Wo m e n ’ s long m a r ch to power - UNESCOunesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001199/119966E.pdf · P u b l i s h e d in 27 l a n g u a g e s. ... sants always waiting for land,justice,edu-cation

PEOPLE AND PLACESChiapas: the magicof the mirror

PLANETThe “miracle” of the Rhine

SIGNS OF THE TIMESDiving for dollars

CONNEXIONSInternet to the rescue of democracy?

Wo m e n ’s longm a rch to power

June 2000

P u b l i s h e din 27

l a n g u a g e s

PEOPLE AND PLACES

3 The magic of the mirro r Photos by Alex We b b, text by Fabrizio Mejía Madrid

PLANET

9 The “ m i ra c l e ” of the Rhine Urs We b e r

WORLD OF LEARNING

13 Doing it their own way: home schooling in the U. S. Jeff A r c h e r

15 E u ropean disunity Cynthia Guttman

ETHICS

38 G y p s i e s :t rapped on the fringes of Euro p e Alain Reyniers

40 A Roma ghetto in Flore n c e Nicola Solimano and Tiziana Mori

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

41 Diving for dollars Vincent Noce

CONNEXIONS

44 Internet to the rescue of democra c y ? René Lefort

46 A f r i c a : cell phones for citizenship Interview with Ibrahima N’Diaye

INTERVIEW

47 M a rgarita Salas:knowledge to dispel fear

1 6 Focus Wo m e n ’s long march to p o w e r“Women’s rights are human rights.” This landmark slogan ofthe Beijing Conference on Women held exactly five years ago ismore than ever brandished by women the world over. Alreadyinfluential forces in their own communities, women are nowdemanding greater access to decision-making powers. But whydoes their quest to break into the male political bastion remainsuch an obstacle course?

Detailed table of contents on page 16.

C o n t e n t sJune 2000 53rd year

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P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

June 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 3

T HE MAGIC OF THE MIRROR◗ Photos by Alex Webb, text by Fabrizio Mejía Madrid

The uprising in Chiapas has forced Mexican society to look at the Indians straight on, perhaps for the first time, and to start weaving with them a truly common future

◗ Alex Webb is an American photographer with the Magnum agency.

Fabrizio Mejía Madrid is director of culture at themunicipality of Mexico City. A contributor to the daily La Jornada, he is the author of three books, including“Small Acts of Civil Disobedience”, published in Spanishin 1996.

■I seemed to notice a movement frombeneath her shawl, a kind of suddenv i b r at i o n . I looked down at the

wo m a n ’s feet and was start l e d : her cal-loused heels bore all the dust and dirt ofye a rs walking barefoot. I placed a coin in thewoman’s permanently open palm,and raninto the Museum of Anthropology. I wasseven or eight years old. I asked my fatherabout the woman to whom I had just beentold to gi ve some money. “ S h e ’s an Indian,”

he replied. “But something was mov i n ginside under her clothes,” I insisted. “ I tmust have been her child,” my fat h e rc o n c l u d e d , and we walked on into theM ayan room of the museum without say i n ga word.

The image of that Indian woman inMexico City has haunted me every yearsince. It is not really an image, more likefragments of a body—an outstretchedhand, the soles of her feet, the copperycolour of her arm—and the suggestion ofanother being moving beneath herclothes. When you come across them inthe cities, you don’t look at them directly.They, the Indians, lower their eyes as if toacknowledge that the colour of their skin,their “defective” Spanish and their rural

Children in front of a mural featuring Emiliano Zapata in Polhó, a village located in the Chenalhó municipality, in the heart of Chiapas.

garments have made them invaders in thisland of mestizo nationalism. They havenever had looks or expressions. Nobodycan remember their faces.

In contrast, the term “ i n d i g e n o u speople” — as opposed to “Indians” — ispart and parcel of Mexican history. Likemillions of other Mexican children, Igrew up seeing murals by Diego Rivera,where the Aztecs came to represent sym-bols and values, but not people. From asfar back as I recall, “indigenous” hasmeant that under the earth on which wewalk there are vestiges of women and menwho erected pyramids to worship the sun,dreamt about the number zero, sacrificedvirgins and predicted eclipses. But bet-ween the “Indian” and the “indigenous”

identification, a form of magic and a mir-ror that creates a third party: neither one-self nor the other, but that which makesus similar, that in which we both recogni-ze ourselves. This reflection of the otherwhich is also my own self in another per-son’s gaze was exactly what was denied to

me by the country to which I belong. For500 years the Indians were not men andwomen who had to be wiped out, butsimple non-humans who survived thanksto a national evasion: not looking at themhead-on, in the eyes. Looking in the eyes


4 The UNESCO Courier - June 2000

there has never been any connectionbeyond the fact that neither had a face.

For centuries the Indians submissivelyjoined the growing mass of invisible spec-tators of a distant country, of an etherealland which changes without the need toinvolve those who are watching it. Theimage of the “Indians” was one of pea-sants always waiting for land,justice, edu-cation and health. We knew they existedbecause there were millions of them,though we stayed deaf to what they weret rying to tell us. Taken into accountbecause of their sheer number, t h e“Indians” ended up being tackled as a“problem” in the 1970s: that of migrationto the cities. The so-called “Marias”—“Indians” who asked for charity dressedin highly coloured clothes—were the fai-thful reflection of the failure of our sharedlife and of the only offer that we made tohelp them belong to Mexico: stop beingIndians.

When on January 1, 1994, the Indiansin Chiapas rebelled once more againstcontempt, they did so covering the wholeface apart from the eyes. They made thecountry look at them. They knew thatmorality started by looking at someone inthe eyes. It is the source of empathy, of

Revolutionary images on a wall in Polhó express some of the inhabitants’ aspirations.

of the Indians made us capture in theirreflection the very part of ourselves thatexists in the other,the foreign in each andevery one of us.

Four years on, the women from anIndian community displaced by a “low-intensity war” were the architects of ano-ther major change. After the massacre ofwomen and children in Acteal onDecember 22, 1 9 9 7 , the women ofX’oyep decided to rise up against thearmy’s presence. Already forced out oftheir homes, they were not ready to bedrawn into hostilities once again. Theypushed the soldiers with their bare handsright to the village’s boundaries, whileone of them carried in her hands X’oyep’slast hen. Riled by indignation, she defen-ded the bird and together with the otherwomen, triumphed over a professionalarmy. The moral strength of the TzeltalIndians of X’oyep rested in January 1998on their physical weakness and on theirsmall number, but also on their opposi-tion to war.They are the poor people whorefuse to be helped by a country whichallowed the Acteal massacre to take place.In their resistance there is a moral stancethat connects me to them: neither wouldI resign myself to a great “national plan”

The image of the “Indians”was one of peasants alwayswaiting for land, justice,e d u cation and health. We knew they existed b e cause there were millions of them, though we sta y e ddeaf to what they were try i n gto tell us.


June 2000 -The UNESCO Courier 5

Standing guard at the entrance to Polhó.

A rope marks off Zapatista territory, barring its access to foreigners.



A memorial to villagers killed in Acteal in 1997.

MEX ICO’S P OOREST STAT E

Along with neighbouring Yucatan and Oax a ca ,Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico, has the

c o u n t ry’s highest proportion of indigenouspeople: 42.5 per cent of its three million or soinhabitants are Mayans. Nationally, there areapproximately 10.6 million indigenous peopleout of a population of 92 million, 80 per cent ofwhom are mixed-race.

Mostly rural, Chiapas breaks Mexico’sp o v e r ty records. In 1995, it was estimated that59 per cent of the population were living on lessthan the minimum income necessary for surv i v a l(then put at $150 a month). That situation ispartly explained by the fact that Chiapas, so farfrom Mexico City, is the state where land reformwas the most weakly implemented. When thereform ended in 1992, half the land in Chiapaswas still in the hands of large landowners.

That is the context in which the “ZapatistaArmy of National Liberation” (EZLN) led by “sub-commandante” Marcos burst upon the scene onJ a n u a ry 1, 1994, a symbolic date because it mar-ked the entry into force of the NAFTA free-tradeagreement with the United States and Canada.EZLN rebels overran seven Chiapas municipali-ties, including the city of San Cristobal de lasCasas, demanding “d e m o c ra cy, freedom and jus-tice for all Mexicans.” A ceasefire was declaredafter two weeks of fighting with the army inwhich, according to official sources, 159 peoplewere killed, though human rights groups put thedeath toll at over 400. On February 21, 1994, theEZLN and Mexico’s federal government begantalks for the first time, mediated by the bishop ofSan Cristobal, Mgr Samuel Ruiz. Signed onFe b r u a ry 16, 1996, the San Andres accords onthe rights of indigenous peoples were rejected bythe authorities, on the basis that national sove-reignty had to be protected.

The cost of breaking off the negotiations hasbeen high. For example, 45 alleged EZLN sym-pathizers were killed in the village of Acteal onDecember 22, 1997.

In March 1999, 2.5 million Mexicans tookpart in a consulation organized by the EZLN oni n t e g rating indigenous law into the Constitution.The strategy of the guerrillas, whose objective isnot to seize power, consists of gathering supportfrom national and international civil society for ademocratisation of Mexican society. ■

that I have not chosen.Their actions havemade them famous because they entaileda nationalism without patriots: they didnot want any happiness that would des-troy them for their own good. In thehands that pushed out the army, I saw the“Marias” of my childhood disappearing.

The distance between lookingand listening

Although we have become morewilling to tolerate difference, we are stillno more ready to listen to and understandthe voices of difference.The idea of diver-sity in Mexican society brings to mind

divided ghettoes where contact betweenone tradition and another inevitably wea-kens one of them.Moving from the ethnicto the ethical does not mean we shouldstrive to preserve that diversity, but ratherabsorb what it is trying to tell us. It is thegap between looking and listening, bet-ween accepting that the Other exists andexperiencing its fragility as one’s own,between opening windows and buildingbridges. It is this gap that we have to nar-row: to go from living alongside eachother to experimenting with living toge-ther. I know that with the X’oyep womenwe will travel that road. ■

Mexico

Tuxtla Gutiérrez

Chiapas



A refugee family in X’oyep, to the northeast of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Musicians performing in Polhó.



Refugee children in X’oyep.

A government military post in Chenalhó.

P L A N E T


T HE “ MIRACL E ”OF T HE RHINE◗ Urs Weber

Fish are once again swimming in the Rhine River but it took an ecological catastrophe for the countries it flows through to clean up their act

◗ Editor of the regional supplement of the Swiss dailynewspaper Basler Zeitung, in Basel

■For decades, the Rhine was one ofE u r o p e ’s most repelling waste dumps.To d ay, c o n c e rted efforts by all the

c o u n t ries along its banks have restored theri ve r ’s health.The symbol of that recove ryis the mighty salmon, which swims oncemore in its wat e rs : over 200 have beencaught since 1996. But the road to successwas long and hard.

Europe’s busiest waterway, the Rhineis navigable over a distance of 883 kilo-meters stretching from its source nearBasel to its mouth in the Netherlands. Forcenturies, many cities and major indus-trial areas, such as the Ruhr Valley, haveoccupied its banks. One of the world’sdensest road and railway networks followsits course.The river also irrigates areas ofintensive agriculture and vineyards pro-ducing highly-prized wines.

Other crops, such as maize, tobacco,sugar beet and market garden produce(often in greenhouses), which consumehigh amounts of fertiliser, are greaterthreats to the environment. Run-off fromdairy and pork farms also cause damage.Thousands of people drink water drawnfrom the river, while urban waste flowsinto it. A glance at the Rhine’s geography(see map and box) shows that civilisationputs huge strains on the river, which flowsthrough five countries, making it a proto-type of co-operation in intern at i o n a lwaters.

