Women's Conference Research Articles

Orthodox Feminists: What Do Our Numbers Mean?

As I look out on this scene, the feeling is one of appreciation and wonderment. We are now 1800 strong and growing every minute. What do our numbers mean? And why now? And what is the message that we take and that we give? First, I believe this great outpouring means that Orthodox feminists and their sympathizers are no longer at the fringes of our community. We are in and of the mainstream. Although we do not yet occupy the seats of power or hold the interpretive keys in our hands yet, we do have great leverage and influence and we have been and will continue to be a force for good in the Orthodox community. But why now, 25 years after feminism first began to take root in the Jewish community and next week there will be an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first National Jewish Women's conference that powerfully influenced so many of us even though we proceeded in different ways , why now do we have these numbers and this support, including that of so many individual rabbis whose presence we treasure, some of whom have been our partners on these issues for two or three decades, and some who are joining us for the first time? Because we have proven ourselves! During these past 25 years we have taken in from the host culture the new values for women, and have passed these values onto our daughters and our sons and our grandchildren, and all the while we have remained faithful to halakhah , not compromising an orthodox way of life. The critique that we were undermining the Jewish family, destroying Yiddishkeit, have proven to be noncredible. On the contrary, we now know more, daaven more, learn more, teach more, give more, celebrate more. We have built wonderful Jewish families and have enhanced and revitalized all of the communities and institutions that our lives touch and have stayed very close to the core of our communities. We have proven that feminism and Orthodoxy can live happily together. What else does it mean, this outpouring and enthusiasm? It means that we celebrate together many of the gains of the past two decades: the explosion of women's learning, women of all ages, the study of Talmud, the many institutions for women that have been

Rural women and the family in an era of liberalization: India in comparative Asian perspective

This essay looks at some aspects of the effects of liberalization on rural women and the family in Asian societies, with a particular focus on India. The author maintains that the “era of liberalization” has neither fulfilled the extravagant promises of liberalizers nor has it been as much of a burden for women as opponents of structural adjustment programs have argued. The author's perspective is that to move ahead from the stagnated development seen especially in South Asian societies, we need to transcend the sterile and politically deadend debates that brand either the state or the market as the enemy and engage, instead, in a clearheaded and value-oriented examination of how and in whose interest to use the market, and what the state should be doing. The author concludes that efforts to change the family in India as elsewhere should move in the direction of democratization. The question is not one of rejecting wider kinship networks and the “extendedfamily aid” that often comes with them, but of ensuring human rights to all family members, so that the cooperation and solidarity shown in family activities becomes a voluntary one, not one enforced by the sheer lack of alternatives (as is the case for so many women).The official “Year of the Family” (IFY) in 1994 was not marked by any major conference such as the women's conferences held in Cairo, Beijing, and Copenhagen, in spite of the fact that the “family values” issue is, if anything, more politically potent than the topical themes of the earlier conferences, namely, population, women, and equality. Perhaps it was more difficult to find a progressive consensus around this topic. As one feminist noted:The IFY jingles about building the smallest unit of democracy at the heart of society...struck discord in the hearts of those for whom marriage is no more than slavery, as slavery is defined in modern dictionaries. The privacy maintained around family life allows the perpetuation of a whole range of violent acts against women, from stripping them of an identity to brutal physical abuse.

The Impact of “World Opinion” on National Identity

This article examines the construction of national identity, considered as a negotiation between a nation's Selbstbild (the image the nation's citizens or leaders have of themselves) and their Fremdbild (their image or reputation in world opinion). It argues that this theory helps explain the manner in which the New York Times and the People's Daily discuss world opinion on the Fourth International Women's Conference in Beijing.

