Program #406
"Women"
Host: Charlayne Hunter-Gault
TRT: 26:17
May 29, 1996

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and The Open Society Institute. Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I'm Charlayne Hunter Gault and you're watching "Rights and Wrongs," human rights television. This week, women's rights as human rights: The journey since the historic Women's Conference in Beijing.

(Cheers and Applause)

You'll hear from women who traveled to Beijing from all around the world. From Atlanta: there's not a corner of the globe you can go and not have a responsive cord around violence, around reproductive rights, around political rights; to Bangladesh: We have a lot of differences within the women's movement. A lot of differences. But we seem to be able to overcome them; to Zimbabwe: We are creating a structure by women, for women to look after themselves, personally, to look after their families, to look after their communities.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: There's an old Chinese maxim that women hold up half the sky. In the summer of '95, women the world over converged on China to flex their collective muscles in an attempt to shape an agenda for women's rights. There were 35,000 representatives from 189 countries, including high-profile women like the American first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): But it was the non-governmental organizations, the N.G.O.'s, which emerged as the main force behind getting human rights concerns high on the U.N. Conferences Agenda. "Rights and Wrongs" this week looks at women's activism on the global stage-- its growing influence, its future prospects. They came from small villages and large cities, from virtually every country. Some came on this peace train, which chugged from Helsinki to Beijing across six time zones. There was a feeling of exhilaration and anticipation. This trip to Beijing is actually a combination of a much longer journey that's taken two decades with stops on several continents, a cavalcade of concern that's roared through U.N. Conferences in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and now Asia, all marking the emergence of non-governmental organizations, or N.G.O.'s, as significant voices on the world scene.

VARIOUS: We want... equal power! We want...equal power! We want... equal power!

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): An outspoken former American Congresswoman helped play a key role in turning a cause into a movement. Bella Abzug, famous for big hats and bigger ideas, heads her own N.G.O., the Women's Environment Development Organization known as WEDO.

BELLA ABZUG: We're advocates for women's empowerment. We advocate for women to participate in decision-making on every level of government. N.G.O.'s are really people saying what they need and want, Telling it to government's, telling it to a community, telling it to the United Nations, telling it to the nation and the world.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The Beijing Women's Conference was actually the fourth world conference on women organized by the United Nations. Activists like Bella Abzug have played a prominent role not only at women's conferences, but also at conferences organized around related issues. An Environment and Development Conference took place in Rio De Janeiro in 1992.

BELLA ABZUG: And it was the first place where we developed a methodology known as the women's caucus at which N.G.O.'s came in and said this is what we think these documents should look like, line by line.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): A year later they were in Vienna.

BELLA ABZUG: It was a human right's conference where it was finally clearly stated-- and it seems almost a shame that you have to have a conference to state it-- that women's rights are human rights. many of you have waited a long time for this moment.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): As women networked, they built working relationships.

BELLA ABZUG: And then after that we had this conference in '94 in Cairo and that was on Reproductive Rights and Development. And that was a very significant conference that dealt with fundamental rights. It dealt with women's reproductive health, their reproductive rights, and it dealt with their social conditions.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): In the aftermath of these conferences the delegates and their groups stayed in touch and pressured their governments to implement what was agreed upon.

WOMAN SPEAKING: Who has access to which delegation?

BELLA ABZUG: We said, listen, we've had enough words. You know, we've had a lot of words on equality. We know want the music, which is the action. So we suggested that every country come to Copenhagen and in the major speeches made by their heads of state that they present what they're prepared to do. In other words, what commitments will they make? And we started to make that a conference of commitments.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): All of this globe-trotting paved the way for the largest and, some would add, most successful of U.N. Conferences so far, Beijing, where as at the other gatherings there was both a formal meeting of governments as well as a larger forum of N.G.O.'s.

WOMAN SPEAKING: I declare the N.G.O. Forum on Women, Beijing 1995 open !!!

BELLA ABZUG: By the time we got to Beijing, we made this issue of commitments a big issue, and we got a lot of countries to say, in the course of their speeches, what in fact they were going to do. We got 90 countries out of 189 to make specific commitments.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Those commitments were translated into the conference's final documents, a 130-page encyclopedia of women's issues and human rights concerns. There was a declaration and a 12-point platform for action. It included these priorities: Alleviating the burden of poverty on women, confronting violence against women, particularly domestic violence and the use of rape as a weapon of war, promoting equal sharing of family responsibilities, encouraging women's and girls' literacy and universal access to education, abolishing discrimination and prejudice against the girl child.

BELLA ABZUG: We did not allow, though efforts were made as they always are by governments, to sort of back out of what they had already agreed to. We said, "oh no. You agreed to that in Cairo. It now belongs in here, in whatever form is relevant. You agreed to it in Rio on environment, the same thing here. You agreed to this at the social summit on economic conditions, you have to bring it in here." We applied for some action. What came out of Beijing is the strongest statement, not perfect, but the strongest statement affecting women and all of their concerns that anybody has ever come out with.

