Women and Women's Rights

This post was authored by Victoria Parsons (Twitter, LinkedIn), a member of CFR’s Young Professionals Briefing Series and a Founding Partner of Palm Global Consulting, a boutique global affairs firm based in Miami and Palm Beach.  Today, Monday, March 22, is World Water Day. The theme for 2021 is “valuing water.” As we celebrate World Water Day and the significant achievements women have made during Women’s History Month, it is imperative to magnify a global health crisis that impacts women’s progress: water insecurity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 785 million people (one in ten) lack access to safe water, and 2.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The global convergence of COVID-19 and water insecurity elevates the salience of access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Access to WASH is integral to improving health outcomes of women and girls, and the development of sustainable communities. Global governance agencies should collaborate with local authorities to develop policies to address water insecurity through the lens of gender and racial equity. The United Nations has elucidated the value of achieving sustainable water systems for all, from global health and equity perspectives through Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, “Clean Water and Sanitation.” Access to clean water and sanitation is essential to sustainable development, and the economic and social progress of women and girls around the world. Women’s water insecurity is a global health crisis that impacts a multitude of regions, and disproportionately impacts women of color, low-income women, and children. Women and girls are often primarily responsible for water collection, and worldwide devote 200 million hours each day to collecting water. UNICEF found that in 80 percent of households for which water collection is necessary, women and girls are responsible for retrieving water. In sub-Saharan Africa, among households without running water, water collection duties are mostly performed by women and girls. In rural India, women can walk an average of 16 kilometers per day to collect water. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 31 percent of people — usually women — retrieve their water from sources that are thirty minutes away from their homes. In Paraguay, among households for which water is collected away from home, women and girls comprise 57.9 percent of those obtaining water. An analysis from the U.S. Water Alliance indicated that racial disparities in water security exist, disproportionately impacting Black, Latinx, Pacific Islander, and Native American households. For example, approximately 30 percent of Navajo Nation households lack access to running water, and need to collect water outside their home. Water insecurity is a global issue that affects women and girls across developed, emerging, and frontier economies. Women’s water insecurity has significant environmental, social, and governance (ESG) implications. Women are inordinately affected by failures in the global water system. Building and maintaining sustainable water and sanitation systems are essential to the ability of women and girls to live healthfully. The global water system is harmed by contamination, water and waste mismanagement, climate change, and scarcity. WHO indicates that by 2025, half the world’s population will reside in water-stressed localities. The most water-stressed region in the world is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Additionally, Europe contains high water-stressed countries, including San Marino, Cyprus, Belgium, Andorra, Greece, and Spain. Access to clean water for consumption, sanitation, and hygiene is inextricably linked to health outcomes. When women have limited or no access to clean water for hygiene and sanitation purposes, communities become more vulnerable to communicable diseases. Women and girls of color, low-income women, and women living in poverty are significantly impacted by water insecurity and WASH-related diseases. WHO indicates that globally, at least two billion people use drinking water contaminated with fecal matter. The use of contaminated water for consumption and sanitation is linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, and hepatitis A and E. WASH-related diseases are the cause of death for nearly one million people each year, prevalent in rural areas in developing nations such as Yemen, Bangladesh, and Malawi. A notable water contamination crisis in the United States was the Flint water crisis in Michigan. This urban water crisis has had a disparate impact on low-income residents, Black women, and children, which has resulted in lower fertility rates, increased fetal death rates, and lead exposure. The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified women’s water insecurity as a global health crisis. As we celebrate World Water Day, global and local public health agencies, civil society, and the private sector need to ensure that inclusive, localized, and sustained solutions are implemented to address women’s water insecurity. Cross-sectoral local engagement is integral to creating a paradigm shift toward building sustainable water systems to augment women’s health, economic, and social progress.

Latin America and the Caribbean remains the most violent region in the world. Overwhelmed police and military forces stand to improve their effectiveness and accountability by unleashing a secret weapon: more female recruits.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers March 5 to March 12. 

A new report by Carla Koppell, Reuben Brigety II, and Jamille Bigio offers a comprehensive approach for international affairs schools to transform the face and shape of U.S. foreign policy.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers February 22 to March 5.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers February 12 to February 19.   

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers February 2 to February 12.   

