Photo shows Mrs. Ella Watson by Gordon Parks. Source: Library of Congress, Creative Commons.
As mentioned in part one of this blog, enfranchisement is the act of participating in the political process, namely through voting. It is the acknowledgement and acceptance of citizenship. White men determined and established citizenship for themselves as leaders in the public and political sphere during the founding of the United States. By securing citizenship for themselves, an automatic disenfranchisement of white women, Natives and the enslaved occurred.
The perception of female inferiority finds evidence in the engendered stratification implemented by the founding fathers. Identified as property and void of personal agency rendered women fully reliant upon men. Married women looked after the home and land while the rearing and socializing the children. The labelling of single women as witches and heretics remained commonplace by the religious elite. The depiction of female enslaved as promiscuous and animalistic positioned them at the bottom of the gender and race spectrum. This position for Black women becomes a point of division as the fight for enfranchisement persists.
With the establishment of the laws of the land, women began to resist because as Abigail Adams suggests in a 1776 letter to Mercy Otis Warren, “we would not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we had neither a voice nor representation.” Adams reveals she threatened her husband, John Adams with a rebellion of a “Tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest…” he scoffed at the idea. Sarah Moore Grimke wrote in 1838 that men selfishly subjected women to their will for sexual pleasures and promotion of their egos. The subjugation of women finds roots in the unwillingness of men to see women achieve their full potential.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, along with Lucretia Mott challenged the political establishment and their regulated domestic life during the 1848 Women’s Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. During the convention, the women pronounced the “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions”, in which they changed the US Declaration of Independence by adding “and women” and “her” to each relevant statement. Frederick Douglass, orator and former enslaved person, spoke at the convention as a proponent for the acknowledgment of women as citizens. His push to include Blacks as a part of the campaign brought about a significant turning point for suffrage.
The purpose of the Seneca Falls Convention was to facilitate the procurement of the ballot for women, but not for all women: only white women. Following the Emancipation Proclamation and at the height of the Reconstruction Era, Douglass and Sojourner Truth lamented at the lack of solidarity that manifested in the failure to recognize Blacks as citizens. Douglass’ desire for the inclusivity of Blacks brought a division within the movement. For him, as Davis writes, Black suffrage was an emergency measure. “The ballot was not a means of ensuring…hegemony in the South. It was basically a survival measure—a means of guaranteeing the survival of the masses of his people.” The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments granted citizenship rights to Blacks on paper and ‘under the law’; however, the right to the ballot for Americans of African descent, especially women, stalled under the discriminatory practices of the Jim Crow laws of the South.
The implementation of literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes stripped the enfranchisement of Blacks created equally by their Creator but not under the law. The 1898 civil rights case of Plessy vs Ferguson confirmed the notion of “separate but equal”, further reducing American citizens of African descent to second-class. The work of Cady Stanton, Anthony, and Mott achieved fruition in 1920 with the 19th amendment, granting the right to vote to women. The path for Blacks to the ballot box remained marred for the subsequent 45 years.
The political system continues to rest on inequality. Cain argues that the expression of a true democracy is political equality. He suggests that those who view (and viewed) the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a provision that allowed special treatment for Blacks fail to see the democratic system that favors one race or class over another as exclusively flawed and unjust. The decision to rationalize the discrepancy gives rise to a white populism. White populism, or white backlash as mentioned by Dr. King, becomes the expressive mode for the frustrations and concerns of whites who seek their claim to democracy through “referendums, recalls, and initiatives.” These referendums, recalls, and initiatives like gerrymandering and rezoning districts, denying restoration of voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, and closing DMVs for the purpose of limiting access to state identification for Black American constitutes constitutional and human rights violations.
The political establishment received a powerful blow in December 2017 by a group of unlikely citizens: Black women. Black women, including the former incarcerated, in Alabama, secured the victory for Senate nominee Doug Jones. Jones prosecuted and brought about the conviction of a klansman involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair on September 15, 1963. The historic victory challenges the racist and sexist undercurrent of American politics because as Anna Julia Cooper remarked, “Only the Black Woman can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” The enfranchisement of Black women—women excluded from the political and social narrative—brings about both the voice and the representation of all citizens.
