Messages from Beijing
Paola Melchiori
This Conference is set at the crossing of two kinds of Conferences, both important for women : the more recent Conferences on "human development" and those ones specifically dedicated to women. Beijing in this sense lies at the crossing between the perception of development of the seventies, expressed by women in Nairobi Conference and the different formulation of its theoretical framework which has been expressed by women mainly in the context of the UN Conferences since 1992.
The position of women has been shifting, after Nairobi, more and more radically from the request for a participation "in "development towards a critical analysis of the nature itself of development .
Beijing in this sense could be considered as the conclusion of a period as well as the beginning of a new phase/stage.
This is the reason why it is important to focus on the results of Huairou Forum more than on the Official Conference ones. The conceptual framework of the Forum indeed is much more advanced and consistent with the history of present times.
Given this forced acceleration of time which tends to even out all the needs for a deep change by reducing them to the market rules (need for ever more new goods), it is essential for us to trace back, maintain and explore continuity by means of the key words which have emerged over the last few years to point out consistency and implications, contradictions and feasibility within the real historical context.
The suggestion which is put forward here is to consider some of the fundamental issues which have emerged from the Rio, Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing conferences as research projects launched towards the future, to compare them with the analysis of the present history, without any time limit outside the conferences framework.
This is the first message from Beijing:, a message of autonomy of women regarding the choices of the issues, their priority and the establishment of a schedule.
I will confront only two issues , those which seem to me crucial and full of implications for the future: the issue of violence : female bodies on the public scene of history; the issue of visibility, efficacy, difference/s: the forms and the substance of a women politics.
There are times of history where the normal course of events discloses the hidden structures of society. We are now going through one of those times.
Female bodies, both real ones and the female imaginary pictures are now on the world scene. "The personal is political" by others' will. The renewed attacks by religion against women' bodies "for the salvation of the species and of civil society values", both Christian and Islamic ones, with alternating demonising or divinising visions of women, clearly demonstrate the extent to which women are "at stake" in "men's bargaining". They become bodies charged with imaginary meanings, which are rooted in a very deep structure which is outside the control of intelligence and will.
Within different contexts, at different levels and under different forms, be it either the rules and regulations of procreation or sexuality in relation to reproductive technologies, or women's bodies during the Bosnia war, women's bodies become carriers of messages among different ethnical groups, or bodies to be controlled in the population boom, or young women's bodies who "could tell too much" in Algeria, or female bodies becoming a symbol of a deeper order, whose disorder threatens the tenets themselves of the so-called - or so perceived - civil and social order. This function of empty significant reproduces and shows more clearly women's original role: "a general exchange coin", the occult and concealed basis of social bond. One should not therefore be astonished if today women are alternatively regarded as "irresponsible people to be regulated or "source of salvation" of a civilization which is sinking on itself.
On the other hand, the global restructuring crisis of capitalism calls for the need - also materially - of women's availability. This also stems from male desperate awareness of a universe without future perspectives.
In this crisis situation, which is characterized by the collapse of patriarchy, a domination project is developing which affects and transforms the intimacy and consciousness sphere. Against this background women are asked both by rulers and victims, for quite opposite reasons, to increase their availability, their material and mental work as well as their "shock absorption" function at social and symbolic level. In a world which is perceived as futureless they are asked to "confirm" a staggering order: an ever more violent new order and an ever more threatened ancient order.
But something has changed on the scene: today women "are aware" of the burden of their work, both material and mental one. This awareness corresponds to a stiffening of the self as flexible variable.
Hence, their stepping out by their own autonomous initiative and because of their own personal reasons, from the role which has been apportioned to them is seen as an unacceptable attempt to shirk their duty, thus disrupting society's traditional shock-absorbing mechanisms.
The traditional or higher degree of violence is further exacerbated by the opposition against women's autonomy, whatever the meaning attached to this word is. The need to exploit female resources is added to the ancestral resistance against the recognition of women as equal partners. War is therefore waged against even those simple movements who advocate a change in position, which is likely, though, to disrupt the whole structure. It is a reaction against what women represent, even by their mere presence: namely, that their "flexibility", their social use value is not "given by nature".
We have so far underestimated the level of violence that this shirking can unleash both in social and personal balances. The increase in violence towards or against women, both in the North and in the South of the world, clearly emerged during Beijing Conference, shows its significance.
We should therefore ever more seriously tackle both the emergence of a new awareness and evidence which seem to be "progressive" for mankind as a whole and, at the same time, the increase of an ancient violence which comes both from the world which has declared itself as bearer of civilization and from its opponents. This violence comes from an obscure hidden side in men/women relationships. If on one hand extremely modern figures emerge, such as cyborgs, a step backward into prehistory is made in social life.
