Thomas Rainsborough was the highest ranking supporter of the Levellers in the New Model Army when he spoke in the Putney Debates in July 1647, and uttered the immortal words for British parliamentary democracy:
"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."
The Nobel Women’s Initiative, in its opening session on ‘Women and Democracy: The Promises and the Realities’, in many ways brought us straight back to the deeper message in these words. It is not only that, after nearly four hundred years, women are still not fully included in the ‘he’ that is the subject of the earliest democratic discourse. Governments, institutions, electoral processes and societies can still claim to be ‘democratic’ despite consistently excluding and under-representing women and failing at gender equality. As we heard in a scathing and impassioned protest from Shirin Ebadi at the barring of two highly acclaimed Iranian delegates from coming to Guatemala who instead will go on trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Courts, accused of the heinous ‘crime’ of being active for women’s rights - some ‘democracies’ are busy legitimising a backlash, the oppression of women through the legislative empowerment of religious and other fundamentalist, anti-women forces. For every step forward, there are steps back – such as the substantial erosion of women’s rights as formerly socialist societies became ‘market societies’, and the escalating violence against women in places such as Afghanistan and Kenya. We were movingly reminded of the terrible cost paid by the one imprisoned winner of the Nobel peace-prize – Daw Aung San Suu Kyi – who, we were told, now lies dangerously ill under house arrest, prevented from receiving the doctors’ assistance that she needs.
But the message that I took away from this morning’s discussion of the discrepancy between the promise and the reality, was that these women at least are convinced that a real democracy is what we need, one that has the qualities that Rainsborough articulated at the very beginning of the struggle – a democracy that is about ‘voice’ and is not confined to the vote, a democracy grounded in self-determination for all, and one which exists to serve the people, and not the other way around. What he was up against in the seventeenth century – the concept of a unitary ‘national interest’ implicit in Henry Ireton’s reply for the ‘Grandees’ - "no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom" – is what we are up against still: the narrow majoritarian, or monocultural notion of democracy, invoked as ‘the people’s will’, preserved through all the old Machiavellian arts of top-down governance for an elite.
The women on this panel, Srilatha Batliwala (AWID), Anne Marie Goetz (UNIFEM) and Alda Facio joined with the Nobel peace laureates who welcomed us in turn – Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams – to call for what Srilatha Batliwala described as, ‘the women’s agenda for a deep, transformative democracy‘. Much of the discussion was devoted to describing the parameters of this ambitious concept. A deeper democracy which is worth our fighting for is not confined to getting women into positions of power at the highest level. This is a democracy for all levels of society, and for all of its major institutions, private and public: not just parliaments but families, media, churches, and the market. This notion of democracy as a way of life is more often to be found in the inclusive practices of the social movements that women have worked in when they found their way blocked to traditional forms of power. It is inclusive not only of excluded minorities, but of a whole series of new political and social struggles including sexual and reproductive rights and the care for natural resources. It is first and foremost, pluralist, participative and accountable – democracy as human aspiration.
There are two clear and present dangers which threaten the emergence of this deeper democracy, and they too were mentioned again and again from the floor as well as the platform. Mairead Maguire articulated the first in a fiery welcome speech which received warm and spontaneous applause, when she said: ‘There’s got to be another way. We have given over to our governments the power to use violence, fear of violence and fear' in the name of democracy. ‘We have given them the right to train young men and women to go to war, telling them that violence is alright as long as it’s for our own ‘state security’. There used to be regulations governing the targeting of civilians in these wars. But now what we have is one-sided bombardments of innocent wedding parties – whether it is the US and the UK wreaking destruction in Afghanistan, Russia in Chechnya, Israel in Gaza. Today women and children are the chief victims in these one-sided wars, and it is time that we women started to build into our democracies non-violence and non-killing. Long ago I started to ask myself how people in Northern Ireland had arrived at the conclusion that they had a right to kill one another for the sake of ‘our security’- and the civilised alternative was so obvious to some women then and is obvious now. Civilised people must sit around a table and listen to each other and talk. They must be sensitive to different cultures, religions and different ways of doing things. We can do this together.’
For Jody Williams, this is the ‘othering process', the fatal flaw, at the heart of the majoritarian approach to democracy. There must always be an enemy without and as often as not, especially in a crisis, the enemies within. This is where the second threat to the fight for a deeper democracy came into view, mainly in the debate from the floor. Historically, capitalism and democracy were joined at the hip. But maybe we have reached the point where the crisis is so systemic, not only financially, but also environmentally, that we really have to ask if capitalism can sustain the kind of economic democracy, empowerment, transparency and accountability which for most of the speakers present is the basis for the ‘deeper democracy’ that they seek. The dilemma was put forcefully for us from the platform, where it was pointed out that we were only in this conference hall together because women corporates had chosen to sponsor us generously with the precious fruits of their efforts. ‘Be pragmatic’, we were urged. There must be ways forward in the current system, and we have to look for those as well as pursuing the many Utopias that motivate us. But for these women, who have travelled from every corner of the world to voice their aspirations for a truer democracy, pragmatism is not at the top of the agenda. It will of course have to stage a reappearance very soon in our discussions. But for today, we are talking to each other about social justice, peace and hope for all.
This is part of openDemocracy's coverage of the Nobel Women Redefining Democracy Conference 2009.
