Did God Discriminate Against Women by Making them Mothers?

July 17, 2002

by Mary Mostert, Analyst - Banner of Liberty

Last month Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced he would “resume consideration of an important treaty to advance human rights for women.” The treaty he refers to is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. CEDAW , Biden said, “has been pending in the U.S. Senate for more than 20 years.”

It appears that Biden believes that the time has come to put behind us the discrimination foisted on women by God, i.e. creating only them, not men, to have the babies.

CEDAW, we learn, would correct that by “enlarging our understanding of the concept of human rights, as it gives formal recognition to the influence of culture and tradition on restricting women’s enjoyment of their fundamental rights.”

Article 1 of CEDAW states: “For the purposes of the present Convention, the term ‘discrimination against women’ shall mean 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.”

Since God restricted childbearing to women, clearly He is in violation of CEDAW’s provisions.

Article 7 of CEDAW demands “The elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education by encouraging coeducation and other types of education which will help to achieve this aim and, in particular, by the revision of textbooks and school programs and the adaptation of teaching methods.”

The Treaty states that “States parties are therefore obliged to work towards the modification of social and cultural patterns of individual conduct in order to eliminate prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women." (Article 5).

And, to make sure it happens, in Part V (Articles 17-22) CEDAW outlines the creation of a Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to oversee the implementation of CEDAW in every signatory nation. The Committee consists of "23 experts of high and moral standing and competence in the field covered by the Convention" whom representatives of the Convention signatories elect. This means, of course, that 23 individuals somewhere in the world that American women have never heard of would be authorized to implement this new “modification of social and cultural patterns of individual conduct.”

Since there already are 169 nations that have ratified the treaty, what has the CEDAW committee been doing to implement this worldwide effort to change gender roles? Concerned Women for America reports that CEDAW noted “with concern that stereotypical perceptions of gender role continued to exist” in Denmark “in society [that] kept men from assuming an equal share of family responsibilities."

In its 2000 review of Belarus, the committee complained that "Mothers Day" and the "Mothers Award" encourage women’s traditional roles and in Armenia the CEDAW committee urged Armenia to "combat the traditional stereotype of women in the noble role of mother."

In Luxembourg "stereotypical attitudes that tend to portray men as heads of households and breadwinners, and women primarily as mothers and homemakers" were declared unacceptable.

Obviously, the CEDAW Committee has concluded that natural law, that prompts the father quail in my yard to come out first and look around for food before mother and baby quail venture forth in such a dangerous place, needs to be repealed. Why are males the “head of households?” Because, in nature, males are the ones who protect the family from dangers whereas females are the ones who produce the babies and nurture them. Put another way, Nature, or Nature’s God, has discriminated against men by not allowing them to have babies and against women by requiring them to have the babies.

CEDAW would correct that in Article 1O.c. that “mandates the revision of textbooks, school programs and teaching methods with a view to eliminating stereotyped concepts in the field of education. Finally, cultural patterns which define the public realm as a man’s world and the domestic sphere as women’s domain are strongly targeted in all of the Convention’s provisions that affirm the equal responsibilities of both sexes in family life and their equal rights with regard to education and employment. Altogether, the Convention provides a comprehensive framework for challenging the various forces that have created and sustained discrimination based upon sex.”

The Feminist Majority website has a campaign to urge Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee to vote for CEDAW’s Ratification tomorrow, July 18, 2002.

It appears that on Thursday Sen. Joe Biden and his feminist cohorts plan to repeal natural law where families are concerned and there’s been practically no media discussion about it. Everyone seems too busy worrying about the stock market.

To e mail your Senators, click here.

_____________________________________

Mary Mostert was writing professionally on political issues as a teen-ager in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1940s. In the 1960s, she wrote a weekly column for the Rochester Times Union, a Gannett paper and was one of 52 American women who attended the 17 Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland to ban testing of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. She was a licensed building contractor for 29 years, as she raised her six children. She served an 18 month mission as Public Affairs Director for the Africa Area for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1990-91. In the 1990s she wrote a book, Coming Home, Families Can Stop the Unraveling of America, edited the Reagan Monthly Monitor and talk show host Michael Reagan’s Information Interchange for seven years. She now operates the website, Banner of Liberty.

Send the author an E mail at Mostert@ConservativeTruth.org.

For more of Mary's articles, visit her archives.