of official military strategy in
a number of wars and conflicts over the past
century. In her statement to the U.S. House
of Representatives Subcommittee Hearings
on Human Rights, Dorothy Thomas, director
of the Women’s Rights Project, noted that
in the last three years the use of rape as a
military tactic has been well documented in
countries as diverse as Peru, Somalia, Liberia,
India, and Burma.[24]
Other Forms of Human Rights
Abuses against Women
BEYOND the gross violations of women’s human rights involving physical and sexual abuse, women around the world are routinely subjected to discriminatory restrictions of such fundamental freedoms as travel, marriage, testifying in court, inheriting and owning property, securing credit, and obtaining custody of their children. In a recent document on the status of women and girls, UNICEF reports that in many countries girls enjoy less nutritious food, fewer visits to health-care facilities, lower rates of vaccination, and less nurture than boys.[25]
In addition, the global AIDS epidemic seriously threatens the lives and health of millions of women since women are not only vulnerable to men’s sexual demands but lack the negotiating power to secure protected intercourse. Among the increasing number of poor women and girls who must sell their bodies to survive, the risk of sexually transmitted disease is greatly multiplied. UNICEF estimates that four million of the ten million HIV infections worldwide in 1992 are among women. In some parts of Africa as many as 30 percent of the women of reproductive age are reportedly infected; and in Zimbabwe, HIV infection among fifteen- to nineteen-year-old girls is six times higher than in boys.[26]
With respect to the allocation of workload and income, it is embarrassing to note that, although women and girls continue to work many more hours a day than men, they own almost none of the world’s wealth. In Nepal, for example, boys work approximately one-half the number of hours worked by girls.[27] The difficulties imposed by this reality are rendered all the more critical when one considers that the number of households headed by poor women is increasing sharply.[28] In the United States, for example, female-headed households among poor African-Americans may be as high as 71 percent.[29]
Although women are the first and frequently the only educators of children, women and girls receive the least formal education. The World Bank reports that women comprise two-thirds of the 960 million illiterate people in the world. Furthermore, of the 130 million children who received no primary education in 1990, 81 million were girls.[30]
The Role of Inequality
THE ROLE of inequality in perpetuating gross
and subtle forms of violence against women
and girls has been well documented. In his
widely cited study of ninety societies, social
scientist David Levinson found four cultural
factors that provide strong predictors of wife
[Page 48] abuse. These include sexual economic inequality,
male authority in decision-making
in the home, divorce restrictions for women,
and a societal pattern of using physical violence
for conflict resolution. Levinson’s data
suggest that female economic inequality, when
supported by male control in the household
and a woman’s inability to divorce, provide
the strongesr predictor of her vulnerability to
violence and abuse. Thus his cross-cultural
study shows that women are most vulnerable
to abuse when they are most dependent upon
men and have the fewest options for escape.[31]
It should be noted, however, that violence is apt to develop, even within a context of dependency, only when males have been predisposed to treat women and girls in harmful and disrespectful ways. Thus inequality and dependency do not cause violence against women and girls; rather, inequality, like violence itself, is one manifestation of a pattern of gender-based mistreatment that has its roots in the presumption of inherent male superiority and entitlement.
