Adrianne Kinnear
The Fourth World Conference on Women (WCW) held in Beijing in September 1995 had as its theme Action for Equity, Development and Peace. The role of the government-appointed delegates to the Conference was to finalise the Platform for Action, a policy document guiding governments' future accountability to women.
The NGO (Non-Government Organisations) Forum, operating with the theme Looking at the World through Women's Eyes, both preceded and overlapped with the WCW. I was fortunate to be one of nine women fully-funded by Edith Cowan University to attend the Forum.
The NGO Forum traditionally provides opportunities for NGOs to influence policy development at the WCW. In fact, many of this Forum's NGOs began their process of influence at least two years before Beijing, when the draft Platform for Action was being developed.
The Forum Workshops were organised around a number of themes, ranging from the economy to religion. At any one time, as many as 300 workshops were in progress!
The Edith Cowan University delegates contributed seven workshops to the Forum. My workshop was entitled "Sustainable Technologies: Universities as Barriers". It explored the links between the need to mainstream women's research and teaching towards a human and environmental face to technology, and the concomitant need to improve on the chilly climate for university women generally.
It was quite an experience to give a workshop with national music from the Tibetan tent next door, and a demonstration of Iranian women loudly proclaiming their outrage against American sanctions. These kinds of spontaneous demonstrations sprang up often and gave an air of sisterhood and feeling to the Forum.
The Beijing NGO Forum was the largest international gathering of women the world has ever seen. It was a most significant event, providing an opportunity for all of us to meet and connect with like-minded women on an international basis and join with international networks of global standing and influence. It was an unforgettable experience for me and provided an opportunity for exchanging strategies and information with other women scientists from all parts of the world.
This document is an important one for women and it is a testimonial to the many hundreds of women who lobbied hard for its acceptance, that every country was a signatory to it by the end of the Conference. As scientists, we need to be aware that Science and Technology have a strong presence in the Platform for Action, being included in seven of the critical areas of concern. It is particularly present in the areas of unequal access to educational and training opportunities and inequalities in women's access to, and participation in, the definition of economic structures.
For example, Critical Area 2 of the draft provides clear guidelines to governments and their educational institutions:
"It is vital that women not only benefit from technology, but also participate in the process from the design to the application, monitoring and evaluation."
"Governments should take appropriate action to achieve a number of strategic objectives in science and technology education.
"Governments should formulate and take positive measures to ... ensure better access and participation for women in science.
"... to increase, in proportion, access of women in education policy and decision-making, particularly by women teachers, at all levels of education and in academic disciplines which are traditionally male-dominated, such as the scientific and technological fields."
"... Ensure the integration of gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development ... by promoting the education of women and girls of all ages in science, technology, economics and other disciplines relating to the natural environment ..."
A key player working in pre-Beijing activities designed to incorporate and strengthen the gender dimension of science and technology in the Platform for Action, has been OFAN, the Once and Future Action Network.
OFAN is a network of agencies and NGOs brought together by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Women's Tribune Centre. It first gathered in New York in 1994 as a prelude to Beijing with the aims of ensuring that science and technology is recognised as gender-specific in development at the WCW. It has since grown into an international group representing more than 60 science and technology NGOs, including the better known AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), GASAT (Girls, Science and technology) and AWIS (American Women in Science).
Its presence at the NGO Forum as a lobby group for women, science and technology was a strong one. One of its most effective strategies was the OFAN Pavilion - a series of displays, workshops and symposia on Appropriate Technologies.
In putting a gender perspective in the application of science and technology in global development strategies on the international agenda, OFAN seeks to bring about a radical re-thinking of women's roles and more people-centred applications of science and technology for the 21st century. It highlights several key issues which were addressed continually throughout the Forum from many different directions:
It is becoming increasingly obvious that macroeconomic restructuring programmes, and the consequent use of technology, is impairing the status of women in many cultures and devaluing their indigenous scientific knowledge. This issue was a major theme for the Forum participants in the science and technology context. International networks such as OFAN will continue to act as a focus post-Beijing, to maintain these issues on government agendas.
A continuing message in the context of science and technology at the Forum was the need to encourage more girls into science and technology areas, the need to ensure that these women remain in their undergraduate and graduate courses, and that they ultimately enter into employment as scientists and technologists making decisions and influencing policies. Mentoring programmes are being seen as essential components of any support strategies designed to achieve these ends.
One particularly successful example profiled and workshopped at the Forum was the American Women in Science (AWIS) Mentoring Project. Initiated in the US in 1990, its specific purpose is to attract and retain women undergraduate and graduate students in the sciences. I had been able to establish links with AWIS via the Net, prior to Beijing and spent time with AWIS members, attending some of their workshops on mentoring and hearing about the successes of their programs. The mentoring project was designed to integrate female students into the scientific community by helping them overcome the obstacles which prevent them, or discourage them, from continuing in science.
AWIS developed chapter-based programmes, utilising a variety of ongoing and off-campus activities aimed to:
(i) encourage more young women to major in science;
(ii) increase students' confidence and positive self-image as scientists;
(iii) introduce them to educational and career resources in science;
(iv) encourage them to explore research opportunities;
(v) help them to understand the barriers;
(vi) provide advice on graduate work.
The AWIS project reported considerable success for participants including greater student commitment to science careers and a greater sense of community among both science students and mentors. I have several of their publications arising from the Project and I am happy to provide copies of these to interested colleagues.
One of the strongest and most consistent themes for me which emerged from the Forum was the urgent need to fully overlap the people (society, culture, environment), economic and science/ technology contexts in development programmes on a global basis. The gendered nature of classical northern macroeconomic policies for restructuring the global economy, and the links with science and technology, are now being made clear by empirical studies of international groups such as:
While science and technology policies are key foci in the economic restructuring of both developed and developing countries, there is increasing concern that women are not the beneficiaries. The illiteracy rate of women is actually declining in the south. Those currently benefiting from science and technology are those who have access to money, markets and mobility (mainly men), and women's indigenous technologies, many of which directly relevant to sustainability are becoming a lost science, marginalised by the application of northern-style technological developments. Most science and technology policies are "top-down" and developed at the national level where women are rarely seen or heard - "one-stop shopping", as one science policy adviser commented.
Science and technology remains divorced from social and cultural contexts and there is an urgent need to strengthen women's roles so as to guide the allocation of resources towards a more socially responsible science and technology development process.
The challenge for us as scientists will be to take the Platform for Action which emerged from Beijing and develop strategies within our various institutional contexts which will transform the rhetoric into concrete programmes for women in science.
American Women in Science (AWIS)
1522 K street NW, Suite 820
Washington DC
E-mail: awis@awis.org
Fax: 202 408 8321
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
304 East 45th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Fax: 212 906 6705
Intermediate Technology
Myson House Railway Terrace
Rugby CV21 3HT UK
e-mail: itdgcru@apc.org
Once and Future Action Network (OFAN)
The Secretariat
The Business District
40 Duke Street
Kingston, Jamaica
e-mail: jsst@uwimona.edu.jm