A high degree of barbarism, both in North and in South, will characterizes in the future developed as well as underdeveloped areas. Suffices it to think of the recent upsurge in India of "barbarian" rites, which had seemed to have almost completely disappeared, which put women themselves - the new witches - at stake; or of recent events in Algeria, where - both veiled and unveiled - young women are more and more frequently attacked or killed; of WHO reports indicating an increasing rate of female genital mutilations; or of increasing cases in our societies of paedophilia and children rapes, both inside and outside families. One should stop interpreting these events as "remainders of barbarism", which are bound to disappear with democracy or just as isolated pathological cases in our countries.
A hidden umbilical cord links the fragmented core of modernity to the new surge of "barbarism".
Women everywhere are indeed part of this picture although in many different ways, thus becoming objects, stakes, distorted protagonists and potential subjects of alternative proposals. They are in a difficult position: at the same time, they have to understand the deep mechanisms which characterize this crisis, to co-operate for its civil solution, without, though, being trapped in emergency.
A thorough analysis of the concealed structures of sexuality and of primeval relations which make up the private and public spheres, of the relationship between the control of the "state of nature" with "civilization" remains essential in our work. This approach will be able to cross extremely different cultural borders.
As long as we do not understand the deep meaning of these practices, the private, social and imaginary use of sexuality, the relationship between the biological body and the construction of the social body, we will not understand the deep meaning of the recovery of the sexual order as the basis of this civil order. We will not understand why our Pope, our modern doctors and politicians are suddenly united, beyond any ideology, with the same crusaders' spirit, on reproduction control, once they have lost part of their control over sexuality; why family is again at the center of the debate of our rulers, both from right and left, in the North and in the South.
One of the crucial aspects of this problem is related to what could be called the utter silence with which even the most civil and thoughtful men have responded to women's urges. Over the past few years there has been a very wide gap between men's silence and women's words. When we say "words" we mean true words, able to create the knowledge of mechanisms and development of deep identities, rather than a paternalistic public recognition of our importance. As long as we do not trace back the origins of this silence, of this almost incomprehensible utter ancestral deafness, which is mixed with ambivalence, embarrassment and hostility, we will be ever more potentially defeated in the attempt to create an acceptable future for all, to create a communality leaving everyone always free to express himself/herself.
These years have not been easy in having us lose any illusion on possible collective identities, global visions, towards a common world for women, in the capacity of showing the effectiveness and the visibility of its insights.
We are confronted with old formulations of issues, with new challenges and new issues.
In our Northern societies women's access to the political society has not been able to produce really significant changes.
It is not a problem of insufficient "critical mass".
On one hand the "critical mass" seems never to be sufficient. Women who have gained "citizenship" and representation in politics or in their job have experienced continuous attempts of marginalisation, or pure feminization, or continuous distortions of their words or "gestures" as "female" support or care-giving actions to political parties or systems undergoing some difficulty. They have found a mixture of segregation and co-optation in their jobs.
On the other hand, there has been a progressive internal camouflage, an absorption of diversity in the mechanisms of traditional policy. Too many issues, regarding the "games rules" of the political scene, the meaning of its forms have not been deeply analyzed yet by women. Co-optation does not come only from outside.
Therefore, although it is necessary to claim the strategic importance of the struggle for equality and fundamental rights - boundaries which have nevertheless been set up by democracy where agreements are more easily achieved - we cannot be too confident in those women struggles which fight for mere inclusion or extension of citizenship and democracy. Indeed, the experience shows that, as such, they even do not succeed: they are continuously trapped in new types of hierarchies and segregation. Even more: they reproduce the existing reality.
Moreover in the name of alliances among women, there has been a tendency towards erasing internal differences among women. These differences then emerge in "the public sphere" on the basis of more ancient belongings, of once again fundamental cultural bonds, which have not been thoroughly analyzed yet. Compared to them, gender bonds become fragile when it comes to political decision-making and to taking up stances on various contents.
Therefore if equality continues to be a strategic tool in relation to a world which is based on the social, economic and cultural control by one sex only, it is clear that we must consider differences more deeply.
We must stress our differences vis-à-vis men in our political practice: namely, in our ability to translate alternative visions and values into a diversity of management and relationship ways.
There are also inner differences however: namely, what divides us from our wills in our deepest desires, in our complicity with the existent order, in our close belonging also to the male universe. These belongings or roots are often deeper than any gender belonging.
They are finally differences among ourselves: in our cultural, racial, economic, positioning, etc., which sometimes turn into real conflicts, diversity of visions, positions, strategies.
Faced with all that, we cannot but using differences as research and working tool. It is here that the analysis of differences among women can become a strength rather than a division, according to classical political parameters of alliances and similar practices.
