Beijing in Perspective

In TCRNATiONAL Trends Beijing in Perspective Peggy Simpson As the first post-Cold War international women's conference, Beijing had a different tone and depth from such previous meetings of women as Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, and Nairobi in 1985. The media focused overwhelmingly on the logistical nightmares of the Beijing conference. These were formidable but the delegates worked around them. Nobody said progress was easy and Beijing proved it. But much work got done. Afterward, it was obvious that the network of women's rights activists was far larger and far more sophisticated and credible than had been recognized before Beijing. The media focus on dissension and disarray was predictable. I had covered the Mexico City conference for the Associated Press. By the time I arrived from Washington, D.C, the local AP staffers from the Mexico City bureau already had met many arriving delegations—and had asked the women if they were "bra burners," the code word for radical feminists of that era. Some of the women were confused by the questions, others were offended. But the AP stories that went out over the wires about how this leader or that "was NOT a bra burner" set a disturbing tone for the conference. This year, I was coming to Beijing from Poland, where I have been covering the economic, political, and "psychological" changes after the collapse of communism. I had obtained a rare seat on the Beijing Express, a train sponsored by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) that induded more than 200 women from more than thirty countries once part of the Soviet bloc. We spent eight days together, through Poland, Belarus, Russia (induding two days in Siberia), Mongolia, and China itself before reaching Beijing. By mid-trip, we were hearing astounding rumors about our train and others destined for the U.N. conference. The Chinese media was reporting that the train was carrying prostitutes to the U.N. conference—and that, in fact, Chinese authorities were braced for an invasion of naked lesbian prostitutes who would bite those who got in their way and, somehow, by doing so give them the AIDS virus. I wasn't sure if this represented progress from Mexico City or not. The Western media had a field day with the reports of the Chinese fears of feminists running amok. The upshot was, yet again, a certain "belittling tone"—a modern twist on the "bra-burners" questions twenty years ear- © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. ι (Spring) 138 Journal of Women's History Spring lier. It shaped the coverage of the conference and left mutions of viewers and Usteners convinced Beijing was a bizarre nightmare for aU concerned. No one should have been surprised at the real or imagined attempts to debunk the Beijing conference. This is about women being full partidpants in society, not as extensions of men or as wives and mothers, but as autonomous people with ambitions of their own, with their own contributions to make to their countries and to the world. This means acquiring and using power controlled and used by men in most countries. Beijing continued the job of identifying obstacles that have blocked women from reaching their goals and of shaping strategies for tackling those barriers, worldwide and in tens of thousands of followup venues, back home. Consensus on core issues has to be translated into enforceable action back home, by nongovernmental organizations or NGOs, to work for new laws or to enforce the old ones; to educate people about the "culture" of today compared to the stereotypes of yesterday. And this is a "use it or lose it" proposition. An international conference itself can only do so much; back-home assessments and activism are the enforcing mechanisms. This works. In Nairobi, for example, there had been a general consensus reached on issues of violence against women. That was extended and reinforced in Beijing. It was agreed that violence against women cannot be rationalized by calling it "cultural." In Nairobi, one particular form of violence in disguise as cultural norms—cliterectomy—began to be addressed by the mainstream media and NGOs. There needed to be education about the essence...