Trump vs. Clinton. Source: Galya Gubchenko. Creative Commons.
On Thursday, November 9, one year after the 2016 presidential election, the UAB Institute for Human Rights co-sponsored the event, “The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election,” at the Edge of Chaos located in UAB’s Lister Hill Library. Other sponsors of the event were UAB’s Department of Government and the Edge of Chaos.
Large amounts of data are presented in Bitecofer’s book. She states it “brings an empirical, political science approach that answers the question of why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, and it focuses on the strategical elements that campaigns are going through because the public is not really aware of what they see in campaign politics.”
Dr. Rachel Bitecofer kicking off her lecture. Source: Dr. Tina Kempin Reuter
Bitecofer began by announcing that her approach to looking at the election results is holistic and systematic, and argues that the entire campaign was framed by an electoral strategy, meaning that there were two problems the candidates faced: reaching out to moderates and independents to vote one way rather than the other and then to get the partisan voters to show up. “If they show up, they’re a guaranteed voted,” Bitecofer said, “but that is a big if.”
The lecture was broken down into chapters. The first was titled: “Pitchforks and Torches.” This was when Bitecofer “put the 2016 election into context,” and looked at the patterns that put Donald Trump in the White House. She examined patriarchal behaviors that were prevalent in the 1950s and 60s that still persist today. She examined the effect of the media’s influence and how the US entered an era of polarization; the media has opened “partisan vacuums,” which are areas where it is possible to only get news from a partisan source like Breitbart or HuffPost.
In the next chapter of the lecture, “Making of the Media Event,” Bitecofer showed how Trump dominated the media until snagging the GOP nomination. Bitecofer’s research was presented with graphs that showed how Trump’s popularity in the news peaked when he did things like “picking a fight with the Pope on Twitter,” or “saying he wanted to ban all Muslims from the country.” Bitecofer then showed that even while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were battling it out for the Democrat Nomination, the news continued to focus more on Donald Trump. She said that this came from Donald Trump’s knowledge of “how to capitalize on both his celebrity and the media’s thirst for scandal.” The Trump campaign ran a base-centered campaign. They appealed to the base voters, a voter who votes for the party rather than the candidate, rather than the establishment.
Bitecofer debunked the myth that “if the Clinton campaign had done ‘x, y, or z’ they would have been more successful,” by saying that, using the metrics one usually does to measure campaign success, they ran an almost perfect campaign. The Clinton campaigned out-fundraised the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaigned got the SuperPACs, which is unusual for a Democrat’s campaign. Despite the almost perfect campaign, there were mistakes. The Clinton campaign made the mistake of hiding the fact that Hillary had pneumonia, and during the debate when she was sick, she made the claim about “deplorables.” Bitecofer said this was a mistake as Clinton has always had so much control over her emotions and demeanor that this came as a shock to many people because “she let that control down.”
Continuing the observation of the media, Bitecofer presented the evidence of news sources’ endorsements of Hillary Clinton. All but two major news sources endorsed Clinton, which was unlike any election in history. Usually, according to Bitecofer, there are sources that only endorse Democrats, and some that only endorse Republicans. Some who never endorsed a Democrat before endorsed Clinton. Not only was this strange but, “not even sitting Republicans endorsed Donald Trump until after the Iowa caucus. No one in the party wanted him,” Bitecofer asserted.
Third-party voting, referred to as “defecting” in presidential elections, was a large issue in this election; defection rates were higher than any in modern history – higher than the 2000 elections. “In Wisconsin, for example, a state that Clinton lost by 1%, the defection rate for third party candidates is normally about 1.5%. [It was] 6.32% in 2016,” Bitecofer found. “The problem is that all of the defectors who wrote in Bernie Sanders’ name or voted for Jill Stein because they just could not bear to vote for Hillary Clinton, cost her the election. I am not saying it is their fault, but I am saying that the campaign that they ran did nothing to prevent it.” She also found that defection only mattered in Hillary versus Bernie. There was almost no defection from Republicans to a third-party candidate. “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.”
