ABSTRACT
On March 29 1999, the Directors Guild of America theatre in New York hosted a Gala performance for the Feminist Majority Foundation’s (FMF) campaign against gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Hosted by the chair of the campaign, Mavis Leno (wife of The Tonight Show host, Jay Leno), the Gala was attended by stars such as Melissa Etheridge, Geena Davis, Angelica Houston, Nancy Sinatra and Gillian Anderson. Addressing the Gala, FMF chair Eleanor Smeal explained that the purpose of the campaign was to motivate American women to become activists, persuading their government to act against the abuses of women’s rights in Afghanistan: “If the women’s movement is to mean anything and if the United Nations Declaration is to mean everything, we cannot rest while these horrific conditions of gender apartheid exist.”1 The campaign achieved mass support with the involvement of agony aunt columnist Abigail Van Buren, otherwise known as “Dear Abby.” A petition launched in 2000, urging the US government to do more to help Afghan women and girls, received over 211,000 signatures. In her Congressional testimony in October 2001 Smeal reported on the impact of the campaign, claiming, “In both 1999 and 2000, officials at the US State Department told us that we had successfully mobilized a US constituency on a foreign policy issue and that they had received more mail from Americans on restoring women’s rights in Afghanistan than on any other foreign policy issue.”2 International recognition of the campaign came with a 2002 nomination for the Nobel Peace prize. In the same year the campaign dropped the gender apartheid reference, becoming the “Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls,” the title it continues to use. The campaign against gender apartheid in Afghanistan was a public cam-
paign to influence US foreign policy on behalf of global women’s rights. In his 1995 study Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones suggested a range of motivating factors which have encouraged women to take an active role in foreign policy. These have included; efforts to create bargaining chips for domestic negotiations, an interest in working toward a more peaceful world or safer environment, the need for women as household managers and consumers to influence international economic policy, and the desire to express their
equality and full citizenship through participation in the traditional male preserve of foreign policy elites. Finally Jeffreys-Jones suggested that American women might seek to influence US foreign policy as part of their international feminist ideals. American women, he argues, might be motivated by “the more idealistic feminist goal to exert appropriate pressure on the US government, in order to help one’s sisters in foreign countries where sexual repression is worse than in the United States.”3 The FMF campaign against gender apartheid in Afghanistan is an example of this motivation, with American women seeking to influence US public opinion and thereby foreign policy in order to promote the rights of women in other countries. This chapter examines the relationship between the FMF, American foreign policy, and global women’s rights. First, it will review the FMF’s campaign in the early period (1997-2001), examining the way in which the campaign used the paradigm of racial apartheid in order to influence American public opinion on behalf of women in Afghanistan. Whilst the first period of the campaign focused on economic and diplomatic efforts, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11 2001 had a significant impact on the FMF’s work, drawing them into a closer alliance with their government, and causing them to become aligned with the calls for military intervention in Afghanistan. This development drew criticism from other feminist groups, both in the United States and internationally. The second part of this chapter will investigate the relationship between the FMF and American foreign policy after 9/11. It will review the consequences of making women’s rights a goal of US foreign policy, focusing on the use of military intervention. Finally this chapter will argue that in order to further the cause of global feminism, American women should seek not to make women’s rights part of American foreign policy, but instead promote the cause of women’s rights from an international platform rather than as part of a national foreign policy agenda.
