International Symposium on

A New Vision for Gender Policy:  Equality, Development and Peace

17-18 April, 2003

Seoul, Republic of Korea

The New Millennium and Sustainable Human Development

                                                                  Dr. Junhui Joo

                                 (Professor, Hansei University)

Introduction

In the past millennium, the human race witnessed the rapid processes of industrialization, democratization, modernization and globalization that originated from the West and had impact on the rest of the world.  In response to both the negative and positive aspects of the processes, as we enter the new millennium, the development discourse of the international society is being carried out centering on the holistic concept of “Sustainable human development”.

In the Millennium Development Goals proclaimed by the United Nations Development Programme, promoting gender equality, empowering women, and improving maternal health are given priority.  Other Millennium Development Goals are: eradicating extreme poverty hunger, achieving universal primary education, and reducing child mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.  As such, gender policy is increasingly being discussed in the context of sustainable development in international society.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the concept of sustainable human development and discuss what it means for women, in an effort to seek a new vision for gender policy.    

As a starting point, it would be useful to remember that the linkage of equality and development was made in 1972 by a group of women’s NGOs to make equality issues more appealing to developing countries.  It was a group of NGOs who initiated the idea of International Women’s Year at a meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women in Geneva in 1972.[1]  While they were attending the World Environment Conference, they discussed, if the UN promoted international concerns for environmental problems by designating the year 1972 as the International Year of Environment, why couldn’t women have the International Women’s Year?[2]

Although the government delegates were not very enthusiastic, the proposal was agreed upon, and “equality” and “development” were adopted as the central themes of the year.[3] The theme of peace was added at the General Assembly by the leadership of Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India and Mongolia.[4]  In the ensuing international conferences on women, the politicization of women’s issues took place, as there were conflicts among different views of women’s rights, equality being the primary concern of the First World women, Development the Third World, and Peace the Second World.

From that point on, the debate of women’s issues at the United Nations has always been linked with development and peace, and during the process international consensus has been formed around the concepts of: sustainable human development, a culture of peace, human security, partnership of stakeholders, good governance, empowerment and gender mainstreaming, which are the main themes of this symposium.

The merits of integrating such concepts with the debates on women’s rights are that they provide an interdependent and holistic vision, that women’s rights are not just the equal rights of the individual women but are conditioned by national, regional, and global development and peace and that women are important actors in development and peace. Such concepts also encourage the international society to incorporate gender perspective in their efforts for development and peace.

On the other hand, tracing the origin of equality, development and peace awakens us to the danger of politicization and how women’s issues can easily get lost in the debates of development and peace.  Sustainable human development occupies much space in the discussion of women’s policies, but the immediate and urgent needs of women are not given much space in the discourse of sustainable human development.  While mainstreaming sustainable development into women’s issues is usually a success, it is much more difficult to mainstream gender issues into sustainable development debates.  With that in mind, this paper will review different perspectives on development, concept of human development, sustainable human development and human rights, and what it means for women.

“Sustainable” development reminds us that the development process should not cause irreversible damage to our ecosystem.  “Human” development focuses on how the ultimate goal of development is the well –being of people.  It took sometime for international society to arrive at this understanding of development.

Perspectives on Development

Development is a process toward a better state of being.  The Preamble to the UN Charter highlights the need “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”, reflecting the founders’ faith in development.  However, because what is “better” could be subjective and culture-specific, there have been on-going debates on what really constitute a “better” state of being in international society. 

In the earlier years after the W.W. II, until the new states came to have voices in international society, development used to be defined primarily in Western ways, as Westernization and Modernization.  At first development was understood as an economic process having as a result a growth in production and an improvement in the living standards of the population. GDP was an important indicator of development.[5] 

However, it was soon realized that GDP does not reflect the problem of the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the poor quality of life.  Also, in the earlier years development was conceived to be a unilinear social evolutionary process, and it was believed that the “underdeveloped countries” should follow the model of the western industrialized societies to achieve development. And when the underdeveloped countries realized that the Western model is not the only model and did not work for them, they started searching for alternative models of development. From the 1960s doubts over the environmental consequences of a development model based on economic growth start to arise even within the Western countries.  In the 1970’s, the Third World started raising questions as to the utility of the Western model of development. 