A subject of treatiesAn 1816 treat y, one of Europe’s

oldest, established the Rhine as a navi-gable waterway. The accord was updatedin Mainz in 1831 and replaced in 1868 bythe Mannheim Act, which set up theStrasbourg-based Central Commission ofthe Rhine, whose purpose was to guaran-tee freedom of movement on the “inter-n ational wat e r way.” Dikes were bu i l talong its branches and marshland wasdredged to make it navigable for vesselswith draughts of up to 3,000 tonnes.

In 1885, five countries along the river

signed an agreement of quite anothersort,the Salmon Treaty.The InternationalSalmon Commission was set up to pro-tect the fish, which were vanishing fromthe river as a result of pollution and damst h at prevented them from migr at i n g .Salmon swim out to sea when they areabout 18 months old and return to theplace where they were born to spawn atthe age of four or five years.The countriesalong the Rhine decided to encourage theintroduction of young salmon into theriver.

But during the nineteenth century,major civil engineering projects were builtin and around the river without any priorb i l ateral agr e e m e n t s. Decisions we r etaken and work done which threatenedneighbouring countries or towns furtherdownstream. In 1807, the Grand Duchy

of Baden (stretching from Basel toMannheim and later absorbed intoWu rt e m burg) unilaterally decided tocanalise part of the river. The Germanhydraulic engineer in charge, Jo h a n nTulla, straightened out its course, increa-sing the water flow. Those “ i m p r ove-ments” had a disastrous impact on thewater table of the upper Rhine plain,whose level fell. The softwood forestswere no longer regularly flooded, a featu-re of the river’s plain, and dried out.

Joining forcesagainst pollution

The Grand Canal of Alsace, whichFrance began in 1920, was also builtwithout consulting neighbouring coun-tries. The decision was made by the vic-tors of World War I as part of the Treaty ofVersailles. The canal enabled France tobuild 10 hydroelectric plants and damsbetween Basel and Strasbourg, not tomention others on tributary rivers, whichblocked the movement of migratory fish.The waterway, which was widened in1950, lowered the level of the Rhine.

The river did not become Europe’scesspit until the mid-twentieth century.Huge amounts of liquid waste, mostlyfrom towns, farms and expanding indus-tries, were dumped into the river withimpunity. The level of phosphates fromfertilisers and household products such asdetergents reached alarming levels. Thefish population dwindled and in 1935 sal-mon vanished entirely. It was also increa-singly difficult to draw drinkable waterfrom the river, and it often smelt like car-bolic acid and tasted salty.

After World War II, most Europeanstates refused to negotiate with Germany.But, unlike what happened in 1919, theidea of a joint effort to ensure the futureof the Rhine gained ground. In 1946, theNetherlands asked Switzerland to takepart in a discussion on pollution in theriver.

The participants settled for a newinternational conference on salmon inBasel in 1948, when it was noted that thegreat fish really had disappeared from the

A COMMISSION F OR THE DA NUBE

The 2,857-kilometer Danube, Europe’s

second-longest river after the Volga, starts

in Germany and irrigates Austria, Slovakia,

H u n g a ry, Croatia, the Fe d e ral Republic of

Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and

Ukraine before flowing into the Black Sea.

After several unsuccessful attempts, a

Danube Commission based on the Rhine

model was set up in Vienna in 1992. An inter-

national convention on cross-border pollution

and environmental preservation was signed in

Sofia (Bulgaria) in 1994 and entered into force

four years later.

The Danube’s hydrogra p h i cal basin

stretches out over 817,000 square kilometers

and drains parts of a dozen countries. Some of

them—Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Albania and

Macedonia—do not feel directly concerned and

have not joined the Commission.

At the present time, the Danube is less pol-

luted than the Rhine was in the 1970s. ■

LE RHIN N’EST PASUN LONG FL EUVE TRA NQUIL L E

The Rhine flows down from two Alpine springs inS w i tzerland’s Grisons region. One of them feeds

the anterior Rhine (Vorderrhein), the other the pos-terior Rhine (Hinterrhein). They converge at the Swissvillage of Reichenau to become the Alpine Rhine,which forms the border between Switzerland andAustria before crossing Lake Constance. After thefamous 25-metre-high Schaffhouse Falls, the riverbecomes the High Rhine (Hochrhein) and flows west,where it demarcates the border between Germanyand Switz e r l a n d .

Downstream from Basel, the river turns northand becomes the Upper Rhine (Oberrhein) forthe next 300 kilometers or so. Then it brieflyforms the border between Switzerland andFrance and, for the next 180 kilometers, betweenFrance and Germany and, finally, between seve-ral German states (Länder). At Mainz, the river

turns west again, then north at Bingen. This is theMiddle Rhine (Mittelrhein), which crosses theRhine mountains for 100 kilometers.

At Bonn, the river becomes the Lower Rhine(Niederrhein), which, upon reaching the Dutchborder near Emmerich, turns west once moreand splits up into several waterways to form theRhine Delta, into which the Meuse also flows.

From Reichenau to the North Sea, the Rhine is1,320 kilometers long. The river’s hydrographicalbasin stretches out over approximately 250,000square kilometers that are home to 51 millionpeople and cover parts of Switzerland, Austria,Germany, France, Luxembourg and theNetherlands. The Rhine’s many branches includethe Aare in Switzerland, the Ill in France, and theKinzig, Neckar, Main, Lahn, Mosel, Ruhr, Lippeand smaller tributaries in Germany. ■

P L A N E T


Rhine. The need to set up a permanentintergovernmental body to handle generalpollution issues then became clear andthe Intern ational Commission for theProtection of the Rhine (ICPR) was esta-blished on June 11, 1950 at a meeting ofrepresentatives from the countries alongthe river (plus Luxembourg) that agreedto fund it.

The results were slow in coming.Water pollution steadily wo rsened forover 20 years. But at least countries haddecided to take regular samples of theRhine’s water, which led to a system tomonitor water quality along the river’sentire length.

The persistenceof hard metals

In 1963, the first draft agreement toclean up the Rhine was signed in Berne.The same year, the ICPR was given a per-manent headquart e rs , first in Lux-embourg and from 1964 in Koblenz.Since then, a secretariat has collected anddistributed valuable data on the river’scondition and drafted progress reports onvarious ecological problems.

The Commission operates in a ratherinnovative way, which experience has pro-ved to be useful. Environment ministersand officials from each member stategather at ICPR meetings on a regularbasis. Decisions are taken jointly and eachcountry, Land or regional governmentadopts the ensuing measures. But neitherthe ICPR nor its secretariat has any exe-cutive or coercive power to speak of, suchas the authority to order the constructionof new fa c i l i t i e s. S i m i l a r l y, t h eCommission draws up env i r o n m e n t a lprojects for the Rhine, but if adopted theyare funded and implemented by eachmember country. The secretariat simplym o n i t o rs their application along theriver’s entire length.

In 1976, the European Community(later the European Union) joined theICPR, lending it more authority, and sub-sequent measures began to show results.Between 1970 and 1974, the river’s oxy-gen content was still between only twoand four milligrams per litre—too low tosupport the growth of any organism.

But between 1970 and 1990, t h ecountries along the river spent $38.5 bil-lion on building a string of purificationplants. The oxygen level steadily rose andsome of the river’s biodiversity returned.However, experts noted that the purifica-tion plants did their work after the pollu-tion had occurred, limiting the effectswithout tackling the causes. Furthermore,

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P L A N E T


the plants could only eliminate a smallamount of the heavy metals in the water.

“The river has some ability to cleanitself, but this has been over-estimated,”says Anne Schulte-Wülwer-Leidig, a bio-l o gist in Koblenz. So the Rhine stillcontained high amounts of heavy metals,such as mercury, cadmium and zinc, andharmful substances, including polychlo-robiphenyls (PCBs),benzene and atrasine(from pesticides).

In 1976, the ICPR member-countriessigned a convention on chemicals thatranked some as dangerous and put themon a “black” or a “grey list.” Maximumlevels were set for cadmium, mercury andother particularly harmful substances.Those steps were taken at a time whenmanufacturers were able to acquire tech-nology to eliminate or separate out dan-gerous toxins during the productionstage. Previously, they could only be filte-red out at the end.

That same year, the countries alongthe river signed an agreement on chlo-rides to reduce the Rhine’s salt contentfrom 500 to 200 milligrams per litre alongthe German-Dutch border. The highlevel, which spoiled drinking water, wasmainly due to waste from potash mines in

Alsace (slated for closing in 2004) and inLorraine flushing into the Rhine and theMoselle,as well as to chemical waste fromplants along the river Main.The salt levelin the river Weser, polluted by potashdischarges from the Werra, sometimesreached 3,000 mg/litre.

People living along the Rhine were infor a terrible shock in November 1986

when a fire broke out at the Sandoz che-mical plant at Schweizerhalle, near Basel.The water that firefighters used to put outthe blaze flushed huge amounts of insecti-cides and pesticides into the ri ve r ,s p a r k i n gan ecological cat a s t r o p h e . E nv i r o n m e n t a lawareness rose and the affected populat i o nand their representat i ves demanded that

m a n u fa c t u r e rs take much tougher actionagainst pollution.

“The Basel disaster enabled the ICPRto set higher goals in its 1987 RhineAction Programme for Ecologi c a lRehabilitation,” says Koos Wieriks, of theICPR secretari at . Commitments we r emade to cut the amounts of the mosthazardous pollutants in half by 1995.Many experts thought this target couldnever be reached, but ICPR samples sho-wed that from 1985 to 1992, mercury inthe river at the German town of Bimmen-Lobith, near the Dutch border, fell fromsix to 3.2 tonnes, cadmium from nine to5.9 tonnes, zinc from 3,600 to 1,900tonnes, atrasine from 10 to 3.7 tonnesand PCBs from 390 to 90 kilograms.

Special chemical purification plantswere built up- and downstream fromSchweizerhalle. “The 1987 programmewon credence for the idea that the Rhinewas a total ecological system,” s ay sSchulte-Wülwer-Leidig. Under the pro-gramme, the Rhine was to become a placewhere salmon, p i k e , p e r c h , trout andother fish could thrive once more. But toachieve that goal, the water quality had tobe further improved,an objective that wasreached before the 2000 target dat e .

Industrial development once transformed the Rhine into a veritable wasteland.

‘The Basel disaster enabled the IC PR to set higher goals in its 19 87 Rhine ActionP r o g ramme for Ecologica lR e h a b i l i ta t i o n ’ .

P L A N E T


Agricultural fertilisers are one of the river’s main pollution sources.

Since 1991, more than a million youngfish have been released into the Rhine andits branches.

But the troubles of the migrating fishwere not over. In 1996, the first salmoncaught in the river for many years washooked just before the Iffezheim dam,near Baden-Baden. The fish came fromthe North Sea but because of the damcould not reach the branch where it wasborn. Salmon only spawn in the placeswhere they started life.

With the help of ecology movements,the reluctance of power station owners tobuild costly bridges or complex networksof passageways for the salmon is gradual-ly breaking dow n . Such facilities arealready under construction at Iffezheim,at the confluence with the river Ill (whichhas no dams on it), at a cost of about $6million, and at Gambsheim, in Alsace.

Basel residents are being consulted aboutplanned changes in the landscape thatwould help the salmon migrate. EgonOberacker, a professional fisherman inthe Swiss town of Nordbaden, is pleasedthat fish will be more plentiful now. But,he says, “we still can’t live off fishingalone, as we once did.”

