1AC: Plan
The United States federal government should provide support for substantive equality and non-discrimination legislation to Tunisia.
1AC: Contention 1
Contention 1: Gendered Democracy Assistance
Democracy Assistance currently excludes discussions of women and gender resulting in endless democratic failures
Handrahan 2 [Lori, Ph.D. from the London School of Economics Sociology and Gender. Gendering ethnicity: implications for democracy assistance. 2002. http://books.google.com/books?id=jGTXJ65Z2j4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false]
Martin’s report was published seven years ago, and is the latest GAO report …onstituted 99% of all department heads. The Jogorku Kenesh, the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan, was represented by 96% men, increased from 70% during the USSR. The political “opposition” leaders supported by USAID funds were 100% men (Zairash 1998).
And, gender coding creates a public/private dichotomy that structures social, political and economic relationship and is a guise for maintaining masculinity. Plan may not remove all barriers, but is a critical to question the social dynamics that justify oppression and violence.
Peterson 2000 [V. Spike Peterson, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona. “Rereading Public and Private: the Dichotomy that is not One” SAIS Review, Volume 20, Number 2, Summer-Fall 2000, pp. 11-29]
Gender-sensitive accounts go beyond this by bringing everyday practices, … material conditions that belive these simplistic renderings, they have rhetorical force and emotional resonance that shape how we live--and how some of us die.
Now is the key time to focus on Tunisia – Candidate parity was used to assuage women – however the lack of constitutional inclusion risks role back of the Personal Status Code and greater restrictions imposed on women
Avi-Guy 11 [Or, Graduate Student of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne, “Women's rights and the Arab revolutions?” AIJAC. http://aijac.org.au/news/article/essay-springing-forward-or-falling-back.]
Historically, following many of the revolutions in the Arab and … democratic and non-democratic means to impose greater restrictions on women in line with traditional customs.
Attacks against women are not some future event – rather this gender based violence is ongoing
Sgrena 11 [Giuliana, Italian journalist, “Women Fearful of Islamists Rise,” Inter Press Service News Agency. November 14, 2011]
Tunisian women poured into the streets armed with the vote, their latest weapon, when the country voted in its first democratic election since a popular uprising unseated former president Zine Abidine Ben Ali, ending his 27-year- long stronghold on the country. However, the … moderates) will wait, perhaps one year, perhaps less, to show their true face; but the fact is, their base has already started threatening women," she stressed. (END)
1AC: Contention 2: Solvency
Contention 2: Solvency
Substantive equality must be written into constitutions—only way to stop violence against women
Wide, 2011 [Women In Development Europe (WIDE) is a European feminist network of women´s organisations, development NGOs, gender specialists and women´s rights activists. WIDE monitors and influences international economic and development policy and practice from a feminist perspective. WIDE´s work is grounded on women´s rights as the basis for the development of a more just and democratic world order and the search for alternative approaches to the economic mainstream. WIDE enables members and partners to articulate alternatives to the negative impacts of globalisation, and makes feminist alternatives visible. Through the dissemination of our research and analysis, WIDE promotes gender equality and social justice. http://62.149.193.10/wide/download/ConceptNote%20and%20Draft%20Agenda_July%2027.pdf?id=1479]
Introduction What is now known as the ‘Arab springs’ has started in December 2010 in Tunisia. … both in terms of diplomacy as well as direct support and selective media coverage. The Arab spring has created new international interest as well as new funding pots. What are the implications for the peoples of these countries and for women’s rights in particular?
Larbi SADIKI Politics @ Exeter ‘11
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/2011531132934920499.html
Egypt and Tunisia are now officially on the international donor community's radar. The World Bank and the G8 are already planning different ways to sponsor the so-called Arab Spring. Many Arabs are speaking out against a possible Euro-US "hijacking… for self-representation. Autarchy only reinforces Orientalist narratives that have misrepresented Arabs for so long through images of invisibility, inferiority, and an incapacity to speak back.
