 |
|
|
SEATTLE, January 28, 2005— Today,
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) International Bioethics Committee (IBC) is meeting in Paris to
set international standards on bioethics. While these standards have
the potential to enhance the health and well-being of all people, the
committee membership is almost exclusively male. Representing more than
half the global population, a disproportionate number of the world’s
vulnerable people, and the traditional caregivers of all generations,
women have a special stake in bioethical issues.
The IBC is composed of 36 bioethics experts, each from a
different country, appointed by the UNESCO Director-General.
Alarmingly, 80 percent of the committee members are men. The sole
expert from the U.S. is a male conservative Catholic physician. UNESCO,
which has long described itself as the “moral conscience” of the U.N.,
has an established pattern of giving limited airtime to women’s
perspectives in its ethics policy proceedings.
“While the committee surely intends no harm to women, men
cannot represent the entire range of human experience. The notion that
a universal set of bioethical norms endorsed by the nations of the
world will be the product of a male-dominated process is absurd,” notes
Kathryn Hinsch, founder of the Women’s Bioethics Project, a
Seattle-based think tank. “Although the current IBC draft Declaration
on Universal Norms on Bioethics does not overtly discriminate against
women, it does not reflect the disproportionate ways in which
bioethical issues affect women, and thus discriminates by omission.”
Hinsch continues, “The draft declaration ignores the realities
of women’s lives. It is most often women who take care of the young,
the old, and the sick of the world. Relative to men, women are
politically disenfranchised and economically dependent. Women’s access
to healthcare, including prenatal care, is subject to outside control
in a way that men’s is not. History shows that women’s participation in
the political process is what brings such issues to light. It is
therefore vital that more women have a place at the IBC table.”
According to Dr. Mary C. Rawlinson, a philosopher from Stony
Brook University who is observing the bioethics sessions in Paris,
“Gender continues to be ignored in bioethics. In developing a statement
of human rights, one can’t just extrapolate from male experience.
Thinking about the specificities of women’s lives would lead to a more
complete articulation of human rights.”
Dr. Dafna Feinholz, of Mexico’s National Commission of
Bioethics, comments, “Gender is not a special-interest category. It is
a very sensible indicator and one that summarizes many other inequities
(e.g., 70 percent of the world’s poor are women, and the highest rates
of illiteracy are among women). When gender inequities are addressed,
many other inequities are addressed as well.”
Bioethics can no longer be dismissed as the stuff of science
fiction. Debate about bioethical questions is under way in academia, in
the political arena, and within religious communities. Policy makers
and voters are addressing bioethics questions when they consider
whether to fund stem-cell research. Courts are facing bioethics
questions when they consider which of three “parents”—an egg donor, a
gestational mother, and a social mother—should receive custody of a
child. The media cover these issues with emotionally charged,
ideologically driven sound bites that fail to educate the public.
Meanwhile, despite the clamor in nearly every one of these settings,
women’s voices are under-represented.
New discoveries in genetics, pharmacology, and assisted
reproductive technologies will soon allow us to modify ourselves and
our children in ways never before possible. With these advances come
profound questions about what it means to be human and what kind of
future world we want to live in. Hinsch notes, “Without a voice in
shaping the legislation and policies that affect their lives, women
will have to contest potentially dire consequences after the fact. We
must be vigilant about creating policies that are thoughtfully drafted
by—and for—all people.”
|
|