It was in the final document of the World Labor Conference organized by ILO in 1975, that “the basic needs theory” was suggested as an alternative.  The starting point was the recognition that economic growth does not automatically take care of the poor, and that it is no longer acceptable that people must wait for many generations before the benefits of development reach the poorest groups.  States should guarantee a minimum income to the poorest groups of the population, covering not only food, housing, and clothing but also “the availability of drinking water, public sanitation, transports, medical care, and adequately paid job for whoever wished to work.” During the mid 1980s, Paul Streeten, a consultant to UNDP and UNESCO focused on the need to carry out policies to combat poverty, based not only on income but also on the transfer of goods and services especially in the field of education.  The overall objective is to guarantee not only a certain amount of income, but also a “full life” status for all.[6]

While growth theories regarded the fulfillment of basic needs of people as consequences of the growth process, the basic needs theory states that it is only through the fulfillment of human needs that we can favor economic growth.

Amartya Sen, a winner of 1998 Nobel Prize in economics, is the one who contributed to redefining concepts like poverty, inequality and well-being. [7]  Sen says that the idea of development and well-being must go further than simply indicating the possession of goods or availability of services.  What matters is what they allow individuals to do. Goods and income are a means of reaching wealth but they are not an index of well-being. We must look at what people manage to do with the means and capabilities they possess.  Policy makers should provide for basic needs not only for food, clothing, medical care and education, but also for social networking, participation to community life, self-respect, freedom, rights, etc.

A new paradigm of development was emerging where the attention was paid not only on productivity and material growth but also on the well being of people. In recognition of the centrality of the human dimension to development, the UN General Assembly in 1986 adopted a “Declaration on the right to development” stating that the human person is the central subject of development, and called upon member states “to ensure access to the basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment and the fair distribution of income.”[8]

UNDP and Human Development

It was in the first Human Development Report by UNDP published in May 1990 where the concept “human development” was first clearly defined and the Human Development Index was introduced. According to the report, “human development” is the process leading to the increase in the capabilities of people.  The UNDP stresses from the very beginning that “people” mean everybody, men and women, present and future generations. The report also examines the relation existing between economic growth and human development and concluded that there is no natural link between the two.  It is possible to reach a high level of human development even with a low income.[9] 

As Paul Streeten says in his contribution to the tenth anniversary of the report (1999), human development is the process of the enlargement of the choices of the individuals derived from the increase in human capabilities and functions, an increase in what individuals do and can do during their lives.

Four Pillars of Human Development

Four Pillars of human development are elaborated in the UNDP Report 6 in 1995.

The first is “equality.”  Human development is a process aimed at the enlargement of the opportunities of people, and it must be beneficial to everybody without exclusion.  People must enjoy equal opportunities, and all barriers against political, economic and social opportunities must be abolished.  Among the largest inequalities in the access to opportunities there are gender inequalities. The second pillar is “sustainability”, which is the ability of the development process to guarantee the reproduction of physical, human, social and environmental capital, setting the grounds for its lasting presence in time. The third pillar is “participation”, which is the central point of human development approach.  Participation means the involvement of people in the economic, social, cultural and political processes affecting their lives.   Any form of discrimination preventing the participatory process of an individual is a limit to human development. The fourth pillar of human development is “productivity”.  People must be given the chance to increase their productivity, to fully join the income generation process and gain access to paid employment. 

We might as well add “freedom” which is missing from the UNDP pillars.  As Amartya Sen said, “development can be seen as a process of the enlargement of the freedoms people can actually enjoy.”[10] 

Sustainable Human Development

From the 1992 report, the concept of human development has often been replaced by “sustainable human development” in international discourse.

