The secret of China’s controversy-ridden women’s conference was that nearly everyone had a terrific time anyway. That included Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose trip had met with tremendous opposition from conservatives in Congress. Her speech declaring that “women’s rights are human rights” was thumpingly well received at the United Nations conference in Beijing; so was her speech to the NGOs outside town–even though most delegates couldn’t get in. Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and one of only six female ambassadors there, found her speech to the NGOs repeatedly interrupted by cheers and shouts of “That’s right!” and “Yeah!” Heady stuff for a diplomat usually confined to the boys’ club. “It was great,” said Albright as aides hustled her along the muddy walkway. “In the U.N. it’s pretty lonely.”
The only people who didn’t have a good time at the party were some of the Chinese authorities. Though many delegates were disappointed that the U.N. leadership did not criticize China more strongly for its poor handling of the conference, Beijing clearly felt rebuked. Mrs. Clinton’s speech did not mention China by name, but her condemnation of forced abortion, and her insistence on the right of NGOs to gather and express their views freely, were clear enough. “The American Mrs. Hillary Clinton also spoke at the conference,” was the only reference People’s Daily made to her speech the morning after–deep on page two. Plain-clothesmen linked arms to keep women out of the overflowing auditorium where Mrs. Clinton spoke to NGOs. But who was more miserable? Delegates tsk-tsked under their umbrellas and moved off to workshops on female genital mutilation and women’s rights under international law. The security forces stood their ground, stony-faced and shivering, little rivulets of cold rain running through their crew cuts.
China’s behavior was largely a temporary distraction from what the women had come to do. The 200-page compendium of the week’s seminars read like a college course guide; offerings included “A meeting between North and South Korean women” (the North Koreans failed to show up); a one-woman performance of “Eleanor Roosevelt” describing her years as a U.N. delegate (standing room only); a sparsely attended seminar on “The Girl Child in Iran” (veiled women described Iranian girls as “serene” and “helpful”), and strategies for getting women’s issues into the media (which obviously worked). Elaine Hewitt of Barbados said she’d taught dozens of women her technique of using street theater to teach gender issues to illiterate peasants. She’d met women from six different countries, ranging from Sudan to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, whom she hoped to stay in touch with. Kerstin Wennberg, who works for the Swedish government promoting women entrepreneurs, said she’d met an American whose own re- search on small loans could save her months of work. “My boss said it wasn’t worthwhile coming here,” said Wennberg. “I couldn’t have asked for better evidence that it was.”
This kind of networking may prove to be a bigger achievement than the Platform for Action, the U.N. document still being drafted this week by more than 5,000 official delegates at the conference in Beijing. But even the NGO delegates say the United Nations’ official rhetoric is better than nothing. “It gives us the legitimacy to walk into a government office and say, ‘Look, these were your promises’,” said a Bangladeshi woman from a family-planning NGO. Of course, “for every word, we have to fight to make it a reality,” says Ambika Venkatasubbu from Hyderabad in south India.
How much impact can a couple of weeks of sisterhood and soapboxes have? Even China, which worked fiercely to isolate the boisterous confab, may not be immune. “I know a lot of women who are really interested in what’s happening over there [at the conference],” said a woman book editor in Beijing. “I don’t think the government can control it the way they thought they could.” Before the conference opened, she and her colleagues had to take a “test” about the meeting, including naming the head of the Chinese delegation and regurgitating the confab’s slogan of “equality, development and peace.” Billboards and television commercials all over China have been driving home the message: raise women’s status, protect women’s rights. To millions of Chinese, those are still empty words. But you never know when, or how, they might start sinking in.