The idea of an integr ated ecosystemt h at will enable a rich va riety of animal andplant life to thri ve in the Rhine and itsbranches once more has come a long way.In 1998, the ministers of the Commissionset targets to restore natural areas as partof a global ecosystem stretching from themouth of the Rhine to the Jura, the A l p s ,the Rhine mountain range, the old soft-wood forests of the flo o d p l a i n s , a n dstreams of the Rhineland-Pa l at i n at e , t h eBlack Forest and the Vo s g e s.

M e a n w h i l e , not all the pollution pro-blems have been solve d . One of the mosts e rious is in the Rhine delta’s huge basin inthe Netherlands, where tox i n - filled muddredged from the port of Rotterdam hasbeen dumped since the 1970s. C o n t a m i n a-tion levels are falling now, but several of theold toxins in the ri ve r ’s sediment are onlyve ry slowly being eliminat e d . And all alongthe Rhine, the main source of pollution isstill fa rm fert i l i s e rs , which seep into the ri ve re ve ry time it rains. ■

T HE TENNESSEEPRECEDEN T

One of the oldest interstate bodies set up

around a river is the Tennessee Valley

Authority (TVA) in the United States. It was

created on May 18, 1933 by the government of

President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the

New Deal’s far-reaching public works program-

me. Since then, many federal and local bodies

have delegated authority to the TVA. The

hydrological basin of the 1,600-kilometer-long

Tennessee River, a branch of the Ohio, drains

sections of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia,

Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Those states and the federal government

set various priorities when the TVA was set up,

including bringing the river’s erratic water

levels under control to prevent flooding, buil-

ding a series of hydroelectric plants and brin-

ging electricity to remote areas. Twenty-one

dams and six reservoirs were built. The entire

system enabled the growth and modernisation

of farming and the reforestation of some areas.

Today, the TVA is considered an outstan-

ding example of regional planning. ■

In 1996, the first salmoncaught in the river for many years was hooked just before the Iffezheim dam,near Baden-Baden

W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G


Stress-free learning? By some estimates, at least one million American children are home schooled.

■Twenty ye a rs ago, C h ristopher andEileen Herman would have technicallybeen breaking the law. Opting against

c o nventional schooling, the parents are tea-ching their two children at their home inWashington stat e ,where until 1985, the onlylegal way to home school was to hold a stat eteaching license—something they both lack.

But today, the Hermans not only canteach their children at home without fear ofp r o s e c u t i o n , they also have an extensive arr ayof resources and supports at their disposal.They belong to three local organizations ofparents who educate their children at home,attend state-wide home schoolers ’ c o nve n-t i o n s , and regularly cull advice from similarfamilies on the Intern e t .“Just about eve ry b o d yk n ows someone who’s home schooling,”M rs.H e rman say s.“ People may still think it’s kindof odd, but there isn’t as much suspicion orhostility any m o r e .”

Legal recognitionI n d e e d , the Hermans are part of one of the

fastest gr owing educational trends in the Uni-ted Stat e s.By some estimat e s , the number ofhome schooled children in the country hasgr own from roughly 50,000 in the mid-1980sto at least one million today. ( O t h e rs peg thep o p u l ation as high as 1.8 million).While thatstill represents at most only three percent ofthe total number of the country ’s school-agedc h i l d r e n , the rapid rise in the popularity ofhome schooling deserves notice.It has quicklybecome the second most popular form of non-g ove rnment sponsored education in the U. S . ,n ow outranked only by the schools affil i at e dwith the Roman Catholic church.

“One big accomplishment of the move-ment is that they’ve made home schooling aviable educational option,” s ays Mitchell Ste-ve n s , a sociologist at Hamilton College inC l i n t o n , N. Y.and the author of an upcomingbook on home schooling.“It now has a smallplace in the menu of educational choices inthis country.”

The forces behind the movement are com-p l e x , and the bigger it gets, the harder itbecomes to describe a “ t y p i c a l ”home schoo-l e r. Most experts see two ve ry differentl i n e a g e s.One was born in the late 1960s fromthe altern at i ve school move m e n t , whose fol-l owe rs believe children learn best when libe-r ated from the ri gid structures of form a lschooling and allowed to pursue their ow ni n t e r e s t s.The other was largely fueled by thec o n c e rns of some conservat i ve Protestantfamilies who—at about the same time—beganto wo rry that the public schools could no lon-ger ensure the proper form ation of their chil-d r e n ’s character.“Both are skeptical of thebu r e a u c r atic organization of educat i o n ,”S t e-vens say s. “ I t ’s a matter of, ‘I don’t wa n tsomeone else taking care of my children.’ ”

Until the 1980s, home schooling in theUnited States was still largely an undergr o u n da c t i v i t y,without legal recognition. But as thenumber of practitioners gr e w, judges andp r o s e c u t o rs became more willing to acceptt h at home schooling was permitted underlegal provisions allowing children who we r e n ’t

in school to be ‘otherwise instru c t e d .’ In 1983,a d vo c ates formed the Home School LegalDefense A s s o c i ation to push the issue in stat el e gi s l atures and to provide legal representat i o nto individual home schooling fa m i l i e s.

To d ay, the practice is recognized as legalin all 50 stat e s , although its regulation va ri e sgr e at l y. I d a h o, for example,places ve ry few res-t rictions on home schooling parents,not eve nasking that they inform any state or local offi-cials of their intentions. O r e g o n ,m e a n w h i l e ,m a n d ates that such families periodically havea ‘ q u a l i fied neutral pers o n ’ test their chil-d r e n . N owhere in the U. S . are parents nowrequired—as they once were in Wa s h i n g t o ns t ate—to be licensed teachers.A few states callfor parents to either have some college edu-c ation or follow a home schooling ‘ q u a l i fie r ’c o u rse at a community college.

S t ate laws often stipulate the number ofd ays of instruction and the general contentareas to be covered by fa m i l i e s. But whilethese provisions usually call on parents tokeep records of their children’s progr e s s ,t h e yare generally not required to turn these ove r

DOING IT T HEIR OWN WAY◗ Jeff A r c h e r

Whether for religious reasons or out of a strong desire to do things differently, a growingnumber of parents in the United States are choosing to educate their children at home

◗ Staff Writer at Education Week (U.S.)



to a gove rnment body. “ E ven the most ri g o-rously regulated states in A m e rica have someflexibility—a recognition that your child maybe learning at a different pace,” s ays Pat ri c kFa r e n g a , president of Holt A s s o c i at e s , a Cam-b ridge (Massachusetts)-based publisher ofhome schooling mat e ri a l s. S t ate and localschool districts va ry in how they accommo-d ate home-schooled children. In some cases,they are allowed to part i c i p ate in field trips orsign up for certain classes while in others ,school officials do not let them join any extra-c u rricular activities.

Although conservat i ve Protestants appearto make up the largest single bloc of homes c h o o l e rs , the movement is dive rs i f y i n g .I nrecent ye a rs ,C at h o l i c, M u s l i m , and Je w i s hhome schoolers have formed their own orga-n i z at i o n s ,and the practice continues to at t r a c ta substantial number of more secular-min-ded fa m i l i e s. S u rveys by the National HomeE d u c ation Research Institute in Salem (Ore-gon) suggest that religion still is the most com-mon reason for home schooling, but theresearch centre also has identified five otherstrong motivat i o n s :c o n c e rn about the aca-demic quality of local conventional schools;a belief that the best education also is the mosti n d i v i d u a l i z e d ; the desire to enhance rela-tionships among family members ; an at t e m p tto mitigate the negat i ve influences of peerp r e s s u r e ; and wo rries that schools are beco-ming increasingly unsafe. O f t e n , these rea-

Perhaps one of the best indications ofsuccess is home schooling’s gr owing reco-gnition by A m e rican colleges and unive rs i-t i e s.The Home School Legal Defense A s s o-c i ation recently surve yed more than 500institutions of higher learning and foundt h at all but two had admissions policies fore va l u ating home schooled students who lacktraditional high school records. M a ny col-leges now accept evidence of student pro-gress prepared by parents, p o rtfolios of theirwo r k , and standardized tests in place oftranscripts.

Despite its gr owing acceptance, p a r e n t sstill are sometimes brought before judges ind i s a greements over whether they’ve corr e c t l yf o l l owed state regulat i o n s. In a highly-publi-cized case last ye a r , a Ve rmont home schoo-ler was jailed for two weeks for refusing to lets t ate examiners eva l u ate her 15-year-old son.S t ate officials argued that they needed to makesure the boy—reputed by local school offi-cials to have learning defic i e n c i e s — was beinga d e q u ately served at home.

While public approval of home schoo-ling has spread, it isn’t unive rs a l . A 1997survey co-sponsored by the Gallup pollingorganization and the international educa-tion organization Phi Delta Kappa showedthat 57 per cent of Americans think homeschooling is a ‘bad thing’—though this wa sd own from the 73 per cent reported 12ye a rs earlier.The National Education A s s o-

sons ove r l a p.Home schooling techniques va ry as much

as the motivations for doing it. In a countrywith no national curri c u l u m ,s t ates are res-ponsible for setting educational standards,which are generally only loosely applied tohome schoolers. Parents generally put toge-ther their instructional plan themselve s.H u n-dreds of publishers now produce mat e ri a l sgeared toward home schoolers , their wa r e ssold through the World Wide We b , in specia-lized magazines and conve n t i o n s.They refle c ta wide arr ay of educational approaches andp h i l o s o p h i e s , from non-denominational cor-respondence courses to mat e rials “ built uponthe firm foundation of scriptural tru t h ”a n dnot the “ p s e u d o - s c i e n t i fic jargon of the secu-lar educat i o n i s t s.”

Trust in public schoolsThe few large-scale research projects that

h ave been carried out in the United Stat e ssuggest that the home schooled childrenwhose families part i c i p ated in the studies tendto perform well above the national average onstandardized tests. But many researchers arehesitant to make too much of such fin d i n g s ,because of the obvious self-selection problem.F u rt h e r ,m a ny agree that a substantial num-ber of home schoolers remain undergr o u n d ,refusing to be counted by state or local autho-ri t i e s , and making it difficult to reach conclu-s i o n s.

Keeping in tune: taking part in extra-curricular activities outside the home is just one way of interacting with other children.



■The continent that has adopted asingle curr e n cy is a long way fromunity on home educat i o n . A l t h o u g h

d ata remains scarce, s u p p o rt groups in seve-ral countries claim that they are receivingincreasing numbers of requests from parentslooking for altern at i ves to formal school sys-t e m s , a movement being matched by legi s-l at i ve attempts to curtail its practice.

According to Amanda Petrie, one of ahandful of European researchers on thesubject,there is an underlying thread run-ning through recent legi s l at i ve changes sug-gesting that “if you are not in school, youare not learn i n g .” In Ireland, an Educat i o n( We l fare) Bill put forward for discussion in1999 treats home education as a schoolattendance problem,rather than as a rightguaranteed by the Constitution, w h i c hdeclares that the pri m a ry educator of thechild is the fa m i l y. With the expressedintention of cracking down on sects, t h eFrench parliament voted a new law inDecember 1998 obliging parents to followthe national curriculum more closely andi n s p e c t o rs to visit their children once a ye a rin the home.The law was passed by a hand-ful of deputies without consulting withr e p r e s e n t at i ves of the home education com-m u n i t y. For Elyane Delmarès of the Frenchsupport group Les Enfants d’Abord, “it’s abogus argument. The state already has awhole arsenal of weapons to fight sects.This is really about the state having a stron-ger hold on education.”

