Although it seems Cedar Rapids resident Alice Dahle has been fighting for ratification of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [3] (CEDAW) her entire life, she says her passion for the international rights of women is something into which she has grown.
"It's hard to tell you of one trigger or something that began it all," she said while arranging CEDAW advocacy papers in a file folder on her kitchen table. "My world view started out as: 'Things are not fair here.' Gradually, I began to see patterns of unfairness and what made sense to me, and what became a passion for me was people that took advantage of women because they thought they could."
Something Isn't Right Here
"I grew up on a farm in northwest Iowa," she said. "I knew that something wasn't right. I knew I was treated differently from my brothers and that women were always expected to serve the coffee and the food at the church events. I was always a little bit of a rebel about that type of thing from the beginning."
In fourth grade, she began corresponding with a young man who lived in Morocco. By the time she graduated from high school, she says her best friends were the exchange students. Her first trip overseas came when she went home with an exchange student from Uruguay.
"My mother's guardian was a woman from Des Moines who had earned law and medical degrees in the 1920s," she said. "She became the president of the International Women's Medical Association, and she used to travel all over the world in that capacity, working on behalf of women. She also worked a lot with wives of alcoholic Italian laborers in Des Moines and she was very concerned [with their welfare]."
At that time, the Catholic Church was strongly opposed to birth control and the Italian families were often large. The men, suffering from alcoholism, would often use their paychecks to buy liquor instead of taking care of family and home.
"I watched poverty," Dahle said. "And that was a major influence in my life."
In the late 1960s, Dahle attended college at the University of Iowa and had a front-row seat to observe and participate in the women's movement.
"I adored Joan Baez [4], and I knew Bonnie Koloc [5] personally because she lived on the same floor of the residence hall," she said. "I became more politicized at that time... although I was still very naive."
She minored in Russian during college and was able to travel to what was then the Soviet Union.
"I traveled there for the summer as an exchange student," she explained. "After being told all the time while I was growing up about what evil and dangerous people the Soviets were, I went over there and found them to be very cordial -- poor -- but very hospitable, generous and everything I had been told they weren't. I never had any fear of them anymore after that.
"I came back very changed about my view of the world and who was dangerous and 'us and them.' I saw the people with power and the people without power as allies rather than the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and so-forth."
Once she earned her degree, she was offered a job at Pioneer Seed Co. in Des Moines. She soon married a young man originally from South Africa. Her association with him and his family offered an even deeper understanding of not only apartheid, but of human rights.
"Apartheid and the women's movement have a lot in common," she said. "It's the power and the oppressed. I saw so many connections about what we were not able to go back to in South Africa and what I'd been thinking all along about women and power in this country."
Her husband was also offered employment with Pioneer Seed Co. and was told he'd need to travel to either Brazil or France to set up a research station. The couple traveled to Brazil and lived there for two years.
"That was another part of my education about what happens to women in poverty," she said. "There was one woman, in particular, who use to scrub our floors that was just a real eye-opener for me."
This Is My Obligation
As an exchange student in the Soviet Union, Dahle had few resources and began collecting all types of literature -- fliers, pamphlets, brochures -- written in Russian because she couldn't afford to buy books. She had these papers, some of which were "blatant propaganda," with her while living in Brazil. A friend who lived in the same apartment building warned her to keep the documents hidden as they would be very offensive to Brazilian military dictatorship in place at that time. The papers were boxed up and placed on a shelf with books in Portuguese and English hiding them from view.
"The whole time I was in Brazil, I was very concerned about who might come in and see what was in my bookshelves," she said. "While we were living there, the archbishop of San Paulo decided that he was going to divulge what he had observed in Brazilian prisons."
Time magazine ran the clergyman's investigation that showed wide-spread torture, faulty record-keeping, the government's shortcomings and the national spy network used to control civilians. Before reading the article, Dahle had no idea exactly how bad the justice system was.
"I was so naive," she said. "When I came back I realized that here I was able to speak out and I had an obligation to do so."
