ABSTRACT
In 1996, after a long and tenuous debate around the issue, the European Court of Justice ruled that discrimination based on sex-reassignment was ostensibly discrimination based on sex, and therefore in violation of European Union (EU) law. This moment illustrates one strategy in the struggle to incorporate issues of gender diversity into international policy. The EU ruled that sex-reassignment surgery was protected based on the procedure’s adherence to normal standards of sexual identification. What this provision does not address are the rights of gender-variant individuals who do not undergo sex-reassignment surgery and are thus less visible within the established system of sex-based recognition. Organizations such as the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) are actively working to get gender-variant populations represented by international human rights legislation. The ILGA focuses much of its effort on the United Nations and the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, arguing that: “[h]uman rights principles, as we now know them, began in the years after World War II with provisions in the UN Charter (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). There was simple binary thinking in those days. There are men and women. They enter into marriage. They have kids. Families are to be protected.”1 This critique of binary thinking brings to light a number of larger questions, including: What is the role of legislation concerning gender equality in the movement for international human rights? Can these same provisions for treatment of gender be extended to protect the rights of gender-variant individuals? Is the human rights framework the appropriate model for protecting those with gender-variant identities? To address these questions, it is first necessary to understand the rela-
tionship between gender expression and provisions for human rights. The effort to integrate a gender analysis into development work has become significantly more forceful since the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which the United Nations general assembly adopted in 1979, and the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in 1995 in Beijing.2 However, the
vast majority of this dialogue still focuses on gender roles assigned for men and women, and the need for women to gain further rights within the domestic sphere.3 Even the most progressive aspects of the gender and development discourse tend to discuss the roles of women and men in terms of a gender binary. Clearly, international development initiatives need to address issues of
gender diversity. These initiatives are often challenged by the difficulties in quantifying the exact size of the transgender population worldwide. Since gender diversity is not formally regulated or measured in most places of the world, the available data covers only those individuals who seek psychological attention or undergo sex-reassignment surgery. There is little data available on those who do not seek out medical interventions and, according to Femke Olyslager and Lynn Conway, even this data set is skewed. The generally accepted media reports claim that transsexualism is found in approximately 1:30,000 males and 1:100,000 females. However, Olyslager and Conway found that “more recent data and alternative methods for estimating the prevalence of transsexualism … indicate that the lower bound on the prevalence of transsexualism is at least 1:500, and possibly higher.”4 This discrepancy in the estimated size of the transsexual population highlights one of the primary challenges in doing international justice work around gender diversity, that is, the frequently indefinable and culturally contingent nature of gender-diverse populations. To that end, this chapter looks to theorize ways that gender diversity activism in the United States can help the gender and development dialogue expand to include those types of bodies and identities that transgress traditional gender norms. Given the cultural sensitivity of gender expressions, gender norms, and gender roles as well as the danger of colonial thinking when talking about gender roles transnationally, we need a flexible framework that allows for variations in cultural norms and ideologies. To begin, this chapter examines the theoretical frameworks of gender
and development, gender mainstreaming, and theories of the gender binary in an attempt to illustrate the general principles of the current dialogue around transnational gender equality. Then, I discuss the struggle for the acceptance of gender diversity in the United States and existing attempts to insert protections around gender identity into the human rights dialogue. Finally, using the World Bank as a specific case study, I consider the practical applications of the gender and development framework and illustrate the ways that its policies not only rely on but also perpetuate notions of “man” and “woman” as exclusive gender categories. I propose my own revisions to World Bank documents that draw on the strengths of the gender and development model while incorporating the theoretical influences of the US-based struggle for transgender rights. Ultimately, I illustrate the radical possibilities of an activism that allows these two theoretical spaces to congregate.