Bitecofer then told of an experiment that she conducted. She went to the adamant Bernie supporters and asked, “What if instead of Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton brought on Elizabeth Warren as her Vice President candidate? Would you have voted for her then?” This tactic suggested Hillary empowered the more progressive Democrats and attempted to bring in those who were in the #BernieorBust movement. About half of them said it would have made them more likely to vote for Clinton. From this experiment, Bitecofer concluded that had the Clinton campaign ran a base-focused campaign like the Republicans had, “we would likely have the first female president sitting in office now.”
Ultimately, it was concluded that “Clinton ran the perfect strategy for the wrong electoral campaign in an extremely polarized era. In such an era, it is all about firing up your base; you better give them candidates that get them ‘up’!”
The UAB Institute for Human Rights is proud to have such knowledgeable lecturers for our events and programs. For a list of our upcoming events, please visit our events page.
20Set Barcelona 14. Wikimedia: Màrius Montón, Creative Commons
After an enormous earthquake destroys the city of Lisbon in Candide, Voltaire poignantly asks the reader, “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others” (Voltaire, 26)? Increasingly, the most potent of political earthquakes – nationalism – is enjoying a powerful rebirth following a long and tortuous decline in the aftermath of World War II. People across the globe are beginning to envision a different world, a better world – one in which they possess a nation of their own. Whether this rebirth will result in bloodshed on a scale not seen since the 1930s or in a peaceful resolution of differences is yet to be seen, but in all likelihood it will be determined on the opposite side of the Iberian Peninsula – in Catalonia.
Since at least the 1920s, the issue of self-determination – which can be defined as the ability of a distinct people to establish a nation of their own and exercise unimpeded sovereignty in their own affairs – began to be adopted into the lexicon of human rights. Woodrow Wilson was one of the first to interject self-determination into human rights, claiming that “nationalities … should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development” in his Fourteen Points. Ultimately, this belief influenced nearly every major, Western-produced document concerning human rights. Self-determination is explicitly guaranteed to all peoples in the Atlantic Charter, the Declaration by the United Nations, the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights among others.
Curiously, however, the European Convention on Human Rights – which is the most relevant document in this situation due to Spanish membership in the European Union – does not guarantee self-determination. In fact, it states that freedom of expression may be limited “in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, … or for maintaining the authority … of the judiciary” (ECHR, 11). As will be demonstrated later, the Spanish government has employed all of these arguments in its bids to stop the Catalonian independence referendum from coming to fruition.
Aside from the European Convention on Human Rights, the connection between human rights and self-determination – at least until recently – has not been prominently disputed. The question then becomes, how do we determine to which groups the right of self-determination applies? The general consensus is that this right is primarily granted to peoples demonstrating the characteristics of a nation. However, the question of who constitutes a nation, and on what basis, generates considerable disagreement, particularly in the West, which has long attempted to suppress its own nationalism as penance for the destruction wreaked by Nazi Germany.
Some claim that the nation is a figment of the imagination, that it is an invented national tradition, that it is an imagined community (Hobsbawm and Ranger; Anderson). This is not to say that it does not possess meaning – history clearly demonstrates that it does – but that there is very little actual quantitative or qualitative basis on which a nation can be delineated. Others suggest that the nation is real, but that its membership is constantly in flux, shaped solely by economic considerations, individual choices, and shared beliefs (Deutsch; Gellner; Kohn). This “civic nationalism” generally possesses a more cosmopolitan outlook, and it often taken to the extreme by intellectuals, such as Ernest Renan, who claimed that “a nation’s existence is … [simply] a daily plebiscite,” (10) a daily referendum.
