After The Conference, The Key Word Now Is Action Women’s Activists Set Forth To Carry Out Their Agenda
The old boys’ network better watch out. The 30,000 women who left Beijing energized to fight for women’s rights don’t yet have an old girls’ network, but they’re on the move.
Armed with a 150-page plan of action, they are heading to the four corners of the world to pressure governments to change discriminatory laws and put money into health and education instead of arms and ammunition.
Perhaps as important as the document itself is the global network of women who are now committed to achieving its goals - equality, development and peace.
Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who made a rousing call for action at Friday’s close of the Fourth World Conference on Women, said the women’s network is growing and reaching down to the grass roots.
“Women’s issues have become broader issues than they were maybe 20 years ago,” and now include topics such as development, the economy and the environment, she said in an interview.
Since the first U.N. women’s conference in Mexico City in 1975, women have been organizing internationally. Their focus has sharpened and their political skills have been honed.
At the last U.N. women’s conference in Nairobi in 1985, the negotiators were mainly male bureaucrats, and representatives of voluntary organizations were pretty much sidelined, said Indian feminist Gita Sen.
Over the past decade, she said, women’s organizations recognized that it was crucial to get their views across when governments and international agencies were discussing issues and making commitments.
Otherwise, “we’re always put in the position of having to plead with them after the fact … that somehow we fit into their agendas,” she said.
In the international arena, women first made a big difference at the U.N. conference on human rights in Vienna in 1993 when they put women in the center of the human rights debate, she said in an interview.
At last year’s U.N. population conference in Cairo, women again played a critical role, changing the debate from controlling population growth to women’s rights to control their bodies, she said.
American feminist Betty Friedan, godmother of the women’s liberation movement, said the women who came to Beijing “were not there as victims the way they were in previous conferences.”
When the conference started on Sept. 4, many feared the Vatican would re-fight the battle it waged against abortion in Cairo - and that delegates would backtrack on the Cairo declaration that women have a right to determine when and whether to have children. Neither happened.
Surprising many participants, delegates from 189 countries meeting in Beijing approved several measures that went farther than Cairo. They declared that women have the right to control their own sexuality and that governments should review laws punishing women who have abortions.
The Beijing conference also reflected the growth in the women’s movement since Nairobi. There were 300 non-governmental organizations trying to lobby governments on women’s issues in Nairobi and more than 3,000 in Beijing.
For all women’s activists, the key word now is action.
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, deputy foreign minister of Namibia, said Africa’s agenda in Nairobi was to end apartheid in South Africa and liberate the continent from colonialism. With those goals achieved, it is now focusing on development “and economic liberation,” she said.
“From here, we will not rest,” she said, noting that African nations which met daily in Beijing would set up a regional organization to ensure that governments implement the Platform For Action.
It is this kind of commitment that many women see as one of the most important results from Beijing.
“This conference is the jumpstart for the next century, where women I think will be the most prominent of the peacemakers and the negotiators and the decisionmakers,” Bella Abzug, the American feminist and former congresswoman, said in an interview.
But they aren’t there yet.
Patricia Licuanan of the Philippines, the head of the conference’s main committee and of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, said the process of building a women’s network like the old boys’ network is just beginning.
“It’s just now that women are really getting into positions where they can network, or take advantage of people at the same level who do the same thing,” she said.
“I’m sure … it will grow exponentially.”
xxxx BEIJING WOMEN’S CONFERENCE LISTS MAJOR AIMS Sex: Women have the right to decide freely all matters related to their sexuality and child-bearing. The platform condemns forced sterilizations and forced abortions. Rape in war: The systematic rape of women in wartime is a crime and must be immediately stopped. Perpetrators are war criminals and must be punished. Children’s rights: Children have the right to privacy when receiving health information and services, but their rights must be balanced against their parents’ rights and duties. Whose rights dominate will vary according to the child’s maturity. Women in power: Governments, parties and the entire private sector should “build a critical mass” of women leaders, executives and managers in strategic, decision-making positions. Female inheritance: Governments should guarantee women equal rights to inherit, although they may not necessarily inherit the same amount as sons in every instance. The family: It is the basic unit of society and should be strengthened, protected and supported. Various forms of the family exist in different cultural, political and social systems. Women must not suffer discrimination because they are mothers. Peace-making: Governments and the private sector should ensure women are equally represented in all national and international bodies that set peace-keeping policies and in all stages of peace negotiations. Violence: Marital rape, genital mutilation of girls, attacks on women because their dowries are too small, domestic battering and sexual harassment at work are all forms of violence against women and violations of their human rights. Associated Press