Misun Woo

In September 1995, following the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, a declaration was issued proclaiming, among other things, that “women’s rights are human rights.” The resulting resolution identified 12 “critical areas of concern,” ranging from “The persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women” to unequal access to education, violence against women to “Inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels.”

Nearly 30 years later, as Misun Woo – the regional coordinator of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) – told The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz in the following interview, women continue to face many of the exact same challenges.

“We need to ask why there hasn’t been much change to advance women’s human rights and end injustice?” Woo stressed.

In the following interview, Woo highlights the interconnected nature of these challenges. It’s not just the patriarchy; other “structural causes of marginalization and inequality” – like globalization, climate change, various fundamentalisms, and militarism – are behind the stagnation in women’s rights and human rights more generally.

In the years ahead, Woo says, “it will be critical for feminist and women’s rights movements, especially with Global South feminist leadership, to articulate solutions, reclaim ways of living and being that have been lost due to various forms of domination and oppression, and connect these stories and solutions both vertically and horizontally so that we can concretely co-imagine and build a new future.”

In talking with APWLD’s many members and partners across Asia, are there common themes in regard to the challenges women face?

Women across Asia and the Pacific face numerous forms of human rights violations and discrimination. These include sexual and gender-based violence, deepening poverty and economic exploitation – where the current global economy continues to extract women’s (cheap) labor, especially in unpaid/underpaid care labor and the gender pay gap – weak political representation and leadership power, and widening inequalities and lack of access to education and health. The debt crisis and privatization deepen these barriers, while the climate crisis and intensifying pushback against feminist and women’s human rights movements exacerbate these challenges.

The worst part of this story is that these ongoing challenges faced by women aren’t new. For instance, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) addressed the same concerns through its 12 critical areas of concerns. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action; the 25th anniversary of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, which commits member states to support women’s participation and leadership in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction; and the 10th anniversary of the COP21 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, for most women in Asia and the Pacific, this year will most likely be a year of mourning as there has not been much change to the rights violations, injustice, discrimination, or inequalities they face.

We need to ask why there hasn’t been much change to advance women’s human rights and end injustice?

The answer is clear. It’s because structural causes of marginalization and inequality remain unaddressed. Causes are complex and interrelated, and hence require long-term strategies and cross-movement pressure to change. APWLD’s analysis focuses on the fusion of patriarchy with systems that routinely undermine women’s human rights: globalization, fundamentalisms, and militarism, and how colonialism and imperialism continue to manifest in these interconnected systems of oppression.

Through countless conversations and space creation, we learn there are some common challenges women face in Asia and the Pacific region. These common challenges are not working in silo but are deeply structural with compounded intergenerational consequences on women’s human rights. And that’s why APWLD is prioritizing these common challenges to help our intersectional movements to disrupt and dismantle the very interconnected system of oppressions.

Some of these include:

Militarism: Asia and the Pacific region includes several countries which are under the rule of the military, or feature the presence of U.S. military bases and rising authoritarian governments. Meanwhile, the “Pivot to Asia” continues with the renewed focus of the U.S. on Asia and the Pacific through trade and investment deals including defense investments such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. China has growing economic and military power in the region while Russia maintains its traditional power over countries in Central Asia. The cost of war and militarism on environmental sustainability is another area identified for urgent attention and responses from women’s movements. We are working to challenge a society where militarism is normalized and portrayed as a tool of peace – similar to how “humanitarian” intervention is defined and practiced.

Food Sovereignty: We seek to assert women and their communities in claiming not only the right to food but the rights to determine its production, consumption, trade, and other processes. Food sovereignty is focused on gaining control and access over natural resources such as land, seed, water, fisheries, forests, and all forms of productive inputs which provide populations daily sustenance and livelihoods. Food sovereignty is also important in re-orienting food systems away from destructive chemical-aided monocultures and towards food production that is in harmony with the Earth and its capacity to support all forms of life. It is fundamentally about resisting the current unjust and extractive global food system, including trade and investment deals and digitalization, controlled by corporations and market institutions that must be dissected and deeply understood by women and their communities.

