Constituency Building: Focus Groups

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In April, IWHC, working with the public opinion consulting firm of Belden & Russonello, conducted four focus groups in Chicago and Los Angeles to assess activist women's interest in a new vision of foreign policy based on the central tenets of the Cairo and Beijing conference agreements. Participants were women ages 18-25 and women 35 and over, who were well-educated and active on women's issues, the environment, or other social issues. Several of the older women in both cities had attended the Beijing conference. Among the main findings from the groups were:

- full agreement that women's voices are not heard now in U.S. foreign policy making and need to be;

- much concern about framing a new foreign policy in terms of "national security" (many asked, "whose security?");

- strong commitment to the U.S. providing foreign assistance as long as it is not used as a way of asserting control (neo-imperialism), or withheld from the people who need it by corrupt or inefficient governments and international agencies;

- belief that partnerships with governments and, specifically, non-governmental organizations are critical to the development process; and

- very positive reactions to the central concepts of IWHC's work (sexual health, reproductive health, sexual rights and reproductive rights) and categorical rejection of the term "population control."

Many of the women in the Los Angeles and Chicago focus groups said they would like to be involved in an effort to get women's voices, values and ideas into the U.S. foreign policy-making establishment, and nearly 90% asked for more information about IWHC's work. They said they would talk to friends, contact journalists or sponsor panels to discuss the issues. The focus groups also indicated that an interested, activist constituency does exist among U.S. women for re-fashioning foreign policy-making. The results of these groups are similar to the findings from recent broad-based surveys of U.S. attitudes to foreign assistance; there is interest in, but not much knowledge of, foreign affairs, and people fear corruption and bureaucracy. However, when success stories are shown, the response is positive and people agree that their tax money should be spent on foreign assistance. In general polls, health, reproductive health, and women's issues spark more interest than human rights-based foreign policies do.