Indigenous Women on Stage: Retracing the Beijing Conference from Below

In a remote Quichua community, thirty-five kilometers away from Tena, the capital of the Amazonian Province of Napo, forty-five indigenous women of the Ecuadorian Amazon met to construct a position platform for the World Women's Conference in Beijing.' The workshop, convened by the Confederation of Indigenous Organizations of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE) and the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Napo Province (FOIN), drew together women representing six different ethnic groups, each with its own language; some of the participants did not speak Spanish. Most of the delegates, ranging in age from twenty-one to sixty-two, had little or no previous experience with such political gatherings. Given this last characteristic, one might ask what relationship this group of indigenous women might have to forming an international feminist environmental agenda. International economic and political concerns in the post-Cold War era have privileged discussions about the conservation of natural resources and ecologically sound technologies and practices; the contribution of indigenous peoples to sustainable development alternatives; and the role of women in caring for the environment, maintaining biodiversity, and advancing a rhetoric of sustainable development. In the last five years there have been five major conferences to discuss global problems and policies: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, which was followed by the Population Meeting in Cairo, the Social Summit in Copenhagen, the World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the Habitat Conference in Istanbul.

Reading Agricultural Power

ABSTRACTMany forms of rural geography include investigations of power. Lately some researchers have achieved this through studies of discourse. This paper presents a reading of agricultural power as it occurs in several examples of Australian and New Zealand print‐media. Initially, I review the importance of discourse in the study of power ‐ arguing that a ‘geography of discourse’ enables key questions and objects of analysis (spaces and processes) to be investigated. I then analyse coverage of agriculture in selected rural print‐media forms. I argue that hegemonic discourses of masculinity and agriculture are used in the construction of reports, reinforcing the power of certain knowledges and truths. Finally, I propose more study is needed of the sites and processes through which meaning is constructed. Using the case of a farm women's conference I argue that the media involves a number of sites and processes which must be negotiated if discursive change is to occur in our understanding of agricuture.

International Conference for Women and Sport October 24-27,1995 Alexandria, Egypt

International Conference for Women and Sport October 24-27,1995 Alexandria, Egypt

The Fourth World Conference on Women: Dissension and Consensus

The Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW, or the Beijing Conference), held in Beijing on 4-16 September 1995, was the largest conference of any held by the United Nations, including the three previous women's conferences (Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, and Nairobi in 1985). Coming on the heels of the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and the Social Summit in March 1995, it was the high point of a long process whereby environmental, human and reproductive rights, and social and economic issues are being refined and synthesized into a more integrated and holistic approach to development. All the above issues found their way into the draft Platform for Action. The document represents not only a call for equality and empowerment by half the world's population, but a challenge to change the course of social and economic development in the direction of one that places people—including women—firmly at the center of analysis and objectives.

The Women's Conference: Where Aspirations and Realities Met

This article is a reflection on the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995 including its preparatory meetings. Delegates from 187 nations negotiated and decided on the disputed passages of the draft Platform of Action which comprised 40% of the 150 page document. The atmosphere prior and during the conference was not peaceful. The UN and China disputed over the location of the nongovernmental organizations (NGO) forum that took place at the same time of the conference. The US and Chinese governments squabbled about Chinas detention of a Chinese-American human rights activist. The US First Lady attended the conference and the NGO forum promoting human rights. Most delegates had decided that this conference would not be a retreat from the Cairo conference. In comparison to Cairo the Vatican delegation had toned down its opposition. US based antiabortion groups and conservative womens groups arrived in greater numbers in Beijing than in Cairo in hopes to reverse actions taken in Cairo. They had few victories. A contentious issue was parental rights and responsibilities specifically adolescents access to confidential health services. Compromise wording was worked out in two paragraphs. All other references to parental rights were deleted or there was a reference to the compromise wording. The Beijing platform was the first universal document recognizing the right of a woman to say no to sexual intercourse. The references in the Beijing document recognizing sexual rights as human rights were a major accomplishment. Debates over the issue of abortion took place: the proposed conscience clause and a call for the review of laws containing punitive measures against women who have had an illegal abortion. The vocal delegates from developing countries are silencing the accusation that radical Western women are thrusting womens rights on the rest of the world.