In another set of studies, M. A. Straus and C. Hornung and his research colleagues found that wide status differences between marriage partners was associated with a higher frequency of violence—especially if the man had a lower status than his wife.[32] Researchers D. H. Coleman and M. A. Straus sampled approximately two thousand couples, classifying them as male-dominant, female-dominant, or egalitarian. Their study found the lowest rates of violence among egalitarian couples.[33]
In their interviews with battered wives, social scientists R. E. Dobash and R. P. Dobash found that battering tended to take place when there had been a perceived challenge to the husband’s control or authority, when there were unfulfilled expectations about domestic work, or when husbands felt possessiveness and sexual jealousy. The Dobashes concluded that males’ use of violence in the home serves to establish or maintain power over the wife when her behavior threatens the status quo.[34]
K. A. Yllo and M. A. Straus, behavioral scientists, examined the relationship between violence and the overall status of women in various states within the United States. Using the legal, economic, educational, and political rights of women in each state as predictors, they found a curvilinear relationship between these rights and marital violence. Where women’s status was found to be low, there was greater violence. However, while violence against women tended to decrease as status increased, at high levels of status there was again an increase in violence. In addition, patriarchal norms in each state suggested a linear relationship with marital violence —the more egalitarian the normative climate among men in that state, the lower the rate of violence against women in the home.[35]
As has been noted, a man is especially apt
to use physical force when his partner is highly
dependent upon him, either economically or
psychologically. The 1975 U.S.-based National
Family Violence Survey found that violence
against wives was most likely to occur
[Page 49] when both economic and psychological dependence
were manifested. Thus the greater
the wife’s psychological dependence on her
husband, the greater the likelihood of minor
forms of violence. By contrast, economic dependence
was associated with much more
severe violence. Approximately 4 percent of
the women who were economically self-sufficient
were reported to have been severely
beaten, as compared to 7 percent of those
women who were totally dependent upon
their husbands for financial support. Reflecting
upon their findings, the researchers concluded
that “wives who are highly dependent
on marriage are less able to discourage, avoid,
or put an end to abuse than are women in
marriages [in which] the balance of resources
between husbands and wives is more nearly
equal.”[36]
Although gender-based violence is correlated with gender-related inequities, replacing the present patterns of violence, conflict, and domination with family and societal processes that reflect men’s and women’s interdependence will require more than the establishment of economic and/or sociopolitical parity. It will require transformation in every aspect of human life and functioning. It will also require the active and willing involvement of men.
The Role of Men in Preventing
Gender-Based Violence
BECAUSE men frequently perpetuate and spread violence against women and girls, it is critical that men be included in efforts to eradicate gender-based violence. Male involvement is most likely to be effective if it is predicated on a moral and spiritual ethic. The principles of such an ethic include the recognition of the equality of the sexes, the interdependence of men and women, and the basic human right of women and girls to live within families and societies that foster rather than hinder their happiness, participation, and development. Indeed, as is pointed out in the Bahá’í writings, when men fully realize and support the justice inherent in these principles, there will be little need for women to struggle for basic human rights. Effective involvement of men thus requires a transformation of male consciousness.
It should be noted that the principle of the equality of men and women is not based upon the assumption of sameness. Structure, biology, and socialization render men and women clearly distinct from one another. Nevertheless, these differences, properly developed and expressed, will reveal the full range of strengths and capacities available to humanity. When the equality and interdependence of men and women are more fully realized, the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced. Everyone, men and women alike, will benefit from such a change. Hence sexual equality is not solely a “women’s issue.” It is an issue intimately connected with the destiny of all humankind.
Comparisons may be made between stages
in the development of the civil-rights movement
in North America and the movement
spearheaded by women for gender equality.
At its inception the civil-rights movement
was confined almost entirely to black Americans.
However, as an increasing number of
white Americans developed an appreciation
of the moral rightness of the movement, they
began to lend their moral, legal, and financial
support. Gradually many whites became
highly effective coworkers in the moral and
legal struggle to secure the civil and human
rights of African-Americans. For example,
the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) was
[Page 50] founded, in part, by white Americans who
recognized their responsibility to the social
evolution of American society. Black and white
NAACP lawyers became the chief litigators
in the effort to extend civil rights to black
Americans.[37] Similarly, efforts to include men
in the global movement for women’s rights
is likely to facilitate the development of the
movement’s full potential. Indeed, as explained
by the Bahá’í International Community in a
recent statement:
- Women working together in unity and harmony have already achieved a great deal within the spheres of influence open to them. Now women must come together with men as equal partners. When men lend their full support to this process, welcoming women into all fields of human endeavor, valuing their contributions, and encouraging their participation, men and women together will help create the moral and psychological climate in which peace can emerge.[38]
Four Areas of Involvement for Men
THERE are four areas in which active male involvement could have important effects on securing equality of status, opportunity, and freedom from violence for women and girls: family life, religious institutions, educational institutions, and places of employment.
