BY LAURA GARZA AND MAGGIE TROWE
BEIJING - Clapping and cheering breaks out periodically
among the crowd of women who are milling about the Beijing
Workers Center, as new groups arrive for the Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGO) Forum on Women in Huairou,
about 35 miles from here. The forum runs from August 30-
September 8.
"Where are you from?" people ask each other as they find common languages to communicate in and exchange looks at the names and organizations listed on their badges. As this Militant reporting team arrives on the scene there is already a group from Japan, a busload of women from the United States who were on tour in other parts of China, and women from France, several African countries, and elsewhere.
Most are middle-aged, but some young women have made their way to the conference. The Chinese volunteers and workers greeting guests and staffing registration tables are overwhelmingly young.
The NGO Forum is being held in conjunction with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, which takes place September 4-15 in Beijing. Official government delegations are scheduled to participate along with observers from the NGOs. The two gatherings are expected to be the largest ever UN-sponsored conferences, with tens of thousands of women traveling to China to take part in discussions on the fight for women's rights.
Christiane Gaspard of the Center for Information on Women and the family in Guadeloupe is among those who have arrived. "Many women in Guadeloupe are unemployed single mothers," she said. "We are interested in the fight against unemployment. The unemployment rate has gone from 35 percent 10 years ago to 55 percent today."
Catherine Muuthali, from Malawi, said she is concerned with "the rights of the girl child. In Malawi violence against women and rape of young girls is a big problem. The girl child should have equal education and opportunity. The destiny of women is not only marriage. Development fails without the advancement of women."
Irene Foyentin of the National Association of Women's Studies of France, said her group wanted to get a resolution passed by the NGO conference to encourage more women's studies programs at universities.
Valda Napurrula of Australia said she is "interested in the rights of indigenous women and meeting up with others from around the world to see what common goals we have."
Two women from Cuzco, Peru, also came to highlight the problems facing indigenous women in Latin America in particular. A representative of the Peasant Federation of Anta Province was interested in discussing, "education, pay, and employment."
"The poverty we suffer obliges us to organize ourselves," she said. "We are not respected for who we are, as women, as Quechua Indians. The economic situation in Peru is returning women to poverty."
These delegates plan to return to Peru and begin working on a nationwide mobilization of indigenous women to coincide with the UN's declaration of 1995 as the year of indigenous peoples.
30,000 expected to participate
The China Organizing Committee expects 30,000 overseas
participants will be on hand including more than 12,000
people from Asian and Pacific countries. Some 5,000 women
from China will join the discussions. Reporters from India
and Indonesia said those countries would have 300 and 200
participants respectively.
By the afternoon of August 29 more than 10,000 delegates had arrived. The unparalleled attendance at this event reflects the greater participation of women in the workforce that has come in part with the growing penetration of industry and manufacturing throughout the world.
While the growing economic crisis takes a heavy toll on women, there are more women in the labor force today, from Africa to Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Women's participation in the labor market grew an average of 10 percent in all regions of the world. In Africa the ratio of women in the workforce for every 100 men went from 39 to 71 between 1970 and 1990, while in Asia and the Pacific it went from 28 to 48 from 1970 to 1980.
Many of those participating in the NGO Forum hope to influence the outcome of the platform of action that is to be voted on by the delegates to the Fourth World Conference on Women. A draft of the platform, 149 pages long, has been discussed for months as women prepared their participation and planned workshops and conferences.
Many sections of the document are in brackets, denoting lack of agreement. This includes passages such as, "Moreover, the debt burden has forced many developing countries to undertake structural adjustment policies that are detrimental to their social development. The number of people living in poverty has therefore increased disproportionately in most countries, particularly the heavily indebted countries, during the past decade."
The platform states abortion should not be used as a contraceptive method and that if it is legal, it should be safe, but does not take a stand in favor of abortion being safe, legal, and accessible for all women.
The fact that thousands of women will come together, with a large component from the third world, has drawn the ire of right-wing forces.
The words `mother' and `marriage' occur rarely," complained Philip Lawler in an August 22 column in the Wall Street Journal, "and only once does the word `motherhood' appear in a positive context. `Wife' and `husband' do not appear at all."
The role of the family, women's integration in the workforce, equal access to employment and decent pay, abortion, immigration, and violence against women are among the issues that will be debated at the conference.
Among the speakers at the conference will be Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights who will address the opening plenary session; Cheryl Carolus of the African National Congress who will join a session on Approaches to Governance; and Hillary Clinton who is scheduled to address the session titled Strategies for the Future.
Participation from the United States is expected to number 5,000. The official U.S. government delegation, headed by UN Representative Madeleine Albright, has been posturing as a leading defender of human and women's rights in the world.
Hundreds of presentations
Hundreds of presentations each day are planned by a
myriad of organizations including the Asian Pacific
Environmental Network, the Federation of Cuban Women,
Hiroshima Women's Network, YWCA, World Assembly of Muslim
Youth, Hmong Women of Minnesota Count Down to Beijing
Coalition, Catholics for Free Choice, and the All Armenian
Women's Union.
The status of women in the Middle East will be discussed, with more than a dozen events planned to express varying points of view on women in countries where Islam is the dominant religion.
There are also a large number of workshops on women in Asia, with organizations from Japan participating, including several that will take up the issue of the Korean "comfort women" who were forced to provide sexual services for the Japanese military during World War II.
Tian Qiyu of the China Organizing Committee said a playground area in Huairou has been set aside for demonstrations and processions, "but these should not infringe on the sovereignty of the host country."
The holding of the conferences in China has been the subject of much debate, with some U.S. politicians advocating a boycott to pressure the Chinese government to be more agreeable to Washington's dictates.
While there have been dire warnings about possible problems entering the country with literature and materials for the conference, when we arrived with several other planeloads of participants customs officials simply watched as everyone collected their boxes and proceeded to the exits. We didn't see Chinese officials check a single piece of luggage.
Most delegates we spoke with said they believe the conference provides an important opportunity to advance the case for women's equality and in general were excited to be here.