by Ariella Hostetter

Outside the gate of my hotel, the Sino Japanese Cultural Training Centre, on the last day of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, I was picked up by a taxi driven by a woman. Aha, I thought, here is a sign of gender equality in China at last!

The taxi ride proved to be an adventure. We were repeatedly honked at, cut off and gestured at by other taxi drivers. Stoically, my driver managed to get us to our destination without betraying any sort of emotion. She just drove on, doing her job. I tried my best to thank her, despite the fact that I had no knowledge of Chinese, nor had she any of English. As on similar trips to the Conference site, I got there by showing the driver a small card with the destination written in Chinese characters.

Later in the morning, in talking to the director of a hotline for women in Beijing, I mentioned this taxi ride. She told me that women taxi drivers put up with a lot in their jobs. They are even denied access to washrooms, which are only for men s use. It was obvious that Chinese women in non-traditional occupations face many of the same constraints as women in similar jobs in Canada. They are the tough ones, the survivors. But what is the lot of less aggressive women in China? There was little chance at the Conference to explore this, because it was difficult to get close to the Chinese people, either because of the language barrier or, I suspect, because they were all careful to say just the correct thing and nothing more.

This was terribly frustrating. In my travels as a worker for an international development agency, I have always been able to talk openly with local people about circumstances in their lives and their countries.

I was at the Conference representing two of the many non-governmental organizations in attendance, as an employee for the Canadian Hunger Foundation (CHF) and as a volunteer for the Canadian Council on Social Development. I had a dual purpose: to communicate a CCSD statement concerning the status of women in Canada, and to try to connect with rural farm women and grassroots networks, since a part of my job with the CHF is to promote an understanding of the challenges that women in developing countries face just to put sufficient food on the table for their families. I also wanted to meet other Canadian women at the Conference, and got a chance to do this at the daily briefing sessions, held in corners of rooms or in crowded hallways at the main Conference building.

There is no need to elaborate here on the lack of facilities and the barriers thrown up by Chinese officialdom, all of which were accurately reported in the media. Nonetheless, women at the NGO Forum and at the Conference managed to connect, rallying around important issues and finding ways to contribute to the Plan of Action. The Plan was in the final stages of negotiation at the Conference, with a number of thorny issues still to be resolved.

Here, the Canadian negotiating team members showed tremendous skill and leadership in drafting the wording of contentious clauses on health, cultural practices and issues of equality. They shared all the latest negotiation developments with the NGO observers, giving us as much information as they had, including drafts of the declaration statement, which was supposedly a big secret. They even briefed us during their lunch hours, when they could have been taking a much-needed break.

On the last day, we asked whether it had been worthwhile for them to meet with us. Had the NGO delegates contributed anything by being there, ready to comment on the topics to which we were so dedicated? We were told that the 70 or so who attended the daily briefings had acted as a reality check for the negotiating team. In a number of cases, as the wording of the Plan of Action was refined, NGOs pointed out the weaknesses of positions, and of the implications for real people. This was a moment of real cohesiveness for us, a feeling that we had achieved something together. But what have we achieved and agreed to with our sisters from the other 186 countries who participated? Among other things, the Beijing Declaration states that we are determined to:

• Promote women's economic independence, including employment, and eradicate the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women...through changes in economic structures, ensuring equal access for all women, including those in rural areas...

• Promote people-oriented development, including sustainable economic growth, through the provision of basic education, life-long education, literacy, training and primary health care for girls and women...

• Prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls.

• Ensure women's equal access to economic resources, including land, credit, science and technology, vocational training, information, communications and markets, as a means to further the advancement and empowerment of women and girls.

These are tall orders for governments to try to live up to. It was too bad that most of the delegates and observers focus was on the federal government s actions in Canada, when so much of the work that needs to be done on behalf of women must be carried out at provincial and municipal levels, especially with the current devolution of powers to the provinces and budget cuts to social programs at all levels of government.

Small wonder, then, that there was no high-level Canadian political representation at the Conference. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Foreign Affairs attended, although Sheila Finestone, the minister responsible for the Status of Women did, as well as Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Secretary of State for Training and Youth) and Flora MacDonald (chair of the International Development Research Centre). As governments pledged their commitment to women, Canada offered to measure the value of women's unpaid work. No rash promises were made. And there certainly was no great commitment to letting go of the nation s purse strings or stating clearly how women in Canada could begin to enjoy the benefits of equality. Given the current political climate in Canada, economic equality for women will no doubt remain a long way off.

I have been asked many times whether I felt that attending the Conference was worthwhile. I will only know this if some positive changes in women's circumstances occur in the near future and if greater commitments are made to stem the increasing poverty among women. If not, it will merely have been a good emotional get-together in sisterhood, with a lot of mutual understanding expressed about the wrongs done to women around the world, and an opportunity to observe the ideosyncracies of the current Chinese political regime.

It is really up to all of us who attended the Conference to continue to promote women's equality issues unreservedly and wholeheartedly, and to reach out to women from all walks of life, in Canada and the world over.

Ariella Hostetter is fundraising manager at the Canadian Hunger Foundation and a member of the CCSD Board of Directors. She was one of the many official NGO observers to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September, 1995.

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