Heyzer: A women with modern vision

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."