S u p p o rt groups say these controls casthome education in a negat i ve light andr e flect misconceptions about how learn i n gtakes place outside school. For Pe t ri e ,i m p o-

sing a national curriculum and allowing ins-p e c t o rs into the home are two examples.T h efirst assumes that “the state knows what edu-c ation is, takes a certain form u l a , and if yo uapply this form u l a , your child is going to befin e .” The second discri m i n ates againstpeople who are “not upper middle classeswith reams of bookcases in the home.”

The value ofinformal learning

But even in countries where the prac-tice is tightly restri c t e d , ambiguity oftenp r e va i l s. In Spain, where schooling is com-puslory up to 16 years of age—special cir-cumstances aside—a court ruled in 1999in favour of parents from Almeria who aree d u c ating their seve n - year-old child. I nG e rm a ny, where home education is illegal,s e veral families have gone to court and paidfines but they have been allowed to conti-nue the practice. After returning from aposting in Micronesia, Dorothee Beckerand her husband found that their two chil-dren were unable to adapt to the Germanschool system. “It didn’t offer the va ri e t ywe had hoped for, especially in languagesand science,” s ays Becker, who has been toc o u rt once. In the Netherlands, a u t h o ri t i e sh ave refused 90 per cent of homeschoolingr e q u e s t s , acccording to Syne Fo n k , head ofthe support group Syntax. In response, agrowing number of parents are starting uptheir own private schools.

Increasing research on home educat i o nwould be a first step to breaking throughsome of the misconceptions surrounding thefie l d , still widely shunned by the academicc o m m u n i t y. Studies are most advanced inthe UK,which has Europe’s strongest homeeducation community, with an estimated

10,000 children.There can be one hundreddifferent reasons for making the commit-m e n t ,r a n ging from a simple question of phi-l o s o p hy, to concern about bullying and beha-vioural problems at school to religiousc o nv i c t i o n s. Alan T h o m a s , a visiting fellowat the Unive rsity of London Institute of Edu-c at i o n ,c a rried out in depth-research on 100families in Britain and Australia to prov i d eone of the first detailed accounts of howparents go about the task of teaching theirchildren at home.Besides shorter lessons andextra individual at t e n t i o n ,Thomas noted thefar-reaching impact of informal and sharedl e a rning and the importance of conve rs at i o nthat is all too often lacking in school. Hefound that children had “high confidence intheir ability to learn ,high self-esteem and aresocially mature in a way many who have beento school are not. T h e y ’ ve not experi e n c e dfa i l u r e . If you don’t understand something,you deal with it there and then.”

Pe t rie takes the debate one step furt h e r ,emphasizing that the right to home educa-tion should be a principle of democracy. “ Ithink it comes down to a question of howmuch confidence the state has in the parent’sability to know what is right for their ow nc h i l d r e n .The debate hinges on that .” ■

EUROPEAN DISUNI TY◗ Cynthia Guttman

Parents throughout Europe are becoming bolder about educating their children at home, even if it means defending their rights in court

◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

+ …Educating Children at Home, Alan Thomas,

Cassell, London, 1999www.worldzone.net/lifestyles/homeducation:

a site drawn up by Amanda Petrie thatprovides information on legal aspects ofhome education in Europe

www.rama.1901.org/vens for information on theFrench home education movement

Les Enfants d’Abord is organizing a homeeducation conference from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2,2000. For information: 33-4-70 59 81 23

c i at i o n , the country ’s largest teachers ’u n i o n , also maintains a policy stat e m e n targuing that , “home schooling progr a m scannot provide the student with a compre-h e n s i ve education experi e n c e .”The Nat i o-nal A s s o c i ation of Elementary School Pri n-cipals has issued a similar warning, addingthat government authorties should “makec e rtain that those who exercise theseoptions are held strictly accountable for the

academic achievement and social/emotio-nal gr owth of children.” A major part oftheir concern is that home schooled stu-dents may not learn enough about relatingto children from other backgrounds.

Home schoolers themselves disagr e eabout how big the movement will gr ow.Some predict a straight-line gr owth formany more years, while others see it soonreaching a point of diminishing return s.

Polls suggest that most Americans remains at i s fied with their local public schools,which educate about 90 per cent of thec o u n t ry ’s students. But most observe rsagree that, however large, home schoolinghas established itself as a lasting feature inthe landscape of A m e rican educat i o n . A sparent and publisher Patrick Farenga putsit, “the concept of education is no longerheld to the schools like monks in a monas-tery.” ■

Acentury of feminism has failed to overturn several millennia ofp a t r i a r c h y : proof is the fate of women in many parts of the world today( p. 1 7 ) . But from unrelenting battles to fragile victories (pp. 1 8 - 2 0 ) ,b y

the end of the twentieth century women had learned to defend their welfareand their interests. The two sexes, they say, are different but have equalrights and responsibilities.

Little by little,women have undermined the old order that sealed their inequi-table fate.By standing in the forefront of struggles against apartheid and maled o m i n a t i o n , South African women are considered as role models: the powerthey have won has enabled them to impose laws sanctioning the violence towhich they are subjected (pp. 2 0 - 2 1 ) .I ranian women have not yet reached thatp o i n t ,but they are seizing every opportunity, from education to the ballot box ,to strengthen their rights (pp.22-23 ). The struggle for equality in the work-place (pp. 23-24) and reproductive rights (pp. 24-25) are other aspects ofw o m e n ’s emancipation that are still high on the agenda, five years after theBeijing women’s conference.

Despite their massive and henceforth world-wide mobilisation, women stillencounter obstacles to political participation, where they remain a tiny mino-rity (pp.28-29 and 30-31).Kept back by mentalities and societies that are movingahead at a snail’s pace, in the private sphere they are negotiating a new sha-ring of time with men (pp.2 6 - 2 7 ) .Following a path opened up in northern Europe,women in countries such as India (pp. 32-33) have obtained quotas thatensure more democratic representation.

In South Korea and elsewhere, they have created political breeding groundsto motivate and train the leaders of tomorrow( p p. 3 4 - 3 5 ) .

A genuine renewal of political leadershipseems to be under wa y. It promises to be one ofthe more important breakthroughs of the centurythat has just begun (pp. 35-36 and 37).■

Fo c u s Wo m e n ’s long m a rch to p o w e r

C o n t e n t sO p i n i o n

1 7 No pro g ress without a secular societyTaslima Nasreen

1 | Fo rceful voices1 8 One battle after another

Sophie Bessis

2 0 South A f r i c a : a strategic ascentShireen Hassim

2 2 Emancipation under the veilsSiavosh Ghazi

2 3 S w e d e n : court battles for equal payElisabet Ornerborg

2 4 Pe r u :s kewed planningNatalia Ta r n a w i e c k i

2 | The political are n a

2 6 For a fair sharing of timeRosiska Darcy de Oliveira

2 8 U n finished democracy

3 0 A woman in the lion’s denHinde Ta a r j i

3 2 I n d i a ’s nurseries of politicsMrinal Pa n d e

3 4 South Ko re a ’s campaign schoolsGlenn Manarin

3 5 Betty Friedan: debunking the mystique of politicsJudy Mann

3 7 Closing ra n k sYvette Roudy


Women’s long march to power


Eve ry day, women continue to be victims of rape,t r a f fic k i n g, a c i d - t h r ow i n g, d ow ry deaths andother kinds of tort u r e . At the opening of this

new century, women are still not considered as equalhuman beings in many parts of the wo r l d .R e l i gion andpatriarchy continue to have an all-encroaching holdon their live s , maintaining and justifying their age-oldoppression.In some South Asian societies,this holdis even increasing.

I do not believe that there can be real equality ina society dominated by religion. Western countriesspeak repeatedly about the necessity of economicd e velopment to alleviate pove rt y. But this is notenough.Societies such as Saudi Arabia may be eco-nomically developed, but women are deprived of allri g h t s. The supremacy of religion is incompat i b l ewith freedom of expression, wo m e n ’s rights andd e m o c r a cy. This is why I see religion as the mainenemy of women’s development.

We have to act on several fronts at once. F i rst of all,i m p r oving access to educat i o n . In a society like Ban-g l a d e s h ,80 per cent of women are illiterat e . For centu-ries women have been taught they are the slaves of men.It is ve ry hard to change their minds,to make them awa r eof their oppression, to gi ve them a sense of their inde-p e n d e n c e . This educational effort has to go hand inhand with a secular feminist movement in society. S u c hm ovements have to start within the country and theycannot take hold when people are uneducated and una-ware of their oppression. I’m not sure you can accom-plish much from the outside, except to expose in themedia the atrocities women in all too many countries fa c ein their day to day live s.

In Muslim countri e s , this movement is emergi n g,but ve ry timidly, and it has a slim margin of maneuve r.It has the uphill task of fighting for the repeal of religi o u sl aws and the introduction of a uniform civil code. So fa r ,it tends to be constituted by a few individual feministswho are forced to be diplomat i c, to compromise withf u n d a m e n t a l i s t s , be they men or wo m e n . But they aret rying to change the system,step by step, and it will takea ve ry long time. People are not yet ready to do awaywith religious laws that impact upon eve ry aspect ofs o c i e t y, from education and health to the workplace andthe home.

For wo m e n ’s status to change, we also need enligh-tened leaders who believe in equality. In countries such

as mine, women with a strong voice do not have thes u p p o rt of political leaders , whether they be men orwo m e n .Look at the countries in which women are inp o l i t i c s , or even heads of stat e . Does it follow thatwomen in those countries are emancipated? Becauseof long-standing vested interests, such leaders continueto back measures that oppress wo m e n .They are noti d e o l o gically committed to changing these condi-t i o n s. In South A s i a ,most of the women who becomeheads of state are religi o u s , and like men, they adhereto the religious objectives of the Establishment. I amthe victim of a country where the prime minister is awo m a n . Because I went one step too far in denoun-cing religion and the oppression that it keeps wo m e nu n d e r , I had to leave my country.

I have seen women oppose me when I talkedabout women’s rights. They said straight out thatGod did not believe that women should have som a ny ri g h t s.And I have met men in my country whoare against what is said in the religious scriptures andb e l i e ve in equality between men and wo m e n . I tdoes not depend on gender. It depends on one’sc o n s c i e n c e . Muslim women who are we a ring the ve i land glorifying their subservience are obviously notgoing to better the lives of the oppressed.

Until a society is not based on religion and wo m e nare considered equal to men before the law, I do notthink that politics will advance the cause of wo m e n .I nWe s t e rn countri e s , women are educat e d , they aret r e ated equally, they have access to jobs. In thesec o n d i t i o n s , their part i c i p ation in politics has a meaning.

E d u c at i o n , a secular feminist move m e n t , a n dl e a d e rs—both men and women—committed to equa-lity and justice.This is what it will take to change thedire conditions which too many women still fa c et o d ay. It will take a ve ry long time, but we are here towork towards that end. ■

O p i n i o n◗ Taslima Nasreen

No pro g re s swithout a s e c u l a rs o c i e t y

◗ Born in Bangladesh,Ms. Nasreen has led a twincareer as a doctor and writer.She is the author of six novels,several collections of poetryand essays, and anautobiography. Her works havebeen translated into over adozen languages. Two of hernovels, Shame and MyGirlhood, were banned in hercountry, where Islamicfundamentalists issued a fatwaagainst her. Accused by hergovernment of blasphemy, Ms.Nasreen has been living in exilesince 1994.She has receivednumerous international awards,including India’s AnandaAward,the EuropeanParliament’s Sakharov Prize andthe International HumanistAward from the United States.