Yet others still define a nation as something timeless and primordial (Geertz; Isaacs; Smith). To these theorists, physical characteristics, shared culture, shared history, and shared language – to put it simply – combine to create “a self-aware ethnic group,” which forms a nation (Connor, 279-88; Schmitt). In modern academia, this conception of the nation is generally regarded with scorn as an outdated, primitive view. Among many people, however, it still holds tremendous sway as demonstrated vividly by the universal opposition to immigration by nationalist, as well as by the decline in social trust in multi-ethnic areas of the United States (Putnam). While there exists some genetic overlap between different ethnic groups in border regions, generally speaking, ethnic groups, and the nations they constitute, remain homogenous and distinct from one another. And even if they did not, as Walker Connor notes, “what ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is” (Connor, 379-88).
In determining if Catalonia possesses the right to independence and self-determination, one must first decide whether or not Catalonia constitutes a nation. As evidenced by the slogan above – which means “We are a nation, we decide” – Catalans clearly believe that they do. And all evidence unequivocally indicates that they are correct.
Indeed, Catalonia has previously experienced independence, existing as an independent kingdom until the fifteenth century when it was divided between the Spanish and French monarchies. Despite this conquest, Catalan culture – and a sense of “Catalan-ness” – survived and even thrived (Sahlins). The people of the region possessed a common language (Catalan), culture, symbols, and history that both united them and kept them distinct from their neighbors and conquerors. However, this distinctiveness was not preserved without a struggle. Various Spanish monarchs, as well as the dictator Francisco Franco from 1936 to 1975, sought to hispanicize the Catalans by banning their language and symbols. Attempts to resist were brutally and bloodily repressed, yet Catalonia’s distinctiveness survived into the current century.
After the death of Franco, the new Spanish Constitution granted Catalonia a limited form of autonomous self-government, and for several decades this largely satisfied the Catalans. Between 2009 and 2011, with the repression of Franco but a distant memory, this rapidly changed as various Catalan towns voted in symbolic independence referendums. In 2014, the first non-binding, Catalonia-wide referendum was held with a result of 81% in favor of independence.
Ultimately, this brings us to the Catalan independent referendum of 2017, which – due to the intransigence of both parties – threatens to engulf the Iberian Peninsula in its second civil war in under one hundred years. There were crucial differences between this referendum and those that preceded it. Unlike the previous referendum, the results of the 2017 referendum were binding. Furthermore, it was administered by a new Catalan leader, Carlos Puigdemont, who refused to swear the customary oaths of allegiance to the Spanish Constitution and monarch, King Felipe VI.
To many Spaniards, the referendum was an illegal act and those who participated were criminals. Following the announcement of the results, millions of Spaniards took to the streets, shouting slogans – as in the video above – such as “I am Spanish,” “No negotiations with traitors,” and “Puigdemont to prison.” It is abundantly clear that the Spanish government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took a similar hardline view of the Catalan independence referendum.
Although the Spanish government was correct in its stance that the referendum was illegal, and it rightly questioned the legitimacy of the vote, it grossly violated the human rights of its Catalan citizens as established in nearly every human rights document. As previously noted, however, it did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, leading – along with no doubt more cynical reasons – the European Union to support Spain’s actions.
Los independentistas catalanes han fracturado la unidad española
Addressing the Spanish nation in response to the Catalan independence referendum, King Felipe VI claimed that the separatists had fractured the unity of Spain, as well as Catalonia itself, and were undermining democracy. In an interview with El Pais, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy admitted that Catalans constituted their own nation, but denied their right to secede. Rajoy professed the belief that Catalans should abandon extremism, and work to coexist with the rest of Spain in a peaceful and mutually beneficial manner.
Are the Spanish monarch and prime minister correct? Or do the Catalan people possess the right to secede?
