Musicman 1
The Feminisation of Poverty.
"The Office of
the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Women's Empowerment."
No, that's not the clandestine front group from a Tom Clancy spy novel, nor is
it a libertarian's bad dream. Rather, it's is a real-life program underwritten
by the U.S. taxpayer. A brainchild of Hillary Clinton, the unit's declared
mission is to advise the secretary of state on "strategies the Department
of State should implement to help empower women worldwide."
Female empowerment has become fashionable at the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control, as well. There, inspired bureaucrats worked overtime to gin up the
EMPOWER acronym — "Enhancing and Making Programs Work to End Rape"
— a multimillion-dollar initiative that promotes sexual violence prevention
programs.
So where did the idea of female empowerment come from, and is it helping or
hurting women?
The term "empowerment" was inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, who
viewed peasant women as dual victims of capitalism and patriarchy. The solution,
of course, was to embolden the ladies to cast off their conjugal oppressors. In
practice, this meant an ample supply of newly liberated female laborers ready to
work the fields, the factories, and the mines — an arrangement that no doubt
pleased liberator-in-chief Vladimir Lenin.
But American women are becoming wary of the ideological agenda that lurks behind
the empowerment facade. Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly recently commented,
"It's clear that feminists never wanted gender equality; they want power
for the female left, which is why they use the word empowerment so
reflexively."
At the US Agency for International Development, female empowerment has become a
religion of sorts. Every problem that afflicts the female gender is filtered
through the neo-Marxist prism of power and control.
So if you want to fathom the problem of partner abuse, "unequal power
relations between men and women" are to blame, according to the USAID
website.
The agency goes on to boast, "USAID is committed to preventing gender-based
violence by supporting legislation against it." And exactly what kind of
laws are we talking about?
In India, USAID "was instrumental in the formation of Women Power
Connect," according to its March 6, 2007 press release. "WPC's
priority issues include...the 33% reservation for women in Parliament."
Translation: In the name of promoting democracy, American taxpayers have been
bankrolling a radical feminist group to rig democratic elections and impose a
gender quota on the Indian lawmaking assembly.
Another pet USAID project is microfinance programs, which provide $50 to $500
loans to aspiring entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. According to the
Marxist formulation, men have all the power, so poverty-stricken males need not
apply.
USAID hails its microfinance effort in northern Mali, Africa, where "2,700
new women micro-entrepreneurs received conditional seed capital, business
training, and help in forming saving groups, while 1,097 already established
women micro-entrepreneurs received additional training and networking
assistance." (A government program to train women to network with their
gal-pals? Yes, that's what the USAID fact sheet says.)
But microfinance programs have come under fire lately. That's because
microfinance is just a fancy name for a sub-prime loan program for low-income
borrowers. Since up to one-third of these loans go sour, lending agencies end up
charging interest rates of 40% or more.
The title of a recent article in The Atlantic says it all: "Lies,
Hype, and Profit: The Truth about Microfinance." Others refer to it as
government-sanctioned usury.
Just last week the UK Guardian ran an article about Indian families
trapped in a "deadly spiral of microfinance debt." The essay recounts
the story of Victoria Bandari who took out a loan a decade ago. When her son was
injured in a road accident, Bandari needed more credit for medical expenses. The
38-year-old woman took out a third, then a fourth loan. Finally, Bandari began
to sell off her daughter's wedding jewelry.
Rama Peadda Boiana, a 29-year-old farmer's wife, consumed a lethal dose of
pesticide to escape encircling debt collectors from a predatory flock of
microfinance firms.
There's another reason that microfinance programs exploit women — they impose
a Faustian-style bargain on the unsuspecting.
The subtle but unmistakable message behind feminist-inspired microfinance
programs goes like this: "Ladies, your husband is an unreliable schmuck.
Stick with him and you'll die a penniless waif. But come on board for our loan
and job training programs and you can become a member of the global
Sisterhood!"
That's the deal that the Great Society struck with low-income black women in the
1970s. The result: the marginalization of black men, an explosion of
single-parent households, and the institutionalization of a near-permanent
under-class.
Forty years ago, social scientists devised a clever euphemism to sum up the
effects of a government program that picks taxpayers' wallets, weakens the
family, and turns women into wards of the state: the feminization of poverty.
Carey Roberts