The one whose wifedies is lucky. But notso the man whosecow dies.Bengali pro v e r b

Until a society is not based on religion and women

a re considered equal to menb e f o re the law, I do not think

that politics will advance the cause of women

We often hear that this will be the centuryof women, in light of the tremendousstrides that have been made in the past

thirty years or so. Although it is far too soon toconfirm this prediction, it can safely be assertedthat the twentieth century was marked by theirstruggle to leave the home,where they were confi-ned by the ancestral division of roles along genderlines. Around the world,women have campaignedto win the rights they have been denied and tobuild, side-by-side with men, the future of theplanet.

True, such struggles had already been wagedin the past, although they were deliberately shun-ned in official historical accounts. But the briefrevolts of this special “minority”, which accountsfor over half of humanity, did not change theplace of women in their societies. They may haveruled the roost, sometimes enjoying undeniablerespect, but nevertheless they were still born toserve men and bring their husbands’ descendantsinto the world.

Education:their first struggle

Yet, at the start of the twentieth century, thetraditional distribution of roles, seemingly legiti-mised by every religion and frozen in a “natural”order, began to crumble under the two-prongedassault of modernisation and women’s strugglefor their collective emancipation. They wagedmany battles to gradually obtain, despite set-backs, a change in their status—which is still farfrom achieved.

The first struggle of the twentieth century wasfor education. In 1861, a young woman gradua-ted in France with a baccalaureate, a highschoolleaving exam, for the first time. In 1900, the firstfemale university was founded in Japan.The sameyear, girls won the right to secondary education inEgypt and the first girls’school opened in Tunisia.Young women who could made the most of thesenew educational opportunities, not only to beco-me better household managers and good educa-


◗ Freelance journalist

based in Paris

tors for their children, as the main discourse ofthe period suggests, but also to do somethingunprecedented: to enter the forbidden spheres ofpublic life, to exercise citizenship and to partici-pate in politics.

Throughout the twentieth century, womenwaged a battle on two fronts: by fighting for theirown rights and taking part in the major social andpolitical emancipation movements. In 1917, theRussian Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontaï becamethe world’s first woman cabinet minister. AfricanAmerican Rosa Parks triggered the civil rightsmovement by refusing to give up her seat to awhite man on an Alabama bus in 1955. DjamilaBoupacha was a heroine of Algeria’s war for inde-pendence.Women were entirely committed to thegoals of these movements but seldom receivedanything in return for participating in them.Oncetheir countries’ new masters took power, theyoften found themselves sent back to the kitchen.But they continued fighting for their own rights,and it is on this front that they achieved theirgreatest victories.

The earliest feminist movements, which firstappeared in the West in the late nineteenth centu-ry, focused on workplace and civil rights issues.I n d u s t ry needed wo m e n ’s labour, which wa sunderpaid in comparison with that of their malecounterparts. ‘Equal pay for equal work!’ deman-ded American and European women, who begansetting up their own trade unions and organizingstrikes. They made unquestionable strides, butafter more than one century of struggle, mostwomen around the world still earn less pay forequal work.

The right to voteThe second objective of the twentieth centu-

ry’s pioneers was participation in public life,which hinged first and foremost on having theright to vote. The struggle was long and some-times violent, as shown by the British “suffra-g e t t e s ” who demonstrated in the streets orChinese women who made their demands heard

One battle after another◗ Sophie Bessis

Women fought for their rights throughout the twentieth century. In the past severa ld e c a d e s, their struggle has truly become global, but all is far from won

1 Fo rceful voices

For a long time I havehesitated to write a book on women. Th esubject is irritating, especially tow o m e n ; and it is notn e w.Simone de Beauvoir,F rench writer (1908-1986)



by invading their country’s new parliament in1912. Everywhere, the fierce resistance of thepolitical world progressively yielded to determi-ned women’s movements.

Scandinavia is where women first won theright to vote and to run for election, with Finlandleading the way in 1906. The First World Wart h rust them into the forefront, with mostEuropean women winning the right to vote in1918 and 1919, although French and Italianwomen had to wait until after the Second WorldWar to at last be recognized as citizens. Outsidethe West, women also organized to demand theirrights. Groups were founded in Turkey, Egypt andIndia. In 1930, the first congress of women fromthe Near and Middle East gathered in Damascusto demand equality. Throughout this peri o d ,women eve rywhere declared that , outside ofmotherhood, they had the right to be just likemen, and that men could not deny them thisright.

Control over theirown bodies

For a while, women’s rights movements took aback seat to the Second World War and liberationstruggles in the European colonies. The fightagainst fascism and, after 1945, c o l o n i a l i s m ,mobilized all their energy. Women distinguishedthemselves in these struggles,but that did not suf-fice to establish their rights as a gender. However,the world continued to change.With independen-ce, many women in the South won access toschooling, salaried employment and, in a fewexceptional cases, the closed world of politics. InWestern countries, the post-war period saw thementer the work force on a massive scale.The gapbetween social reality and the discriminatory lawsdefended by exclusively male power structuresgrew wider.

In the West,the second generation of feministsemerged in the wake of the libertarian move-ments of 1968. Picking up where their elders leftoff, they broadened the scope of their demands,for late-twentieth century feminists no longeraspired to the right to be “just like men”.Challenging the claim of the “white male” torepresent universality, their goal was to achieveequality while remaining distinct as women.Thewomen’s liberation movement that first emergedin the American middle-class claimed the right tocontrol one’s own body. Feminists fought forcontraception and abortion rights in many coun-tries where one or both were against the law, andfor autonomy and equality within the couple.“The personal is political,” proclaimed womeninspired by Marxism and psychoanalysis.“Workers of the world, who washes your socks?”chanted demonstrators in the streets of Paris inthe 1970s. In France, the Veil law legalizing abor-tion unleashed emotional debate in 1974.

Many Third World women could not identifywith the struggles being waged in the West and

insisted on leading their own battles at their ownpace. However, these Western feminist move-ments breathed new life into the cause.Recognizing the changes and proclaiming theirintention to accelerate them, the United Nationsdeclared 1975 “International Women’s Year”and organized the first international women’sconference in Mexico City.

Already proclaimed in the Unive rs a lDeclaration of Human Rights in 1948, sexualequality was reasserted in 1979 by theConvention on the Abolition of All Forms ofDiscrimination Against Women, which became aprecious emancipation tool in the North as wellas the South. At UN conferences in Copenhagenin 1980, Nairobi in 1985 and Beijing in 1995,women from both hemispheres found commonground, demanding the right to “have a child if Iwant it, when I want it,” rejecting Malthusianprinciples and claiming their place in political

In Munich, Germany, a poster printed for Women’s Day on March 8,1914 demands the rightto vote for women.


South A f r i c a :a s t rategic a s c e n t◗ Shireen Hassim

Since the advent of their country’s first democratic government, women have imposed far-reaching pieces of legislation. Making them effective remains an uphill battle

◗ Lecturer in Political Studies at theUniversity of Witwatersrand,andmember of the Gender andElections Reference Groupcoordinated by the ElectoralInstitute of South Africa.Also onthe advisory board of Womensnet(www.womensnet.org)

bodies that until then had decided the world’sfuture without them, struggling against religiousfundamentalism that jeopardizes their modestgains.

Misogyny of thepolitical class

Of course, the struggle of Kuwaiti womenagainst those who have denied them the right tovote or Indian women against the forced abortionof female fœtuses is not the same as Americanwomen’s battle against their own fundamentalistsor French women’s campaign against the misogy-ny of the political class.Women’s movements takedifferent approaches depending on the continentand do not necessarily have the same priorities,but the struggle has nonetheless become globald u ring the past several decades. In the lastt we n t y - five ye a rs , women have gradually in-creased their presence in public life, although itcan hardly be said that the doors are wide openfor them. From Africa to Asia, women’s organiza-tions have multiplied and acquired experience.

But their victories remain incomplete and thefuture is uncert a i n . From the nightmare ofAfghan women to the ways in which equality isresisted in the so-called most advanced countries,the obstacles show that there is still a long way togo. Will women see the end of the struggle in thiscentury that has just begun, the one which sup-posedly belongs to them? ■

Beijing Plus Five

Five years after a historic women’s conference in Beijingthat gathered some 30,000 participants from 189 coun-

tries, the United Nations General Assembly will be holdinga special session in New York from June 5-9,2 0 0 0 . The goalof the meeting, entitled “Women 2000:Gender Equality,Development and Peace for the Twenty-First Century,” is totake stock of progress made in implementing the Platformfor Action adopted in 1995. Divided into 12 areas of criticalc o n c e r n , this set of commitments calls for economic oppor-tunity and security for women, quality education and healthcare, full political and economic participation and the pro-motion of human rights, among others. M e a n w h i l e, w o m e nare on the march to demand an end to poverty and violence.Launched on March 8 by the Fédération des femmes duQuébec,the World March of Women gathers some 4,000groups from 153 countries. The initiative culminates at theUnited Nations in New York on October 17, 2 0 0 0 , t h eWorld Day for the Eradication of Poverty. ■

+ …www.un.org/womenwatch/dawwww.ffq.qc.caChanging the World Step by Step. Mosaic in Tribute to Women’s Struggles Worldwide.A collection of empowering experiences publi-shed by The World March of Women

Right after South A f ri c a ’s second democratic elec-tions in June 1999, the newly elected PresidentThabo Mbeki appointed eight women to minis-

t e rial positions,double the number in the first gove rn-m e n t . The country ranks seventh in the world int e rms of women parliamentary representat i ves (25 perc e n t ) , while the South A f rican constitution and theA f rican National Congress (ANC) gove rnment haveentrenched gender equality as a key political va l u e ,s i g n i ficant achievements on a continent where wo m e nare all too often regarded as secondary citizens.

The moral support of leaders such as Oliver Ta m b oand Nelson Mandela notwithstanding,wo m e n ’s gainsresult from a we l l - a rt i c u l ated strategy that took shapewithin the ANC well before its 1994 electoral victory.

With a transition to democracy in progress in the early1 9 9 0 s , this strategy focused sharply on representat i o ni s s u e s. In 1991, women within the ANC demanded aquota of seats on the National Exe c u t i ve Committee.They fa i l e d , but in 1994, the ANC was the only part yto adopt a 30 per cent quota of women on its electorall i s t s.When the ANC started drafting the Reconstru c-tion and Development Progr a m m e , the backbone ofits electoral manifesto,wo m e n ’s groups within the part ylobbied hard for it to address their concerns regardinge m p l oy m e n t ,health and land ow n e rs h i p.This lobbyingwas bolstered by a powerful grassroots movement thatshared the aim of making South A f rica a non-racial,but also a non-sexist democracy.Women from all wa l k sof life formed a National Coalition in 1992, which tur-

ned gender representation into a multiparty concern .A c c o m p a nying the dri ve to get women into power wa san emphasis on getting them out to vote through tar-geted campaigns.

Opposition from traditional leadersOnce in government, women were influential

in drafting the constitution, adopted in 1996.Thetask was not always easy. Even though the coun-try touted itself as a non-sexist democracy, inpushing for the insertion of an equality clause,women ran into strong opposition from severaltraditional leaders, including some within thepolitical fold of the ANC, who argued that itconflicted with the protection of custom and tra-dition.Strong political lobbying efforts by womenMPs such as Mavivi Manzini, Baleka Mbete andThenjiwe Mtintso undercut the arguments of thetraditional leaders.Women MPs were also instru-mental in getting clauses included on reproducti-ve rights as well as socio-economic rights.