“Sustainable human development should join sustainable development and human development everyday, in practice, on the ground around the world.  It is development that does not merely generate growth, but distributes its benefits equitable.  It generates the environment rather than destroying it; it empowers people rather than marginalizing them; it enlarges their choices and opportunities and provides for people’s participation in decisions affecting their lives, Sustainable human development is development pro-poor, pro-nature, pro-jobs, and pro-women.  It stresses growth with employment, growth with environment, growth with empowerment, growth with equity.” (UNDP Human Development Report, 1992)

The concept of sustainable development is a heritage of old days in agriculture and forestry, and became a global concept to thanks to the Brundtland Report: Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987).  In this definition the term “Sustainable Development” links the two concepts of “environment” and “development” and refers to “development seeking to meet the need of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.  It aims at assuring the on-going productivity of exploitable natural resources and conserving all species of fauna and flora.”  At that stage sustainable development was equated with ecological.  There were four elements to environmental sustainability:  poverty, population, technology and lifestyle.[11]

The concept of sustainable development was further developed during the 1992 World Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, also known as Earth Summit.  As a result, the Commission on Sustainable Development was established.  Other major results were the Rio Declaration, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention of Biological Diversity, and Agenda 21.  Agenda 21 is a broad ranging program of voluntary actions on how to make development socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable.

The Summit on Social Development held in Copenhagen in 1995 was the first that placed development as a global issue, not only of the South but also of the North.  Poverty, unemployment and social exclusion are the three major consequences of the severe unbalances caused by the current development model. [12]  The problems can be defeated only through the adoption of a new development model of human and sustainable development.  This must be reached through the reduction of inequalities, the protection of the weakest social sectors, the respect of diversity, the respect of equal opportunities between men and women, the participation of civil society to the decision making process.

Although the concept of sustainable development was primarily ecological in the beginning, the consequences of globalization by economy, technology and political choices have broadened the application of the concept of sustainability.[13]  Therefore, it would be useful to clarify several aspects of human sustainability; ecological sustainability, social-economic sustainability, community sustainability, cultural sustainability and institutional sustainability.[14]

“Human sustainability” goes beyond ecological sustainability, and sometimes refers to basic needs related to the eradication of poverty, scarcity of food and water, illiteracy, preventable illness, health, etc.  But it is important to point out that it also refers to “human security”, which includes the very basic needs of “absence of violence”.  For example, there is no sustainable human development for Korean people if North Korean nuclear issue is not resolved peacefully.

Social-economic sustainability depends upon equity, a just distribution of chances and welfare at the global level.  Next to distributional equity, equity in chances for social participation, in other words empowering people is also very important.  A society with a structural weakness in terms of participation is not sustainable.  It is in this context that the empowerment of women is an important precondition for human sustainability.

Cultural sustainability depends upon the system’s response to cultural diversity.  Cultures need to be open toward each other, and a society is not sustainable if it cannot deal with cultural diversity, but at the same time culture needs to be protected against hegemonic and identity-deforming influences. 

Institutional sustainability calls for good governance of transparency, accountability, and integrity.  Sustainable human development requires good governance that allocates fair resources for safety, environmental and development concerns and not only for private commercial interests.

In short, human development aims at enhancing the well-being of people by creating opportunities whereby every person can achieve a good and satisfying life.  Sustainable human development seeks to insure that the present generation uses resources in ways which will allow future generations to also live a good life.  Sustainable Human Development encompasses four interrelated principles.

First, Development is people-centered.  The kind of development that benefits only a few is not development.

Second, Development is multi-dimensional.  Because each person has different and multiple aspirations, no single indicator of development can fully capture the essence of true development.

Third, Development builds capital.  A nation’s capital consists of its natural, cultural, human and social resources.  The development aims to add value to each of the capital assets. 

