Being a woman is harder, but by how much is hardly comprehensible. After all, can man even begin to fathom menstruation, pregnancy, or the risk of rape? Or daily media-wide reminders that he should have bigger breasts and smaller hips…or the likely snub that he’s a "bitch" when he asserts himself, or the common case in which the office manager prefers the other sex for the job? This all, of course, describes the life of a lucky woman. If you’re unlucky, you might find yourself in another country facing a different breed of struggles. In the Sudan, you can expect the excruciatingly painful removal of your external genital organs (clitoris, labia majora and labia minora). In a burning building in Saudi Arabia—unless you’re wearing the correct Islamic dress—you can count on being prohibited from leaving, condemned to a fiery death by the religious police and Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. As a pregnant Tibetan in a Chinese jail, you can anticipate being beaten until you abort or, perhaps, sexually molested with an electric baton. And on and on goes the list of atrocities and abuses, worldwide. Fortunately, there are individuals and organizations devoted to helping.
At the frontier of the Women’s Rights movement is Alexander Sanger, chair of International Planned Parenthood Council and grandson of Margaret Sanger, the mother of the birth control movement and founder of Planned Parenthood. Mr. Sanger is a graduate not only of Columbia Business School, but also of Columbia Law School. His organization, International Planned Parenthood, Western Hemisphere Region, was founded in 1954 with the goal of improving the health of women throughout the Americas. He also served as President of Planned Parenthood of New York City from 1991–2000.
Below are some of the points Mr. Sanger brought out in my recent interview with him:
JK: What can we expect to see as women’s rights are advanced?
AS: Promoting women's rights will improve not only the lives of women, but also those of their families, communities, and societies throughout the world. At the same time, it advances broader U.S. foreign policy goals, such as encouraging broad-based representative governance and increasing worldwide economic prosperity.
JK: How does Planned Parenthood help?
AS: By establishing partnerships and alliances with other governments, international institutions, domestic and foreign non-governmental organizations, and the private sector to protect women’s interests. For example, today, more than half of Arab women cannot read or write. This means, in effect, that those countries are depriving themselves of the creativity and productivity of half their populations. No country can thrive under these conditions and the UNDP Arab Human Development Report actually links lagging Arab economies, in part, to the country’s failure to develop the capacities of women. We are committed to helping to remedy this waste of human potential.
JK: How are women’s rights faring in the Middle East?
AS: This is the most serious problem in the Middle East because it’s the major roadblock to getting new ideas and new social structures that can lead to values that embrace democracy, freedom, liberalization, and all that those imply. Change in the status of women will come about from a combination of internal and external pressures. Outside economic, political, and diplomatic pressures—as well as the unintended consequences of military intervention in Iraq—will lead societies in the Middle East to question how to structure their society, and how their culture should change.
JK: Can people be expected to feel a sense of urgency about women’s rights in the Middle East and elsewhere?
AS: Societal change is vital for the world interest, but also for their self-interest, just as it would have been for people in New York who were the subject of attacks. Now, everyone can see how change in the Middle East is vital for this country’s security. We can’t let societies over there continue to breed terrorists. It’s a male occupation. And men are driven to it for lots of reasons. But you don’t see terrorists coming out of Latin America. Now, Latin America has huge pockets of poverty and huge disparities of wealth. But there cultures are quite different, and while people have grievances and dislike the US for lots of reasons—many historical—the society and culture has not responded by breeding terrorists. You have to stand back and say, "OK, Why? What are these cultures doing right?"
JK: Is the current of worldwide opinion with or against you?
AS: Leaders around the world are recognizing that they cannot—they will not—protect or advance their countries’ interests if they fail to analyze, organize, and democratize their educational structures, election systems, and economic opportunities for the inclusion and benefit of all of their citizens. Protecting human rights is an integral part of belonging to the global community What we demand is respect for the fundamental humanity of every person, especially women, and for their right to decide whether and when to have children. And we believe that these principles, if followed, can help to foster respect for everyone's involvement in civic life, in the economy, and in the government. When we eliminate exclusion and disenfranchisement in a country, we can go a long way toward building communities based on common values and building nations governed by the consent of all the people.
JK: What role does our government play?