The complexity which emerges in the analysis of differentiation starting from a common basis lets us come from an easy and boastful identification of being women, helps us have alternative visions and understand the way in which we develop different positions, keeping aloof from ideological belongings, which are so present even in feminisms. It helps us see how our history as women gets intertwined with the specificities of our culture of origin, with the obscure roots which link us to a homeland, a place, a culture, an image of femininity and masculinity, a certain vision of nature, a certain knowledge, namely the fertile background of thoughts and values - and faith - where we have grown up, which have nurtured our dreams and which have contributed to the development of our positioned feminine identities.
Our vision is the product of mediation between our discovery of gender belonging and other deep roots which are "newly interpreted".
This is what has happened, for instance, in different moments and areas of women practices.
One area was the one occurred during women's meetings of women pertaining to war areas: the transversal meeting of women and tracing back one's histories of one's sense of national belonging has led to the redefinition of the notions themselves of nationality, sense of belonging, priorities to focus on even at a time of emergency, calls, part taking. Each woman, while working out the redefinition of one's notion of friend/foe, has been obliged to reposition herself in relation to her society. In doing so, she has been obliged to unveil first the invisible violence which can often be found in a society as well as the female bonds which support it. In Beijing women, be they from Belgrade or Bosnia or Gaza, provided different keys of interpretation, elaboration and management of one's bonds with one's "homeland", peace and war, starting from their own daily lives, where peace and war are made and destroyed. It is a new way to look at things, just like in the scientific practice research questions may change. It is a new way to read oneself and the changing reality, which is likely to change the course of events, the setting of "positive" and "pragmatic" priorities.
It seems to me that the analysis of these differences, rather than a mere tolerance or praise of them, is now essential to progress along the double track which leads us to understand the deep mechanisms underlying the construction of ourselves and the construction of the image of reality.
Women, especially in the South, are at the "forefront" of civil society struggles. In spite of these contradictions, they truly are the only forces which can not only put up resistance but also bring forward new projects for this end of the century.
They are historical subjects who are able to point out the need to build a new social covenant. They are also the only "transversal" subjects as against ideologies. They clearly aim at the daily change of their lives. They are probably already redefining the "object" of the political debate. Women's practices have probably gone much more ahead than our capacity to theories them.
In Beijing, in Copenhagen, it has clearly emerged how civil society and women as its radical force have been emphasized as the last bulwark against an invasive power affecting not just the public, but also the private and intimate spheres.
Yet, this raises a whole set of questions.
On one hand, as Raffaella Lamberti points out, the meanings given by women to this "cure-all" are quite different according to one's starting point, namely to the State where one lives, thus being part of its "civil society": in Algeria, in Eastern countries, in Palestine, or in "democratic" countries, being actively involved in the "civil society" can take up different meanings: claim for human rights, no interference by the State, or just the opposite, State intervention to find a participation between forms of government and citizens' "common good", etc.
On the other hand it seems to me that a neutralization of civil society vis-à-vis women's specificity is taking place.
In particular, what I would like to underline here is that this recovery of civil society goes on allowing for a dichotomy between political society and civil society, which then leads to other fundamental dichotomies, namely exactly those that we have tried to call into question.
My impression is that the greatest effort of unification of the private and public spheres in the political domain, which has been carried out by wom-en, has indeed raised a problem and a redefinition of the object of politics itself, a redefinition of the separation between domains (the social and political ones, in particular). This leads to a deterioration of separate spheres. Many of us consider the interpretation of women's struggles as an advanced piece of civil society as limiting. We have wondered whether it is not preferable to let the public visible spaces which have been set up, or sometimes carved out, by women "work directly as political spaces".
These spaces include specific forms of women's practices and relations among themselves, the ways to reinterpret the priority contents which emerge, the forms which have been invented to work, think, survive. Their characteristic is that they cannot be read according to traditional separations. Their characteristics of small, spontaneous aggregations automatically locate them in the "social" arena, classicaly opposed to political arena. They find many difficulties in self -legitimizing themselves as having political meaning.
The direction however is clear.
Just like in economy, where the inclusion of the reproduction notion disrupts the conceptual economic space, here domains are mixed up; proposals are put forward for new forms of work, discussion, management , solution of conflicts, ways to be involved in the production of culture and social rules outside institutional places. They are suggested as direct political spaces, where the analysis of the "old" previous collective belongings is still active but together with the emerging of another approach, intended as invention of new forms of organisation and decision, nurtured by different relationships.
It is therefore clear that in the search for a new covenant of civil cohabitation - which is what women are trying to do by means of the above mentioned key words - Beijing horizon brings us ever further from the philosophy underlying the Conference document and its key words. Among Beijing's key words "peace" probably stands out as the key word which is closer to what women have so far underlined. Yet, this word ultimately includes a whole history which is still to be developed. Indeed, this is the key word which was most "abandoned" in the Official Conference.
To conclude with an already worn out metaphor, which has often been used in relation to the preparatory works in view of the Beijing Conference, "the great march" has just started. Bringing Beijing home seems to be even longer.
