General
Source: All Africa
This is the 12th in a series of articles marking regional progress on gender equality and women's empowerment. This reflective piece introduces the Beijing Platform for Action for analysis. A few weeks ago, in a meeting to reflect on the past 20 years since the Beijing 4th World Conference on Women in 1995, one participant brought up the subject of who had attended.
None of us around the table had attended Beijing, although some had been close enough to the action to share what they remembered of the time in 1995, seen by many as having revolutionalised discourse around gender equality and women's empowerment.
Most had either been too young, some not yet born and others not actively working in the women's movement, so to speak.
What was clear though is no one could claim that they did not know about Beijing.
This is testimony to the fact that a few may have attended the meeting in China, but many more were part of the struggle and or joined the cause afterwards.
Personally, I did not attend for two reasons, I was 24 then and while involved in what we referred to as gender, identified myself more with media than women's rights.
Then working for a regional research and documentation centre that focused on the SADC region, I was not only too young, rather removed as an activist but too low in the hierarchy of the organisation to be even considered among the likely candidates for the Beijing conference.
To my credit, I do remember that I was considered for a lateral move in the organisation to leave the Editorial Department where I worked and join the Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA) programme, a new department. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was decided at the time, that I had more to add to my department.
Fortunately for me, what is meant to be, will be. Two years later, a colleague in the Editorial Department, a veteran Canadian journalist and my mentor, the late Hugh McCullum, advised me to apply to some organisation that was looking for someone to work on women's rights.
By then, I had kind of proved not only my worth in that department but also my interest and passion to advance the women's cause, reporting first on the social welfare issues, then human rights and finally the women's rights issues in the SADC region. I applied for that job and formally joined the women's rights movement in 1997, although I would only identify myself with that in 2002, when I started actively working with women's rights organisations in Zimbabwe. That job was in the labour movement, my tag for the next four and half years.
But I digress, in 1995, the buzz at SARDC as far as Beijing was concerned was not only what the meeting was about, but what had preceded it, the 1985 Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies. So those of us in the organisation who were in the know, like my mentor, Kudzai Makombe, would roll off these phrases and speak about great women like Gertrude Mongella, who went on to chair the Beijing Conference and also became the first president of the Pan African Parliament. Of course, Kudzi went to Beijing although she is only a few years older than me, so that puts paid to my excuse that I was too young.
In 1995, Kudzi was everything that I could never dream of being.
She spoke English confidently with a foreign accent, heaven to my Mbare-bred ears. Many a good laughs we had when she would educate me on my rights, as she would blow cigarette smoke saying "... but Virgie you can't just accept that! It is not right, I wouldn't take it" when I would moan about the myriad challenges that at the time I thought were significant, but in retrospect, were useful steps in my journey to discovering who I am in the bigger scope of things in the world.
Her advice to reflect on and fight for my rights and the rights of other women subconsciously mobilised me into becoming an active participant in the women's rights movement, although I was to only be bold enough to acknowledge that much later.
Kudzi went to Beijing because that is the area in which she was already active. And the feedback after, then there was no real time sharing of events through social media as now, or if there was, in Zimbabwe we were certainly not on board. But we got to know about the 12 Critical Areas of Concern that the esteemed women came up with in the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA).
These areas were on women and poverty; education and training of women; women and health; violence against women; women and armed conflict; women and the economy; women in power and decision-making; institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women; human rights of women; women and the media; women and the environment; and the girl child.
Follow-up work was on disseminating these areas and, of course, after the conference any issue about conflict between women and men was described as a Beijing issue!
And we started hearing a lot about feminists, not necessarily the ideology but individuals, who were painted by the media as really rebellious women.
So now we have come full circle, the areas of concern are still concerning.
The BPFA is still as relevant today as it was then. So has there been any progress? Of course, and quite a lot, although we can never be over-complacent and fold our hands as we still have unfinished business.
The inclusion of young women, for example, is one huge indicator of success. I just travelled to the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 59) with an 18-year old girl, Rumbidzai Muparutsa, from Kadoma, who came in her own right as a representative of her council where she is in the junior council. That was unheard of in 1995, so we have made progress. I also know that in the delegations to this year's meeting at the UN CSW, there were many young women directors of organisations and board members, notably under 30 years. Again, unheard of in 1995. And on the programme, formal and side events, some activities were organised by these young women, again I am sure this was not so in Beijing.
So as I reflect on the goings on at this year's meetings, nationally, regionally and internationally, definitely there is a lot to celebrate. Equally present too are the things we should be seriously concerned about! What I am sure about is that collectively as the women and girls of the world particularly, we are up to the task of protecting, promoting and advancing our socio-economic and political rights. And that voice, choice and control are painfully slowly but surely becoming ours too. We just have to be persistent and proactively address remaining gaps even as we celebrate and consolidate our gains while affirming each other as women!