and aint i a woman: NOW and the 'war on terrorism'
US President George Bush has not only used the September 11 terrorist attacks to launch an imperialist war drive, he has used the advantage they created to attack progressive organisations and movements within the US.
One such organisation is the National Organisation of Women. NOW, one of whose founding members was The Feminine Mystique's author Betty Friedan, was established in 1966. At the time, US women were radicalising around, and campaigning against, the discrimination they faced because they were women.
With half a million members, NOW has become the largest US feminist organisation. While it focuses primarily on lobbying and electoral politics, it has organised protests for women's rights, particularly abortion rights, against violence against women and in defence of affirmative action. In 1992, a NOW-organised abortion rights rally in Washington DC attracted more than 750,000 people.
Shortly after September 11, NOW came under fire from the US religious right. Reverend Jerry Falwell claimed the tragedy was God's condemnation of a secularist, atheistic America created by "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists and the lesbians".
The Bush administration, with the bi-partisanship of the Democrats, has fast-tracked its conservative agenda, which aims to wipe out many of the gains of the women's liberation movement.
Bush's aims include stacking US courts with conservative judges and further tightening social security legislation. He has also planned further tax concessions to big business.
In November, in order to "stimulate" the economy the Bush administration handed a US$1.4 billion tax rebate to IBM, $1 billion to Ford and $833 million to General Motors. Hundreds of millions more went to airline and energy companies.
According to NOW, these handouts come at the expense of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, programs to help domestic violence victims and other services targeted at helping women. NOW has argued that it was reprehensible for Washington to exploit the "national unity" that followed September 11 to reward big business with tax cuts.
However, NOW has failed to criticise Bush's war against the Third World. Far from condemning the war on Afghanistan, NOW merely argued for what it sees as the crucial aspects of the "war on terrorism": "the successful reconstruction of an Afghan democracy that includes full rights for women".
It has urged Washington to extend the scope of the International Security Assistance Force beyond Kabul to protect this "democracy".
A statement by NOW president Kim Gandy in May called on the Bush administration to ensure democracy and equality in Afghanistan, particularly by ensuring the security of the June 10 Loa garget and the 200 women who participated in the 1700-strong gathering. The gathering turned out to be a sham, being openly manipulated by the US and a coalition of warlords.
Women in Afghanistan have not won liberation, or even a significantly better societal position through the US war in their country. Instead thousands have died as a direct or indirect result of the bombing campaign, and another misogynist government has been installed.
NOW's leaders refuse to recognise this because they hold illusions in the US government. They do not understand that the oppression of women is not just the result of bad laws, but is maintained because it benefits a privileged few — the same privileged few that are profiting from the "war against terror".
With the ability to mobilise hundreds of thousands, NOW could take on and lead the campaign against the US war drive and counter the racist and nationalist hysteria of the US government. That the organisation is not doing so is a travesty.
Unless progressive activists around the world, including feminist organisations like NOW, take to the streets to oppose the war on Afghanistan, innocent people — many of them women — will continue to die.
BY BRONWYN JENNINGS
[The author is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 17, 2002.
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