[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 196 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 196
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the
importance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign
policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade,
diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability
mechanisms.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
March 8, 2021
Ms. Speier (for herself, Ms. Lee of California, Mrs. Lawrence, Ms. Lois
Frankel of Florida, Mr. McGovern, Ms. Meng, Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney of
New York, Ms. Jackson Lee, Ms. Norton, Mr. Cicilline, Ms. Velazquez,
Ms. Titus, Mr. Jones, Mr. Carson, Mr. Khanna, Ms. Wasserman Schultz,
Mr. Welch, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. Sherman, Ms. Bonamici, Ms. McCollum, Mr.
Hastings, Ms. Kuster, Mr. Lowenthal, Ms. Houlahan, Mr. Johnson of
Georgia, Ms. Sanchez, Ms. Chu, Ms. Clarke of New York, Ms. Omar, Ms.
Eshoo, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Blumenauer, Mr. Grijalva, Ms. Tlaib, Mr. Vargas,
Mr. Keating, and Mr. Casten) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the
importance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign
policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade,
diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability
mechanisms.
Whereas a feminist approach to public policy requires meaningful analysis of and
proactive challenges to power structures and inequalities based on
intersecting systems of discrimination, including discrimination on the
basis of race, age, language, socioeconomic status, physical or mental
ability, sex, including gender identity or expression and sexual
orientation, indigenous identity, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, and
nationality or migrant status;
Whereas foreign policy reflects how a government defines and prioritizes peace
and security, structures international trade, provides humanitarian aid
and development assistance, and works with other nations and non-state
actors;
Whereas feminist foreign policy is the policy of a state that defines its
interactions with other states, as well as movements and other non-state
actors, in a manner that--
(1) prioritizes peace, gender equality, and environmental integrity;
(2) enshrines, promotes, and protects the human rights of all;
(3) seeks to disrupt colonial, racist, patriarchal, and male-dominated
power structures; and
(4) allocates significant resources, including research, to achieve
that vision;
Whereas feminist foreign policy is coherent in its approach across its levers of
influence, anchored by the exercise of those values at home and
cocreated with feminist organizations, movements, and stakeholders, at
home and abroad;
Whereas women's rights are human rights and foreign policy in the United States
should be representative, inclusive, responsive, and accountable to
stakeholders, and should take an intersectional approach, utilizing a
power-based analysis that reveals, acknowledges, and seeks to correct
for inequalities;
Whereas feminist foreign policy includes a focus on key thematic priorities of
bodily autonomy, peace, environmental integrity, and justice, which are
often left behind in foreign policy development and discourse;
Whereas although women and girls make up approximately half of the world's
population, they face considerable disparities relative to men and boys
in their access to rights, resources, and agency around the world, and--
(1) as of 2020, women had on average three-fourths of the legal rights
as men worldwide;
(2) the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report for 2020
estimates that at the current rate of change, it will take 99.5 years for
there to be gender parity across the four dimensions it examines: health
and survival, economic participation and opportunity, educational
attainment, and political empowerment;
(3) in 2020, around the world women held only 25.2 percent of
parliamentary seats and in 2019 held 21.2 percent of ministerial positions;
(4) approximately one-third of women globally have experienced gender-
based violence, which increases in crisis settings such as during current
COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, resulting in some settings having over 70
percent of women experiencing gender-based violence;
(5) in 2020, only 4.8 percent of military contingents and 10.9 percent
of uniformed police units in United Nations peacekeeping missions were
women;
(6) in low- and middle-income countries, 218,000,000 women have an
unmet need for family planning services and supplies;
(7) women face more constraints than men do in accessing foreign
markets;
(8) immigration law itself tends to marginalize women, relying on
outmoded models of family, migration patterns, and economic mobility that
often fail to account for the reality of women's lives when migrating;
(9) women and girls face increased risks in crisis; and
(10) in the past decade, women provided over 43 percent of the
agricultural labor in low- and middle-income countries, yet comprised more
than 60 percent of the world's chronically hungry people;
Whereas in a world in which there is gender equality and women can fully
participate in all spheres of life--
(1) global gross domestic product could increase by $28,000,000,000,000
over 10 years;
(2) the percentage of hungry people could be reduced by 12 to 17
percent if women had equal access to agricultural resources; and
(3) peace agreements are 35 percent more likely to last over 15 years
when women are at the negotiating table;
Whereas as foreign assistance by the United States helps tens of millions of
people each year, often providing lifesaving aid while accounting for
approximately 1 percent of the United States Federal budget, a smaller
amount supports gender equality, and--
(1) about 2 percent of assistance in 2018 was reported as specifically
for gender equality programs;
(2) only about 16 percent of assistance in 2018 was reported as
including key components to address gender equality issues within projects
that have a primary focus other than gender equality across all sectors;
and
(3) an even smaller amount of aid funding finds its way to local,
women-led and feminist organizations and grassroots gender equality
movements, and in 2018, the United States only disbursed $4,400,000 to
women's rights organizations and institutions, and in the past 10 years has
not disbursed more than $10,000,000 in a year;
Whereas a feminist foreign assistance policy in the United States would promote
gender equality and focus on the experience of women and people who
experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as
gender-based violence, lack of access to sexual and reproductive health,