Fourth, Development is forward looking.  True development protects and expands the options of future generations.

Human Rights and Sustainable Human Development

After the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, human rights came to be integrated in the discourse of sustainable human development, represented by UNDP’s specific policy on human rights: Integrating Human Rights with Sustainable Human Development (1998). 

Human rights and sustainable human development are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.  In this context, sustainable human development aims to eliminate poverty, promote human dignity and rights, and provide equitable opportunities for all through good governance, thereby promoting the realization of all human rights –economic, social, cultural, civil and political.       . 

The Role of NGOs

Since government representatives at international conferences are limited by the positions of their governments, the role of NGOs as the representative of stakeholders in civil society is significant in sustainable human development. Sustainable human development requires that NGOs carry out the role as pressure groups, exerting influence on the governments and businesses to realize core values.  The dynamic between civil society organizations, business and politics that realize societal values can be called “new governance.”  Long-term partnership should be established between the public sector, the private sector, and NGOs to promote transparency, accountability and solutions that balance everyone’s interest. 

Women and Sustainable Human Development

With the development of the discourse on sustainable human development, a broad international consensus has been formed on the links between securing gender equality, promoting reproductive health, ending poverty, and protecting the environment. 

Sustainable human development for women means the increase in women’s capabilities to choose the life they want and the enlargement of life choices.  It means the best possible use of their potentials.  Good governance of the government and NGOs to promote education, empowerment, participation, and elimination of discrimination are important in human development for women.  And women are the key actors in building sustainable human development.  There is no sustainable human development without the joint participation of men and women in all creative activities.

Sustainable human development approach can contribute to advancing women’s progress and achieving gender equality through conceptualizing women not only as beneficiaries of development but as active agents in the process of transformation of their lives.  Through sustainable human development approach, gender policies can be developed focusing on building and developing women’s capacity of hope, the capacity of exercising their rights to pursue their own freedom, and the capacity of participating actively in the process of change.

In the development of the discourse on women and sustainable human development for the past decades, there have been two remarkable trends.

First is the development of linkage between gender issues and the concerns with development and environment.  The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development stated clearly:“Women have a vital role in environmental management and development.  Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development.” (Principle 20).  The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development was a groundbreaking conference that affirmed women’s critical contribution to environmental management and sustainable development. 

Chapter 24 of Agenda 21 is on Global Action for Women Towards Sustainable and Equitable Development.  It is policy and management oriented and contains specific recommendations to strengthen the role of women in sustainable development and to eliminate obstacles to their equal and beneficial participation, particularly in decision-making.

UNDP Report no. 6 was dedicated to the analysis and recognition of women’s role in the development process.  Among the various forms of discrimination, gender discrimination is the most common.  In no society women enjoy the same opportunities as men.   In the report, the UNDP created the human development index linked to gender (GDI) and the measure for the attribution of power related t gender (GEM).

The UN Millennium Declaration links gender equality to the eradication of poverty, with Governments resolving to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment “to combat poverty, hunger and disease, and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.”

The second trend in the past decades has been the changes in the approaches to women’s issues from WID (Women in Development) to GAD (Gender and Development) approaches.  This is an important change affecting not only the wording but also the objectives and strategies to combat inequalities. Beginning from “women’s issues” and “female condition” in the International Women’s Year in 1975, the debates have developed through the Mexico City Conference (1975), Nairobi (1980), Copenhagen (1985), and Beijing (1995) to the efforts to solve the “gender issue.” [15]

<Table 1> shows the development strategies within WID and GAD approaches.

<Table 1> Strategies for Development within WID and GAD Approaches

The 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women marks the joining of the two trends discussed above.  The Beijing Platform for Action identified six areas where action was needed; mainstreaming a gender perspective in sustainable development, participation of women in decision-making for sustainable development; strengthening women’s capabilities; involving civil society; gender analysis and research; and empowering women economically.