AS: Bush has said that the status of women is a vital issue and has, for example, allocated money toward status of women issues in Afghanistan. But you have to give it more than lip service. It’s got to be part of the diplomatic armory of this nation, as we deal with contentious trouble spots around the world. Promoting social change and our values cannot be done without addressing status of women. I think we dance around it—we don’t have a concerted approach to that. There’s just no sort of overall lens looking at, clarifying how the money we bring overseas to countries like Uganda, how this money ought to be spent. The World Bank does some of that: they look at their grants from gender perspectives, among many other perspectives—it’s a bit of a political hot potato. There’s no political will to perceive the status of women as relevant to the health of nations that we’re trying to democratize and liberalize. I think it’s directly relevant.
JK: Should women’s rights issues be left to government?
AS: These are all very tough issues—and probably best decided locally. Whatever government does, it’s going to be clumsy, inadequate, ineffective, and probably attended by consequences worse than the disease they’re trying to cure. Societies are much better off just letting women and men make their own decision by giving them the ability and means to make those decisions. Make abortion legal…and safe. Have a primary healthcare system where you have child survival and women able to give birth without losing their lives. There’s a saying in Mali that when a woman gets pregnant she opens her own tomb…this directly correlates, and in large part causes, reversal of economic growth. In Rwanda there’s an AIDS epidemic, and [risk of infection] increases with the social status of the man. If you’re a woman in Rwanda, and you’re married to a farmer, you have a 9 chance of being HIV-positive. If you’re married to someone in the army, you have a 22 chance. If you’re married to a civil servant—top of economic ladder, middle class—you have a 38 chance.
JK: What can a reader of this article do to promote women’s rights?
AS: Make congress and make our president make the change. They will make the change when they see it’s dangerous not to do it. If not promoting women is seen as a political loser for them, costing them votes, they’ll change.
JK: What single change would most advance women’s rights?
AS: The average amount of schooling girls receive around the world is far less than that boys receive. I think the most effective intervention, not only to aid economic growth but also to improve status of women, is to simply provide women with an education. If we provided women with the same education as men, you’d see women marrying later, having choice about whom they’re going to marry, being happier—one would hope— in their marriages, having more choice about their child-bearing, and being able to get involved in the economic and political life of their nation. You can’t underestimate that. When women have status of their own and are independent thinker and agents, they’re able to enter into the social and political systems of their country. Status of women is intertwined with development of political and economic institutions, and legal institutions that support liberty. In a lot of the world, women have no legal redress. In this country, they do. They can get restraining orders. Women are raped and often nations provide no redress. Often a woman is labeled negatively because she’s been raped… When you respect individual liberty, economic freedom will follow from that. When you work in economic development, you need firm legal systems to protect property. That involves protecting persons and well as property.
JK: In this short space of time, you’ve touched on the legal, political, social, international, and economic implications of your work. You’ve led a worldwide movement that affects the lives of millions. What leadership lessons can you pass along to our readers?
AS: You have to live your values. You have to work harder than anyone else. You have to respect the people that are working for you. You have to live the values that the organization stands for. At Planned Parenthood, we believe in women being able to have the power to make decisions about their lives, even if half the country doesn’t support that. When I was at Planned Parenthood of NYC, I respected everyone’s ability to make their own decisions. This meant pushing the decision making down the organizational chart, to let the nurses, social workers, and educators make decisions about what was going to be the best approach to a given problem—not to micromanage them.
I worked with them collectively to work out the vision for the organization—strategic planning is a totally inclusive process. You have to demonstrate your respect every day by giving authority to make decisions. We had a staff gathering at one point— I stood up there, brought up the guy who is the janitor and said, "he and I have the same job—we’re here to enable all of you to do your jobs. He keeps the place clean, gets the doors open in morning, locks them at night, makes sure you have all the supplies you need. And I’m basically doing the same thing…I have a vision of what this organization ought to be— you’re the people carrying out the work. My job is to get out of the way so that you can do that." I probably have opinions about how people should do their job, but I often keep them to myself.
I remind people why they’re here and why I’m there. Leadership involves reminding everyone what the mission of the organization is, what we’re there to accomplish, why we’re unique, and what special talents we bring to the social problems we’re trying to solve. Also, invigorating everyone who donates to the organization—all the stakeholders: explaining why we’re there, why we’re important, why we’re vital. Leadership is a lot of cheerleading. And instilling in people the sense that there’s nothing more important they could be doing in their lives. Asking yourself how you can accomplish your mission more effectively, and not being afraid to re-examine this on a daily basis.