Most women who entered Parliament in 1994were committed to advancing the rights of SouthA f rican women—an inevitable source of tensionwhen their positions came into conflit with those oftheir respective part i e s. S t i l l , a number of routeswere pursued to break through this ‘ l oya l t y ’d i l e m m a .By far the most successful structure for adva n c i n gwo m e n ’s rights has been the Joint Committee on theI m p r ovement of Quality of Life and Status of Wo m e n .Grouping women from across party lines, this par-l i a m e n t a ry committee consults with wo m e n ’s orga-n i z ations in civil society and has played a cri t i c a lrole in proposing and fast tracking legi s l ation so thatit is put on the roll for debat e .Had it not been for thisc o m m i t t e e , it is more than likely that several fa r -reaching pieces of legi s l ation directly concern i n g



1.AZT has been shown to reduce transmission of HIVfrom pregnant mothers to their babies.

women would not have been passed. In part i c u l a r ,t h eTe rm i n ation of Pregnancy Act provides women withaccess to abortion under significantly broader andmore favourable conditions than in the past. T h eMaintenance Act of 1998 substantially improves theposition of mothers dependent on child supportfrom their former part n e rs.Free health services havebeen provided for pregnant women and childrenunder the age of six.The 1998 Domestic Violence A c twas important in sensitizing the judiciary to the fa c tt h at violence within families was a public mat t e r.The committee has also stood behind a budget ini-t i at i ve which analyzes how different ministries allo-c ate resources specifically to benefit wo m e n .

These gains are laudable. But despite thesignificant number of women in cabinet—manyof whom come from an activist background —they have been unable to oppose cutbacks insocial service spending or increases in arm sexpenditure (the deputy minister of defense is aQuaker and head of the ANC’s women’s parlia-mentary caucus). And although health ministerDr Manto Tshabalala is a woman and longtimegender activist, she has not supported women’sorganizations’ demand for the HIV/Aids drugAZT to be offered to pregnant women and rapesurvivors.1 The government has argued that theoption is unaffordable, a position not necessarilyheld by women within the ANC, nor, for thatmatter, by the opposition.

Securing leadership positionsin political parties

In the 1999 election campaign, no party ques-tioned the principle of gender representation.Instead, the focus shifted to specific policy issuessuch as violence against women, unemployment,housing and health care, with national televisionand radio allotting air time to debate the positionsheld by the competing parties. Women activistspointed out that despite the formal commitmentsto gender equality, political parties failed to outli-ne policy positions on key gender issues. Forexample, not one party had a policy with regardto dealing with violence against women despitethe fact that South Africa has one of the highestincidence of rape in the world.

These interventions during elections highlightedthe need for women to become significantly moreorganized within political parties and to hold lea-d e rship positions within them.This will gi ve wo m e nMPs the support they need to become even moree f f e c t i ve within the legi s l at i ve arena, but also ensurethat internal party mechanisms exist to hold themaccountable to women members and not just part yleadership. Joyce Piliso-Seroke,chairperson of theCommission on Gender Equality, has commentedt h at a long climb remains. The gove rn m e n t , s h es a i d ,“talks the talk of gender equality, without wa l-king the walk.The Domestic Violence and Main-tenance Acts will remain just so many words unlessi n f r a s t ructure and human resources are provided tomake them effective.” ■

An ANC gathering on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections in April 1994.

The women werec o u ra g e o u s, p e r s i s t e n t ,e n t h u s i a s t i c ,i n d e f a t i g a b l e, and theirprotest against the passsystem set a standard for anti-government proteststhat was never equalled.Nelson Mandela, former SouthAfrican president (1918- )


‘I’ll go to parliament dressed as I was during myc a m p a i g n , in an ove r c o at and a head-scarf. N oway will I put on the chador.” Elaheh Koulaï, a

u n i ve rsity professor elected to parliament as a repre-s e n t at i ve of Tehran in the Fe b ru a ry 18, 2000 legi s l a-t i ve elections, unleashed a political storm when shemade this quasi-revo l u t i o n a ry proclamat i o n . S i n c ethe advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979,all wo m e nholding official positions have wo rn the chador, t h el o n g,black fa b ric cove ring that conceals the entire bodyfrom head to toe.

Marzieh Dabagh, an outgoing member of parlia-ment who was not re-elected, reacted to Koulaï’s sta-tements by threatening to “ b ox the ears ”of any wo m a n

who would dare come to the M a j l i s (the Iranian par-liament) without the traditional chador.The brotherof the Guide of the Islamic Republic, Hadi Kha-m e n e i , a leading member of the reformist camp,h a dto step in and cool tempers dow n , s aying that allf o rms of ve i l s , from the simple head-scarf to thec h a d o r , are acceptable.

This debate may seem tri t e , but it reveals thea s s e rt i veness of women in Iranian society, i n c l u d i n goutside Te h r a n , where they are seldom seen withoutthe chador. Fatemeh Khatami (no relation to the pre-sident) was elected to parliament in Mashhad,not fa rfrom the Afghan border, e ven though she does notwear the chador, an unprecedented event in the pro-v i n c e s.

An educated generationA symbol of the Islamic order,the obligation to we a r

the veil has never prevented women from standingup for their ri g h t s.At the beginning of the revo l u t i o n ,the gove rnment tried to send them back into theh o m e , p ri m a rily with offers of early retirement andi n c e n t i ves to work less.But officials soon gave up in theface of resistance (women were accustomed to gentlert r e atment under the Shah, especially if they belongedto the elite) and the needs of the country, then at wa rwith Iraq.To d ay,women account for 12 per cent of thework force.Although the figure is the same as in 1979,it is likely to rise as new generations of better-educat e dwomen enter the labour market.

For women have taken full advantage of the literacyfor all campaign launched after the revo l u t i o n ,e s p e-cially in the country s i d e , which had remained back-ward under the Shah.To d ay the percentage of girls inschool is almost the same as that of boys (nearly 80 perc e n t ) .Young women account for 40 per cent of uni-ve rsity students and, t wo ye a rs ago, for the first timemore girls than boys were admitted to the competitiven ational entrance examinat i o n s.This ye a r , they eve nmake up 58 per cent of the accepted candidat e s.“Almost all leisure activities are closed to gi r l s ,”explains law yer and wo m e n ’s rights advo c ate Meh-ranguiz Kar. “So they focus on their studies.”

Women are still overwhelmingly underr e p r e s e n t e din political decision-making bodies, but they play ad e c i s i ve role as vo t e rs.“Their turn-out has been outs-tanding since the May 1997 legi s l at i ve ballot, w h i c hhelped elect President Khat a m i ,” continues Kar.“ T h ewo m e n ’s vote is a conscious vo t e . They carefullychoose candidates who are in favour of their ri g h t s.”In Fe b ru a ry 1999,they made use of their power to vo t esome 300 women into municipal councils during thefirst local elections since 1979. In the rather traditional

E m a n c i p a t i o n under the veils◗ Siavosh Ghazi

Despite the Islamic re v o l u t i o n , women have never stopped standing up for their rights.In head-scarves or chadors, they are at the heart of the struggle to modernize society

◗ Freelance journalist based inTehran

Young Iranian women at the ballot box in the first round of the February 18,2000 legislative elections.



p r ovincial cities and tow n s , these results reflect a“ r e volution of mentalities”, s ays Fatemeh Ja l a ï p o u r , aTehran municipal council member responsible forwo m e n ’s issues.

The wo m e n ’s vote also helped reform e rs win thel e gi s l at i ve elections. Some interior ministry officials sayt h at women outnumbered men vo t e rs : 55 per centcompared with 45 per cent. B u t , as journalist SaïdLeylaz points out,“this time they didn’t vote specific a l l yfor women candidat e s ,” e ven though their numberincreased by 70 per cent compared with the last legi s-l at i ve elections. Like the outgoing M a j l i s, the new par-liament has only fifteen women deputies (out of 290),but they are moderates rather than conservat i ve s.

A voice in the pressWomen must still settle for a backseat in politics,bu t

they hold a gr owing number of senior civil serv i c ep o s i t i o n s. Since taking office in 1997, P r e s i d e n tMohammad Khatami has asked his ministers to appointwomen to head up the va rious ministerial depart-m e n t s.And his brother, Mohammad Reza Khat a m i ,who leads the Islamic Iran Pa rt i c i p ation Front,said aftert h at movement won the last elections, “ We are infavour of women entering the gove rn m e n t .”

The rise of Iranian women is partly due to theirown mobilization effort s. After the Iran-Iraq wa r ,m a ny of them organized all kinds of activities withinr e l i gious organizat i o n s , often spurred on by theg ove rn m e n t . Since 1997, they have rushed into thel i b e r a l i z ation process begun by Mohammad Kha-tami to set up more independent non-gove rn m e n t a lo r g a n i z at i o n s , despite resistance from conservat i ve s ,who until now have controlled the committee incharge of issuing perm i t s.To d ay, the social fa b ric isp a rtly based on wo m e n .“In Te h r a n ,s e veral hundredgrassroots mutual aid, e nvironmental protection and

other groups are headed by wo m e n ,” s ays Ja l a ï p o u r.L i k e w i s e , the number of young women on studentcouncils is steadily on the ri s e .A n d ,s ays Kar, wo m e nhead over 40 publishing companies, most of whichp rint books on wo m e n ’s issues or by women authors.

The press has also played a key role. As early as1 9 9 0 , women Muslim intellectuals founded themonthly Z a n a n (Wo m e n, in Fa rs i ) , where they cam-paign for a revision of their legal status and a morem o d e rn form of Islam.They are demanding the samerights as men with regard to inheritance (under shari a ,they are entitled to only half as much as men),d i vo r c e(they can be repudiated for no apparent reason) andchild custody (which is denied them if their daughteris over seven and their son over two ) . Only a fewminor touch-ups have been made in the past seve r a lye a rs to correct these inequalities. For example, awoman may now request that her right to ask for ad i vorce be recognized in the marriage contr a c t .

Widely read by young wo m e n ,Z a n a n boasts a cir-c u l ation of 30,000,one of the highest runs of any Ira-nian monthly. H owe ve r , there as elsewhere, t h ed e b ate over the interp r e t ation of Islamic rules stilld o m i n ates the issue of gender equality, which limitsthe scope of the feminist move m e n t .“ A d vo c ates ofs e c u l a rism still cannot organize as such,” s ays Kar.They have voiced their concerns on several occasionswithin non-gove rnmental groups such as the Orga-n i z ation of Women Jo u rnalists and through thewo m e n ’s press, in Z a n a n and the daily Z a n, before itwas shut down less than one year ago.

“ We ’re going to have new laws passed in favo u rof gender equality,” said Elaheh Koulaï after shewon the election. The deputy’s determ i n ation islikely to put her on a collision course with irat ec o n s e rvat i ve s , who view the “loosening of morals t a n d a r d s ” as a sign of their political defeat . ■

S w e d e n : court battles for e q u a l p a y◗ Elisabet Ornerborg

Even in the country with the world’s highest number of female cabinet ministers,the gender gap is not closed in the workplace

Despite an Equal Opportunities Act passed in1 9 7 9 , S wedish women earn 15 to 20 per centless than men. F i ve ye a rs ago, an economist

won her case, p r oving that she took home less thanher male counterp a rts in the same borough,although her responsibilities and education we r ei d e n t i c a l . But when it comes to comparing differentjobs deemed of equal value, the task is much morecomplex.

In 1995, almost 400 Stockholm area nurses lod-

ged a wage discri m i n ation complaint with theirEqual Opportunities Ombu d s m a n . Because casesare dealt with on an individual basis, three differentproceedings were filed in the Labour Court . A fourt hwas filed separately in 1996 by two midwives fromOrebro county council,in southern Sweden.

