ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY ROBINSON UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND MARY ROBINSON UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP, TUESDAY, 8 MARCH, 1994.
I consider myself to have had a privileged viewpoint over the last few years. I hold an office which is elected and, at the same time, is removed from policy. Therefore I have been able to stand back and reflect on some of the energies which I see around me, while at the same time observing their force and excitement, and their power to renew and challenge a society.
The process of reflection has been especially valuable to me. It has enabled me to catch a glimpse of a changing and invigorating climate of effective contribution by women. I wish I could give you a sense of the local community resource centres I have been in, the conferences I have opened, the dialogue I have seen women engage in - and I particularly think here of the women's groups and networks in both parts of the island of Ireland, North and South. And in each case, even though the circumstances are so different, even though the personalities are diverse, that process of reflection I spoke of keeps drawing me back to some of the same points and the same observations.
Coming here gives me a chance to share some of my perceptions and also some of my much less articulate instincts about the huge importance of the relationship between the practical and the theoretical in the field of women's priorities. I don't think
we will make true progress until we find a language for our perceptions, and I don't think we will find a language until we make a link between the exciting powerful efforts on the ground of women responding to the reality of their situations by empowering themselves - and the new concepts which we need to define so that those efforts are made safe from the old interpretations which might hamper them.
Let me give you an example of this: one of the striking details which remains in my mind from the women's groups I have visited or who have come to see me is their manner of organising and functioning. After all, I was trained in the law, one of the oldest of the organisational sciences. In contrast to many of the formal structures of organised society, which are based on precedent and are hierarchical, women collectively seem to devise instinctively structures which are open, enabling, consultative and flexible. Instead of one spokesperson for the group, everyone has their say, and many decisions are arrived at by a fluid process of achieving consensus. I was fascinated to observe, in a preliminary and unscientific way, that women in developing countries, such as the Self-employed Women's Association (SEWA) group I met in Ahmedabad, India, last October, adopt a similar approach. As I sat with these women and listened to them I felt totally comfortable and at ease, in tune with their running order and their priorities.
On the other hand, however powerful and energetic the efforts of women's groups, many of them remain at a voluntary level. And in all our countries women are still under-represented in formal decision-making. As women with a leadership role, we should accept the further implications and the further responsibilities of this: in other words, however important the advances made by women in every area - in politics, in economics, in the environment, in new thinking on society - they will be at risk if we do not persuade our various societies that in essence what we as women achieve will not be a sectional benefit for women, but a gain for everyone. If we are to achieve that parity at every level which would so radically alter our societies, men, too, must be persuaded of the benefits.
Therefore, we must try to perceive those trends in our societies which can be harnessed to the benefit of women's greater participation whilst not being characterised narrowly as `women's issues'. One such trend, I would suggest, revolves around the use of time and its relation to work. When we think about it, along with biological difference, the different use of time constitutes the most significant division between men and women in their domestic, working and political lives. We need to analyse the historical construction of time and to pinpoint the gendered consequences this has generated. Insofar as the division of time as we know it is a cornerstone of an outdated industrial society, which is changing rapidly, women have an opportunity - for the betterment of society as a whole - to support a re-allocation of time that creates a better balance in the activities of men and women.
I think this is the right occasion, and the right forum in which to point out, that we have a unique opportunity as women today to assess and change the climate of thought and perception in which we live and work. We have come far enough to have achieved a central role in a wide number of areas; yet we are near enough, historically, to the old vulnerabilities and constraints of the past to be aware, not just of leadership, but of its perils as well. I think we have a deep, inherent sense, through the best of our traditions, of the power of consultation and the limits of an imposed order.
Therefore when we think of leadership I believe we should have the widest possible interpretation of it. Not just of its advances, but of its responsibilities. And not just responsibilities to the job in hand, but to the meaning of that job: its language, its tradition, its past and its future. This reflectiveness is something unique which we can provide at the same time as we advance into positions of responsibility.
Let me take an example. We all know that in the widening gap between North and South, women are especially at risk. They bear the burdens of hunger, of immobility. They are hostages to the safety of their small children. They are vulnerable to every shift and spread of the plagues of disease and famine. They do not usually carry guns, but they are often the civilian victims of their use. They stand in the food queues. They cross deserts carrying their babies. They throng the roads as refugees.
But it is not enough that we should analyse particular problems as women. I think we should also be questioning of the method of analysis. For instance the very language we use to describe women's differences needs to be challenged and reviewed at all times. The designations First, Second, Third Worlds may reveal division but they can also make a hierarchical evaluation. The use of the term minority is fundamentally misleading. The use of the words developing and developed are loaded with inference and assumption. Above all, the designation `women's issues' reinforces the fallacy that they are sectional interests. We may not be able to change this language. Words, after all, are a shorthand in these circumstances and are used as such. But our vigilance, our care, our search for the proper word, the more precise usage, the more dignified and accurate description - these are places where leadership and reflection meet again, and where one can only reinforce the other.
Beijing, and the processes such as this leading to it, will be a theatre of debate and insight which will not come again soon. For that very reason I think we need to be particularly sensitive and tolerant towards the enormous and proper impatiences of younger women in the field of social activism, of scholarship, of analysis. They stand on a platform of assumptions and acceptances we did not have. But now they want action. They want to enter the future as equal partners. And we should help them - with our definitions, our support, and above all, our ability to guide and shape the dialogue which is evolving between women's priorities and the decision-making processes.
Let me address another issue here which may well be in many people's minds today. The whole unsettled question of whether there is a backlash. We need a careful and complex language to shape that dialogue which is developing - and a patient language. In that context backlash is a pre-emptive word - it pre-empts that painstaking consideration of the other viewpoint, the real resistance, which may co-exist with an openness to persuasion. At the same time, we need to be vigilant - as we have been in the past - about any pre-emptive limitations on our own progress. Maybe the glass ceiling is the barrier that comes to mind. But the real resistance, the dangerous limitation, and the truly pre-emptive viewpoint is the one that would argue that the benefits gained by women are sectional benefits, rather than perceptions and achievements which are a resource for everyone. And all our persuasion should be directed at changing that view.