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Beijing Plus Five: Reviewing Women's Progress, Part One
by Jo Freeman
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In the last
25 years the United Nations has sponsored four international women's
conferences in different parts of the world: Mexico City (1975),
Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995). These
were major events, bringing not only official delegates from the
world's governments to the official conferences, but tens of thousands
of women from all over the world to auxiliary conferences and festivals
held simultaneously.
This time, it was a mini conference, (a
Special Session) in New York City during the week of June 5-10.
As before, there were numerous companion meetings of NGOs (Non Governmental
Organizations) open to any woman. Everything was smaller: time,
numbers and purpose.
The purpose of UNGASS (United National
General Assembly Special Session) was to review progress made in
implementing the 150 page Platform for Action written in Beijing
in 1995, not to write a new document. That's why it was unofficially
called Beijing Plus Five, and not the Fifth World Conference. (Officially,
it was called "Women 2000: Gender equality, development and peace
in the twenty-first century").
As before, 188 Member States sent delegates
to argue about words. Their numbers were augmented by 2,043
representatives from 1136 NGOs, filling the UN buildings with 2,300
extra bodies, waiting to hear 207 speakers address ten plenary
sessions.
Throughout New YOrk City, there were
numerous NGO meetings on the impact on women of armed conflict,
indigenous women, violence against women, gender strategies, and
many, many more. Highlights included panels on Women, Science
and Technology by the Association for Women in Science; Women and
Racism; Men's Roles and Values; Gender Statistics; Poverty Eradication
Strategies; Internalized Oppression; and Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan
by the Feminist Majority Foundation. With help from a few
corporate sponsors, the Host Committee hosted a picnic on the Hudson
for NGO representatives and their friends.
Three newspapers published daily during
the week, as tabloids and on web sites: Earth Times,
which normally provides biweekly coverage of the UN; Women Action,
a global information network printed its commentaries in French,
English and Spanish; Flame, an African daily, published in
French and English. There was a daily internet TV program
(in French) and daily radio broadcasts.
Paper progress
The UN was awash with paper, as many
countries piled tables with vast amounts of slick reports on their
progress since Beijing, and quite a few posters.
In some countries 'progress' has been
more talk than action. Half of Kuwaiti college graduates
are women, but no woman can vote. When the US military bombed
Iraq to rescue Kuwait from its military embrace, it didn't demand
female suffrage in exchange for restoring the all-male government
to power. Kuwaiti women are now demanding it, but the men
tell them to wait until they have "progressed more."
In India, there has been a 40 percent
increase in reported cases of sexual harassment and a 15 percent
increase in dowry deaths. India is one of those countries
with many more men than women, due to selective abortion of female
fetuses. The loss of women available for marriage has not
increased the desirability of girls; instead men import young
girls from other countries when they can't find suitable wives
at home.
In Afghanistan, women and girls can be
beaten or killed for going to school or working for pay or leaving
the house unaccompanied by a male relative and covered from head
to toe.
Israel has become one of the world's
centers in the trafficking of women, where it is a $2 billion-a-year
industry.
In the formerly Communist countries women
have lost ground. Women's employment fell by 40 percent in Hungary,
21 percent in Russia and 24 to 31 percent in the Baltic states.
Fewer girls are finishing high school than ten years ago.
Health care and child care have all but collapsed in many places.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reminded
the delegates that "Most countries have yet to legislate in favor
of women's rights to own land." Inability to inherit a husband's
land is putting into poverty widows created by Central Africa's
wars.
Two thirds of the 110 million children
who are not in school are girls.
Betty King, the American envoy for economic
and social affairs at the UN, said "Since Beijing, nearly 400,000
women have died unnecessarily from unsafe abortions. Even
when abortion is legal, too many countries have unsafe doctors,
nurses or other health providers." About 600,000 women die
in childbirth every year.
Real progress was seen less in statistics
than in attitude change. Female genital mutilation is no
longer claimed to be "cultural," properly left to each society
to decide for itself. Sixteen African nations have made it illegal.