Family Life. Ideally the family is the social matrix out of which emerges a person capable of contributing to the development and well-being of others. To do this the family must endow each member with the capacity and desire to serve and nurture others. In general men and boys have not been encouraged to develop such qualities as much as women and girls have.[39] If current trends are to be reversed, men will need to acquire many of the capacities for nurturing now associated more frequently with women, and they will need to help teach these qualities to their sons.
Social learning theorists have shown that modeling oneself on parents is a significant source of aggressive behavior. Boys whose fathers are cruel and neglectful are more likely to become cruel and neglectful themselves; a higher percentage of delinquent than nondelinquent boys have had aggressive fathers; abused children are apt to abuse their own children more frequently than nonabused children; and boys who have seen their fathers beat their mothers have a 1,000 percent greater battering rate than those who have not.[40]
If the behavior of fathers at home has such a profound influence on the perpetuation of violence against women, efforts to prevent violence that do not include fathers are bound to fail. Worldwide media- and community-based campaigns that educate fathers about the deleterious impact of family violence on well-being and development are thus sorely needed. These campaigns are likely to be most effective when they involve men educating other men and when they teach techniques for conflict resolution and problem-solving that rely and build upon the unific powers inherent in consultation.
Concerning incest and sexual abuse perpetrated
within the home, much more needs
[Page 51] to be done to familiarize men with how
destructive sexual contact with a child or
adolescent is to that person’s growth and
happiness. Through a variety of mechanisms
men and boys in many cultures are socialized
to think of sex as the ultimate source of
pleasure. The mechanisms are also often
embedded in cultural contexts that encourage
self-indulgence and tolerate the depiction
of women as sexual objects. Consequently,
many men may come to think of all women—
including their daughters, nieces, and so on—
in sexual terms. Furthermore, the secrecy that
enshrouds incest on both familial and societal
levels does not provide opportunities for
men to learn about the ubiquitous nature
and deleterious effects of sexual abuse within
the home.
Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may have an important role to play in educating men and including them in efforts to prevent both physical and sexual violence. Such institutions, usually headed by men, are among the most influential and stable social entities in many localities. Thus they represent a potentially powerful community resource for helping to prevent violence against women and children.
Temple University, for example, employed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, churches quite effectively in its Community Child Abuse Prevention Program (C-CAPP), which is part of the University’s Center for Social Policy and Community Development. To help reduce the incidence of child abuse, CSPCD works with churches in a depressed area to promote family life. The C-CAPP staff, in collaboration with community religious leaders, formed a Spiritual Life Committee that initiated a number of activities focusing public awareness on child abuse, including a training session for the religious community in which pastors, ministers, and laypersons learned about child welfare issues. C-CAPP initiated a “sermon search” in which spiritual leaders were encouraged to take part in a friendly competition to preach sermons on the prevention of child abuse. The sermons were collected, published as an anthology, and distributed in the community. In addition, during a “United Child Abuse Prevention Day,” congregations throughout Philadelphia heard sermons on positive family life. Churches also served as a base for various kinds of family-life programs, ranging from child-parent play programs and family conflict-resolution programs to weekly rap sessions on issues related to the development of peaceful and happy families. Similar programs might be developed and funded by government and nongovernmental agencies that are concerned with preventing gender-based violence.
