Comparative Issues

At Nairobi, the most controversial issues were feminism itself and the role of politics. Although a lot of progress had been made since the first two UN women's conferences in Mexico and Copenhagen, there were still debates, initiated by women from the South, about whether feminism was a Western women's movement. This was despite the work that had been done before Nairobi to attempt to bring about respect for and celebration of diversity within the International Women's Movement. Nevertheless, it was still being asked whether "feminist issues" were too far removed from the survival issues of women of the South. These women also recoiled at the idea that Western women might try to take the lead on issues of tradition and culture which did not directly affect them, and there was further concern that the International Women's Movement created divisiveness between men and women working together on national issues.

The role of politics at the conference and in the movement was also a major source of controversy at Nairobi. Ronald Reagan sent his daughter, Maureen, to Nairobi as his official representative to tell women to stick to women's issues. Margaret Papandreou, the wife of the Greek Prime Minister and official representative from Greece, countered that "all issues were women's issues." But despite this stance, debt, apartheid and Zionism were the sticking points in arriving at consensus in the Forward Looking Strategies document.

Among the emerging issues at Nairobi were economic ones. A new South-led economics group, DAWN (Development Alternatives for a New Era), came to the conference with a macro-economic analysis of global crises and their impact on women. The launching of DAWN book Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives, was a major event. Other emerging issues were sex tourism (with opposition led by Sister Soledad of the Philippines) and the practice of female circumcision. The latter issue aroused some of the debates around culture and the appropriate roles for women of the North and South to play in such issues. Wages for housework and prostitution in the North and South were also prominent issues in 1985.

By 1995, many of the issues had changed. Impressive progress has been made in terms of information sharing, networking, organizing and lobbying on issues that were just emerging at Nairobi, and the use of the internet has made an incredible difference in this regard. The appropriateness of feminism in the international Women's Movement has received wide acceptance by women from both the North and South. In fact, women from the South have, in many areas, taken over leadership. The women of India, Southeast Asia, Japan, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America are particularly involved, and women of the former Soviet republic and Eastern Europe were active at the conference. On the other hand, the women of China and many of the Arab countries still do not seem to be well integrated.

Surprisingly, the position that feminism is a Western women's movement with no relevance for the South has been co-opted by conservative forces in order to discredit feminist work. Politicians as Bob Dole in the United States and Sharon Hayes of the Reform party in Canada have adopted this tactic. Hayes left the official conference at Beijing in disgust, decrying the "feminist agenda" of the Canadian delegation. The Vatican and certain Arab countries made similar objections.

The position that all issues are women's issues seemed to be generally accepted. in fact, I would argue that it sometimes went too far. With regard to the situation in China, broader political issues were discussed without any tie-in to women or women's perspectives.

The question of women's rights within the context of their cultures played a major role at Beijing, particularly at the official conference. A number of delegations from countries with large Roman Catholic or Muslim populations took the position that human rights could not be universally applied but rather, in certain instances, should be subordinated to national and religious customs. in the final version of the Platform for Action, though these traditions and customs are declared “significant” and “must be borne in mind,” ”. ..it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” ⁴

Sister Soledad's organization, TW MAE-W (Third World Movement Against the Exploitation of Women), has grown tremendously. But so has the issue of sex tourism, which has broadened to include trafficking in women, virtual sexual slavery (involving prostitution rings in the West), and the plight of domestic workers and mail order brides. A success of TW MAE-W has been to bring about an agreement between the Belgian and Philippine governments to curb the traffic in women between the two countries.