The World Through Women's Eyes: Making History in Beijing
By Sally Rubenstone '73
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Although the media spotlight focused on bad food and worse weather, on
poor planning and over-zealous security measures, members of the Smith community
who were part of the history-making Fourth United Nations World Conference
on Women returned home from China with jubilant reports.
Associate Professor of Exercise and Sport Studies Christine Shelton, Professor
of Social Work Jeane Anastas and Assistant Professor of Theatre Carla Kirkwood
were among the thousands of women worldwide who made the trip to Beijing,
bringing with them varied aims and common bonds. Shelton traveled as a representative
of the Women's Sports Foundation; Anastas represented the National Association
of Social Workers (NASW) and the International Federation of Social Workers
(IFSW); and Kirkwood, who had previously lived in Beijing and speaks Chinese,
held independent delegate status.
What is commonly called the Beijing Conference was actually two different
but related events. The first was a forum for non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) that convened from August 30 through September 8. NGO is a broad
term that generally refers to what Americans call grass-roots organizations
but can be any nonprofit group.
The second was the World Conference on Women, held September 4 through 15
and composed of official delegates representing United Nations member states.
A key goal of the first caucus was to discuss a range of women's issues,
such as health care, employment and poverty. Resolutions and recommendations
were then passed to the U.N. delegates, to be incorporated in "The
Platform for Action." This, while not a binding document, will serve
as a worldwide blueprint for bettering women's lives by detailing the practices
and goals every country should adhere to or work to achieve.
If the process sounds confusing, add to it the problems created by a last-minute
change of venue that moved the NGO conference from downtown Beijing to Huairou,
a muddy village at least an hour away. Many called the Chinese government's
decision to send forum attendees to this bleak field of rain-soaked tents
and unfinished buildings an underhanded ploy to disable the parallel events'
mission.
Shelton and Anastas had credentials to attend both the NGO forum and the
World Conference on Women. One of the tasks of Shelton's group was to keep
sports and physical activities for girls on the international agenda under
the health-care rubric-an aim they met successfully. She and three colleagues
presented a workshop called "Enriching Girls' and Women's Lives Through
Sport and Physical Activity," which drew a full-house audience that
included the highest-ranking women from the International Olympic Committee.
Shelton calls the attention paid to athletics at the conferences a first.
"Twenty years ago," she adds, "I would have been laughed
out of the hall." Yet, although buoyed by such signs of progress, she
was shocked to hear of grave injustices, such as sexual abuse and impregnation
of young Kenyan athletes by their coaches.
Jeane Anastas, a member of the NASW's National Committee on Women's Issues,
had a two-part mission in China: to represent the position of American social
workers on women's issues, and to learn and bring ideas back home. Anastas
felt that "it proved to be a complex and frustrating process to have
input on platform language in Beijing," but she was satisfied that
the IFSW was able to review and endorse a resolution calling for adequate
attention to issues of mid-life and older women. "There was also more
attention paid in the platform statement to mental health issues than ever
before," Anastas reports.
Kirkwood, who had studied at the Central Drama Academy in Beijing a decade
ago, attended the NGO forum after spending three weeks interviewing Chinese
women directors and students at her former school. Although greatly concerned
about diverse issues on the NGO docket, she was especially interested in
seeing productions by women's performance groups, such as those from the
Philippines, India, Japan and Australia, and learning about the successes
and struggles of other women artists around the globe. Many of her observations
will be parlayed into her work at Smith, which includes a course she recently
initiated on Chinese theatre.
A Government Plot--or Not?
When asked if the Chinese government deserved the bad press that filtered
stateside, Anastas conjectured that some snafus were the result of mere
bureaucratic ineptitude while others may have been intentional, due to what
she calls "overanxiety about attendees' activities." She recounts,
for instance, the time she tried to take a taxi from her own Beijing hotel
to another-one close to Tiananmen Square. She was put in a cab by a doorman,
then quickly yanked out as the hotel doormen squabbled noisily with taxi
drivers. She later learned that all Beijing cabbies had been instructed
not to take the delegates near the notorious square, for fear that unruly
demonstrations might erupt.
On the other hand, insists Kirkwood, some of the delegates, especially from
the more prosperous nations, were insensitive to the differences between
the Chinese culture-and economy-and their own. "For example,"
she points out, "people were complaining about the simple, sparsely
furnished apartments where they stayed in Huairou. But they were paying
less than twenty dollars a night, and even the president of the university
I attended lives in an identical flat. 'These accommodations are very honored,'
I tried to explain, but many women did not grasp this." "I think
that the Chinese government was unfairly blamed for too many of the problems,"
she observes. "Even the rain seemed to be considered some sort of communist
plot!"
Little could quell Kirkwood's enthusiasm, nor that of her Smith colleagues,
after sharing experiences with women from 185 other countries. "One
thing that struck me," says Anastas, "was how profoundly similar
and yet profoundly different the issues are in each cultural context."
"But just showing up was what was most essential," she concludes.
"So many people stood up and were counted. It was like going to a demonstration
and voting with your feet, saying 'These things are important.' It renewed
one's commitment to the welfare of women and girls as a primary issue."
A World of Differences
And now, months after the jet lag has worn off, the ardor has not. The
three Smith professors agree that what happened in Beijing has made a difference
in many places and in many ways. For instance, says Shelton, when the International
Olympic Committee met following the events in China, they issued a statement
calling for representation of at least 10 percent women on all national
Olympic committees. "No one can convince me that this isn't directly
related to Beijing," Shelton contends.
Anastas is currently writing two official policy statements for the NASW:
one on women's issues, one on gender- and race-based workplace discrimination.
"Certainly what I learned at the conference has helped me in crafting
these," she says, "and in advocating for women's issues in these
arenas." Anastas has also backed an NASW initiative to derail proposed
Republican welfare reforms. "One of the conference's slogans,"
she explains, "was 'Look at the World Through Women's Eyes.' Well,
if you look at this welfare reform through women's eyes, you'll see that
it's punitive to women and their children."
Yet, despite such changes, Kirkwood is cautious. "Perhaps it's a mistaken
idea that some 'big bang' is going to come out of the conferences,"
she suggests. "But each of us who was there is active in some area
of women's issues in our home country. So now it is our job to bring what
we've learned back to our own work-whatever and wherever it is." |