Educational Institutions. Realizing the need to cultivate a greater capacity for self-control, caring, and nurturing among boys, several educational institutions have begun to offer classes focused on teaching nonviolent conflict resolution, parenting skills, consultation, and violence prevention through mediation. Many of the programs have been developed and implemented by men and are beginning to play an important role in male resocialization.[41]
Peer groups have also been formed among
male college students to facilitate education
on the impact of pornography on male-female
relationships. Since sexual harassment
and rape are disproportionately high among
subgroups of males in educational settings
(for example, athletes and fraternity members),
efforts to reduce gender-based violence
that focus on these populations are likely to
make a significant impact.[42] One dimension
of sexual abuse that has received relatively
little attention is peer-to-peer sexual harassment
among elementary and secondary school
children. A sixteen-year-old New England girl
[Page 52] recently described the impact of sexual harassment
on her psychosocial and academic
functioning:
- It came to the point where I was skipping almost all of my classes, therefore getting kicked out of the honors program. It was very painful for me. I dreaded school each morning, I started to wear clothes that wouldn’t flatter my figure, and I kept to myself. I never had a boyfriend that year. I’d cry every night I got home, and I thought I was a total loser. Sometimes the teachers were right there when it was going on. They did nothing. I felt very angry that . . . they took away my self-esteem, my social life, and kept me from getting a good education.[43]
According to Nan Stein, a feminist writer, sexual harassment in school does often take place in the presence of teachers, administrators, or staff and includes a wide range of abuses such as attempts to snap bras or grope at girls’ bodies; efforts to pull down gym shorts or flip up skirts; circulating lists that degrade female students by using sexually explicit language; designating special weeks for “grabbing the private parts of girls”; nasty, personalized graffiti on bathroom walls; and sexual jokes, taunts, and skits that are sometimes performed at school-sponsored pep rallies, assemblies, or halftime performances during sporting events. In some countries sexual harassment is so severe that it prevents a significant number of female students from either going to school or functioning well once they arrive. Male-sponsored peer groups that are developed to sensitize boys to the psychosocial impact of sexual harassment of girls are thus urgently needed.
Employment Settings. Recent Senate hearings in the United States have brought to public awareness the severity of the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace. In some settings the problem goes far beyond harassment to include sexual violence and rape. In a report in the San Francisco Examiner on the occurrence of rape of women in the military Gary Warner noted that a woman serving in the U.S. Army is 50 percent more likely to be raped than a civilian.[44] Similarly, women serving in other male-dominated institutions, such as police and fire departments, construction companies, manufacturing industries, and the legal profession are more likely to be subjected to gender-related violence than are women serving in occupations with longer histories of female involvement. The male leadership of these professions should, therefore, be given training on this problem and be made responsible for educating their employees about the moral, legal, psychological, and social costs of sexual violence and abuse. While local and international legislation designed to protect women’s rights will provide legal incentives for those who would otherwise lack commitment to this issue, males may also be inspired to contribute to the mitigation of this problem if they are encouraged to do so from the highest levels of government, industry, and society.
Creating Unity-Based Families
IN A remarkably insightful essay prepared for
the International Symposium on Strategies
for Creating the Violence-Free Family, Dr.
Hossain Danesh, a noted author and psychiatrist,
distinguishes among three types of
families: power-based, indulgence-based, and
unity-based.[45] In Danesh’s typology, power-based
[Page 53] families are severely constrained in their
capacity to facilitate the happiness and development
of family members. Since physical
force and authoritarian control are the principal
means by which such families function,
the female members of power-based families
are particularly apt to suffer.
In addition to power-based families, Danesh describes the emergence of a new type of family, the indulgence-based family. These, according to Danesh, have developed in this century and especially since the end of World War II. “These are Pleasure- or Indulgence-Based Families,” Danesh writes, “which give gratification of personal needs and desires primacy over all other issues.” In such families “love is viewed to be the same as gratification, and the powers of human will are expressed in promiscuous and anarchic ways.”[46] Indulgence-based families, like power-based families, are unsafe for women and girls. In such families women and girls are often seen as readily available outlets for the expression of unbridled impulses and desires. Thus incest and sexual abuse are more likely to occur within such contexts.
