D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 3, May/June 2000, p. 8-11)

Five years after the 4th Women’s Conference in Beijing, a Special Session of the UN General Assembly will take stock of the successes and obstacles in implementing the action programme adopted in 1995. Based on the findings of the New York meeting, member states will once again identify needs for action and give impetus for further implementation. This article assesses the achievements and failures since Beijing five years ago.

Beijing, 1995, three weeks in September. The place and time mark a climax at the end of the ‘Century of Emancipation’. The fourth World Women’s Conference in the Chinese capital and the simultaneous NGO forum in nearby Huairou were the largest meeting of women of the 20th century and a milestone in the institutionalising of policy on women by national governments and the United Nations.

The final communiqué, titled the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA), was celebrated as a success both by governments and NGOs and welcomed as a template for future policy on women. The NGO lobby in Beijing rejoiced that never before had a UN document so clearly borne their imprint. They had been able to bring a great number of their topics and demands into it, and even had “revolutionised” the language.

The Beijing effect on women’s
organisations

The entire Beijing process was a learning progression stretching over several years for national women’s organisations and cross-border networks. The highpoint was not only that the mega-event in China mobilised women’s NGOs around the world. Unlike the first three UN women’s conferences, the Beijing organisational process was aimed primarily at intervening in politics. This time around, women’s NGOs sought to influence government reports and positions during the run-up to the conference. Based on a “strategic union”, they learnt sophisticated lobbying tactics aimed at including their proposals and formulations in the action platform. After the conference they developed question patterns and indicator systems to monitor implementation of the PFA.

Inspired by the Beijing process, many national and local women’s groups changed their character and operating methods. Increasingly, they embedded their interests in the concept of human rights. They changed their approach from one of meeting basic needs to fulfilment of basic rights. This had significant impacts both on their self-image and the way outsiders saw them. They no longer came on as petitioners, but as civil society actors that represented legal rights and demanded their implementation. These included the right to education, health care, resources and freedom from violence.

Women’s NGOs began systematically to apply the strategy of mainstreaming propagated by the action platform. They no longer limited themselves to women’s interests as special topics, but sought to bring women’s interests and a women’s perspective into all areas of political action. Among autonomous women’s organisations, this meant frequently a change from rather confrontational strategies vis-à-vis governments to more constructive and cooperative ones. They switched from positions of protest to lobbying approaches. At the same time, a number of women’s NGO activists dropped out of the line of march of the women’s groups and moved into the field of institutional policy. Women everywhere sought to improve their participation in political institutions and negotiations. In some countries they demanded reserved seats and quotas.

Unlike after the third UN Women’s Conference in Nairobi in 1985, when networking quickly fell apart, post-Beijing transnational networks consolidated and grew by e-mail. For women’s groups, the Internet is no longer merely a means of information and communication, but has become a new and globalised arena for achieving consensus and cooperation. For instance, one of several global electronic networks set up for Beijing+5 calls itself WomenAction 2000.

In an initial assessment in 1998 of the situation of women post-Beijing, the New York-based international network Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)1 noted that in many countries women’s NGOs were the driving force for realising the decisions taken there. It said that applied in particular to countries in which to date little democratic and civil society participation had developed. The WEDO added that in its view the NGO strategy of putting pressure on governments, especially with regard to reforming laws on violence against women, trafficking in women and children, reproductive health care, political participation, and land rights was successful. For instance, the NGO Equality Now recently launched a campaign calling upon 42 countries to repeal or amend 62 discriminatory laws which it said were “fundamentally in contradiction with the spirit and letter of the Beijing PFA”.

At the same time, however, women’s NGOs have also become actors in the implementation of the Beijing platform. They carry out social tasks and provide supply and care services from educational measures to health care, and from preventing violence to legal and political literacy, which their governments either do not deliver or only insufficiently.

How far does political will go?

The action platform’s strength was its focus on political action. The NGOs defined “Take Beijing home” as the homework for themselves and the 187 governments represented at the conference. The task was to spell out the recommendations for action in the PFA’s 12 Critical Areas of Concern in national terms and implement them in political measures. Five years after Beijing the decisive question now is whether the declared political will of the governments was merely fine words or actually got underway practical initiatives for a policy of promoting women as well as mainstreaming.

To check implementation of the action platform, the UN sent a questionnaire to all the signatory countries, which most have now answered. The UN will base its summing up of the situation on the response to these questionnaires and the findings of the regional preparatory conferences held in Bangkok, Addis Ababa, Beirut, Geneva and Lima at the end of 1999 and the beginning of this year.

At a special meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, June 5-9, the member countries are to take stock of the successes and obstacles in implementing the PFA. Based on their findings, they are once again to identify needs for action and suitable measures, and give impetus to further implementation.

Looking back, the Indian economist Jayati Ghosh said at the ESACP conference in Bangkok the PFA had overestimated the “willingness and the capacity of governments, international agencies and others to go for major changes, and especially to allocate the required resources”. He said the optimism of 1995 was based on the expectation that Beijing would generate an enabling environment for policy on women and gender, and “that a significant proportion of the population in developing countries would benefit from the new technologies, expanded trade and employment opportunities. Women in particular were seen as major potential beneficiaries because of the trend towards the feminisation of employment.”

