From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgFri Sep 15 10:27:22 1995 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1995 20:28:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Why should women get power? Here's why [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN ## author : theearthtime@igc.apc.org ## date : 09.09.95 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Why should women get power? Here's why. By Elizabeth Bryant Earth Times News Service BEIJING--Forget the rhetoric of empowerment and equal rights in Beijing. Forget the effusive expressions of sisterhood in Huairou. If talk is not backed up by women's access to power, said women political leaders Thursday, it becomes meaningless. Many of those speaking at a forum on global governance also said it may take quotas for women to elbow their way into leadership positions. After all, said Mona Sahlin, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, not without some humor, "without the quotas, the world would be full of incompetent men." "Why should women be in power?" she asked. "Are we better, are we smarter, are we more beautiful than men? Women are half the population, and that should be enough." Agreed text in the draft Platform for Action calls for countries to work toward establishing a gender balance in their governments. Sahlin, 38, has been in parliament for 14 years. During that time, she has raised three children and watched a staid, male-dominated Swedish parliament gradually blossom into a body equally balanced between woman and men. The change is thanks to Swedish strictures that require that no more than 60 percent of political seats be occupied by either sex. Other countries aren't so lucky. Since the 1970s, when she first ran for Congress, the number of US congresswomen has grown from nine to 43 out of 435 members, said Bella S. Abzug, Co-Chair of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organization. "That's not a whole lot of progress," she said. In South Africa, women fought for constitutional language mandating that 33 percent of electoral seats be assigned to women, said South African Speaker of the House, Frene Ginwala. But, she added, "it's no good opening doors to women and saying that's enough. If we are to change institutions, women have to be in decision- making positions." Besides changing power structures, women are key to looking at power in a different, less aggressive light, these women said. But some of the audience questioned how women might take even the first step toward power. "When you want to go into politics, the first problem you have is your husband," said Chief Abedeji from Nigeria.