Political Engagement with law is key. Communicative mechanisms that become institutionalized check government power and change societal interests
Yordan 09 Professor of Political Science at Drew University
(Carlos, Towards deliberative peace: a Habermasian critique of contemporary peace operations, Journal of International Relations and Development (2009) 12, 58–89. doi:10.1057/jird.2008.26
Habermas’s work is important for another reason. Connected to the first point, Habermas’s … a multicultural system that affords individuals, via legal statutes and constitutional mechanisms, ability to participate in processes of political will formation regardless of their ethnic, religious, economic, or ideological backgrounds.
1AC: Contention 3: Framing
Contention 3: Role of the Ballot
Peterson and Runyan 99 [V. Spike and Anne, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of
women’s studies at Wright State University, Global Gender Issues, 2nd edition, 1999. p. 14-15)
Gender issues surface now because new questions have been raised … are intentionally and unintentionally reproduced. We can then use this knowledge in our struggles to transform global gender inequality by also transforming other oppressive hierarchies at work in the world.
Incorporation of a gendered lens is crucial for investigating how reality is constituted and developing a basis for action that avoids error replication
Peterson and Runyan 99 [professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of women’s studies at Wright State University, 1999 (V. Spike and Anne, Global Gender Issues, 2nd edition, p. 1-3)]
Whenever we study a topic, we do so through a lens that necessarily focuses …every aspect of our lives, from child rearing to healthcare, from public transportation to national security, from religion to love of country. Yet, people are typically unconscious of how their fundamental moral frames shape their political positions. The Rockridge Institute works to make that thinking more explicit in order to improve political debate.
True for the aff – only making women’s participation an explicit goal of our democracy assistance solves
Moon, 2011[ Ban Ki, Secretary General of the UN, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at the Round Table on Gender Equality and Democracy, in New York, today, 4 May: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sgsm13541.doc.htm]
First, gender inequality in decision-making remains a great impediment to … system can improve its democracy assistance programming. Let us do our utmost to promote women’s democratic participation — and to ensure that democracies are accountable to women.
People have a cognitive bias against high probability-low magnitude impacts. You should undervalue their DAs – the longer the chain of events the less likely the scenario
Yudkowsky 06 [Eliezer, 8/31/2006. Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Palo Alto, CA. “Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks, Forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic, singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf.
The conjunction fallacy similarly applies to futurological forecasts. … of any of the existential risks discussed in this book - or some other cause which none of us foresaw. Yet for a futurist, disjunctions make for an awkward and unpoetic-sounding prophecy.
Political focus on catastrophe first shuts down deliberative politics and causes militarization and perpetual war
Carollo 03 [Kevin, asst prof of English at U Minnesota, Moorhead, Bad Subjects, Issue #64, September, http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/64/carollo.html]
The much-heralded individualist spirit of American society relies on nurturing a fear of … one another like human beings. The recognition of panic unites us more than we know, for it forces us to imagine a better world than the inhospitable one we're stuck with now.
Current frameworks reflect a male perspective reinforcing masculine hegemony
Charlesworth et al 91 [Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney Law School, 1991 (Hilary, 85 American Journal of International Law 613, lexis]
The structure of the international legal order reflects a male …rincipal legal systems of the world" n66 on the Court, but not in the direction of representing women, half of the world's population.
Political developments are unverifiable media fabrications
Edelman 87 [Murray, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, “Constructing the Political Spectacle,” Pg. 104]
It is language about political events, not the events in any other sense… about other unobservables. Their social situations make people sensitive to some political news, promises, and threats and insensitive to other communications.
Prefer systemic impacts over short term scenarios
Bassiouni 03 [M. Cherif, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, President, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University College of Law; President, International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (Siracusa, Italy); President, International Association of Penal Law (Paris, France), Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Spring]
At the end of the Second World War, the world collectively pledged "never again." While the intention of this global promise may have been sincere, its implementation has proved elusive. There have been over 250 conflicts in the twentieth century alone, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to … represents a short-term vision of expediency over more enduring human values.