In contrast to power- and indulgence-based families—which have evolved during the childhood and adolescence of humanity’s collective development—unity-based families are said to represent the future course of human social evolution:
- Humanity is now in the final stages of its collective adolescence. As we mature we will leave behind the mindset based on power and control. This is so because evolution and transition from one stage of development to another is an unavoidable aspect of life, and the most important dimension of this transition is development of a new mindset. The nature of this new mindset is directly related to the fact of the oneness of humanity which attains its highest expression in the all-important state of unity. It is impossible for humanity to further advance in its path of growth unless we establish a life of unity—inner, interpersonal, and international. As we enter the next stage in our collective evolution we will gradually move away from the mindsets of childhood and adolescence based on control, power-struggle, and indulgence and will begin to see the world from the perspective of unity. We will also begin to move away from power- and indulgence-based families to unity-based families.[47]
If Danesh’s typology is properly understood, unity-based families are fundamentally egalitarian. In such families the rights and responsibilities of the children are commensurate with their emerging capacities. Mother and father, the chief stewards of this organic unit, are regarded as equal in all meaningful aspects of life, and consultation is the principal means whereby unity-based families arrive at important decisions. Inasmuch as justice provides the optimal context for human development, unity-based families are characterized by an absence of force, coercion, and manipulation as the means of control. Unity-based families are painstakingly nurtured through the development of those qualities with which humanity is potentially endowed: love, compassion, trustworthiness, loyalty, fidelity, self-restraint, and a desire to contribute to the advancement and well-being of others. If a firm foundation is to be laid for the unfettered advancement of women and girls, the establishment of unity-based families must be the ultimate goal of our individual and collective endeavors.
Establishing Enduring
Foundations for Unity
FROM the dawn of civilization to the present
time, humanity has known neither peace nor
security. For no less than six thousand years
[Page 54] some part of the human family has been at
war. As we approach a new millennium, many
of us—men and women alike—have turned
our hearts longingly toward peace.
There are, however, prerequisites that must be met if a firm foundation for peace is to be established. An enduring peace can be established only if we accept the reality of the oneness and interdependence of humankind. Just as nations, ethnic groups, and tribes will have to work sincerely and persistently to abandon divisive prejudices, so also will men and women need to eradicate habits of thought and behavior that now prevent their mutual and harmonious development. Chief among these is the age-old practice of physical and sexual violence perpetrated largely by men against women.
But peace requires more than the absence of violence. It requires a conscious commitment to unity and justice. Justice allows equal opportunities for the development of men and women and ensures that future generations will benefit from the unencumbered contributions of all those who have lived on earth. Unity, the purpose of justice, provides the optimal psychosocial and spiritual milieu wherein the resources and capacities latent within all peoples may be developed and expressed. Inasmuch as humanity needs desperately the qualities so abundantly evidenced by the women of the world, one hopes that men of all nations will arise to aid in the effort to secure the human rights so long denied to women. One also hopes that the women of the world will accept such efforts by men as tangible expressions of their desire to build together a future that will be remarkably different from and infinitely superior to the past.
- ↑ Throughout the essay the term “gender-based violence,” rather than “sex-based violence,” has been used, as it does not confuse sexually motivated violence with nonsexually related violence that is directed against women because they are members of a socially oppressed group. “Gender based” removes the ambiguity inherent in “sex based.”
- ↑ See E. Stark and A. Filcraft, “Violence among Intimates: An Epidemiological Review,” in V. B. Hasselt et al., eds., Handbook of Family Violence (New York: Plenum, 1988).
- ↑ Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice, Crime in the United States, 1991 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1992) 14, 17, 24, 58, “Table 1. Index of Crimes, United States, 1972-1991.”
- ↑ R. Bachman, “Female Victims of Violence,” address, p. 23, table 11, 1993 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology.
- ↑ R. E. Hall, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault (London: Falling Wall Press, 1985).
- ↑ N. Gavey, “Sexual Victimization Prevalence among New Zealand University Students,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 59 (1991): 464-66.
- ↑ J. Jacobson, “Slavery (Yes, Slavery) Returns,” World Watch 5 (Jan.-Feb. 1992).
- ↑ Charlotte Bunch and Roxanne Carrillo, Gender Violence: A Development and Human Rights Issue (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Douglass College, 1991).
- ↑ David Levinson, Family Violence in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Sage, 1989).
- ↑ M. A. Straus, “Wife Beating: How Common and Why?” Victimology: An International Journal 2 (1977): 443-58.