She joined Amnesty International in 1981 and attended the 4th World Conference as its representative.
"I feel very connected to women," she said. "To me it's not out there or us here as opposed to someplace else. I feel very connected to other women in the world. An affront to them is an affront to me. But if we don't speak out for them, it could happen here. It's just like what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. You have to stop it where it happens or it will be on your doorstep.
"This isn't just selfish motivation, I feel it personally when this happens to my community -- my sisterhood."
28 Years And Counting
CEDAW, often described as an international bill of rights for women, was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. It came into force at roughly the same time Dahle became involved with Amnesty International. Although originally signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, it has never been ratified by the Senate. The United States is among eight nations that have not ratified the treaty. The other seven are Iran, Tonga, Qatar, Somalia, Nauru, Sudan and Palau. The United States is both the only western country and the only industrialized nation that has not ratified CEDAW.
The Convention defines discrimination against women as "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."
Dahle, who is the Iowa coordinator for the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, says the organization and network behind it are working with senators across the nation to both bring CEDAW out of committee and to ratify.
"It's getting down to such a small minority of countries now that have not ratified that it is quite embarrassing," she said. "It also makes my work on behalf of women's human rights with Amnesty International more difficult because it is very hypocritical of me to ask other governments to abide by the standards set out by CEDAW when my own government won't sign on to it."
It has primarily been members of the Republican Party who have opposed CEDAW. Their opposition has evolved over the years from fear of international interference to fear of what some individuals or groups may try to accomplish within our own country with the document.
"If the United States does not ratify this, it undermines our ability to use the document in support of women's rights everywhere," she explained. "When we go to international conferences that have anything to do with women's rights the United States is marginalized right now. The U.S. delegation sits off to the side and is not consulted, is not able to make any statements, does not really have any authority because we have not signed on to this treaty."
Dahle says that when she attended the 50th session on the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, the U.S. delegation was "very quiet, not involved and not consulted."
"I asked them what non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and the UN Association could do help them get the U.S. off the very brief list of countries that had not yet ratified CEDAW," she said. "They said that they were studying it for implications for abortion and prostitution. That was really all they had to say at that conference about anything even though the focus of the conference had nothing to do with either abortion or prostitution."
Such strict attention by the U.S. delegation to those two topics while ignoring whatever might be being discussed continues to undermine credibility, says Dahle.
"The U.S. delegation really was irrelevant at the conference," she said. "They did not come prepared with any backing from treaties that we'd signed on to internationally or credibility from other delegations from other countries because we don't sign on to these treaties. They didn't really have any other agenda than to make sure that abortion or prostitution got any support there."
A bright spot, however, could be the U.S. stance on human trafficking.
"Human trafficking is one issue on which the U.S. has been on the right side," Dahle said. "Unfortunately, the U.S. delegation was so isolated due to lack of credibility that they could not be effective on this issue."
Dahle and other like-minded individuals continue to actively push for ratification of CEDAW. Senators throughout the nation are being contacted as are presidential hopefuls. The hope is that the Senate will bring CEDAW out of committee and to the floor in the spring. Dahle says each of the Democratic presidential hopefuls will vote in support of ratification. She says she's exceptionally happy with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who has not only pledged support of CEDAW, but has fought for women's rights throughout his career. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd has been another advocate. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will support it, but isn't as educated as some of the others about the issue, she says. Dahle says that she's had conversations with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign to express disappointment that Clinton hasn't been more of an advocate. Dahle has not personally been able to speak with any of the Republican senators and is not currently aware of their opinion on ratification.
"I think wherever you are and whatever your passion is, that is where you can be the most effective," she said. "I don't think everybody has to be an internationalist to be part of the solution or to be connected with everyone else. I'm passionate about this because this is where I feel the connection and the urgency. That's what drives me."
For more RH Reality Check coverage of CEDAW, read Joanna Pozen's "The High Price of Compromise: CEDAW and Abortion [6]."