New Director Named for Radical Feminist UN Agency

By C-FAM Staff | January 4, 2002

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) The UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) has named Dr. Carolyn Hannan, a Swedish "gender mainstreaming" expert, as its new director. Hannan recently completed a stint in the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues at the UN, where she was responsible for implementing gender mainstreaming throughout the UN system.

     Largely unknown outside UN parlance, gender mainstreaming represents the latest and most sweeping account of radical feminist ideology. Gender mainstreaming is based upon the belief that sex distinctions have been created by male-dominated social hierarchies to perpetuate male power. According to the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, gender is defined as "the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes. They are context/time-specific and changeable."

     Since gender is a social construct, it can be altered. Gender mainstreaming is the process through which the UN hopes to eliminate all vestiges of gender distinctions. The UN defines gender mainstreaming as "a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality." So in all facets of UN activities – from budgeting to peacekeeping – gender inequality is to be eliminated by ensuring that women's perspectives predominate.

     A particularly troubling gender distinction for DAW is motherhood, which Hannan termed "reproductive labor" in a speech she delivered two years ago. Hannan said we should consider "reproductive labor as a form of 'reproductive tax.' This 'tax' limits women's capabilities to engage in remunerative work in the market.Calls for greater sharing of reproductive roles by women and men and ensuring better balance of home and work responsibilities are important for economic development as well as for gender equality."

     DAW operates as the lead UN agency for gender mainstreaming. DAW organized and oversaw the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), as well as Beijing +5. In both instances, members of pro-family NGOs charged that DAW attempted to minimize their influence. DAW also works with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which has demanded that some countries expand access to abortion.

     One long-time pro-family observer at the UN says, "The Division for the Advancement of Women is emblematic of the systemic problem at the UN. It is part of the UN bureaucracy that is thoroughly leftist and completely outside the mainstream anywhere in the world. Agencies like DAW thoroughly discredit the work of the United Nations."

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