This guest post was authored by Maryum Saifee, a U.S. Department of State foreign service officer and alumna of the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship program. Ms. Saifee is contributing in her personal capacity and her views do not necessarily represent the U.S. Department of State and any other institutional affiliation. For decades, efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) were largely concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East. In 2016, UNICEF released data that almost half the girls in Indonesia are cut before fourteen. With these new statistics, the global estimate for FGM survivors jumped from 120 million to 200 million. As survivors from more countries shared their stories, researchers began to understand that FGM is far more prevalent in more places than previously understood. The Centers for Disease Control, for example, estimate 513,000 girls and women have either undergone or are at risk of undergoing FGM in the United States.  From a national security perspective, ending FGM is a precondition for stability and prosperity both at home and abroad. FGM is a human rights abuse that imposes a hefty price-tag. According to a World Health Organization study of twenty-seven countries, the cost of FGM-related health complications is an estimated $1.4 billion per year. In countries with high prevalence like Somalia, where an estimated 98 percent of women and girls are cut, an increase in school dropouts and the life-long ripple effect of childhood trauma hold back large segments of a country’s population from realizing their full potential. Because drivers vary across and within countries, advocacy and policy interventions to end FGM need to be localized to be effective. In the context of Sierra Leone, for example, FGM is a coming of age ritual (into the Bondo secret society) that happens largely in rural communities. In the Gambia, a regional neighbor, FGM justifications are grounded in ideological interpretations of religion and cut across urban and rural divides. In countries like Egypt and Nigeria, there are trends toward medicalization, so engaging with healthcare providers is critically important.  We can bring about an end to FGM in three ways: 1) Invest in Data Collection Multilateral institutions need to invest in regularized, machine-readable data collection that is systematized across all countries with known FGM prevalence, including countries outside the scope of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme to Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation. Data and research investments should also include sentiment analysis that looks at how and why attitudes are shifting within communities to more accurately measure effectiveness of interventions and pinpoint backsliding. According to UNICEF, an estimated two million additional girls are at risk of undergoing FGM over the next decade due to COVID-19-related disruptions and school closures.  In some cases, grassroots groups are filling the data void and could become natural partners in larger multilateral data coordination efforts. For example, Sahiyo, an advocacy group working with FGM survivors in the United States and India, conducted a survey in 2017 to study attitudes on FGM within the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, a Shia subsect concentrated primarily in South Asia with diaspora communities around the world. 2) Bring Diverse Survivor Voices to the Policy Table Like other forms of gender violence, FGM transcends race, religion, geography, and class. It is a common misperception that FGM is exclusively an import from diaspora communities migrating to Western countries. Up until the nineteenth century, FGM was indigenous to the United States and Europe as a cure for hysteria, and we are starting to hear survivors from white, Christian communities in the U.S. break their silence. For there to be a sustainable end to FGM, policymakers need to integrate a broad range of survivor perspectives in to the policymaking table. This means going beyond putting survivors on panels at public events to tell their stories by bringing their rich expertise and diverse lived experiences directly into conversations that shape policy. 3) Close Loopholes that Intellectualize Violence The adjudication of what type of FGM causes the most harm intellectualizes violence. For example, FGM is often framed as a health issue broken down into four categories, with Type One being the least invasive. Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz characterized Type One FGM as a benign, symbolic “pinprick” to minimize the gravity of the practice, in response to a recent federal case in which nine girls were transported across state lines to undergo FGM. And in 2010, the American Association of Pediatrics issued guidance condoning Type One FGM as a form of harm mitigation--guidance that was later retracted after an outcry from advocacy groups. Instead of adjudicating which cut is most harmful, leaders should adopt rights-based, dignity-affirming language grounded in keeping girls whole and intact, both physically and psychologically. Amplifying World Health Organization guidance that FGM serves no medical purpose and all forms of excision cause harm is an effective way to do this. Furthermore, FGM survivors also should be afforded the same level of respect and dignity as other survivors of trauma in how they are portrayed.  The stock images often used to accompany press pieces on FGM reflect girls screaming in pain or photos of henna-stained, dark-skinned hands cradling a blade. These images are dehumanizing and reinforce stereotypes. It is possible to end FGM in a generation. I shared my story in 2016 and have already seen the ripple effect with attitudes shift in my own community. However, relying only on survivors to unearth their traumas and call for change isn’t enough. Many face tremendous backlash and drop out of advocacy work to navigate the fallout. We need strong policies and outspoken leaders to eradicate this human rights abuse. The more inclusive and survivor-informed the policy approach, the faster we will see a sustainable end to FGM.  

