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1992 Global Summit of Women Press
July 16, 1992, CITY EDITION
Forum inspires a new way to defend women's rights
HERE is a story for those who are already thinking how best we can
mount a campaign for the defence of women's rights to travel and
information in the autumn. In October, 1975, over 90 per cent of the
female population of - Iceland took part in a general strike. It wasn't
called a strike because very many
women in Iceland, as in most other countries, work
exclusively in the home. It was described as the "women's
day off", and its purpose was to draw attention to the contribution
which women make to the
functioning of society at home and in the workplace. We do not know
whether the organisers -got the idea from "Lysistrata", but thee protest
brought Iceland to a standstill. A year later, a law - one of the
world's first examples of equality legislation - was passed in the
Icelandic parliament. Four years later, Ms Vigdis Finnbogadottir, at
that time director of the Reykjavik Theatre Company, ran against three
male candidates and was elected president, the first woman to be
democratically elected to such an office. One should have known, even
before last week's Women's
Forum in Dublin, that the story of Iceland's
women was bound to be thought provoking. Our own
experience showed that the election of a woman president doesn't just
happen out of nowhere; it marks an extraordinary shift in a nation's
view of itself. But what is still unfolding in that small northern
republic, clinging like ourselves to the edge of Europe, seems so
interesting that I hope readers who are already familiar with the story
will bear with me while I tell it here. Dr Gudrun Agnarsdottir, a
quiet-spoken doctor specialising in virology and immunology, is director
of the Icelandic Cancer Society and a member of her country's National
AIDS Committee. From 1983 to 1990 she was also a parliamentary deputy
for the Women's Alliance,
the only women's movement
in the world with representation in parliament. She resigned in 1990
because it is part of her party's programme that all jobs should be
shared, in order to allow as many
women as possible to acquire the knowledge and
experience necessary to participate fully in political life. Despite the
election in 1980 of President Vigdis - as everyone called her during the
workshop session which she addressed from the floor at last weekend's
conference - women at that
time were still seriously under-represented in the Icelandic parliament.
In 1981, meetings were held in the main cities to discuss the
possibility of having slates of
women candidates for municipal and parliamentary
elections. Out of this grew the
Women's Alliance, determined to offer an
alternative to "parties designed by men, where they have determined the
rules of the game, where the voice of a woman is rarely heard and our
priorities are disregarded". In 1983, three members of the party were
elected to parliament and this increased to six in the 1987 general
election. The effect this success had on the other political parties was
dramatic. Women, from
having been a tiny minority, now make up 20 per cent of the elected
representatives in Iceland's parliament and expect this to increase. As
challenging, at least to somebody like myself who has always been
sceptical of the idea of a political party based solely on gender, was
the description Dr Agnarsdottir gave us of how the
Women's Alliance is organised. The party has a
detailed manifesto on everything from the fishing industry and taxation
to cultural affairs. It does not accept the idea of "women's
issues" but argues that there are
women's perspectives and that these are often
particularly valuable on aspects of government policy that are
vulnerable to economic cutbacks. Jobs within the Alliance, including
those of elected representatives, are rotated. This has practical
benefits, since it allows
women to be much more flexible and gives them experience, but it can
also create difficulties. There are intense pressures, from inside the
movement as well as outside, for the more confident, experienced (and,
dare one say it, charismatic)
women to take on the high pro- file jobs. The party has no leader,
something which at first caused consternation, particularly to the
media. "But you must have a leader," they told us, "as though we had
forgotten this important fact," Dr Agnarsdottir said, rather wryly. This
was a success story. But the political advance of
women does not necessarily - surprise, surprise
- go hand in hand with the liberation of men. Ms Maud Montanyane, a
distinguished South African journalist, told us what had happened in her
country. From the start black
women have been involved in the struggle against apartheid, often
bearing a heavy part of the suffering which it has caused. Yet last
December when Codesa (the Conference to Democratise South Africa) was
formed, the original negotiating group consisted of 60 men and not one
woman. I thought with a pang of the Northern talks, how few
women have been picked to
take part in the various delegations, how incredible this is when one
thinks of their enormous involvement in the grassroots organisations
which help to keep that society in Northern
Ireland on any kind of an even keel. It wasn't all
politics in Dublin last weekend. If there was a criticism of the
women's summit, it was
that it was almost too rich in ideas and speakers, as though the
organisers were hungry to capture all of
women's experiences - in politics, the market
place, health care, the arts and much, much more - in the space of a
couple of days. It was impossibly ambitious and this in turn led to
frustrations for visiting speakers and audience alike, though these were
borne for the most part with humbling good humour. We needed time and
space to listen and to absorb what we heard. Perhaps the story told by
Ms Devaki Jain, an Indian economist with 30 years experience of working
with community groups, needs to be taken to heart. Ms Jain talked of a
survey conducted among
women who had become active in grassroots politics, asking them what
they now wanted by way of help and support. It was assumed they would
ask for courses in political strategy, or technical resources, even
improved childcare. But over and over again came the same response. What
these women most wanted
was time ''to sleep and think." FOR many delegates, particularly those
who came from abroad, one of he highlights was the wonderful evening of
music and poetry by Irish
women at Trinity College. Another came during a session on the last
morning when Ms Wilhelmina Holladay of the National Museum for
Women and the Arts in
Washington gave us a slide show of reproductions from the museum, and
told us how so many of these
women painters, sculptors, engravers, silversmiths had been ignored
and marginalised. As Ms Chung Hyun Kyung, a young Protestant pastor from
Korea put it, "Again and again I tell my students, it is in the presence
of beauty that you are closest to God". There had been criticism that
the forum was elitist, so expensive that very few Irish
women could afford to go
and complaints that the work of community groups in this country had
been ignored. But on Sunday morning, when
women working in Ballymun and Kilbarrack in Dublin
and in Cork spoke of their struggle against poverty, deprivation and
ill-health, they were given a standing ovation and some of the
women from other
countries, who recognised their situation very well, had tears in their
eyes. We know from Mary Robinson's election and have been made more
conscious of it in the time she has been President, of the flowering of
women's groups across the
country. But I keep coming back in my mind to a final story which we
heard at last weekend's forum about the
Women's Alliance and the lessons it holds for the
way ahead. After the last general election in Iceland, the Alliance was
approached to join the coalition government. It decided not to, because
that it could have a more serious influence on government policy from
outside. Think about it: what it would be like if we were going into
this autumn knowing that Mary Harney, Monica Barnes and Mary O'Rourke -
with a few others like Mary Henry, Frances Fitzgerald and Brenda
O'Hanlon waiting in the wings to rotate jobs with them - were members of
a women's party and that
the Taoiseach had approached them to talk about joining a coalition
government? Fantasy? Of course, just as it seemed fantastic a very short
time ago to think that
Ireland would elect a woman President.
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