The Women's Conference: Where Aspirations and Realities Met

This article is a reflection on the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995, including its preparatory meetings. Delegates from 187 nations negotiated and decided on the disputed passages of the draft Platform of Action, which comprised 40% of the 150 page document. The atmosphere prior and during the conference was not peaceful. The UN and China disputed over the location of the nongovernmental organizations' (NGO) forum that took place at the same time of the conference. The US and Chinese governments squabbled about China's detention of a Chinese-American human rights activist. The US First Lady attended the conference and the NGO forum, promoting human rights. Most delegates had decided that this conference would not be a retreat from the Cairo conference. In comparison to Cairo, the Vatican delegation had toned down its opposition. US based antiabortion groups and conservative women's groups arrived in greater numbers in Beijing than in Cairo, in hopes to reverse actions taken in Cairo. They had few victories. A contentious issue was parental rights and responsibilities, specifically adolescents' access to confidential health services. Compromise wording was worked out in two paragraphs. All other references to parental rights were deleted or there was a reference to the compromise wording. The Beijing platform was the first universal document recognizing the right of a woman to say no to sexual intercourse. The references in the Beijing document recognizing sexual rights as human rights were a major accomplishment. Debates over the issue of abortion took place: the proposed conscience clause and a call for the review of laws containing punitive measures against women who have had an illegal abortion. The vocal delegates from developing countries are silencing the accusation that radical Western women are thrusting women's rights on the rest of the world.

Beijing diary: ten days at the women's conference.

A British Medical Journal editor recorded her impressions and experiences at the Fourth World Conference on Women in the form of a 10-day diary. She described a logistical nightmare extending from her attempt to check into the hotel where she had a reservation to workshops and meetings held in unfinished buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and public areas of a hotel (even after hotel management extinguished the lights). The journalist's movements were dutifully recorded by a uniformed attendant, and taxi drivers refused to take her to the conference center. Early lobbying and strategy meetings revolved around the issues to be discussed at the conference. The opening of the Conference was marked with pomp and ceremony while workshops held at the nongovernmental (NGO) forum 50 miles away provided an opportunity for women to describe their attempts to improve their status. Rain forced Hilary Clinton to speak inside and disappointed thousands of women who had waited in line for hours to hear her comments. Betty Friedan described the conference as a metaphor for women's experience in the world and called for a "new vision of equality." Debates at the NGO forum centered around the rights of parents to have access to their children's medical records and punitive measures for women who have had abortions. At the Conference, the UN was unable to explain the paucity of women in positions of under secretary general or higher. By the end of the first week, the governments of Australia, India, Tanzania, China, the US, Ghana, the UK, Turkey, and Cambodia had all made commitments to improve the status of women. During the second week of the Conference the wording for the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was passed through various committees. The resulting document represents a significant contribution to the gradual progress towards equity for women, instead of a major shift in world view, but grassroots organizations will find in it the ammunition to hold governments to promises made in Beijing. The logistical problems of the Conference provide a manifestation of the roadblocks that women will face as they attempt to change their role in society. They also illustrate the problems encountered by anyone attempting to challenge the status quo in China.

TUC Women's Conference 1995

TUC Women's Conference 1995

"Women and disability don't mix]" Double discrimination and disabled women's rights.

Oxfam's experience with groups of disabled people has revealed that gender affects how disabled people are treated in various cultures. This experience runs counter to the often voiced (even by a consultant hired by Oxfam) assumption that gender analysis serves only to confuse any analysis undertaken of disability-based circumstances. This assumption is echoed in the disability movement itself where activists fear fragmentation through the introduction of gender analysis. Thus, gender is not yet understood as a factor which affects every aspect of life including race, class, ethnicity, caste, and disability. Because 75% of the 250 million disabled women in the world live in developing countries, development programs must consider the specific needs and rights of disabled women who suffer from double discrimination and are more likely than disabled men to live impoverished and isolated lives which lead to depression and despair. In many societies, disabled women, but not disabled men, lose their rights to marriage, family life, education, and health care. Mothers of disabled children are stigmatized, and fathers tend to "blame" defective genes on the mothers and to ignore their disabled offspring. These factors combine to make it difficult to improve the status and livelihoods of disabled women through development work. Disabled women activists have also voiced complaints about their lack of access to the preparatory meetings for the Fourth UN Women's Conference, but disabled women intend to use the Conference to lobby for their rights and to call for scrutiny of health policies which discriminate against the disabled.