(Forced) Migration: A consequence of loss of livelihoods, poverty, conflicts, climate change or sexual and gender-based violence, labor migration characterizes a dominant trend across the region  – with women migrant workers concentrated usually in low-paid insecure jobs in the informal economy. Not much spoken but another common form of migration in the region is marriage migration – a product of neoliberal globalization and as a response to the reproduction and care crisis. For instance, East Asia has the lowest fertility rate in the region, and marriage migrants become an answer to take care of family members, provide for the renewal and maintenance of care labor, and contribute to the household. Marriage migrants experience precarious conditions, including economic difficulties, isolation, discrimination and legal constraints, including the tightening of citizenship laws and policies.

Debt, Austerity, and Women’s Human Rights: There is mounting evidence and stories of the multigenerational consequences of debt, austerity measures, and other economic policies such as privatization on women’s human rights and gender inequality. It requires intersectional cross-movement solidarity and actions to transform international economic and financial institutions and rules.

Women’s Access to Justice: This issue is emerging clearly, particularly in the context of rising authoritarian governments and shrinking civic, democratic spaces. Particular concerns are around sexual and gender-based violence in the context of conflicts and wars and attacks against women human rights defenders (including judicial harassment and criminalization).

Digitalization: There are increasing stories of how digitalization is adversely affecting women’s labor rights through the shift to “flexible” employment relations and the platform economy. The traditional employer-employee relationship is disrupted (as workers enter a “partnership contract,” as if they are on an equal footing), which consequently removes labor rights protection. There is also a lack of social protection in societies where essential services (e.g. health and education) are heavily privatized. All of these increase private/household debt where gender, class, and other intersecting causes of marginalization further structural inequalities within and between countries. Another fast emerging concern includes the use of digital technology to monitor and discipline workers, while a larger concern relates to digital surveillance and criminalization of women human rights defenders and civic organizing.

In what ways are “women’s issues” in Asia linked with other areas of critical concern, such as climate change?

I would argue to first define what women’s issues are, and to distinguish them from the systemic and intentional exercises of patriarchal power that deliberately restrict women’s fundamental human rights and power. For instance, if the dominant assumption is that domestic violence is the women’s issue, then women are contained only to the “private and domestic” sphere. It is then not a surprise when this leads to a protectionist approach to “save” women from violence, rather than addressing the broader structures that enable it. Even recognizing domestic violence as a violent and criminal act itself alone took an unbelievably long period of time.

Similarly, if climate change is not regarded as a woman’s issue, then it also implies that women’s lived experiences, leadership, and voices will not be taken into account in climate-related policies, spanning from redesigning of national and global economies to resource allocation for a just and equitable transition.

How can climate change not be related to women? Women and girls are more likely to die in climate disasters. More girls are dropping out of school and marrying early to ease family burdens. Women and girls experience higher vulnerabilities to sexual exploitation and gender-based violence while seeking to secure access to humanitarian aid or in the course of climate-induced displacement/migration. It is reported that women, as sustenance farmers, are hit directly by acute weather and climate pattern changes, such as longer working hours including house chores and care labor. Meanwhile women have limited access to financial resources for resource management due to under-representation in policy making.

Similarly, how is trade not a women’s issue when trade rules prioritize cash crop exports that directly hit women’s livelihoods? Or when investment rules are designed to extract profits through exploiting women’s labor in special economic zones (where young women workers are concentrated) without guaranteeing labor rights, including the right to unionize?

Also, how is digitalization not a women’s issue, when the “flexibility” of digital platforms, marketed as job opportunities for women, actually further exploit women’s care labor for profit? Meanwhile data and algorithms reinforce gender stereotypes, which further entrenches inequalities. Again and again, it is clear that the current political, economic, social, and cultural structures are deeply patriarchal and unjust for women – i.e. the intentional marginalization of women to keep and consolidate existing power relationships.

What issue areas are of most concern or focus among women on the ground, acknowledging that these might be different from what international organizations are most interested in?

There is growing interest and demands from APWLD members and partners to understand “resourcing structures and mechanisms” for feminist and women’s rights movements. Asia and the Pacific is one of the least-resourced (or “funded”) regions in the world, and feminist and women’s rights organizations/networks hardly have a say in determining “funding priorities or modalities” – even in cases where those resources aim to support gender equality, women’s leadership, or feminist movements in Asia and the Pacific.

A survey conducted with APWLD members and partners confirms that there are very few organizations that receive direct funding support from donors. Most are funded through intermediaries (e.g. INGOs, intermediary funds such as feminist and women’s funds, multilateral agencies such as the U.N., or other intermediaries). This indicates that there is no direct communication line or relationship building between the majority of women’s and feminist organizations in Asia and “donors.” This is telling as it repeats multiple layers of extractive power dynamics – even in the name of development, human rights, or democracy.

