Wiki Cables Give Women the Reindeer Treatment

By Corinna Barnard

WeNews editor

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Women are off the U.S. diplomatic map. A look at 200 WikiLeaks cables finds no mention of our rights or struggles, says Corinna Barnard, and a recent check of the State Department's Council on Women and Girls site found a top story about romping reindeer.

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Most Disturbing Finding

She said she was most disturbed not to find any mention of the women and children killed in drone attacks in Pakistan and other places.

I realize that these cables, by their nature, are about crisis, danger and international discord and that women's issues often concern a country's internal courts and its own customs and traditions.

Nonetheless, it would have been nice to find indications that that U.S. diplomacy is driven by the keen awareness of the big post-Sept. 11 idea: That extremist people are created by conditions that leave them with nothing left to lose.

No such luck.

Women's eNews has an Arabic-language site and we are committed to the basic notion that when women's conditions are taken seriously, the world has a chance to become more civilized and safer.

As we read more of the WikiLeaks documents--there are thousands still to go--we hope to find that at least some of our foreign-affairs representatives share this view.

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Corinna Barnard is editor of Women's eNews.

For more information:

WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout, the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizer-nigeria

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2 COMMENTS | Login or Sign Up to post comments

Excellent article which makes clear the problem for women in a nation that does not consider us to be equal human beings, even nations that fight to restore democracy buy into the idea by not mentioning women. That is shown by Barnard in describing the wikileaks cables, "I realize that these cables, by their nature, are about crisis, danger and international discord and that women's issues often concern a country's internal courts and its own customs and traditions." If a woman is only 'internal' to the nation, then women are not equal. A crisis situation includes the crisis to women and children in this war.

Submitted by user18662 (2 years ago)

I was very glad to find this TED Conference talk by Sec. Clinton on the Global Women's Issues page today, when I went there to see if the reindeer story was still there:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/12/152670.htm