WOMAN SPEAKING: Multiculturalism is part of gender education. It's part of the Beijing platform.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): So now the message from Beijing is being brought back home to all the N.G.O.'s through report back sessions like this one at New York's Waruk College in April 1996, seven months after Beijing. It's at sessions like these that the N.G.O.'s will decide when and where next to flex their muscles and extend their influence.

LYRICS: Gonna keep on moving forward. Gonna keep on moving forward.

BELLA ABZUG: N.G.O.'s live in the present and plan for the future. They believe that changes can take place because if we change life for women we change it for men and women, we change it for our children, we change it for everybody.

LYRICS: Never turning back. Never turning back.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The women who answered the call from Beijing came from every continent. They brought with them a wide range of local concerns and fused them together under the banner of women's rights as human rights. Independent filmmaker Prudence Hill is profiling three grassroots organizers from Asia, Africa, and here in America. By following these three women over several years, her film offers a personalized view of the emerging global women's movement and shows how the concerns of women worldwide are linked. "Rights and Wrongs" offers a preview of this work in progress.

PRUDENCE HILL: The passion of my life is to improve the accessibility and quality of reproductive health care for women, particularly for women in Bangladesh, which is my country.

(SINGING)

WOMAN SPEAKING: My mother sang this song and said to the African women, you must articulate your own needs because nobody else can articulate your needs for you. You are the only ones who know what your needs are and who understand them.

LORETTA: The stories we got to tell ain't just our stories. There's a story about women everywhere in the world. My name is Loretta, and I want to know how many of us out here are pissed!

(SINGING)

WOMAN SPEAKING: I see human rights as the ideological connection... Moving the women's rights as human rights movement forward to being universalized.

WOMAN SPEAKING: You begin to see a string which is common to everything. there is a lot to learn from the grassroots women.

(HORNS BLOWING)

SANDRA KABEER: It's a basic human right of every person to be able to make a choice about their fertility.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Sandra Kabeer started the Bangladesh Women's Health Coalition in Dhaka 15 years ago It provides health and family planning information as well as legal, educational, and credit services to local woman.

SANDRA KABEER: Women have demanded that we provide basic health care services for their children, immunization services for their children, basic health care services for women. They have demanded that they want functional literacy classes. They have demanded they want to know how they can get the information on ways to keep their families healthy. It's not that we sit here in this office, in the capital and think, well, this is quite a nice idea, let's just do it, no. It's because we have our ear to the ground.

SEKAI HOLLAND: We are creating a structure by women for women to look after themselves personally, to look after their families, to look after their communities by being involved in community development.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Since 1981, Sekai Holland has been working with village women in her homeland of Zimbabwe, helping to link their local organizations with the nationwide association of women's clubs.

SEKAI HOLLAND: The grassroots women said, "you come to the clubs to get skills for your hands, to look after yourself economically, to improve yourself economically, to improve your capacity to look after your family and to be involved in community development effectively with knowledge, with information, with skills." The grassroots woman lives for other people. She lives for her husband, for her children, for her community, and at the national level, she is the one who is actually producing wealth...Trying to get to be involved in development, in today's world joining other nations, other continents, other countries into the 21st century well-prepared from the grassroots.

LORETTA ROSS: Sister love really just started out as an organization that wanted to care for women who have H.I.V.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Six years ago in Atlanta, Loretta Ross and a friend founded Sister Love with a credit card and an unemployment check. Its mission was to provide adequate health services to poor women at the grassroots level.

LORETTA ROSS: Sister Love is an H.I.V./Aids Organization centered around women's needs, women-focus, women-ran, no decisions are made or created without the input of the women we serve, we take care of.

WOMAN SPEAKING: All of our organizations came out of meeting un-met needs. We would not start programs to help women who have AIDS if our governments were delivering enough services to the women who had AIDS. We would not start our clubs if the governments to whom we pay our taxes were already meeting those needs.

(LAUGHING AND TALKING)

WOMAN SPEAKING: We are really trying to link up international meetings about development.

LORETTA ROSS: It's been the Women's Movement that has totally redefined the roll of N.G.O.'s in having an impact on governmental policies.

BELLA ABZUG: Have you all gotten copies of the principals proposed by the Women's Caucus?

VARIOUS: No. No. No, no, no.

WOMAN SPEAKING: The platform of action... We are able to move forward telling our governments that you have signed and agreed to this document.

WOMAN SPEAKING: I see human rights as the ideological connection. ...Moving the women's rights as human rights movement forward.

WOMAN SPEAKING: The Women's Movement is already beginning to show the way about the concept of more equitable distribution of resources.

WOMAN SPEAKING: The process that is being followed by I.M.F. and the World Bank is that of completely recolonizing Africa.

WOMAN SPEAKING: We have a lot of differences within the women's movement, a lot of differences, but we seem to be able to overcome them. transcend. We maintain those differences, but we still maintain the strength of the movement.

