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Women of the World: Report from Mexico City

1975; Council on Foreign Relations; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/20039562

2327-7793

Jennifer Seymour Whitaker,

Gender Politics and Representation

They did not, however, look like revolutionaries: Imelda Marcos of the Philip pines and her corps of silken butterflies; the U.S. delegation, carefully dressed in styles ranging from Lord & Taylor to Peck & Peck; the Africans in their richly woven cloths and elaborately wrapped turbans?certainly not the solid Byelorussians, with their knotted hair and flower prints. Nor were they united be hind a single ideology: they were rather a microcosm of the differences which con front the women's movement as it gains international legitimacy. And, in fact, the women's revolution was immediately faced by what seemed like a counterrevolu tion?the delegates from the developing countries appeared for a time so intent on the redistribution of resources between rich and poor that the redistribution of power between men and women seemed for them a competing priority. That this threat to the liberation effort came from the oppressed was disarming. Both the women and the poor are trying to change the status quo, either by alter ing the existing power structure or by carving out a more advantageous place for themselves within it. For Western women, however, debate over any issue other than those directly affecting women could only be construed as wasteful and frus trating. They wondered whether the Third World position did not reflect a disdain or hostility by those countries and their male-dominated governments for the goals of the conference, an attempt to distract the women from how much they had in common. International Women's Year will have been another mockery, said France's Fran?oise Giroux, if the results are subtly diverted toward either national or international political causes, no matter how pressing, respectable or noble their aims might be. A careful assessment must be made of these divergent positions. That political conflicts emerged between rich and poor, black and white, Arab and Israeli, signi fied that the event was taking place in the real world, not as an academic exercise or an oversized coffee-klatch. Women's issues remained paramount and a good deal of common ground was established there. The link between poor women and the world's poor was also felt and acknowledged by Westerners?perhaps in a new way?in discussing their own oppression. And yet the different perspectives the women revealed at the conference were highly significant. That both the conflict and the communication flowed almost exclusively between the Westerners and those from developing countries was strik ing. Regarding their own revolutions as complete, delegates from the communist countries complacently abstained from the revolutions of both women and the poor ?except for an enthusiastic endorsement of all attacks on neocolonialism, im perialism and similar evils.