There is a growing international agreement that burning wives
to get more dowry, or killing female relatives to restore family
honor, should be treated as serious crimes. Rape is recognized
as a war crime.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
has put trafficking -- taking women from their homelands to sell
as sex slaves -- on the top of her agenda. Between one and
two million women and girls are coerced each year into prostitution,
manual labor, and domestic service. About half a million
of them are from eastern and central Europe. Almost 50,000
end up in the United States. When Albright addressed the
UN gathering on Thursday, she invited "everyone here to join in
a multi-year, multi - national effort to win the fight against
trafficking." Kofi Annan called it "a worldwide plague."
Hillary Speaks
Hillary took time out from running for the U.S. Senate to address
the
UN meeting on Monday. In 1995 she traveled to Hairou where
the NGO Forum was being held to address the 'unofficial' women
who pushed and shoved their way into a converted movie theater
to see her. This time she confined her remarks to the 'official'
meeting. Conference Room #4 was full, but not overcrowded,
and the audience was enthusiastic when she told them that the
Beijing conference, was "one of the most moving and meaningful
experiences in my life." But "our work is far from done,"
she said.
"What meaning can free markets have for
women who, desperate for economic opportunity, are brought and
sold like any consumer product? What meaning can freedom
and democracy have for the growing number of women and children
who are trafficked into other countries to be abused, degraded,
and enslaved?"
The lead speaker in a panel on micro-credit,
she emphasized the need to bring women out of poverty and reminded
the delegates that 70 percent of the world's poor are women.
When she finished, Ela Bhat, founder of India's Self-Employed
Women's Association, told the audience not to see micro-credit
as a quick fix. Although 14 million of the world's poorest
families are being reached by 1,065 micro-credit institutions
and 75% of the clients are women, there was much for governments
to do.
African women questioned whether micro-credit
was a boon or bane. By itself, it does not empower women
said Joanna Kerr, President of the Association for Women in Development.
She said that training, information, and readily available markets
are what give women self sufficiency. Some of the practices
are also repressive. Meetings and paperwork can consume
a lot of time. Interest rates are high and repayment must begin
immediately. Women who borrow to grow food can't repay until
they sell their harvest. Nor does it help the truly
destitute. As in the developed countries, it takes money
to make money. Those on the bottom can't get up by themselves.
A few miles away in the Customs House,
Richard Holbrooke, the US ambassador to the UN, told a few dozen
people that investing in women, through small loans, led to more
development in Third World countries than lending to men.
Men spent their profits on tobacco, alcohol and leisure activities
for themselves, Holbrooke said. Women spent them on their
children, especially for better food and school fees. This
finding was part of a slow realization by development agencies
that men who control household resources shortchange women and
girls. Educating girls decreases poverty, family size, and
infant mortality.
Tuesday evening, at a large, formal reception
for honored guests sponsored by the US mission in the American
Museum of Natural History, Hillary thanked Holbrooke's wife, Kati
Marton, for converting him to feminism.
For more information check out the following websites:
www.conferenceofngos.org
www.iwmf.org
www.womenswire.org
www.un.org/womenwatch/daw
www.uswc.org
www.unesco.org
www.whrnet.org
www.wedo.org
Part
Two >>
Jo Freeman is a political scientist and attorney. Her most recent book is At Berkeley in the Sixties: Education of an Activist (Indiana U. Press 2004). Her previous book, A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) was reviewed by Emily Mitchell, a Senior Women Web Culture Watch critic.
Jo's next book, We Will Be Heard: Women's Struggles for Political Power in the United States, will be published by Rowman and Littlefield in March.
Other books include The Politics of Women's Liberation, winner of the 1975 American Political Science Association's prize for the Best Scholarly Book on Women and Politics; five editions of Women: A Feminist Perspective (ed.). Jo edited Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies and (with Victoria Johnson) as well as Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from NYU's School of Law. Visit her website, www.jofreeman.com and email her at joreen@jofreeman.com
©Jo Freeman for SeniorWomenWeb
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