Оригинал материала
THE LESSONS OF DEMOCRACY: A POSTCRIPT SIX MONTHS LATER
by Tamara Ovnatanyan, Center for Gender Research of the Armenian Association of University Women
[In her introduction, the author writes that this is a report of a month-long stay in the USA in l998 by sixteen representatives of Armenian women's organizations. They came under the auspice of the NIS-US Women's Consortium as part of a US AID funded program to develop women's leadership in former communist countries. While in America they studied organization and management, strategic planning and survival, fund raising and financial principles for the functioning of non-governmental organizations. Now, writes the author, some months later it is possible to reflect more deeply on what the group members saw and heard.]
The Science of Defending One's Rights If one puts aside the living standard with which ours cannot even be compared, and the 200 year-old tradition of American democracy, and the many advantages of a developed economy, and then tries to characterize the situation of women in America, what comes to the foreground is the notorious problem of "equal rights and equal opportunities," which is characteristic for virtually all contemporary societies regardless of their level of democratic development. They share the same reverence for power, the same male political elite and strict distribution of social roles according to gender. The path to the highest echelons of power is almost as hard for women in America as elsewhere, the graphic term "glass ceiling" signifying the obstacles facing women in their careers. Here's what the figures show: women make up 50% of the Atlanta, Georgia, city council, but only l2% of the state senate and l9% of the state house of representatives. The US House of Representatives is l2% women, and it is about the same for the Senate, traditionally "a male club," and these figures are considered an achievement of sorts. The representation of women in managerial positions, including the highest ones in government administration, is 36% and this is in part the result of President Clinton's campaign promises.
Since our own president did not make any such promises about drawing women into decision-making, they are poorly represented in this sphere. We have no women ministers, only one deputy minister, and l7% women administrators at the middle ministerial levels. There are only 11 women in the republic's national assembly (5% of the deputies), and not one of them deals with women's issues, and only just before election-time do they even acknowledge that problems exist.
Although statistics give a graphic picture of women's non-participation in decision-making, they are only the consequence of many different factors. It would be appropriate to compare not the number of women admitted to power but, for example, their social-political behavior as a factor determining the position of women, their attitude to their status and rights, their aspirations to participate in the exercise of power. The data from sociological surveys show that for the majority of our women, the problem consists first and foremost in not knowing their rights and not realizing that they are discriminated against, and therefore not knowing how to defend their rights and, finally, in their position of waiting for charity from the powers that be. Maybe it's because while the Old world and the New world struggled for women's right to vote, we were given it as something natural, that goes without saying. One has to take into account the peculiarities of Armenian women's mental behavior, which doesn't show or foresee wide public activeness. From this come the psychological barriers limiting women's aspirations to political careers.
For the majority of American women, defending their rights is on the subconscious level, and if someone is unaware of these rights, there are many organizations prepared not only to explain them but help defend them. It would be interesting to learn specifically what meaning American society attaches to the term "violence against the person." In questionnaires distributed in a crisis center in Dekalb Country to learn about domestic violence, women answer a series of questions about specific situations, many of which we Armenians would never even think to qualify as violence. There is a difference in the very perception of the problem. American data show that 75% of American women are members of one or another community organization working very actively to resolve problems, across a broad spectrum including the defense of women's rights. Through these organizations, putting pressure on the appropriate level of authority, they succeed in advancing their interests.
In our country, lobbying is only just starting. Moreover, a far smaller percentage of women is involved in the social movement, which includes only a few human rights organizations.
Know Your Rights
In our learning process in America we visited many non-governmental and government organizations defending the interests and rights of women. One of them was the Women's Bureau in the US Department of Labor, established by Congress in l920 under pressure from women's organizations, which deals with the rights and problems of women in the workplace. In our country in the recent past, the rights of working women were dealt with rather actively by the trade unions, with help from the women's councils. Trade unions still exist but now they don't care about women, and with mass unemployment, especially women's (they are 74% of the unemployed), and when everyone has to treasure the least bit of paid wage [many wages go unpaid for months], nobody talks about labor rights, and particularly not in the private sector of the economy. [The author explains what the Women's Bureau in the US Department of Labor does to help women.]
The Facts As Buttress
Effective use of facts, of scientifically reliable information to work out a strategy is characteristic of all the organizations we visited in America, and not only the government ones. … For ourselves, we noted that such an approach is indispensable in the virtually unpredictable conditions of our own socio-political life. Today many but not all NGOs in our republic have turned away from methods of trial and error and are seeing the necessity of using scientific approaches in planning their activity. [The author relates more about the US Labor Department's approaches and methods.]
Women for Democracy in Action
If we generalize about what we learned on defending women's rights and interests in America, the main thing is that nobody doubts this is a problem of national importance, and consequently there exists a whole system, a whole mechanism, for resolving the problem. For example, there are such structures as the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women created in l96l, the Georgia State Commission on Women's Issues created in l992, the Atlanta city committee for liaison with non-governmental organizations, and a host of other organizations on every level of power, all of which are part of the national mechanism to guarantee women's rights. The problem of creating such a mechanism in Armenia is now very topical, especially in view of the government's stated resolution last year to improve the situation of women, which was adopted under pressure from women's organizations. With further pressure a mechanism can be created to realize the government's resolution, even if only as part of the next election campaign. Ten years ago in the period of so-called "demonstration democracy" when our nation was a united whole, women were equal with men. Later, when certain political forces of men thirsting for power divided up the power pie in their own way, women and society as a whole got nothing but problems. If today women link their hopes to democracy, it is not in the first instance out of aspirations to equal rights - the road there is a long one even in a developed democracy - but because this will allow us to knock on the door of power and make ourselves heard. We observed this in America. Perhaps not in the far off future, the entrance to our parliament will be as open as is the US Capitol building to any American who wants to follow from the visitor's balcony the work of his or her elected representatives. …
Research on Women is not Just Prestigious
In the whole system of defending women's interests in America, a special place belongs to research on women, which nourishes the women's social movement with scholarship and ideas. Its main goal, through comprehensive analysis including historical analysis, is to illuminate and change those practices leading to discrimination against women in socio-political, family, and professional and spiritual life. Research on women began in the USA in the l960's. Its interdisciplinary character facilitated its broad development, and today there are courses on women in more than l000 colleges and universities in America, in over 5000 programs, and a student can get university degrees at all levels in this field.
[The author describes what the group learned from visits to three women's research centers, where they made personal contacts for future cooperation, and she compares this with the research situation in Armenia. The last section is on fundraising in America by non-governmental organizations. The author concludes her article by saying that now the Armenian women need to follow up on the personal contacts they made and the joint projects they would like to work on.]