Sir, - The decision by Kevin Myers to launch an attack on the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has all the elements of a military coup (An Irishman's Diary, May 25th). Accusing the UN of being party to "almost a Communist manifesto of feminism" and then galloping on like the Light Brigade to suggest that any fool in favour of this Convention must be an "ideological zealot" akin to Lenin, Mr Myers has ignored or denied the roots of the Convention which lie in the brutal aftermath of the Second World War.
In 1946, the UN Commission on the Status of Women began to argue for an international system to protect the rights of women. Women had suffered appallingly in the upheavals of the war, in the moral degradation of the occupied territories, in the concentration camps and were pitiful among the displaced persons and refugees who flooded across Europe. These are the type of scenes so often evoked by Kevin Myers in his diary and they are the background to a 30-year struggle to establish minimum rights that recognise the humanity of women. The struggle culminated in 1979 in a Convention which over 100 countries have ratified. It remains one of the very few standards against which the records of tyrannical and autocratic governments, who have committed systematic crimes against women, can be judged.
If he had cared to read the 1999 exchanges between the UN committee and the representatives of the Government of Ireland on Ireland's compliance with the Convention, he would have found that they did not in fact linger on the question of the family and motherhood, as he so disparagingly argues. The Committee was concerned in the first instance at the low level of representation of Irish women in the Dail and Seanad. With approximately 14 per cent of deputies and senators of the female sex, this creates a serious gender imbalance, indeed a democracy deficit.
Neither the UN nor CEDAW says that the "family is an obstacle to participation by women." What the preamble to the Convention states is that the role of women in procreation should not be a basis for discrimination, which is an entirely different matter. What is odd about Kevin Myers's cynical mocking of women who might wish "to be head of General Motors, Microsoft, Boeing and the US Marine Corps . . ." is that he mentions only American multinational corporations and an American military apparatus. Here in Ireland, many high ranking, experienced, qualified women with no record of threatened impeachment, would be happy to accept a nomination to the European Investment Bank, or the European Central Bank, but the gambling odds on such a nomination are not good.
Mr Myers's invective against the UN for offering support and protection for women who press for equality of treatment is worth noting for its timing. It comes just 10 days before the UN General Assembly meets in special session in New York to discuss women's rights. In attacking the UN as "feminist," he attempts to rubbish in advance the significance of this global event for African women seeking health support, for women in the Balkans seeking humanitarian aid and women in Asia and China seeking a reduction in the poverty of women. - Yours, etc.,
Pauline Conroy, Clonskeagh, Co Dublin.