In assessing the achievements of Beijing, three points need to be looked at: the political will of the governments, an enabling environment and implementation activities. The signatory countries exhibit a broad spectrum ranging from strong commitment to political Alzheimer’s, from pure lip service to innovative action. The WEDO noted in 1998 that most of the signatory governments had begun implementation. Almost 70 per cent had tabled corresponding national plans, implementation offices had been set up in 77 countries, and 64 states were implementing legal and political measures to honour women’s rights. In Thailand, for instance, the government developed a comprehensive plan to integrate a gender perspective in the planning process and passed legislation to prevent trafficking in women and children. In India, China, the Philippines and Vietnam, legal amendments were adopted to protect women from sexual harassment and violence. Mexico and Germany recognised marital rape as a penal offence. In Pakistan, the introduction of co-education has led to an increase in girls enrolling at school, particularly in rural areas. Peru, Mozambique and Uganda introduced quotas for women in political parties and local government.

But in many places, activities appear to be getting underway only very slowly and cost-cutting measures threaten constantly to strangle them. The WEDO suspected as early as 1998 that in a number of countries “action plans remain more plans than action”. The National Women’s Council of Ireland rated the political will of their government thus: “The Irish government signed up to the PFA without reservations. Government commitment to implementation, however, has been limited. The weakness of institutional mechanisms for implementing the PFA suggests that gender equality and the advancement of women is still regarded as an ‘add-on’, outside the mainstream policy-making process.” German NGOs also complain that the lack of gender mainstreaming in all government ministries is as bad as the poor coherence of their policies on women.

Ghosh sums up: “...despite a number of positive moves in terms of policies and new legislation, the overall condition of women across developing countries has not changed very much, nor have gender disparities been reduced significantly.” She believes this is due to the fact that good intentions and legal amendments are “simply not enough”. She says that introducing legislation does not mean that these laws will be honoured or, even less, that they will improve directly women’s living and working conditions.

No Beijing effect on globalisation

The WEDO assessed as early as 1998 that economic restructuring and globalisation were a growing threat to the assertion of women’s rights in the sectors of health care, education and employment, and in no way an enabling environment for equality of the sexes as a whole.

That was confirmed by the UN’s 1999 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Globalisation, Gender and Work2. True, except for Africa, more women than men were integrated in the employed labour market. But under worse conditions than those of men. Women work in low-paid, insecure employment conditions, often in the informal sector. They bear a disproportionate load of the burdens of structural adjustment, and as a result of cutbacks in state social services are forced to take on more unpaid caring tasks. Amid the Asian crisis, they were the first to lose their jobs. Now they are suffering not only from economic stress, and once again threatened by poverty, but also from psychological stress which is leading to the break-up of families, growing suicide rates, drug abuse and violence. On the whole, neo-liberal globalisation has caused great social inequality between world regions, classes and women. There is no doubt that for some women globalisation has created new opportunities, especially in the service and information technology sectors. But at the same time it has added to the problems of many women and catapulted them into food insecurity and loss of living space and social security.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights summed up bitterly at the ECE Regional Preparatory Meeting: “Five years after Beijing it is necessary to confront the fact that more women and more children are being trafficked than ever before than ever before. The pool of potential victims in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in other parts of the world, is growing exponentially because of increased poverty, lack of employment opportunities, violence, discrimination and inequality.” Political measures appear to be increasingly powerless against stronger macroeconomic developments and ever more powerful economic forces such as multinational companies and internationally organised crime. The fundamental question is how much power and what instruments politics has to regulate globalisation processes or the private sector.

New drive in the new millennium?

The review processes of the major UN conferences of the 1990s have so far been implemented with little élan. The review five years after the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 caused great disappointment over how little the signatory governments had done to implement UNCED’s Agenda 21. Indeed, many governments in 1997 had fallen even behind the Agenda’s agreed positions. The review process five years after the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 attracted no great interest on the part of governments or the public. Only with effort was a backlash against women’s reproductive rights prevented. Women’s NGOs summed up: “Poor results did not justify costly means.”

The negotiations on the Beijing+5 document, which is to be adopted in New York, are also tough and are aimed pragmatically at not falling behind the progressive positions achieved in China. The document is more vague and less action-oriented than the PFA, and hardly seeks to commit the governments to objectives and timeframes. It lacks the optimism and drive that the PFA projects. As only a few governments allowed women’s NGOs to participate in their official national reports for the UN, in many countries these organisations drew up alternative reports which were summarised into a global assessment.

The NGOs have already organised a global forum on the Internet titled Women’s Watch. In the autumn and winter of 1999, virtual working groups compared notes and views on translating the 12 Critical Areas of Concern into political practice in their respective countries. They debated and ‘chatted’ about various topics, such as the conditions under which micro-financing can be a successful strategy to reduce poverty, about information haves and have-nots, and whether adoption of social clauses by the World Trade Organisation should be fought for or codes of conduct negotiated on a company-by-company basis. They also agreed that women were making progress in political participation, but that it was far from ensured that women politicians also represented women’s interests.

To date, women have had a foot in the door of the ‘soft’ ministries, mainly those that deal with social affairs. When it comes to macroeconomic subjects and the ‘hard’ ministries, they are excluded. At the UN, women increasingly are occupying mid-level professional positions. But the glass ceiling is still firmly in place at the top of international and national politics.

The 123 national reports the UN has received so far identify three main reasons why implementation of the Beijing PFA is stalling. These are discriminatory attitudes, economic change and instability, and conflict and displacement. The special UN General Assembly meeting in New York in June will not find it easy to nail down benchmarks so that these obstacles can be overcome.

2) UN (Division for the Advancement of Women, 1999 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Globalization, Gender and Work, New York 1999.