‘Suffrage and beyond’: New Zealand women's suffrage centenary conference Victoria University, Wellington 27–29 August 1993

‘Suffrage and beyond’: New Zealand women's suffrage centenary conference Victoria University, Wellington 27–29 August 1993

International women's health conference for Cairo '94

International women's health conference for Cairo '94

BOOK REVIEWS

Gender & HistoryVolume 4, Issue 2 p. 256-280 BOOK REVIEWS First published: June 1992 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.1992.tb00060.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Heide Dienst and Edith Saurer (eds), ‘Das Weib existiert nicht fur sich’ Geschltxh-teheziehungen in der biirgerlichen Gesellschafi Helen Diane Russell with Bernadine Barnes, Eva/Ave. Womn in Renaissance and Baroque Prints Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance. Laboringclass Women's Poetfy in Britain, 1739–1796 Roger Lonsdale (ed), Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. An Oxford Anthology Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Ladies, Women, and Wenches: Choice and Constraint in Antebellum Charleston and Boston Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women in the Old South Anita Levy, Other Women: The Writing of Class, Race and Gender, 1832–1898 Christina Crosby, The Ends of History: Victorians and ‘The Woman Question’ Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts 1780–1860 Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York Aparna Basu and Bharati Ray, Women's Struggle. A History of the All India Women's Conference 1927-1990 Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography at the Dock. Essays on Photographic History, Institutions and Practices Yvonne Hirdman, Att lägga livet till rätta - studier i svensk folkhemspolitik Volume4, Issue2June 1992Pages 256-280 RelatedInformation

Women's conferences, 1990

Women's conferences, 1990

Campaign against Pornography

The first Campaign Against Pornography (CAP) conference took place in November 1989, shortly after the launch of Off the Shelf, CAP's campaign to get W. H. Smith to stop stocking soft-porn magazines on its top shelf. The conference, entitled 'Pornography and Sexual Violence' had been planned for over a year, was massively oversubscribed and a 1990 repeat was planned. It was part of a programme of action between November 1989 and April 1990 which included a speaking tour and regional training events in February sessions for activists on winning the arguments against pornography and a national day of action on International Women's Day. The November conference took place at Nottingham Polytechnic Students Union; students were much in evidence though the Townswomen's Guild, which took part in the London press launch of Off the Shelf, was nowhere to be seen. A national women's conference, as the event was subtitled, is a rarity in itself, but CAP's conference was also unusual in that it did not invite debate about the issue. Though not confined to CAP's 700 members, the registration form stated that women attending should be opposed to pornography and want to organise against it, before they had heard the arguments. Potential dissenters were excluded from the afternoon workshops. Women with press tickets were allowed to listen to the series of papers which formed the first half of the conference. A cheer went up when it was announced over the loudspeaker that a group of women who had distributed a leaflet 'against the aims of this conference' during the lunchbreak were 'no longer with us'. The leaflet contained a feminist argument against the dangers of censorship. Despite the fact that participants were presumed to agree already, the six papers which made up the first half of the conference were not about ways to combat pornography but a rehearsal of arguments and

International indigenous women's conference

International indigenous women's conference

Inaugural Australian women's studies association conference

Inaugural Australian women's studies association conference

Crisis and Structural Adjustment: Tanzanian Women's Politics

The United Nations Women's Conference in Nairobi was the high point of official and unofficial attention to women in Africa in the entire International Decade for Women. The conference seemingly had a profound capacity to influence subsequent policies, programs, and organizational efforts to empower women. Yet the internationally derived economic crisis has had an even more profound effect on Tanzanian women's work and politics. Since independence, but particularly since the 1967 Arusha Declaration, Tanzania has made remarkable progress in extending access to education and health care facilities. As a result of crisis and structural adjustment policies, however, state budgetary investments have moved from social to productive sectors; budget redirection looms large in explanations of women's work and politics.