Our Girl at the U.N.

The United Nations

THE first meeting of the 46th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women opened on March 4 with its first-ever election of a man— Tunisia’s Othman Jerandi—as “chairperson.” I had just arrived for my two-week stint as a U.S. delegate to the commission, and I figured that this crossing of the gender divide meant that my multilingual militant sisters had turned soft on men. Over the coming days, I was to learn the sadder truth: The feminist agenda has been so wildly successful at the U.N., with “gender mainstreaming” now all the rage, that real hostility emerges only when it’s time to block some U.S. proposal. The U.N. prides itself on its organizing principle of “consensus,” but delights in defining this term to mean ideas embraced by everyone but the U.N.’s single largest benefactor.

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Kate O'Beirne

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The United Nations

THE first meeting of the 46th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women opened on March 4 with its first-ever election of a man— Tunisia’s Othman Jerandi—as “chairperson.” I had just arrived for my two-week stint as a U.S. delegate to the commission, and I figured that this crossing of the gender divide meant that my multilingual militant sisters had turned soft on men. Over the coming days, I was to learn the sadder truth: The feminist agenda has been so wildly successful at the U.N., with “gender mainstreaming” now all the rage, that real hostility emerges only when it’s time to block some U.S. proposal. The U.N. prides itself on its organizing principle of “consensus,” but delights in defining this term to mean ideas embraced by everyone but the U.N.’s single largest benefactor.