Death by Gender

...According to ESCR­FEM, the online listserv for Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in 2009 “promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of humankind...

...The officially reported estimates of the numbers of women who die in honor killings range from five thousand to ten thousand a year...

...Through feminist online activism, but more prominently through the efforts of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (in his new book Half the Sky, written with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and in his New York Times column), a socially embedded and systematic assault on women and girls in much of the world has been brought to public consciousness...

...more than one thousand occurred there in the preceding five years...

...It is clear, however, that the practice and the reasoning behind it will be difficult to erase...

...Death because of gender is arguably a leading cause of female homicide in many soci­eties, but gendercide occurs in other ways: in 1990 the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote in the New York Review of Books that more than one hundred million women were missing from the world as a result of sex­selective abortion and ill treatment...

...UNICEF reported that in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to 1999 figures, two­thirds of all murders were probably honor killings...

...Taken as child brides into the homes of their husbands, the only power these women have comes later in life as the mothers of sons who may, or may not, support them—and as the mothers of daughters, whom they can help to control but can’t protect...

...This is not so different from the marriages negotiated between the royal houses and aristocratic families of many countries in the West up to the early twentieth century...

...Friedland has criticized the lack of awareness by political scientists (to say nothing of the media experts) who attempt to understand soci­eties such as Afghanistan and Pakistan without attending to the tribal alliances created by marriages engineered by tribal elders...

...And although Islamic law, or sharia, does not mandate honor killing as a punishment, it is practiced in many Islamic communities, openly so in some of them...

...ARTICLES Death by Gender CYNTHIA FUCHS EPSTEIN Finally, the atrocity of gendercide—the murder and mutilation of victims selected by sex—is getting prominent attention in the press...

...Of course, men also are affected by these exchanges, but the men stay in their families of origin and it is the exchanged women who are forced to leave their places of birth and childhood...

...Charrad, a sociologist studying the tribal foundations of the former French colonies of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, simi­larly points to the political importance of tribal alliances created through the exchange of women...

...Surprisingly, the support for honor killings is not limited to tribal societies but exists also among individuals living in traditional commu­nities in modern societies...

...In “honor societies,” which are char­acteristic of much of the developing world, girls and women are denied the protections that outside affiliations and affection might provide...

...Among her books are Woman’s Place, Women in Law, and Deceptive Distinctions...

...Offering the bloodied sheets of the marital bed to relatives of the bride and groom is still necessary in many countries of the world...

...Or who insist that their daughters be circumcised when they know the pain and future discomfort this practice will bring...

...A poll by the BBC’s Asia network, for example, found that one in ten young British Asians believe that honor killings can be justified...

...Honor killings, Emery reported, account for virtually all recorded murders of Palestinian women...

...Girls’ families won’t invest emotionally in them because they typically leave their birth families while very young and are brought into their husband’s families as outsiders whose purpose is to bear children and take care of elderly family members...

...And in a poll of five hundred Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Muslims reported in 2009 by the online Women’s E­news, one­tenth said they would condone the murder of someone who “disrespected” their family’s honor...

...According to the Al Arabia Web site, a Saudi father killed his daughter for chatting with a man on Facebook...

...Whether it has occurred within or outside the family, sexual contami­nation may be punished by murder...

...Women who protest forced marriage and 54 DISSENT SPRING 2010 DEATH BY GENDER abusive husbands can become targets of honor killings...

...I will focus in this article on honor killing because the act is so vile, Further, the concept is difficult to dislodge...

...Trying to escape an arranged marriage is another important violation of traditional family norms that may merit death—as in the case of a young British woman who was stabbed to death by her father in London in 2002 when her family heard a love song dedicated to her on the radio and suspected that she had a boyfriend she had chosen for herself...

...In 2003, anthropologist/journalist James Emery of the Metropolitan State College of Denver stated that in the Palestinian commu­nities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel, and Jordan, dishonored women were executed in their homes, in open fields, and occasionally in public before cheering crowds...

...What is to be done...

...It declared that “such a concept has been used in the Arab region to justify treating women as second class citizens, female genital mutilation, honor crimes, child marriage, and other prac­tices that clearly contradict international human rights standards...

...But these numbers underestimate the actual toll because most honor murders are recorded as suicides or acci­dental deaths—or are not recorded at all...

...Without personal or social resources, they often are forced to be the servants or slaves of men in their birth families and then again in the families they enter by marriage...

...The resistance to the education of girls in Afghanistan, by the Taliban and also, some­times, by their own parents, is now well known, but girls’ education is poor in many other regions where their “honor” is the most important thing about them—as in Pakistan, for example, and parts of India...

...They include the International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and the International Women’s Rights Action Watch­Asia Pacific...

...The protection of women’s honor is an important part of the symbolic glue of kin groups that are, in many societies, the essential political bodies that maintain social order...

...But, notions of honor underpin the marriage system in the tribal societies that are common in the Middle East and many parts of Africa...

...The UN Population Fund has estimated the total at five thousand a year, and that figure was reported by the secretary­general to the UN General Assembly in 2006...

...It is ludicrous to suggest that Islamic women decide for themselves to wear restrictive clothing and head coverings, given the possible consequences of not doing so...

...Are things getting better...

...In January 2009, an Iraqi woman, Samira Ahmed Jassim, confessed to organizing the rapes of more than eighty women so that their shame would make them susceptible to recruitment as suicide bombers by al Qaeda...

...Some organizations devoted to improving the situation of women are connected to agencies of the United Nations...

