2006.07.11: July 11, 2006: Headlines: COS - Ivory Coast: Law: Women's Issues: Georgetown University: Ivory Coast RPCV Susan Deller Ross helps women in developing countries fight for equal rights
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2006.07.11: July 11, 2006: Headlines: COS - Ivory Coast: Law: Women's Issues: Georgetown University: Ivory Coast RPCV Susan Deller Ross helps women in developing countries fight for equal rights
Ivory Coast RPCV Susan Deller Ross helps women in developing countries fight for equal rights
She attended law school and began to understand why the women lived the way they did: their oppression stemmed from the Ivory Coast's legal system. Laws prohibited women from entering into contracts independently, for example, making them economically dependent on men. The circumstance, she thought, appeared strikingly similar to that faced by American women a century ago. "I've seen over a long career how the law formally subordinated women, but that we could use the law to change and give women equal rights," she says. "The law can be an oppressive tool, or it can be an equalizing tool." That's the message she shares as founding director of Georgetown's International Women's Human Rights Clinic, which links law students and scholars at Georgetown with policymakers, activists and residents in developing countries. Together they've challenged laws related to genital mutilation, polygamy, discriminatory labor practices, and women's rights to divorce and to inherit property.
Ivory Coast RPCV Susan Deller Ross helps women in developing countries fight for equal rights
Life Changing Experience
Susan Deller Ross helps women in developing countries fight for equal rights
Five years after John F. Kennedy shared his idea for a corps of volunteers that would travel to developing countries to work on service projects, recent college graduate Susan Deller joined the cause and left for the Ivory Coast in western Africa.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s, Deller (now known as Susan Deller Ross) taught basic health and nutrition skills to women in a small village. The women worked from dusk to dawn tending to their families, she noticed, while the men somehow enjoyed more leisure time.
"I didn't understand why this was in place," says Ross, who serves as a professor of law at Georgetown. "I just observed it because I was already a feminist and interested in these issues. I just saw that their working life was just extraordinarily difficult."
Several years later she attended law school and began to understand why the women lived the way they did: their oppression stemmed from the Ivory Coast's legal system. Laws prohibited women from entering into contracts independently, for example, making them economically dependent on men. The circumstance, she thought, appeared strikingly similar to that faced by American women a century ago.
"I've seen over a long career how the law formally subordinated women, but that we could use the law to change and give women equal rights," she says. "The law can be an oppressive tool, or it can be an equalizing tool."
That's the message she shares as founding director of Georgetown's International Women's Human Rights Clinic, which links law students and scholars at Georgetown with policymakers, activists and residents in developing countries.
Together they've challenged laws related to genital mutilation, polygamy, discriminatory labor practices, and women's rights to divorce and to inherit property.
"We've worked on an incredibly diverse range of issues," she says.
Reaching Out to Women in Africa
The issues are intense -- and so is the research process, says the clinic’s teaching fellow Tamar Ezer. In early March the clinic's students and staff members traveled to Swaziland in southeastern Africa. The landlocked country is about the size of New Jersey, but with a fraction of the population. Swaziland suffers from the world's highest known rate of adult HIV infection and has adult life expectancy of only 33 years.
Human rights -- particularly women's issues -- are also of concern, says Ross, whose team is examining inequities in the country's marriage and divorce laws.
One major problem, she says, is that Swaziland law permits male polygamy. The nation's king, for example, has a dozen wives. Ross says the practice is inherently unequal because while a wife is able to devote all of her time and resources to her marriage and children, a polygamous man's resources are divided among multiple marriages.
Also under Swaziland law, only men have the right to seek divorce. Thus women have no means to escape from an adulterous husband, which Ross says is not only unfair but potentially deadly in a country where more than 40 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV.
This is the fifth year the center has traveled overseas. In each case they partner with local attorneys to advance human rights for women according to international norms. Most of their efforts have taken place in Africa.
"I think for her, it's a very exciting part of the job," Ezer says. "She's always had a connection to Africa. She is very passionate about this work."
Ezer and Ross go abroad a week before everyone else to prepare for the fact-finding missions. They handle everything from securing transportation and lodging to analyzing local laws. Once the students arrive, they interview dozens of people "from all walks of life," Ross says, "to get a broad comprehension of the culture itself, as well as the inner workings of the legal system."
In Swaziland, the scholars are meeting with more than 100 people, including polygamous and monogamous husbands, wives, tribal leaders, government ministers, members of parliament, lawyers and judges, and activists with nongovernmental organizations.
The researchers plan to write two reports -- one advocating changes in marriage law and another in divorce law.
"We're trying to give them the tools to enact the appropriate legislation," Ross says. Their reports typically include new policy proposals and the justifications for the changes under international and domestic law.
"They're learning how the law operates in practice," Ross says. "They're coming to understand the law in much greater depth than I think would be otherwise possible."
They also grow to learn the extent of the women's suffering.
"You hear horrendous stories," Ross says. Students traveling to Tanzania several years ago talked with a lawyer who described how a woman left her husband after he had blinded her. The woman ended up returning to him, only to have her hearing destroyed in one ear, Ross explains. "You're talking sometimes about extreme rage and damage," she says. "It's very sobering seeing how real these practices are."
Source: Blue & Gray
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Story Source: Georgetown University
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ivory Coast; Law; Women's Issues
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