lack of access to education, and the burden of unpaid care
responsibilities;
Whereas the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need to take a
feminist approach to foreign policy with many impacts likely to
disproportionately affect women and girls, including--
(1) the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) finds that over 90 percent of students have been
affected by pandemic-related school closures, that approximately
1,000,000,000 students have had their learning disrupted during the 2020-
2021 academic year, and that approximately 11,000,000 girls will likely not
return to school due to the disruption;
(2) the economic impact of the pandemic has had a disproportionate
effect on women, and the 780,000,000 women who rely on informal employment
lost on average 60 percent of their prepandemic income in the first month
of the pandemic;
(3) on average, women's employment is 19 percent more at risk than
men's employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic;
(4) the United Nations estimates that due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
women between the ages of 25 and 34 are 18 percent more likely to fall into
extreme poverty in 2021, worsening the already existing gender-poverty gap;
(5) worldwide, women have shouldered the bulk of unpaid care and
domestic work resulting from the pandemic, and even prior to the pandemic,
women on average performed more than three times the amount of unpaid work
relative to men;
(6) the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted efforts to end child marriage,
and could result in an additional 13,000,000 child marriages taking place
between 2020 and 2030 that would otherwise have been averted;
(7) over 49,000,000 additional women will have an unmet need for modern
contraceptives, and over 15,000,000 additional unintended pregnancies in
low- and middle-income countries are expected to occur as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic;
(8) an estimated 243,000,000 women worldwide were subjected to sexual
or physical violence by an intimate partner between April 2019 and April
2020, and an additional 15,000,000 cases of gender-based violence are
expected to occur for every 3 months the lockdown continues; and
(9) due to the disruption of programs to prevent female genital
mutilation in response to COVID-19, 2,000,000 female genital mutilation
cases may occur over the next decade that could have been averted;
Whereas, in 2020, nearly 80,000,000 people were displaced from their homes due
to violence, disaster, conflict, and persecution, more than 165,000,000
people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and tools to center
women, girls, and people of all gender identities in humanitarian
responses, such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Gender Handbook
for Humanitarian Action, should be used to respond;
Whereas trade is a necessary and vital component of a nation's economic success
and growth, and a key part of its engagement with other nations;
Whereas, in 2019, United States exports and imports totaled approximately
$2,377,156,000,000 and $3,214,184,000,000, respectively;
Whereas a feminist trade policy would promote women's rights and equitable and
dignified labor practices throughout the value chain, as well as reduce
and mitigate the harmful impacts of climate change associated with
trade;
Whereas feminist diplomacy fosters increased collaboration and cooperation among
state and non-state actors, including championing equality and
supporting the institutions and mechanisms that facilitate cooperation,
nonmilitary conflict resolution, and peaceful competition, and that
mitigate the effects of climate change;
Whereas defense efforts support the goal of a more peaceful, equitable, and
healthy planet, with peace as the ultimate aim of defense, and a
military policy that prevents and responds to gender-based violence in
conflict and meaningfully includes women and those who face
discrimination in security forces, peace negotiations, and postconflict
rebuilding;
Whereas migration remains a global and growing phenomenon, and--
(1) the number of international migrants reached an estimated
272,000,000 persons in 2019;
(2) women constitute nearly half of global migrant flows;
(3) the United States is the leading country of destination, hosting
44,800,000 foreign-born people, including 22,600,000 naturalized citizens;
and
(4) a feminist approach to immigration would integrate an analysis of
the impact of immigration policy on women, children, people of all gender
identities, and indigenous people; and
Whereas strong transparency and accountability are critical to ensuring that
promises to advance a feminist approach are honored through full funding
and include the development of participatory approaches to policy
formulation and implementation, the setting and reaching of specific,
time-bound and measurable goals that do no harm and are desired by and
beneficial to those impacted, and transparent reporting on the progress
toward goals: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) supports the goals of a feminist foreign policy;
(2) supports the adoption of policies that promote gender
equity and women's participation in public life, including
women's education, access to health care, representation in
public office, economic security and opportunity, access to
rights and resources, inclusion in foreign markets, and
participation in peacekeeping, military, and diplomatic
missions;
(3) recognizes that a whole-of-government effort that
ensures coherence of a feminist approach across all streams of
foreign policy is necessary to achieve those goals, and must
include--
(A) high-level leadership with a mandate to design
and implement a feminist foreign policy with clearly
articulated objectives;
(B) commitment to gender parity, diversity, equity,
and inclusion, both internally among leadership and
staff and externally, cocreated with civil society
groups and other stakeholders outside of government;
(C) the adoption of a zero-tolerance policy on
gender-based violence and workplace harassment,
immediately eliminating policies that allow abusers to
move from one post to another once accused without
facing consequences related to their employment or
promotion;
(D) training and capacity-building to ensure robust
implementation;
(E) gender analysis underlying all aspects of
foreign policy;
(F) adequate resourcing to ensure all of the above;
and
(G) regular and public reporting on efforts and
outcomes; and
(4) commits to work with civil society groups and other
stakeholders inside and outside of government to advance a more
feminist foreign policy in the United States.
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