LORETTA ROSS: There's not a corner of the world you can go and not have a responsive chord around violence, around reproductive rights, around political rights, around the human rights of food and shelter and stuff like that. I mean, we have the model movement for social change, I think.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What happens now? On one level, advocates for women's rights have accomplished a great deal. Their issues have been recognized. But for the majority of the world's women, change is slow and elusive. Governments have agreed to make changes, but many argue that the gap between rhetoric and performance remains wide. India's Vandana Shiva, an economist, is a leading N.G.O. activist. We invited her to share her perspectives about the movement's future. Vandana Shiva, thank you for joining us.

VANDANA SHIVA: Hi, Charlayne.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you agree with the general assessment that women in non-governmental organizations came out stronger after the Beijing Conference?

VANDANA SHIVA: I think each time women from the grassroots have gathered in large numbers their strength has been multiplied. What something like Beijing does is increase their confidence, remind them they are not fighting alone. So the issues really are pre-Beijing; they get consolidated in Beijing. Something like Beijing helps those movements draw new strength because the people like us who work with the grassroots come away more confident about getting our agendas through, keeping the basics on the table, keeping life on the table, and not subjecting life to the logic of the dollar.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: One of the impressive things about the Vienna Human Rights Conference and Beijing was the extent to which women across geographical, social, economic, cultural boundaries came together, submerging often differences. Do you see that spirit of cooperation still happening, especially when it comes to, say, western women or women from the developed world, the industrial societies, and women in the developing and less-developed societies?

VANDANA SHIVA: Sisterhood is definitely close, but sisters are different. But sometimes women in more privileged positions where they have privileged jobs, where all their basic needs are met-- they don't have to worry about food, they don't have to worry about water-- can forget that women's human rights in the third world include their basic rights to food and water and shelter, that women's human rights include the freedom to determine their economy and their political structure, and that is part of a new sensitivity that we need in this new globalized world; while we remember that sisterhood is global, to recognize that some of our sisters are being robbed of the little that they have.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is this globalization of the economy about which you've written and spoken a great deal, does it have greater implications, you think, for women and for human rights issues in general?

VANDANA SHIVA: I think it does in a very, very serious way. Women are hurt more than anyone else because of the kind of division that patriarchy left us with. It is women in every society who are looking after sustenance. They were looking after water, after food, after shelter, providing for their children and their communities. That is what is under assault now. We might have more Pepsi and Coke floating in the world, but there's less drinking water in India's villages. We might have more shrimp being traded, but there's less fish for the Indian coastal communities. And it is the women who know when that disappearance happens because they are the ones who have been responsible for food, they are the ones that have been responsible for water. So they're turning their special responsibility into a new ground of protest against a system that has totally marginalized basic needs of people to food, to water, to shelter.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What are some of the solutions?

VANDANA SHIVA: We need to seriously adjust our economic logic, including the global economic logic, to... To the imperatives of ecological survival and the imperatives of economic production in the women's perspective, which I believe is diverse, it's pluralistic, it's very rich. We will protect our biodiversity. That's our right, and it's our responsibility, and we want economic and political systems in which we have a place to do this.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Technology is said to be empowering now grassroots movements, non-governmental organizations women. Is there another side to that, though? Because you've argued that there is a downside, a negative aspect to it.

VANDANA SHIVA: It depends on what grouping of technologies one is talking about. I believe there are two groups of technologies that are emerging in today's time, the biological technologies, biotechnologies, and the new information technologies. The communication technologies, so far in the current system, organized with somewhat open access, have been helpful for mobilization, but the new biotechnologies and the earlier generation of green revolution technologies and agriculture have robbed women of their value and significance, and relevance to productive work. They have created new... The worst pesticide poisonings, and forced pesticide hazards on third world women, including to the extent that even mother's milk is loaded with D.D.T., And I think we need to seriously look at that side, and not just look at the promises from the Biotech Companies alone.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Finally, Ms. Shiva, what do you see now as the biggest problem confronting women in the world today?

VANDANA SHIVA: I think the biggest challenge before women is to shift the logic of the political and economic structures that are excluding larger numbers and to put the agenda of inclusion, not just for themselves alone, but all other excluded groups, which would include third-world people. I think the challenge for women is now to, in a way, lead the movement for inclusion.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Vandana Shiva, thank you.

VANDANA SHIVA: Thank you, Charlayne.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you for watching "Rights and Wrongs." Please share your response with us in the mail, or through E-mail. Also, check out our internet site on the WorldWide Web. I'm Charlayne Hunter Gault.

(singing)

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Open Society Institute. "Rights & Wrongs" welcomes your written comments and suggestions. You can also order a transcript for $5, or a video cassette for $29.95, plus $5 shipping and handling, by writing to: The Global Center, P.O. Box 311, Radio City Station, New York, 10101. Checks or money orders only. Credit card holders may call 1-800-541-2535. You can also reach us by e-mail, and please visit our web site on the world wide web. You can also reach us by E-mail, and please visit our web site on the world wide web.