F i ve ye a rs down the line, none of these cases hasbeen resolve d .The nurses and midwives claim thattheir work is of equal value to that of male medicalt e c h n i c i a n s ,but that their wages are about 15 per cent

◗ Swedish journalist,with Lag&Atval, a magazinespecialized in labour issues

It is not possible to develop a countrywithout first adva n c i n gthe status of women.Habib Bourg u i b a ,first president of Tunisia ( 1 9 0 1 - 2 0 0 0 )


◗ Journalist based in Lima (Peru)

1.These 243 complaints, which included 30 deaths,arecollected and detailed in the report Nada personal. Reportede derechos humanos sobre la aplicación de la anticoncepciónquirúrgica en el Perú (“Nothing personal.A human rightsreport on the implementation of surgical sterilisation inPeru”),released in mid-1999.The author,lawyer GiuliaTamayo, was awarded Amnesty International’s GinettaSaga prize for her work on behalf of women’s rights.

Pe r u : s kewed p l a n n i n g◗ Natalia Ta r n a w i e c k i

Two Peruvian organizations working on behalf of women’s rights have waged a successfulcampaign to re v e rse coercive family planning policies

The first rays of morning sun appear through thew i n d ow.The water boils, the dry clothes must bebrought in, the children woken up. In the humble

house where Damiana Barrientos lives in one ofL i m a ’s southern subu r b s , a new day is begi n n i n g .But for Damiana, this is no ordinary daw n :t o d ay shemust go to court .

In Fe b ru a ry 2000,Damiana won the right to freemedical care from the Pe ruvian health ministry untilshe makes a full recove ry from an operation per-f o rmed against her will. “ E ve rything began in them at e rnity ward of a Lima hospital in 1998 when I gaveb i rth to my baby,who died a few days after I had a cae-s a r e a n ,” s ays Damiana.“There they cut my fa l l o p i a ntubes and forged my signature on a paper saying I hadc o n s e n t e d .But complications emerged afterwa r d s ,a n dn ow I’m suffering from a dropped uteru s.”She we n tto the court s , but though the state acknowledged thatthere were “ d e ficiencies in the quality of care,”her casewas closed.Thanks to law ye rs from the Committee forthe defence of wo m e n ’s rights in Latin A m e rica andthe Caribbean (CLADEM-Pe ru) and to the Mov i-miento Amplio de Mujeres group (MAM), D a m i a n a ’scase was taken to the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights, where it is now awaiting sentence.Tod at e , CLADEM has filed legal complaints over 243cases of forced steri l i s at i o n .1

Since 1996, when the first evidence emerged of

s e rious violations of human rights through the imple-m e n t ation of vo l u n t a ry surgical steri l i s at i o n ,MAM andCLADEM have sought to reform the family planningp o l i cy embraced by the Pe ruvian gove rnment in 1995,and aimed at reducing the birth rate in rural areas from5.6 children for each woman to an average of 2.5children by the year 2000.“Our goal was to ensure thatwomen could freely opt for one of the va rious methodsof family planning and get the gove rnment to prov i d ei n f o rm ation on all the altern at i ves rather than imposevo l u n t a ry steri l i s ation as the only possible method,”s ays CLADEM’s Giulia Ta m ayo.

“Health festivals”According to CLADEM,the family planning pro-

gramme heralded by President A l b e rto Fujimori as away to make health services more democratic andt r a n s f o rm women into “ m a s t e rs of their destiny ”h a sbeen conve rted since 1996 into a policy of forceds t e ri l i s ation devoted to meeting national quotas,w i t hs u r gical steri l i s ation as the only option.To make thel atter more popular,“health festiva l s ” were organizedin which women were goaded into agreeing to undergothe operat i o n . “ We decided to have only two chil-d r e n .T h at ’s why we chose to have our tubes cut, a n dwe are happy!”Messages like this featured prominentlyon the colourful banners hoisted in villages toannounce the health festiva l s , which would last bet-ween one and three days and include sporting activi-ties and public concert s.

D u ring the festiva l s , va c c i n ation campaigns,tests for breast and uterus cancer and dental check-ups were promised, but not all of these serv i c e swere provided.No official information is availableon the number of festivals held between 1996 and

l owe r.The former look after hospital apparatus andrequire less educat i o n .

The case has revo l ved around job eva l u at i o n s.T h em i d w i ve s ’e m p l oye rs maintain that there is no salarygap between the two work cat e g o ries since they receivec o m p e n s ation for night shifts and work four hoursl e s s.The medical technicians work days only.T h eO m budsman has argued that basic monthly wa g e sshould be compared, not those taking compensat i o nfor shift work into account.The Labour Court turn e dto the European Court of Justice in Luxe m b o u r g,which ruled in A p ril that basic salaries should be com-p a r e d , taking the case back to the Swedish court .

“The most significant thing about these casesis that they are all focusing on the difference in payb e t ween different professions, one dominated bywomen,one by men.How do you prove that work

is of equal value? There is no precedent in our courtabout this,” explains Raija Lounava a r a , of the EqualOpportunities office.

If the nurses and midwives win their respectivec a s e s , their employe rs will be held liable for damages.It does not follow that the 400 nurses who filed com-plaints in 1995 will benefit .“But rulings stating thatthese persons have been discri m i n ated against willsend a ve ry important message to trade unions ande m p l oye rs ,” said Lounava a r a . N e ve rt h e l e s s , t h en u rs e s ’ union does not support the court cases whichbreak with the Swedish tradition of collective agr e e-m e n t s. It argues that wages are best set through nego-t i ation and by relying on market forces, gi ven thes h o rtage of nurs e s. Since 1995, the union has streng-thened this negotiating process and obtained thes h a rpest wage hikes on the labour market. ■



1 9 9 8 , though according to the health ministry,there were 463 “ c a m p a i g n s ” in the first half of1996, which were attended by 120,000 people inremote rural areas.

“These massive campaigns were preceded byhome visits carried out by medical wo r k e rs with theaim of winning over fertile women with more than fourc h i l d r e n .People lived in a state of permanent anxiety,”declares Ta m ayo. R e p o rts collected by Ta m ayo indi-c ate that couples were explained the benefits of the sur-g e ry, which was presented as the only option, b e f o r ebeing forced to sign a document.Those who under-went the operation were then presented with 15 kilo-grammes of food, while the health worker who suc-cessfully persuaded the woman in question wa sawarded a bonus.

CLADEM gathered together a large number ofcomplaints proving that the poor sanitary conditionsin which the steri l i s ations were carried out had causeds e rious complicat i o n s , sometimes leading to deat h ,and that these after-effects were not just limited to iso-l ated cases as the gove rnment had claimed, but we r e

p a rt and parcel of a vast systematic practice. In theabsence of any official answe rs to its questions,CLADEM called on the press at the end of 1997 tomake the complaints public and put direct pressureon the gove rn m e n t .

“Not all of the family planning programme isw r o n g .We don’t oppose it, but we want to point outthe traumatic results of the coercive implementat i o nof vo l u n t a ry steri l i s at i o n ,” o b s e rves MAM’s MaríaEsther Mogollón. In 1998, her organization decidedto check out reports that had emerged from Lima andthe country ’s interi o r.“Fifty vo l u n t e e rs visited hospitalsin 19 out of the 25 districts where the programme hadbeen applied to talk with those affected and with doc-t o rs ,” s ays Mogollón. “The two most serious pro-

blems we saw were medical negligence and a lack ofi n f o rm ation for wo m e n ,” she adds. MAM has sincedecided to distri bute pamphlets listing the rights ofhealth service users , and urging them to contact ane m e r g e n cy advice hotline in the event of any abu s e sof those ri g h t s.

O f ficial statistics report that 800,000 couples we r eattended by state family planning services in 1998,bu tt h at only 3.5 per cent chose vo l u n t a ry steri l i s at i o n ,a n dt h at so far the total number of sterilised men andwomen in Pe ru stands at 300,000 —in a proport i o nof 10 women to each man. U n o f ficial fig u r e s , i nc o n t r a s t , suggest that almost 500,000 people haveundergone the surgery.

Fo l l owing the campaigns mounted byCLADEM and MAM, the health ministry has beenforced to change its methods, and now incorp o r at e sthe MAM pamphlet in the inform ation it distri bu t e s ,as well as offering two advice sessions to would-bepatients: one on contraceptive methods, and theother on the contraceptive method chosen, i n c l u d i n g(if necessary) a briefing on the possible complica-

tions and irr e ve rsible nature of surgical steri l i s at i o n .A 72 hour-period between signing the consent formand the operation has also been granted to allow forany second thoughts.

A year after the introduction of these reform s ,Pe ru ’s family planning programme now maintains amuch lower profil e . No health festivals have beenstaged this ye a r ,while according to authori t i e s ,d e m a n dfor vo l u n t a ry steri l i s ation has dropped by 30 per cent.The main goal of the wo m e n ’s rights groups has beento condemn the deva s t ating effects and psycholo-gical damage that have followed the operat i o n s , bu ttheir campaigns have helped ensure that poor ru r a lpeople can plan their family freely, and learn the way sof responsible parenting. ■

Nela Julcarine leaving a healthcare centre on the outskirts of Lima.She is one of several social workers who denouncedthe ways in which state medical officers pushed women into undergoing surgical sterilisation.

The male is by natures u p e r i o r, and the femalei n f e r i o r ;and the one rules, a n dthe other is ruled.A r i s t o t l e,G reek philosopher (384-322 B. C. )


At the dawn of the 21st century, states andthe international community can no longerrefute the fact that humanity is made up of

two sexes, not just one.This discovery, a preciouslegacy of the century that just closed, has broughtwomen’s existence into the limelight. One of thegreat democratic challenges for societies over thenext century will be to mature so that both sexesare able to live their lives on an equal footing,with all their differences, contrasting history andculture, but also with equal rights and responsibi-lities.

Women’s rise to power and their participationin politics are the vital signs of a healthy demo-cracy. If only this vision that emerged from the1995 Beijing Women’s Conference could spreadworldwide! I would call it a radicalisation ofdemocracy. When women take part in the publicarena, contributing to the ongoing, shared effor tto shape better ways of living together, a qualita-tive leap occurs. Their participation fills a gapwhich has until now prevented the emergence ofa truly democratic culture.

Archaic attitudesEqual sharing of decision-making by men and

women is a pre-requiste for democracy. In Brazil,women hold half the civil service jobs (they aremore qualified than men), but only 13 per cent ofs u p e rv i s o ry positions. The ultra-modern bu i l-dings in the federal capital, Brasilia, stand insharp contrast with the persistence of intellectualand emotional outlooks which hark back to the19th century and hinder women’s empowerment.

But attitudes are not the only obstacle towomen’s ambitions. The structure of society andthe way men and women run their daily lives areother stumbling blocks.

The Inter-American Development Bank hashad the good idea of giving the Institute forCultural Action, an NGO in Rio de Janeiro, thetask of setting up a pilot programme to trainBrazilian women for positions of political andsocial power, an experiment which is to be exten-ded to the rest of Latin America. Participantsinclude trade union and NGO leaders,key figuresfrom the black and indigenous communities,company executives, civil servants and policyma-kers.

These women of different ages, educationalbackgrounds and ethnic origins are all aware ofone fact: they are paying a very high price for asocial contract that was negotiated when womenwere in a position of weakness,and agree that thishas to change.

Re-mapping the division betweenpublic and private life

Women account for 46 per cent of Brazil’sworking population and hold 51 per cent of theuniversity degrees, but still perform almost alltasks at home, in the private sphere. A study of300 women in positions of responsibility by theCentre for Women’s Leadership (CELIM) in Riode Janeiro revealed the difficulty they had inmaking choices, their temptation to give up andthe risk of pulling back in the face of increasingobstacles. Their difficulties show that there is anurgent need to re-organize the use of time,to stri-ke a new balance between responsibilities and tore-map the division between public and privatelife. Household tasks must be recognised as time-consuming, socially and economically vital and aserious check on women’s ambitions.

