THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 4, 1995 TAG: 9509040034
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR, COX NEWS SERVICE
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
No country in the world today treats its women as well as its men.
Throughout the world, women are too often underpaid, inadequately protected by law, under-represented in government and industry and most vulnerable to sickness, violence and poverty.
The Herculean task of changing that is the top priority of the 10,000 delegates to the Fourth World Conference on Women that opens in Beijing today.
``We want to come out of this with a plan of action to make sure life is better for women throughout the world,'' said Geraldine Ferraro, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and vice chair of the U.S. delegation. ``Hopefully we will walk out of Beijing with a commitment by 184 nations that they will do something to better the lot of women throughout the world.''
Many agree on the need to improve the status of women.
Pope John Paul II recently called for a worldwide campaign to focus ``on all areas of women's life and beginning with a universal recognition of the dignity of women.''
But many also oppose altering traditional cultural practices that hold women back. In some areas of the developing world, women seem to have lost ground.
Support is sweeping throughout the Muslim world for Islamic extremists, even as some have assassinated women for refusing to don the traditional veil.
China has yet to eradicate the practice of kidnapping young women for sale into marriage or prostitution.
About 100 million women are ``missing'' from the world's population, the casualties of traditional societies that favor boys over girls, according to the International Women's Health Coalition.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of death worldwide among women 14 to 44 years old, according to the U.S. State Department.
The trade in female sex slaves - some of them children - has mushroomed in southeast Asia. Sex tourism has multiplied in many Third World countries with scarce opportunities for women.
Of the 1.3 billion people in poverty worldwide, 70 percent are women, according to the U.N. Development Program. Pay for working women, on average, is three-fourths of the male wage rate.
In the United States, the mass integration of women into the workplace occurred virtually in a single generation, but society has yet to solve the issues of sexual harassment, child care and salary equity that stand in the way of a level playing field.
U.S. women have slid from first place worldwide to fifth in the past 20 years in a broad gender-progress index produced by the United Nations Development Project. The four Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark - have vaulted ahead of the United States in the index, which measures such things as life expectancy, income and political representation.
The high incidence of divorce in the United States and other industrial countries, and the refusal of many fathers to pay child support, has helped contribute to what some call the ``feminization of poverty,'' analysts say.
Discriminatory attitudes fuel a ``glass ceiling'' that blocks upward mobility to top jobs and salaries. Only one Fortune 500 company is run by a woman, according to one study. Ninety-five percent of all senior management positions at major U.S. corporations are held by men.
Even in countries that have shaken off autocratic rule in recent years, women often find their democratic rights sharply curtailed by longstanding discriminatory traditions.
``Women's progress in the work force over the past 10 years has not meant greater access to quality jobs, nor has it brought an end to discrimination,'' said Mary Chinery-Hesse, the leader of the International Labor Organization delegation to the 11-day Beijing conference. ``Despite gains in some areas, women earn an average of just two-thirds of men's wages, and they are often denied access to opportunities leading to the best jobs.''
Russian women have found that old-fashioned ills like rape, sexual harassment and wife-beating survived the transition from communism to democratic elections and a market economy - but their Soviet-era jobs did not.
Six out of 10 unemployed Russians are women, while the wages of employed women have dropped from 70 percent of what their male countrymen earn to 40 percent. This pattern is being repeated throughout eastern Europe.
Throughout the world, legislation and judicial codes are often slow to catch up to the social revolution that is changing women's daily lives, and decisions on women's issues - such as child care, abortion and divorce - are generally made by male lawmakers.
Women make up half the electorates worldwide but hold only 11 percent of the seats in national legislatures, down from 15 percent in 1988, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a multinational organization of lawmakers.
Only one out of 10 members of the U.S. Congress is a woman.
Women have the highest level of political representation in Scandinavia. In Sweden, for example, they compose half of the cabinet and hold 40 percent of the seats in parliament.
``The United States has a political participation level comparable with many developing countries,'' said Saras Menon, a U.N. policy specialist. ``The very fact that some poorer countries have surpassed some wealthier countries shows that where there is commitment, it can be done.''
The status of women is generally closest to men in Scandinavia, and closing the narrow gender gap that remains is a national goal in the region.
At the other extreme are countries like Saudi Arabia, where one of the world's most rigid interpretations of Islamic law is employed to justify maintaining women with few human rights or civil liberties and a legal code that defines them as virtual property.
Women are sometimes stoned to death for unfaithfulness or premarital sex, and are forbidden by law from driving.
In some Islamic nations, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco, women delegates were required to obtain their husbands' permission to travel abroad to attend the Beijing conference.
Members of the U.S. delegation, led by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, say they want to discuss strengthening a more egalitarian concept of the family.
They want the final document to focus on how early discrimination begins in many young girls' lives, from the practice of killing female babies, common in China and other parts of Asia, to the tendency to give them less food, education and opportunities than their male siblings.
``There are many people . . . who want to continue to keep women in narrowly defined roles,'' said Timothy Wirth, the undersecretary of state for global affairs and alternate chair of the U.S. delegation. ``There are reactionary forces in the world who want to return to an old view. But we believe that most of the world wants to move ahead.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Color graphic by Janet Shaughnessy, Staff
The Issues: the agenda for the United Nations World Conference on
Woman...
Includes many statistics for women in Hampton Roads
by CNB