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From Mexico 1975 to Beijing 1995

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007. In Nairobi 1985, at the NGO Forum of the Third World Conference on Women, the mood was celebratory. One of the dominant images I carried back was of African women dancing spontaneously on the green spaces between the meeting rooms. The previous decade had seen a mushrooming of women’s groups globally and they were present in strength, some 10,000 women. Unlike the 1975 First World Conference in Mexico City which was dominated by Northern agendas and the wives of heads of state, also unlike the 1980 Second World Conference at Copenhagen, Nairobi celebrated the arrival of Southern women’s movements, including India’s. A feeling of togetherness overcame difference, especially among the Southern participants, and the feeling showed. In Beijing 1995, at the NGO Forum of the Fourth World Conference on Women held at Huairou (a Beijing tourist resort), the mood was sombre. It reflected the turmoil of the past decade: the global economic crisis, the collapse of most communist regimes, unmitigated ethnic conflict, and growing conservatism. And it reflected the disproportionate burden of these borne by women. The statistics in circulating documents spoke for themselves: women today constitute 70 per cent of the world’s 1.3 billion poor, two-thirds of the illiterates, and (with their children) 80 per cent of the 25 million refugeesmostly victims of armed conflict.