Although the Catalans do constitute a nation, and nations do possess the right to self-determination, the current iteration of the Catalonian independence movement possesses little, if any, basis for secession from a human rights or any other standpoint. This is true for several reasons. First, Spain is a highly functional democracy. According to the 2016 Democracy Index, Spain is the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world, several spots above the United States. If Spain were an authoritarian, dictatorial state, then Catalonia would present a stronger case, but Spain is not an authoritarian state, it is one of only 19 full democracies. And in a democracy no group should possess the right to unilaterally ignore the law or constitution simply because they disagree with it. An obvious exception would be if the laws were unjust; however, the Spanish Constitution and law – from an outside perspective – are not unjust in their treatment of Catalonia. In fact Spain has gone to great lengths to attempt to meet the demands of the Catalans – guaranteeing their right to autonomous self-government, granting the Catalan language official status, and pledging to protect their culture and traditions among other initiatives.
Today, Monday the 9th of October, Catalonia – despite Spain’s cancellation of its parliamentary session – will attempt to officially declare its independence. Prime Minister Rajoy, as well as King Felipe VI, have continually stated that there is no situation in which they would entertain actually allowing Catalonia to achieve independence. They have pledged to employ all of the means at their disposal to halt such a declaration, including ending Catalan autonomy and ordering the military to exercise its duty to maintain the territorial integrity and constitutional order of Spain.
Ultimately, the Catalan pursuit of a pointless independence, possessing little to no basis in human rights or even common sense, could see a return to the bloodshed that characterized the apex of nationalism – the 1930s. Already the signs can be observed. The referendum is serving to polarize both sides of the issue, heightening Spanish nationalism, and encouraging violence. Increasingly, many disillusioned Spaniards – in a last bid attempt to maintain their country’s longstanding territorial unity – will look for example to the last Spanish leader who was able to control the separatist tendencies of Catalonia: Francisco Franco. And if that occurs, Catalonia will certainly have created a different world, but will it be a better world for Catalans?
Saudi portrait. Source: edward musiak, Creative Commons.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home to the origin of Islam, is an absolute monarchy with no formal written constitution. The Holy Book of Islam–the Quran–is what the country has announced as their constitution. Saudi basic laws of governance, social structures, and overall culture are all based strictly on and reinforced by Islamic law. Saudi government has a reputation for using Islamic laws to marginalize the rights of Saudi women. Saudi laws inhibit women freedoms such as the right to drive, the right to free choice of employment, the right to travel, etc. However, in the past ten years, Saudi has made progress in easing the restrictions on women. In 2005, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud ascended into the throne and restructured the importance and dynamic of women rights in the kingdom. King Abdullah is seen by many as a reformer, advocate for women rights, and modern. Under his rule from 2005 to 2015, late King Abdullah advocated for various women’s rights, specifically their civil political rights.
Women rights are embodied in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the legally binding Convention on the Elimination Against of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Saudi Arabia worked towards promoting gender equality and ratified the CEWAD in 2000. Unfortunately, the Kingdom placed a reservation upon the ratification process of the Convention stating, “In case of contradiction between any term of the Convention and the norms of Islamic law, the kingdom is not under obligation to observe the contradictory terms of the Convention.” In other words, Saudi does not see itself obligated to comply with paragraph 2 of Article 9 of the Convention which states nations “shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.” Even though the adoption of this Convention is in some sense incomplete and impartial, the acknowledgment of the Convention by the Saudi government, gives women legal protection to fall back on.
Saudi Arabia. Source: Steve Conover, Creative Commons.
Progress: Civil Political Rights
Before 2003, the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia was only responsible for overseeing male education. There was an independent ministerial level department named the “General Presidency of Girls Education (GPGE),” which was in charge of overseeing female education from primary schools to university colleges in Saudi. In 2003, the GPGE department was terminated and merged into the Ministry of Education for pre-university programs and the Ministry of Higher Education for university level programs. This was a major step for the government in recognizing the importance of female education. King Abdullah took it a step further in 2009 by appointing Saudi’s first ever female minister. Nora Al Fayez was appointed as Saudi’s first female deputy education minister, in charge of a new section in the Ministry of Education in control of female education. Unfortunately in 2015, after the death of King Abdullah, Nora was removed from her position by the new appointed King Salman.
