Heyzer: A women with modern vision

By Cebe Tadjoedin and Farsida Lubis

JAKARTA (JP): When Noeleen Heyzer, the director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), arrived at the Soekarno-Hatta airport recently, she stupefied the officer sent to meet her. He had brought two cars, apparently believing that a woman's luggage couldn't be accommodated in just one car. He may also have thought she would have a large entourage with her, being an United Nations envoy. No, Heyzer came by herself, and she had only one bag, which she carried herself.

A twinkling in the eye showed Heyzer's sense for humor at the officer's stereotypical concept of women. Other women activists might have despaired that such bias still dominates Indonesian society, but Heyzer only smiled, recognizing the basic intention to honor a guest. It is typical of Heyzer, a woman with modern vision who values her Asian culture.

Petite, with a ready smile and honest eyes, Heyzer is fast thinking and mobile, and is committed to working for new development paradigms. Given the growing feminization of poverty and the global environmental crisis, Heyzer is convinced that development must include the empowerment of women.

Heyzer's interest in development and the role of women started when she pursued a doctorate in sociology from Cambridge University in the U.K. in 1978. Being a Singaporean, she realized that for Asia to advance, it was necessary to come to terms with its history and define its own reality. She came to this conclusion as she found that some of the issues of the feminist movement came from European and American history.

"I could not come to terms with my own reality, so I needed to go into my own history, doing a lot of research," she said.

She has written 11 books and some twenty or so papers and articles. Heyzer has been actively involved in conceptualizing, planning and implementing different research works, policy dialogues, and creating networks, as well as many publications, one of which is called Gender, Poverty and Sustainable Development.

Heyzer worked with the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok from 1982 to 1984. She was also the coordinator of the Gender and Development Program in the Asian and Pacific Development Center in Kuala Lumpur, from 1984 to 1995 as well as a founding member of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era. She has led many efforts to build networks of women's groups, creating credit and development programs, and establishing training and research centers in Asia.

Being the first Asian woman to be selected for the post of director of UNIFEM is a quite a breakthrough in a system where only two other Asian women head UN agencies: Sadako Ogata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Nafis Sadiq, the executive director of the UN Fund for Population. Heyzer's appointment, however, wasn't a surprise to the people who have worked with her, for breakthrough ideas and action seems to be her trademark.

Heyzer, 47, now leads a worldwide staff of 200, including the 63 at UNIFEM's New York headquarters.

Heyzer came to Indonesia last month to attend a national follow up seminar on the adoptions in the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing last September.

Having been heavily involved in the preparation for the Beijing conference, Heyzer's presence at the recent seminar opened by President Soeharto at the State Palace was welcomed by both government officials and seminar participants.

"We have to look at some of the recommendations that have come out of Beijing," she urged.

Closing the gender gap in basic needs was the conference's message to world leaders.

Gender disparities continue to negatively impact on women, to the extent that the feminization of poverty is now a global phenomenon. Today 564 million rural women live in absolute poverty, which is 60 percent of the world's one billion rural poor. This is a 50 percent increase for women since 1970, compared to a 30 percent increase for men in the same period.

Heyzer says the impoverishment of women has been exacerbated by the transformations taking place in the world economic system through trade deregulation, rapid technological changes, industrial production changes, the transition to a market economy, structural adjustment programs, and the power of global financial markets.

Heyzer suggests impoverishment processes be carefully studied.

"I stress very, very strongly that we need to look at the processes of impoverishment. Poverty elimination cannot be a piecemeal effort that is decided on a case by case bases the level of the local communities, as if poverty itself was a problem that is only intrinsic to those communities", she stressed.

Processes of displacement, de-skilling and deposition of women need to be looked at carefully.

Heyzer, and many other experts, contends the empowerment of women is a basic requirement for overcoming the poverty and environmental crises. She gives four reasons why women should be empowered: women form the largest percentage of the absolute poor (70 percent), bear the largest burden of coping with poverty at the household level, and gender biases push the girl child into the same trap of poverty as her mother. Sustainable development, she maintains, is not possible if the livelihoods of local communities are at risk. While shorter-term economic needs have to be met without destroying long-term concerns for sustainability, longer-term ecological imperatives have to be addressed without neglecting the immediate livelihood of local communities. There is therefore an urgent need to balance economic viability with ecological sustainability in an increasingly globalized world economy where the social crisis of poverty converges with the environmental crisis.

Women in many societies mediate between these dualities, states Heyzer. Women's reproductive labor, both biological and social, underwrites the entire process of human development. Not only do women bear and rear children, they are usually the managers of local resources on which everyday life depends. In conditions of rapid change, including environmental deterioration, the out-migration of men, changing economic activities and aspirations, and government interventions, women play an even more crucial role in the maintenance of livelihoods, cultural continuity and community cohesiveness.

Heyzer proposes a re-thinking, urging that the transformative agenda begin from a recognition of women's achievements, not of their needs.

Highlighting the issue of AIDS, the virus currently spreading through Southeast Asia, Heyzer says no country will be able to control AIDS without empowering women. Women must have the decision making power to intervene in some of the most intimate processes of life in order to control AIDS, she contends. Heyzer emphasizes that women must be able to negotiate how their sexual life takes place, to be able to control the spread of AIDS.

Her own vision and the objectives of UNIFEM are linked, as UNIFEM is a catalytic fund within the UN system that works for the empowerment of women. The definition of empowerment is women having access and control over economic assets on a long term and sustainable basis, she says.

Political empowerment is the ability of women to have control over their own lives, both in the household and beyond, and also the ability of women to influence the direction of their societies.

Asked for her views on the issue of multiple roles of women, Heyzer retorts: "I think everybody has multiple roles, men too have multiple roles -- the men are fathers, the men are workers and women too -- they are brothers and they are sons. And in the same way it is true for women too. Increasingly we talk about parenthood, not just motherhood.

"I believe that children who know their fathers as people will appreciate them better, they will definitely be healthier. Conversely fathers too, I believe, will appreciate their children better if they get to know them better. So basically I think that the concept that we are looking at is that everybody has multiple roles -- it's not just the women and that we need to ensure that if we want stable families, both mother and father will have to play their equal share."