This article was written by Lois Quam, president and chief executive officer of Pathfinder International, and Rachel Vogelstein, Douglas Dillon senior fellow and director of the Women and Foreign Policy program.  The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the limitations of the United States and Europe’s current approach to global health. Experts had long predicted the rapid spread of a contagious respiratory virus. But while global health spending increased at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2017, countries around the world were ill-prepared for the coronavirus pandemic, global shutdowns, and the economic shocks that followed. Women experience unique challenges during global health crises, and COVID-19 has exacerbated preexisting gender inequalities, including domestic violence and access to critical health care. Women’s economic participation has also suffered. According to the International Labor Organization and U.N. Women, 41 percent of women work in the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic: hospitality, real estate, business, manufacturing, and retail. A recent McKinsey study found that the pandemic has adversely affected women, particularly women of color; one in four women are considering downshifting their career or leaving the workforce entirely. While policymakers often see women as vulnerable, they rarely view them as agents of change critical to crisis preparedness and response. The few women accorded leadership roles during the pandemic have performed better on average than their male counterparts: Witness the resounding reelection of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last October on the back of her successful COVID-19 response. Still, women remain dramatically underrepresented in positions of power in government and across the global health system. Responding effectively to the current pandemic and preparing for the next one will require a new strategy to shore up health systems, including investing in women. It is imperative to ensure women’s representation in the global health system and political leadership. To win the fight against the coronavirus and any future infectious disease, the global health community and national governments must capitalize on all of the world’s talent and experience—not half. Too often, government officials and health systems overlook the critical role of women as health-care workers and first responders in their own communities. Women make up a majority of frontline health-care workers globally: 70 percent of community health and social workers are female. Through both paid and unpaid work, women contribute over $3 trillion annually to the global health sector. These contributions are significant, not least because female health workers are remarkably successful in changing household practices, such as increasing family-planning uptake and vaccination, improving sanitation, and addressing the spread of disease. Consider, for example, the effects of the Women’s Development Army (WDA) in Ethiopia and the Female Community Health Volunteers Program (FCHV) in Nepal. Both initiatives established a grassroots network of women volunteers to plug gaps between the formal health system and the community, disseminate vital information, and improve health-care referrals. Between 1991 and 2001, there was an 80 percent reduction in Nepal’s maternal mortality rate after the introduction of the FCHV program. The women leading the WDA in Ethiopia similarly achieved remarkable success, reducing Ethiopia’s under-five mortality rate by 69 percent by 2013, two years ahead of the deadline set by the Millennium Development Goals. Despite their overrepresentation on the front lines of global health response teams, women remain undervalued by the national governments that rely on their contributions to ensure their health systems function. Of the $3 trillion that female health-care workers contribute to the global economy annually, an estimated 50 percent is in the form of unpaid labor. Government officials must do more than applaud the women on the front lines; they should also ensure fair working conditions, including fair compensation. Women also play crucial roles in the health of their households, which are ground zero for disease identification and eradication. During a pandemic, the first sign of illness is typically reported to a female household leader—a mother, aunt, or grandmother—who serves as primary decision-maker regarding treatment, isolation, and reporting. Pandemic preparedness strategies should fund, develop, and distribute digital tools to capture this data. Systems that capitalize on household-level information, rather than wait for individuals to report their illness or present themselves for treatment, could help global health systems control transmission. Training and digital tools, provided by national health systems and tailored to women’s roles as front-line workers and household leaders, could lead to more targeted use of medical facilities—preventing overburdening with conditions that could be treated virtually. It would also improve timely reporting to health-care authorities, which in turn would advance early disease detection, control, and prevention. Artificial intelligence-enabled systems that are gender-sensitive could improve health systems, too. For example, these systems could build in medical advice in responses that explicitly reflect women’s role as health-care givers in their families. Such reforms would benefit women and their families. Women being able to provide care to extended family members based on better medical evidence would increase the quality of care and health outcomes, as well as lower costs—and provide women with new marketable skills. Furthermore, women represent a massive, untapped group of leaders the world over. In addition to underrepresentation in political leadership, gender inequity is a persistent problem across global health organizations: in ministries of health; delegations to global bodies; and donor institutions. Research shows that gender diversity correlates with better governance, decreased corruption, and increased support for public health reforms. Women’s participation in governance is also linked to increased likelihood of finding common ground across political divides—an advantage in an era in which even wearing a facemask has become controversial. Amid the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, in May 2020, countries with women in positions of leadership had death rates that were six times lower than countries led by men. Women-led countries locked down earlier and had higher rates of testing and lower absolute COVID-19 cases than peer countries led by men. Finally, women leaders are more likely to address concerns related to gender equality—a perspective that is critical to recovery, given the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women. But this is all too rare: A recent CARE study found that the majority of 30 countries examined did not have a gender-inclusive COVID-19 response. Government failure to implement gender-equitable reactions leaves issues such as gender-based violence and reduced access to sexual and reproductive health services largely unaddressed, despite their effects on community well-being. COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic. As the world seeks to recover from the current health crisis and strives to prepare for the next one, the global health community should capitalize on the talents and strategies of women—from the household level to the national stage. Investing in women’s full participation in and leadership of global health response efforts promises a healthier, more prosperous, and more secure future for all.

