Emma Watson is leading the charge to have the Group of Seven leading industrial nations fund controversial feminist groups in the developing world and institute far-reaching gender-equality legislation.
The actress of “Harry Potter” fame seems to think that with a wave of a giant, transnational magic wand, she can make gender inequality vanish.
An activist on behalf of women’s rights as a U.N. Women goodwill ambassador, Watson helped launch the global movement HeforShe, which encourages men to advocate for gender equality and feminism.
With a quote from fellow artist and political activist Toni Cade Bamba (“The goal of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”) stitched onto the back of the jacket she wore to the G-7 Gender Equality Conference on May 10, Watson spoke about the importance of gender-equality legislation and sought financing for feminist movements across the globe.
The Group of Seven are the International Monetary Fund-designated seven most economically advanced countries in the world—the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The Gender Equality Conference also included numerous representatives and leaders from other countries in the European Union.
At the conference, members of the G-7 signed a joint declaration designating gender equality a “major global cause.” What specifically that means in practical terms is not entirely clear.
At the signing ceremony, France’s minister for gender equality, Marlene Schiappa, explained, “No country in the world has achieved gender equality between men and women, and no one can achieve it alone.”
The call to close the gender pay gap, end gender discrimination, and advance women’s “reproductive rights” is an ambitious—some would say extreme—leap, given the cultural context and current realities faced by women worldwide.
While the goals of ending discrimination and ensuring that women have equal rights in society is admirable, the path that Watson and her allies would take to get there is extreme, if not radical, in nature.
In an Instagram post with more than 2 million likes, Watson wrote, “We expect G-7 states to urgently adopt, fully implement, and fund, the most ambitious legislative frameworks on combating gender-based violence against women in order to create a fair, safe, and dignified world for its constituents.”
Ending “gender-based violence against women” is surely a goal all can support, but how exactly that’s going to come about is not clear, especially considering that the nations Watson was speaking to already are the world leaders in gender equality and economic development.
It seems less like a plan and more like a call for increased Western interventionism in the developing world.
Actually, what Watson and the other radical reformers at the G-7 plan to do to see their goals realized is fuzzy. Most of what information is available seems to be coming via social media and the group’s celebrity endorsements, such as Watson’s advocating for G-7 funding.
In another Instagram post, she describes a meeting with Women 7, a group she says is “advocating that G-7 make concrete commitments to finance feminist movements around the world.”
She goes on to say that “financial commitments are essential—without them, it’s impossible to implement gender-equality laws and make them a reality in the world. I sincerely hope we can [realize] their vision of creating a feminist G-7.”
Watson seems to be encouraging the G-7 member nations to financially back movements that push feminism across the globe, to institute radical gender-equality laws, and to put the drive for gender equality in the hands of expanding, intrusive governments.
There are problems with seeking to correct these perceived social problems legislatively.
Romina Boccia of The Heritage Foundation points out that gender pay-gap studies often do not factor in variables such as personal job preferences, types of occupation, hours worked, and education/experience background that may account for some of the perceived pay differentials.
Moreover, studies cited by leftists themselves even recognize that there are more women in globally prominent positions than ever before.
We should take gender inequality and discrimination seriously where it exists. However, it doesn’t serve anyone well to create a boogeyman where it doesn’t exist or to inhibit the progress already taking place.
Instead, unleashing economic freedom is the key to escaping poverty and ensuring equality. Providing economic opportunities to women—which many businesses and key influencers are already doing—will provide far more opportunity, empowerment, and prosperity to the developing world.
Empowering women to be drivers of innovation and job creation will not only give back to the world’s economy in a major way, these free-market principles also will give women the ability to tread their own path and make the decisions that most benefit themselves, their families, and their communities.
There are many reasons that economic opportunity is a far better solution for dealing with social ills faster, more efficiently, and more reliably than legislation or governmental edicts.
Legislation generally takes longer to take effect and clashes with culture. The free market ensures cooperation, provides options for women to pursue their calling in vocations, and works within the context of communities to drive real, lasting cultural change.
Heritage’s Anthony B. Kim, the editor of its Index of Economic Freedom, says that “[e]nsuring and spreading economic freedom for women is the best way to empower them and to propel an economy forward.”
According to Forbes, the top 10 largest American companies had combined total revenues of more than $2.1 trillion in 2015. More than half of the top 15 largest public companies in the world are based in the United States or the United Kingdom—already the world leaders in gender equality.
It seems that these values are already spreading without the help of G-7 funding. Responsible consumerism and economic freedom for women have and will spread the values of gender equality faster, further, and more efficiently than any government could ever hope to.
As companies spread these values worldwide, it’s likely that we will see further development of women’s rights and an increase in their ability to participate in and contribute to the global marketplace.
Economic opportunity gives women the ability to escape poverty and financial reliance on others—and the equality that Watson and others like her are wrongly assuming the G-7 can provide through foreign aid.
What we don’t need is more developed nations financing social movements in the developing world. We also don’t need more “progressive” legislation that places good intentions above economic commonsense.
Any such plan to have the most economically advanced and developed nations in the world fund incendiary feminist movements in developing nations, however well-intentioned, is nothing short of moral colonialism.
It also would create a good argument for critics that these sometimes controversial policies are simply the paternalism of Western nations.
The endorsement of an actress who dresses up and plays make-believe for a living doesn’t change that or make it a good idea.
Absent Watson waving that Harry Potter-style magic wand and casting a spell that turns lead into gold, we can confidently say that her proposal is a bad idea and would be a huge waste of taxpayer money.
Despite what the radical left would have you believe, women have more opportunity and occupy more positions of leadership than ever before. Don’t fall for the famous names or heated rhetoric that try to sell you on expanding foreign aid or global interventionism in the name of gender equality.
