Q: Will the Beijing platform benefit the world's women

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 18, 1995 | by Rebecca J. Cook, | Elizabeth B. Lurie

Yes: It focuses attention on the plight of women the world over.

The benefits of the Women's Platform for Action to be presented at the U.N. Conference in Beijing must be examined in accordance with the many different realities in which women live the world over. These differences include conditions of oppression, denial, humiliation and servitude -- conditions those accustomed to the opportunities available to most women in America might find difficult to imagine. But difference is amply present within the United States itself, as can be readily seen on a journey from the downtown cores, through the ghettos and barrios, to the comfortable suburbs and beyond to rural America.

Had the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the Beijing Platform for Action this summer it could have aired the different realities of women in America and beyond. It would have recognized how barriers to women harm families that depend on women as the mainstarys of family life, as nurturers of children and as wage earners.

Surveying these social and economic realities through the lens of political ideology, many senators, supported by newsmedia ideologues, have attempted to use the Beijing platform to advance their own domestic agendas. They have isolated selected phrases from the full spectrum of issues that compose the platform to reinforce the stereotypes they want to project and to make the Beijing conference fit their purposes. They have publicized a few extremist representatives of non-government organizations to disparage governmental delegations to the official U.N. conference.

Advocates of isolationism, defenders of nationalistic sovereignty and followers of the historic belief in women's irrelevance to serious decisions can all find language in the platform to buttress their fears, phobias and sneers. Balanced readers who see the platform in its full context, however, will identify many themes that can be promoted to benefit not only women but the many interests in justice, family life and civil society that men and women hold dear. Any international initiative gives as much room to unreasonable pessimism as to unreasonable optimism, but defeatism can fulfill its own prophecy.

The Draft Platform for Action is being submitted to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (Sept. 4-15, 1995) for completion and adoption. The document attempts to speed the removal of continuing obstacles to women's full and equal participation in all spheres of life, to protect women's human rights and to integrate women's concerns into all aspects of national life. The draft platform identifies critical areas of concern (see box) and specifies strategic objectives and actions that should be pursued to address each of these areas. The platform concludes by discussing institutional and financial arrangements for implementation at the national, regional and international levels.

Yes, the platform's 149 pages are too many and its bureaucratic jargon is not easily understood by most of the world's women. Certainly, Beijing is not the location most women would have chosen for the forum, but international diplomatic rotation among regions required that the conference be held in Asia, and apparently only China volunteered to host it. International relations have been dominated by the dilemmas that traditional politics have prioritized. International arms races continue, nuclear terrorism remains a threat, "ethnic cleansing" still soils the world and national problems of drug trafficking have international origins. The Beijing platform addresses anew the harsh realities -- family, community and social discriminations -- that beset the half of humanity called women.

Government delegations at the conference are negotiating the final text of the platform with a view to its implementation in their respective countries. The platform will be a consensus document reflecting the views and aspirations of the 185 member states of the United Nations. The platform compels governments to address the impact of their domestic policies on women and families that women lead. This process of national, international and comparative reflection can only benefit the world's women.

All of the critical areas of concern at Beijing hold the promise to advance understanding of injustices to women. Three alone are sufficient to illustrate room for improvement in national practice and the need for international recognition of the dangers in which many women live: violence, discrimination against female children and denials of human rights.

The Beijing platform explains that women are subjected to physical violence and sexual abuse that cut across lines of nationality, income, class, culture, race and religion. Publicity given to incidents of domestic violence and ethnic rape does not show even a tip of the horrendous iceberg. Sexual and nonsexual violence and subjugation of women by denial of their reasonable hopes and ambitions to live decently gratify historic lust for power over the powerless. These forms of violence are aspects of the harassment, intimidation and servitude in which women in many countries of the world are forced to live. Traditional institutions of states including elected governments, law-enforcement agencies and religious institutions have been shamefully slow to recognize their neglect of justice for women. Pope John Paul's recent apology for the role of the Catholic Church in marginalizing women is welcome recognition of this injustice.