King Abdullah, in 2011, announced that he will allow women to run for municipal council positions, and give them the right to vote. On December 13, 2015, participation in government procedures became a reality for women during Saudi’s historic municipal elections for the very first time, as they were allowed to vote and run for municipal governmental positions. During the election more than 1,000 female candidates ran for a municipal council positions, and 100,000 women registered to vote compared to more than 1 million male voters. At least 18 female candidates won municipal council positions. The number of female voters were low due to multiple reasons: they are unfamiliar with the voting process thus did not participate, did not have rides to the voting booth, or were unaware of where to vote due to lack of information. Even though voting numbers were low, the fact that more than 100,000 women did vote proves that with the right campaigning and access to general information about voting rights for women, the turnout will increase in the future.
“I exercised my electoral right. We are optimistic about a bright future for women in our homeland.” – Najla Harir, Female Voter
The most noteworthy reform by King Abdullah was his royal decree to appoint 30 women to the 150 member advisory Shura Council. The Shura Council, also known as Saudi Consultative Council, is a group of 150 people which advise the king on certain social, economic, political issues by proposing laws and modifications, but cannot enforce any suggested laws. Women have never been appointed to this council prior to King Abdullah, so this action was a major statement towards the need for modernization. It also made it very clear that women and men have different needs, and women need to be the ones voicing their own concerns. King Abdullah verified that a women’s opinions and needs are just as important as men, and have a right to be heard.
Social impact
The continuum of women breaking the glass ceiling in Saudi Arabia is causing a major social impact and a change in attitudes amongst Saudi women. Saudi women are starting to show solidarity for their rights by starting and promoting campaigns that protests against social inequality and discrimination towards women. The two most popular campaigns Saudi women supported and participated in are “Women2Drive” and “#IAmMyOwnGuardian.” #IAmMyOwnGuardian demands that the Saudi government abolish the male guardianship, and has rallied more than 14,000 signatures for their online petition which was delivered directly to the Saudi government. Women2Drive is another women rights movement started by Saudi women activists. This was a Facebook based campaign, started by Saudi activist Manal Al Sharif when she posted a video of herself driving a car in Saudi, trying to prove she is capable of doing so. She was detained and arrested eventually; however, she inspired other women to follow her resistance. On October 26, 2013, at least (if not more) 30 women took to the streets throughout Riyadh and Jeddah, driving themselves around the cities. Even though technically no change come out of those two protests, women have joined each other in solidarity for their rights. Most importantly, they have started a very important discussion amongst themselves regarding their human rights.
Saudi women walk inside the Faysalia shopping centre in Riyadh. Source: Tribes of the World, Creative Commons
Future Goals
Despite the progress, there is still a long ways to go regarding women rights in Saudi Arabia. The CEDAW commends Saudi on the progress it has made towards gender equality, while strongly encouraging Saudi to continue implementing women’s rights. In 2008, the CEDAW released their concluding comments regarding the elimination of discrimination against women and how to more actively implement all the provisions of the Convention. The ultimate goal for women’s rights in Saudi addressed by the CEDAW and non-government organizations, like Humans Right Watch, is the abolishment of the current male-guardianship system in Saudi. Saudi requires every women in the country to have a male guardian–usually her father, husband, or son–who holds the legal power to make decisions for women. A Saudi women’s male guardian must grant her permission to participate in a range of daily activities, like getting a job, going to college, leaving the country, and even receiving healthcare. Women in Saudi, if unable to fully embody individual rights and make key decisions for themselves, will remain at a disadvantage if their national constitution and laws do not match the progress of the past ten years.
Saudi Arabia continues to make progress towards women rights in the Kingdom. More and more Saudi women are becoming activist and using their voices to fight for change. It is refreshing to know that women all over the world are also taking on the challenge and uniting together for a brighter future. Start encouraging and supporting each other. Show solidarity for the effort women are making to ensure their human rights are acknowledged and respected. Foster thoughtful discussions about women rights so we can confront our biases, instead of disregarding men and women who are different than us. As J.K. Rowling said “we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.”
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