Women Bring Hopes, Plans To Meeting The Networking During The Trip May Also Help U.N. Delegates Achieve Goals

Thousands of delegates from around the world converged Monday on Beijing for two conferences on women, bringing hopes of promoting progress in areas ranging from health care to jobs to - most elusive of all - political power.

“I think they come here with a level of excitement, a level of frustration and a level of anger and determination that there will be change,” said delegate Sunera Thobani as she pushed her luggage out of Beijing’s international airport.

Thobani, president of Canada’s non-governmental National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and most of the others arriving Monday were headed for a conference of private groups that opens Wednesday, five days before the U.N. women’s conference.

The first of three women’s trains, the U.N.-sponsored Beijing Express from Warsaw, Poland, arrived with 250 women. They had spent eight days on the rails talking, singing and dancing.

“They made enough contacts with each other … and I think they have a lot more confidence to face the issues and really get what they want out of the conference,” said Stacey Gilbert, an U.N. worker who rode the train.

About 24,000 delegates are expected at a women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Forum, while about 6,000 are expected for the U.N. World Conference on Women, which runs Sept. 4-15.

The U.N. conference will adopt a document calling on member governments to abolish discrimination against women in education and work, end violence against them, develop programs to alleviate female poverty and other specific steps.

But it will be the fourth major U.N.-sponsored conference in three years that seeks to promote huge social changes. Participants have all become a bit jaded.

That is why many of the delegates arriving Monday pinned their real hopes not on the formal declaration and government action, but on the women arriving around them.

“There are 200 women taking part from Pakistan. Many come from the grass roots, from villages. When they go home and share their information, that will have effect,” said Nageen Malik, who represents a Pakistani group that offers legal, medical and financial help for women.

The Canadian delegate, Thobani, said her group will push for the NGO group to establish a permanent, international women’s network to work on issues ranging from health care to jobs to political power in between high-profile conferences.

Conference organizers, meanwhile, pre pared the hall where the U.N.-sponsored meetings will take place, raising the Chinese and U.N. flags outside the building Monday morning.

“This will be the biggest, and I dare say most important United Nations conference in history,” said Gertrude Mongella, a Tanzanian diplomat and secretary general of the conference. “This is a conference for action.”

In groups small and large, delegates arrived throughout the day and for the most part were smoothly directed to buses and taken to registration centers. Most arrived with bags bulging from brochures and workshop props, and Chinese volunteers in bright pink T-shirts helped heft the luggage onto buses.

Zhang Xiaohang, vice president of a Beijing travel agency, was among the pink-shirted greeters. He said they got to the airport at 4 a.m. and would work in shifts until the day’s last flight came in, at 10 p.m.

“Today is our busiest day so far, and it’s gone pretty well,” he said.