...At its most serious, contamination is decreed when a women or girl is believed to have sought or had a sexual connection outside marriage—whether she acts from a desire to choose her own mate or is a victim of rape...

...A similar report comes from Turkey...

...Nicholas Cohen, a writer for Standpoint magazine, asks why the outrage against apartheid does not extend to the women who are segregated and locked in their own homes, forced into arranged marriages, or raped and stoned...

...The truth is that gender is regarded as a birth defect in much of the world, and this fact is neither analyzed nor addressed...

...Thus, in some societies, the murder of girls and women is justified by perceived social and moral infrac­tions, and women are held in strict segregation to guard against these possibilities...

...Human Rights organizations across the globe strongly opposed it, declaring that its passage would set a destructive precedent by affirming a concept (“traditional values”) often used to legitimize human rights abuses...

...Why do we hear accounts of mothers who hold down their daughters as their husbands plunge knives into them or who observe the stoning that kills them...

...There are lesser violations of honor for which girls and women are sometimes killed, like failing to comply with restrictive dress codes—wearing makeup or taking off the head scarf or hijab, for example—or for dating or merely appearing with unrelated boys or men in public...

...Although there are attempts by organizations such as the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) and other NGOs to provide education and practical services to protect and assist women, they have had little success so far...

...The Turkish Human Rights Directorate reported in 2008 that in Istanbul alone there is one honor killing every week...

...The most important connections between tribes are based on kinship and marriage, and value in the marriage market depends on female “virtue”— so girls and women must be tightly controlled to assure the “purity” of these social connec­tions...

...C FE is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York...

...Attempts by inter­national human rights associations and women’s rights organizations to impose penalties for honor killings have recently been undercut at the UN...

...Ironically, the United States has not signed...

...No doubt, the number has increased as girls continue to be selectively pruned in such places as India and Pakistan–­not only by the poor who undernourish their girl babies but also by members of the middle class who use sonograms to determine the sex of a fetus and then abort the females...

...The notion of “honor” is at the core of many conflicts within and between societies all over the world, although it has been substantially reduced in the West...

...And the reports cannot begin to describe the terror girls and women must feel when they know that any aberrant behavior might provoke their fathers or close kin to kill them...

...Sociologists like Roger Friedland and Mounira Charrad have argued that control over women and marriage ensures that tribal groups can fully regulate the relationships between clans...

...But many of the signatories are countries in which the worst practices are carried out against women...

...Twenty­eight of the women were said to have carried out suicide attacks...

...Young women have to have unsullied reputations, and of course, they have to be virgins...

...And perhaps it is also time for the resurgence of a woman’s movement in the United States that will connect with the fledgling women’s movements in countries of the Global South to form an alliance that will act politically to insist that women’s and girls’ rights be on the agenda of every international meeting...

...We know that indi­viduals’ hearts and minds are difficult to DEATH BY GENDER change, but we also know that with proper incentives and political will they can sometimes change swiftly...

...The vote was twenty­six in favor, fifteen against, with six abstentions . The reso­lution was proposed by Russia and supported by the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a grouping of fifty­seven UN member states...

...It can be found also in some other groups, such as the Sikhs...

...It is more than thirty years since 90 percent of the member countries of the United Nations signed on to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, which proclaimed that women’s rights are human rights...

...Why do some women and girls internalize these views of honor and defend the very prac­tices that enslave them...

...Honor killings are not identified as a critically important instance of women’s degraded status in many societies, and the practice is rarely condemned by the educated and sophisticated members of the societies in which the killings occur—nor by the social activists or leaders of the “free world...

...Why, he asks, do the societies that tolerate such practices not face irate SPRING 2010 DISSENT 55 DEATH BY GENDER Western boycotts or demonstrations in front of their embassy buildings...

...Even there, women who “go astray” and violate the bonds of marriage or assume individual identities often face physical assault...

...SPRING 2010 DISSENT 57...

...Because girls are married off early and torn from their families, they are powerless in the new environments to which they come as strangers...

...The nongovernmental Cairo Institution for Human Rights Studies issued a statement expressing deep concern over the text...

...Deviation from the rules imposed by male authorities may label a female as “contami­nated” and elicit harsh sanctions...

...The obedience of women (actually girls, because these marriages are typically of underage children) is essential, and so the discipline over them is intense...

...The dishonor of rape is so great that it can be used for political purposes...

...There are a number of organizations devoted to improving the conditions of girls’ and women’s lives in the countries where those 56 DISSENT SPRING 2010 lives are most at risk...

...emphasis added...

...The belief that women are symbolic bearers of the honor of the clan or tribe is widely held, most often in Muslim countries but in others as well...

...And women and girls who have been raped can be doomed to death at the hands of a kinsman—or be forced to kill themselves to shield the rapist, if he himself is a kinsman, from punishment by the civil authorities...

...Commentators in the West who suggest that women freely choose to conform to restrictions on their behavior and dress are not sensitive to the lurking threat of deadly punishment for viola­tions of the codes...

...They have learned the costs of deviance, and they teach those costs to, and even impose them on, their daughters...

...The crimes at issue range from the killing of girls and women—often by their fathers, brothers, or male cousins, acting for the “honor” of the family—to the trafficking of women as sex slaves and to their forced recruitment as suicide bombers...

...They are virtual slaves in the women’s quarters of their new families...

...Perhaps it is time for world leaders to insist on basic standards of human rights as a precondition for full commercial and diplomatic relations regardless of a country’s religion or traditional culture...