Critical area K of the Beijing Platform for Action “Women and the environment” asserts that “human beings are at the center of concern for sustainable development”, and that “women have an essential role to play in the development of sustainable and ecologically sound consumption and production patterns and approaches to natural resource management.” (Para.246)

The strategies highlighted were; gender mainstreaming, a life-cycle approach, partnership between women and men, a human rights approach, and a holistic approach towards development.

Conclusion: Implications for Gender Policy

According to Women’s Environment and Development Organization, Women’s contribution to sustainable human development has been limited because of the following obstacles. [16]

-          Lack of recognition of the role that women play in sustainable development and lack of awareness about the benefit of gender equality considerations in sustainable development policies;

-          Under representation of women in decision-making and absence of strategies to ensure women’s participation in formulating, planning, making decisions about and implementing sustainable development.

-          Predominantly male leadership of environment and sustainable development-related organizations and institutions

-          Lack of gender-specific information on sustainable development…etc.

Effective gender policy should provide measures to overcome such obstacles. 

This paper concludes by suggesting the implications of sustainable human development for gender policy in the new millennium.

First, women’s NGOs and leaders should make efforts to mainstream gender in all sustainable human development policies and programmes, and make policy makers accountable for this.  Women should also request the government to reevaluate its development goals to reflect the values of sustainable human development. 

Second, carry out awareness campaign through the mass media on the role that women play in sustainable human development.

Third, ensure full and equal participation of women in sustainable human development decision making. Promoting women’s leadership and widening women’s role in decision-making are key strategies for sustainable development, since production and reproduction require the full participation and partnership of both women and men.  The participation of both women and men in sustainable development policy making brings a higher quality to planning and an important sense of ownership to projects. It is necessary to have a critical mass of women in politics, and to rally the support of the media for gender issues.

Fourth, develop and disseminate gender-specific data and information

Fifth, eradicate poverty through empowerment. Women still constitute 70 per cent of the 1.5 billion absolute poor, living on one dollar a day or less. Women are among the poorest of the poor and disadvantaged.  In the 1993 UNDP Human Development Report, it points out “South and East Asia, defying the normal biological result that women live longer than men, have more men than women.  The reasons: high maternal mortality and infanticide and the nutritional neglect of the girl child.”  Women need to be empowered to take leadership in eradicating poverty. Empowerment means the process whereby marginal groups become aware of their capabilities, and gain decision-making power in the issues affecting their lives. Empowerment is about women’s ability to analyze their own situations, decide for themselves, and take action to improve their lives.  Empowerment means self-confidence, and the feeling that change is possible.

Sixth, women’s rights to the freedom of reproductive choices should be promoted and protected. The sustainable human development approach concentrates on the capabilities to lead worthwhile lives and choices. The freedom of choices should include reproductive freedom. There is a growing recognition that protecting and promoting women’s and girls’ human rights not only improve their political, social and health status, but also contribute to the well-being of family, community and society. Rights empower people in the fight against poverty and for sustainable development.

Women’s rights to liberty, security of person and development are not attainable without comprehensive, accessible and affordable sexual and reproductive health services and the freedom to make decisions about sexuality and fertility as well.  Immediate measures are needed to combat poor reproductive health, unwanted fertility, illiteracy and discrimination against women.[17].

In concluding, the concept of sustainable human development is a sensitizing concept, and invites us to think long term, inclusive, and holistic in our discussion of women’s rights.  It requires long term planning for intergenerational equity.  It is holistic because weight is given to ecological, social and security concerns at all levels of society.  It is inclusive because the interests of all relevant actors should be considered in decision-making.  The concept also draws attention to quality –of-life of people.  It is based on the values of equity, justice, transparency, accountability and no corruption

Women need to be empowered to be the main actor of facilitating the change of sustainable human development, and to mainstream gender issues in development discourse.  And finally, let us not lose the sight of women’s equal rights.

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