Another related focus is the intentional effort to foster Global South feminist movement building, solidarity, and leadership, which is deeply linked to “democratizing” multilateral spaces and reclaiming knowledge and voices of women in Asia and the Pacific.

For too long a time – and expedited and cemented by the COVID-19 pandemic – women from Asia and the Pacific have been pushed away from global policymaking mechanisms and processes, including the U.N. Significant amounts of resources (e.g. travel costs, time, energy) are required to attend global meetings that happen in New York or Geneva and have some level of direct engagement with member states, U.N. agencies, and other actors. This most often results int a high level of reliance on international organizations who are based in those cities and have political, social, and cultural capital – including relationships with missions, information access, dedicated U.N. advocacy staff, as well as year-round proximity to physical spaces.

Furthermore, our issues and voices are most often “represented by” Global North allies due to multiple barriers, including visa restrictions. Development challenges (or injustices), the consequences of climate change, war and conflicts are not mere issue areas but lived realities of women in Asia and the Pacific. Stories and solutions can only be best represented directly by the people with such lived realities, subsequently requiring a foundational change to global decision making structures and mechanisms.

There has been a growing demand to strengthen regional spaces and processes to review and implement international human rights, development, and climate commitments such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and Sustainable Development Goals.

Additionally, there is a push to seek the possibility of regional rotations of holding such global meetings, bringing them closer to where feminist and peoples’ movements of the Global South are, and transform the global agenda setting, discourse, and decision-making processes.

Has there been progress on sexual harassment since the #MeToo wave of advocacy several years ago?

A careful answer would be negative, particularly if we understand the heightened pushback against feminist and women’s rights movements and new forms of violence such as technology-facilitated gender-based violence and trafficking of women. But there have also been some positives, as it is fostering newer dialogues, organizing, and strategies, deepening intersectional solidarity as well as critical reflections of/within feminist and women’s rights movements.

The so-called “anti-gender movement” – which is not new, but probably an intensified response to successful feminist organizing and movements – has gained so much power and resources in recent years. It is not surprising as their agenda is well aligned with the current power system that is patriarchal, colonial, fascist, neoliberal, and fundamentalist.

It is a manifestation of how deeply rooted patriarchy is. To achieve a foundational shift in “one area” – such as sexual and gender-based violence – requires a structural shift in power relationships across the political, economic, social, and cultural architectures of a society.

Are women's rights in the Asia-Pacific moving in the right direction? What do you hope to see in the coming years in this regard?

Women’s human rights in Asia and the Pacific can move in the right direction only to the extent that  feminist and women’s rights movements in the region have strength and power, and that the collective power of global feminist and peoples’ movements are acting in solidarity to co-create and sustain a just and equitable future. The latest Asia Pacific Feminist Forum (APFF) confirmed the importance of creating a space and time for our movements to learn, critically reflect, heal, support, and practice our intersectional and intergenerational movement solidarity building.

To share a reflection from an APFF participant:

“Before I joined APFF4, I believed that there were many feminist movements in the world, various issues and cases. But I haven't seen it. After attending APFF4, my trust was fully paid off. I really saw a large and solid feminist movement throughout the Asia-Pacific which included women from various backgrounds of struggle, issues and cases.”

The reality is, as we resist, our minds are also deeply affected by the current rules of the game, which are clearly colonial and patriarchal. Movements need time and space to “free” ourselves from all forms of deep oppressions, and that takes abundant resources for the movements to imagine a new feminist world building.

In the coming years, it will be critical for feminist and women’s rights movements, especially with Global South feminist leadership, to articulate solutions, reclaim ways of living and being that have been lost due to various forms of domination and oppression, and connect these stories and solutions both vertically and horizontally so that we can concretely co-imagine and build a new future.

This isn’t going to be an easy task. We are imagining a new world that is yet to come, and by doing that we are making significant few steps forward, rather than resisting what we have. This takes time, and it will require our movements to slow down and go against the current tides.

Imagine what solidarity could mean and look like in a growingly volatile world – especially between Global South and Global North feminist, social justice, and peoples’ movements. This requires our collective movements to expand our boundaries and do serious, real cross-movement, cross-regional, and intergenerational solidarity building that addresses power inequalities within our own movements.