- ↑ E. S. Cox, “The Battered Women’s Movement in Mexico and the United States: An Examination of Strategies and Possibilities for Future Cooperation,” address, NCIH Conference, Crystal City, Virginia, 17-20 June 1990.
- ↑ J. Julian and W. Kornblum, Social Problems, 5th ed. (New Jersey: Prentice, 1986).
- ↑ United Nations, The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics: 1970-1990 (New York: United Nations, 1991).
- ↑ G. Ashworth, Of Violence and Violation: Women and Human Rights (London: Change Thinkbook II, 1986).
- ↑ Center for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs, Violence against Women in the Family (Vienna Office: United Nations, 1989).
- ↑ Bunch and Carrillo, Gender Violence.
- ↑ See K. Olayinka, The Circumcision of Women: A Strategy for Eradication (London: Led Books, 1987) for a discussion of the distinctions among these three types of female genital mutilation. I do not wish to suggest that such practices would be any more acceptable if anesthesia were used. I support Olayinka’s contention (p. 16) that, “Constituted through genetically programmed processes which are identically reproduced for all female embryos of all races, the organs of reproduction, external or internal, are thus vital products of natural, human inheritance. When normal, there can be no reason, medical, moral or aesrhetic, for suppressing all or any of them.”
- ↑ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee hearings on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights (Sept. 28-29, 1993; Oct. 20, 1993; and Mar. 22, 1994).
- ↑ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee hearings on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights (Sept. 28-29, 1993; Oct. 20, 1993; and Mar. 22, 1994).
- ↑ National Victim Center and the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Rape in America: A Report to the Nation (n.p.: The Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, 1992).
- ↑ Jacobson, “Slavery (Yes, Slavery) Returns.”
- ↑ P. Ehrlich, “Asia’s Shocking Secret,” Reader’s Digest Oct. 1993: 70.
- ↑ Jacobson, “Slavery (Yes, Slavery) Returns.”
- ↑ U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee hearings on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights (Sept. 28-29, 1993; Oct. 20, 1993; and Mar. 22, 1994).
- ↑ United Nations Children’s Fund, Girls and Women: A UNICEF Development Priority (New York: Programme Publications, 1993).
- ↑ United Nations Children’s Fund, Girls and Women.
- ↑ United Nations Children’s Fund, Girls and Women.
- ↑ United Nations, The World’s Women.
- ↑ R. L. Jarrett, “Living Poor: Family Life among Single Parent African-American Women,” Social Problems 41 (1994): 30-49.
- ↑ The World Bank, Educating Girls and Women: Investing in Development (The World Bank, 1990); UNICEF, Educating Girls and Women: A Moral Imperative (New York: Programme Publications, 1992).
- ↑ David Levinson, Family Violence.
- ↑ M. A. Straus, “Social Stress and Marital Violence in a National Sample of American Families,” in F. Wright, C. Bahn, and R. W Reiber, eds., Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry: Annals of the New York Academy of Science 347 (1980): 229-50; C. Hornung, B. McCullough, and T. Sugimoto, “Status Relationships in Marriage: Risk Factors in Spouse Abuse,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 43 (1981): 675-92.
- ↑ D. H. Coleman and M. A. Straus, “Marital Power, Conflict and Violence in a Nationally Representative Sample of American Couples,” Violence and Victims 1 (1986): 141-57.
- ↑ R. E. Dobash and R. P. Dobash, “The Nature and Antecedents of Violent Events,” British Journal of Criminology 24 (1984): 269-88.
- ↑ K. A. Yllo and M. A. Straus, “The Impact of Structural Inequality and Sexist Family Norms on Rates of Wife-Beating,” Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare 1 (1984): 16-29.
- ↑ M. A. Straus and R. J. Gelles, Physical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8,145 Families (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1990).
- ↑ See Richard Thomas, Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress (Ottawa, Canada: Association for Bahá’í Studies, 1993). In more recent decades, partly due to public policies, demographic patterns, and growing apathy, white support for civil rights has become less widespread. As black and white communities have become more estranged, the effectiveness born of their cooperative effort has clearly diminished.
