Among the 35,000 plus women gathered in Beijing and Huairou in September 1995, ten were from The Feminist Majority. Here are on-site accounts that Feminist Majority Delegation members posted on The Feminist Majority Foundation Online throughout the conference. |
September 1, 1995 - Colleen Dermody
Day Two of the Women's NGO Conference Day two of the NGO Forum, taking place in Huairou, China, got off to a soggy start as a steady rainshower drizzled for most of the day. Exhausted participants again boarded 7:30 a.m. buses at hotels in Beijing and hopped on bicycles at hotels around Huairou to reach the Conference Site.
Some workshops, which were to be held in tents around the 143 acre site, were canceled because of leaky roofs and a retainer wall collapse caused by flooding in one part of the Conference Site. The wall collapse blocked the entrance and exit of hundreds of participants in the regional tent area for almost one hour. No participants were injured in the collapse which had Chinese facilitators scrambling for construction personnel. A make-shift wall was quickly thrown together and activities resumed.
Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) delegates participated in a full day of activities starting with the morning plenary session and ending with workshops on topics ranging from Sexism in Advertising Around the World, to Gender Statistics Gathering Worldwide, to Computer Networking for NGO's.
Computer networking was the topic in several workshops and participants were excited about the announcement of the new Feminist Majority On-line World Wide Website. NGO's throughout the day logged on to the new site. Some reported that they had already given feedback to FMF through the "Feedback" mechanism.
In a workshop on the stereotyping of women through advertising, speakers from Holland, India, Egypt, Japan and the U.S. traded stories and strategies on the problems and possible solutions to the degrading of women in television and magazine advertising. In Holland, a national women's rights organization successfully sued to have offensive advertising, using partially nude teenage girls, removed from magazines distributed throughout the commuter train system.
The day ended with a break in the frustrating rain and an appearance by the actress Sally Fields at the Global Tent on behalf of Save the Children where she talked with young women from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, North America and Europe.
Schedule of Plenaries
Statistics on the Status of Women
Copyright 1995, The Feminist Majority Foundation and New Media Publishing Inc.
