PROTECT THE FAMILY AT THE UN
This past week I had the privilege to attend a few of the events at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 59) conference held at the United Nations in New York. While delegations from 193 member nations held closed discussions, there were hundreds of public events happening throughout the day within and around the UN. In a single 90 minute time block, 10 or more events were occurring simultaneously. I was almost overwhelmed by the number of meetings I wanted to attend, with so many I was interested in that there was no way I could attend them all. They covered a wide range of important topics such as education, human trafficking, climate change, youth, mental health, work and family life, and many others.
I wanted to maximize my time at the UN; thus, I selected those few events which sounded interesting and would hopefully teach me information that would prove valuable for my future in WFWP. However, after attending a few events, I started to become frustrated with the ideal of women's empowerment that some organizing NGOs were touting. It seemed that, to many, the definition of an empowered woman is one who is independent, career-driven, and doesn't need a man for anything. As if men are an obstacle that must be overcome in order to gain any kind of satisfaction out of life.
Even a panel discussion on "Family, Peace and Security" primarily talked about the rights of women and children and very little was said on the father's or the husband's role in the family. In the face of these messages, our ideal of harmonious family life seems revolutionary. As WFWP International President, Professor Yeon Ah Moon, shared with me: individualistic gender equality in the end is limited. Men and women are two halves of a whole who complement each other and, reflecting this, we need a paradigm of family equality rather than gender equality.
Thus, I was relieved to attend a discussion on "The Family as Agent of Women's Equality and Human Rights" organized by the UN Family Rights Caucus, The Doha International Family Institute, Family Watch International, The Foundation for African Cultural Heritage, and several government sponsors. Within that environment of radical feminism, it was a breath of fresh air to meet people who share many of the same values as WFWP. Indeed, the room was so packed with like-minded people that many had to find space to sit on the floor.
The panelists shared that in the past few decades, there has been an excessive focus on individual human rights but at the expense of the family. For example, even though the Beijing Platform for Action, which was the focus of the CSW, calls for strengthening the family in the promotion of women's rights, this provision is often overlooked. Instead people focus only on equal pay for equal work, inclusion of women in politics, stopping violence against women, or providing access to education.
While gender equality goals are laudable, they cannot be accomplished without strengthening the family, the basic building block of society. Sharon Slater from Family Watch International shared some of the statistics her organization has gathered on the importance of marriage and family. For example, there tends to be less abuse—physical, emotional, and sexual—in families with a married mother and father compared to cohabiting couples, single parent homes, or families with a step parent. This does not suggest that families with a married mother and father do not experience unfavorable situations or that circumstances of single parent homes or families in which children are raised by grandparents are always disadvantageous. However, data overwhelmingly shows that families with a married father and mother, one man and one woman, is the most beneficial for children's safety and wellbeing. Children from families in which parents are married also experience higher employment rates and are less likely to engage in premarital sex.
As the speakers pointed out through this session, we cannot promote equality between men and women at the expense of the family. Though I am only scratching the surface through this article, there are many tremendous social benefits to building and strengthening good wholesome families. The road toward peace should not be a battle between men and women. The answer lies in the family. All in all, after being bombarded with feminist views downplaying the importance of the family and motherhood in the struggle for equality, it is nice to know that there is a growing population of individuals and organizations that reject this view and are seeking to bring family values into the UN human rights agenda.