- ↑ Bahá’í International Community, Women and Men: Partnership for a Healthy Planet (New York: Bahá’í International Community, 1991).
- ↑ See, for example, Myriam Miedzian, Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link between Masculinity and Violence (New York: Anchor Books, 1991).
- ↑ See Albert Bandura, Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice, 1973) for a review of this literature; see also Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (New York: Doubleday, 1980).
- ↑ See Miedzian, Boys Will Be Boys, for a brief review of such programs.
- ↑ See Peggy Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape (New York: New York UP, 1990).
- ↑ Quoted in Nan Stein, “No Laughing Matter: Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools,” in Transforming a Rape Culture, ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, and Martha Roth (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1993) 313.
- ↑ Gary Warner, San Francisco Examiner 30 Dec. 1992.
- ↑ Hossain B. Danesh, “The Violence-Free Family: The Building Block of a Peaceful Civilization,” keynote address, International Symposium on Strategies for Creating the Violence-Free Family, 23-25 May, 1994, UNICEF House, New York.
- ↑ Danesh, “The Violence-Free Family” 19-20.
- ↑ Danesh, “The Violence-Free Family” 21.
A Poem in Plain Speaking
- I’ve always wanted to write
- a poem in plain speaking,
- without artifice,
- before a critic tells me
- I belong more to the nineteenth
- than to the twentieth century.
- Before I’m told I’m too symbolic
- or sentimental or too cryptic or
- too moral, too metaphysical, didactic.
- Before someone analyzes me away.
- Before I analyze me away.
- The poem that would be the imagist’s dream.
- A poem that is not crafted but craves spontaneity,
- the direct life experience.
- Here it is, my direct poem.
- But it is not the red wheel barrow
- after the rain shining in the sun
- on which so much depends.
- Narrowing down the vision creates authenticity.
- Allusiveness, scholarship, craftspersonship
- guild a poem with artifice.
- This process reminds me of a cigarette-vending machine.
- You put in your coins. Out pops the product.
- Can poetry be like grace . . .
- Freely given,
- So freely received?
—J. A. McLean
Copyright © 1995 by J. A. McLean
Authors & Artists
CHRISTINE A. BOLDT, who holds a B.A.
from Cornell University and an M.A.
from Northwestern University, is manager
of New Car Cost Guide. Her interests
include needlework, swimming,
reading, and Star Trek.
J. A. MCLEAN, a frequent contributor
to World Order, holds a degree from the
Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in French
literature, degrees from the universities
of Ottawa and Toronto in religious
studies, and a degree in the science of
education from the Université du
Québec in Hull. He also holds an M.A.
degree in comparative religion from the
University of Ottawa and is completing
a Ph.D. in religious studies at the same
university. His interests include philosophy,
poetry, and world religions.
HODA MAHMOUDI, who holds three degrees
from the University of Utah,
including a doctorate in sociology, is an
associate professor of sociology and
criminal justice at California Lutheran
University. She serves on the Board of
Directors of Women for International
Peace and Arbitration and is facilitating
a workshop with Dr. Betty Reardon on
“Community Reconstruction: A Consensual
Framework for Global Peace and
Security” at the Decade for Women Conference
to be held in Beijing, China, in
the early fall. Dr. Mahmoudi has published
articles on work and economic
problems, feminist social structures and
bureaucracy, male aggression, and the
equality of women and men.
MICHAEL L. PENN is a clinical psychologist
and professor of psychology at
Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania. His research and
publications center on the relationship
between culture and psychopathology.
He is currently working on two books:
Desecration of the Temple, an exploration
of the global problem of physical and
sexual violence against women and girls
and its psychological, social, and spiritual
consequences for both males and
females, and Hope, Hopelessness and
American Race Relations, a discussion of
the psychohistorical development of
Americans’ attitudes about the viability
of healthy relationships between blacks
and whites during the last three decades.
ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz; cover photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 1, photograph, Terry Randolph; pp. 6, 26, 42, photographs, Steve Garrigues; p. 54, photograph, Feng Bin; p. 56, photograph, Barbara B. Campbell.