This blog post was authored by Jamille Bigio, senior fellow in the Women and Foreign Policy program, and Elena Ortiz, intern in the Women and Foreign Policy program. Despite widespread condemnation, human trafficking persists globally—an estimated 25 million people are trafficked worldwide, producing $150 billion annually for perpetrators—and the threat is only growing due to the COVID-19 crisis. To mark National Freedom Day on February 1—the culmination of January’s National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month—we have compiled CFR resources that explore how human trafficking threatens national security, economic growth, and sustainable development, and propose steps for governments, the private sector, and civil society to combat it.  The Security Implications of Human Trafficking  Human trafficking fuels conflict and undermines international security. In this CFR discussion paper, Senior Fellow Jamille Bigio and Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow Rachel Vogelstein take stock of the multidimensional threats posed by human trafficking and outline steps for the U.S. government and its allies to promote stability by reducing human trafficking in conflict and terrorism-affected contexts.   Human Trafficking Helps Terrorists Earn Money and Strategic Advantage  Exploring the ways in which human trafficking enables terrorist and armed groups, finances criminal organizations, and supports abusive regimes, Bigio argues in Foreign Policy that ignoring its spread undermines our collective security. As the Global Economy Melts Down, Human Trafficking is Booming  Analyzing how the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified economic instability worldwide and increased risks of human trafficking and forced labor, Bigio and Research Associate Haydn Welch recommend in Foreign Policy how governments, the private sector, and civil society can better protect communities most at risk.  Modern Slavery: An Exploration of its Root Causes and the Human Toll  The CFR interactive on modern slavery offers key statistics, definitions, graphics, and case studies. This multimedia resource is a powerful introduction for those seeking to learn about the driving forces and consequences of modern slavery.   Guest Blog Series on Human Trafficking  The Women and Foreign Policy program’s guest blog series on human trafficking features insights from leading experts on new approaches to improve U.S. and global efforts to curb human trafficking and modern slavery. Topics include opportunities for the Biden administration to combat human trafficking; analysis of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on human trafficking risks; reflections on the twentieth anniversary of the Palermo Protocol—a landmark international trafficking instrument; steps to curb child labor worldwide (recognizing 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor); how technology can help combat forced labor in global supply chains; and opportunities for data-driven decisions to end modern slavery.    CFR General Meetings on Combatting Human Trafficking In January 2021, NBC’s Cynthia McFadden moderated a discussion with Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation; Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and Paul Polman,  cofounder and chair of IMAGINE and former CEO of Unilever on the role of the private sector in eliminating human trafficking and forced labor. Last year, Kathleen Hunt guided a conversation with Bigio, Rohingya activist Wai Nu, and former Ambassador-at-large John Cotton Richmond on the security implications of human trafficking.  CFR Podcast Episodes To mark July 30 as the United Nations’ World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, James M. Lindsay, podcast host of The President’s Inbox and CFR's director of studies, spoke last year with Bigio on the spread of human trafficking and global efforts to address it. CFR’s Why It Matters podcast explored the human cost of labor trafficking in an episode hosted by CFR’s Gabrielle Sierra. What is the Kafala System?  Traced to a growing demand in Gulf economies for cheap labor, the kafala (sponsorship) program gives companies in Jordan, Lebanon, and most Arab Gulf countries complete control over workers’ immigration and employment rights. CFR’s Kali Robinson describes the modern slavery risks intricately embedded within the kafala system.