Women in positions of power must constantlyprove that they can behave like men. They keep

For a fair sharing of t i m e◗ Rosiska Darcy de Oliveira

Women may have entered public life on a massive scale, but they are still on their own when it comes to running the household. A new balance must be struck if there is to be genuine democra c y

◗ President of the Centre forWomen’s Leadership (CELIM),Riode Janeiro, Brazil

2 The political are n a



quiet about having to look after children, run ahousehold and care for elderly parents. Bringingthose issues out into the open would mean admit-ting “flaws” that men do not have, for the simplereason that they delegate such work to theirwives.

By drawing a veil of silence over their homelife as if it were something illicit, women are allo-wing a basic fact to be hidden: the world of workrelies on a domestic zone run by them. Womenhave changed, but the world of work has not andthey are reaching the point of exhaustion. Filledwith a deep sense of injustice, they are askingthemselves: “Where did I go wrong?”

Understanding that humanity is composed oftwo different but equal sexes has several implica-tions. Society must redefine itself because womenare turning up in public carrying children in theirarms and breast-feeding them, and because theyhave their own awareness and language that comefrom life experiences which are different fromthose of men.

An untenabledouble burden

Articulating issues affecting public and privatelife is complicated, but that does not mean theequation is impossible or that the problems theyraise should be brushed aside—especially sincethe two worlds of public and private life are inter-twined and mutually supportive.The balance bet-ween the two has now been upset. Women haveentered public life on a massive scale, but theorganization of home life—how time is used andwho is responsible for what tasks—is still thesame, as if nothing had changed. And yet such aworld, where women are expected to soldier on just as before, “simply” adding to their livesexperiences hitherto reserved to men, is calledegalitarian.

That misunderstanding is fueled by an age-oldtradition of dismissing the world of women, evenby women themselves. Because society does notconsider what they do in the home as having anymajor social significance, it fails to add this partof their lives to the other side of the equation.

This is why the massive migration of womenfrom the home to the public arena is occurringwithout societies having to think seriously abouthow and by whom domestic work will be done inthe future (and which women still do, but at whatcost!).The double burden, resulting from an out-dated social contract, is putting women undermounting pressure by speeding up their lives toan untenable pace.We are facing a social problemthat society as a whole must solve and not, asmany think, a problem that women must settle byworking even harder.

As new areas of power open up to women,both sexes must take a fresh look at how they usetime. Re-arranging it is a challenge to society’simagination. But has this necessity sunk into theminds of decision-makers? I do not think so. This

poses a major problem because it is a missingbuilding block in the construction of our demo-cracies.

The everyday work of CELIM is proof of this.Women must put these issues on the political andeconomic agenda, thereby contributing to a moreradical definition of democracy. Feminism’s newdemand for a different sharing of time also opensa debate that goes beyond the interests of womena l o n e . In the final analysis, time and itsconstraints define the limits of our own lives andthe range of choices we make, in accordance withthe meaning we give to our own existence.

The equality equation is increasingly complex.It is not enough to wipe out the last traces of dis-crimination in public life. A new definition ofequality will emerge when both sexes start sharingresponsibility in the private realm. Otherwise, theissue will be distorted and women will lose allchance of succeeding in public life. ■

Being there: A woman nursing her child during a political rally in Tokoza, South Africa.

If you say,“I’m for equal pay,”t h a t ’s a reform.But if you say,“I’m a feminist,”that’s atransformation of s o c i e t y.Gloria Steinem,American writer andfeminist (1934-)


U n finished d e m o c ra c y

Women in politics:still “the s e c o n d s e x ”

% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

15.3 Americas

15.3 Asia

14.1 Europe, excluding Nordic countries

38.8 Nordic countries

13.5 Pacific

11.7 Sub-Saharan Africa

3.6 Arab States

13.8 World

Source:Inter-Parliamentary Union,April 2000

% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

42.7 Sweden

37.4 Denmark

36.5 Finland

36.4 Norway

36.0 Netherlands

34.9 Iceland

30.9 Germany

30.0 Mozambique

29.8 South Africa

29.2 New Zealand

28.6 Bosnia and Herzegovina,Venezuela

27.6 Cuba

28.3 Spain

26.8 Austria

26.7 Grenada

26.5 Argentina

26.0 Turkmenistan, Viet Nam

25.0 Namibia

Source:Inter-Parliamentary Union,April 2000

The 20 countries where women hold at least 25% of parliamentary seats

Women in national parliaments(in percentage, by region,both houses combined)

Nearly eve ry w h e r e , with the notable exception ofc o u n t ries like Ku wa i t , l aws entitle women tovote and be elected. But in reality, the propor-

tion of women in legi s l at i ve bodies falls far short ofrepresenting their percentage in the general popula-t i o n .The Inter-Pa r l i a m e n t a ry Union (IPU),a Geneva -based organization comprising 139 parliaments, s ay st h at men still account for 86 per cent of the wo r l d ’s par-l i a m e n t a rians and that no country—not even in nor-t h e rn Europe—has achieved total pari t y. In the form e rcommunist countri e s ,which once boasted some of thewo r l d ’s highest rates of female representation in poli-t i c s , the percentages have fallen sharply since 1989.

L i k e w i s e , the IPU say s , “there has been no signi-ficant increase in the number of women heads ofg ove rnment and, a b ove all,m i n i s t e rs throughout thewo r l d .” The average number of women heads ofg ove rnment is around 12 per cent.A n d , they seldomobtain strat e gic portfolios such as fin a n c e , the interi o r

or defence but are more likely to be gi ven the minis-t ries of social affa i rs , the fa m i l y, health and the env i-r o n m e n t ,which have lower funding and less politicalc l o u t . ■

Regardless of their political affil i at i o n , in allc o u n t ries women must overcome a host ofstumbling blocks that limit their political

careers. “Most obstacles to progress consist. . . ofdeficiencies of various kinds,” the IPU says, inclu-ding lack of time,training, information,self-confi-dence, money, support, motivation, women’s net-works and solidarity between women.

In every culture, prejudice and stereotypes diehard. The belief still holds sway that womenbelong in the kitchen and with the children,not atelection rallies or in the Speaker’s chair. Themedia often reinforce traditional images ofwomen, who, upon entering politics, also oftenbear the brunt of verbal and physical attacks.

In impoverished countries racked by civil stri-

The 1980s has seen a powerfulc o u n t e rassault onw o m e n ’s rights,a backlash,an attempt to retract thehandful of small andhard-won victories thatthe feminist movementdid manage to win forw o m e n . Th i sc o u n t e rassault is largelyi n s i d i o u s : (...) it standsthe truth firmly on itshead and proclaims thatthe very steps thate l e vated women’sposition have actuallyled to their downfall.Susan Fa l u d i ,journalist and American author( 1 9 5 9 - )

Heads of State 7 3 . 7 %( B e r m u d a ,F i n l a n d ,I r e l a n d ,L a t v i a , Pa n a m a , San Marino, Sri Lanka)

Heads of Government 3 1 . 6 %( B a n g l a d e s h , New Zealand and Sri Lanka)

Number of countries whose government includes a woman 1 4 5 7 6 . 3 %

Minister of Defence and Ve t e ran A f f a i r s 4 2 . 1 %

Minister of A g r i c u l t u r e 7 3 . 7 %

Minister of Finance/Budget 9 4 . 7 %

Minister of Science, Technology and Research 9 4 . 7 %

Minister of the Economy/Development 1 4 7 . 4 %

Minister of Foreign A f f a i r s 1 5 7 . 9 %

Minister of Justice 2 3 1 2 . 1 %

Minister of Education 2 3 1 2 . 1 %

Minister of Labour/Employment/Vocational Tra i n i n g 2 5 1 3 . 2 %

Minister of Fa m i l y / C h i l d r e n / Yo u t h 2 6 1 3 . 7 %

Minister of the Environment 2 8 1 4 . 7 %

Minister of Health 3 0 1 5 . 8 %

Minister of Culture 3 2 1 6 . 8 %

Minister of Social A f f a i r s 4 4 2 3 . 2 %

Minister of Wo m e n ’s Affairs/Gender Equality 4 7 2 4 . 7 %

Source:Inter-Parliamentary Union,1999



S t rategies of c h a n g eHow can women—a “minority” that makes

up 52 per cent of the world’s population—take their rightful place in the management

of the world’s affairs? The controversy surroun-ding various measures intended to encouragethem will continue for a long time to come.As thefierce debate over France’s recent parity law sho-wed,the two camps are divided into the advocatesof practical efficiency and the defenders of a theo-retical universalism.

“Some feminists view the demand for parity indecision-making forums as a step towards ther e building of a dividing wall between the sexe s , ad e velopment conducive to hierarchy - building andd i s c ri m i n at i o n ,” s ays the IPU. “ O t h e rs , on thec o n t r a ry, view it as a means to eliminate barri e rsand as an altern at i ve to strat e gies that h ave failed towo r k : e n t ry into parties (in which women regularlyfa i l ) ,p a rtial redistri bution by means of quotas. . . o rpious hopes for a change in mentalities.”

In northern Europe, where the feminist move-

fe and deteriorating economic and social condi-tions, women are strapped by the tasks of mana-ging everyday life and looking after their families.

The IPU stresses the general lack of child-carefacilities—often reserved for a privileged few—the reluctance of political parties to change thetimes and running of meetings and the weak bac-king women receive from their own families.Thatsupport, which is moral as well as financial, is allthe more vital because women have internalisednegative images of themselves since the dawn oftime and often suffer from low self-confidence.

Another obstacle is the lack of fin a n c i a lresources, especially as election campaigns beco-me increasingly expensive . To make mat t e rswo rs e , women encounter more or less ove rtmachismo in the form of closed political circlesbarring entry to the “second sex”. Lastly, theydeplore the lack of solidarity between women,exacerbated by the fact that the number of avai-lable positions is limited. ■

ment is very strong, parties set up quotas in the1970s and have been raising them periodically tothe point of achieving near-parity. That policy isstarting to spread to the rest of Europe, especial-ly left-wing parties. But in some countries, suchas Portugal, bills in favour of such measures haverecently failed to pass (February 2000).

The situation in developing countries is morevaried but seems to be changing. Many partiesand governments—especially in Angola, BurkinaFa s o, Cape Ve r d e , C h i l e , G u at e m a l a , I n d i a ,Namibia, the Philippines, South Africa and SriLanka—have taken steps in favour of quotas orannounced their intention to do so. ■

Women in the Executive

+ …● w w w. i p u . o rg● Politics: Women’s Insight. The views of some 200women politicians in 65 countries—from why theyrun to how they feel their involvement in politicsm a kes a differe n c e.Series Reports and Documents No 36,I n t e r- Parliamentary Union, 2000


a handful were activists like her.They were fussedover by the men in the organizat i o n , who wanted toshow they were modern-minded and strongly infavour of wo m e n ’s emancipat i o n .The UNEM exe-c u t i ve committee welcomed Skalli and she tookon her first political responsibilities.

King Hassan II, who came to the throne in1961,soon called a halt to these “antics.” In 1965,a high-school student rebellion grew into a popularu p rising and a state of emergency was declared.T h eUNEM was decapitated when all its leaders weredrafted into the army. Except for Skalli, t h at is,who gr e atly resented being treated differentlybecause of her sex. “I had dreams about an armyt ruck that would pick me up and take me awaywith my comrades.”

Skalli acquired her yen for politics during theseye a rs of activism. But the state of emergency drovethe UNFP, of which she was a member, u n d e r-gr o u n d . Morocco entered a period of politicalrepression. Women party members busied them-s e l ves with looking after political pri s o n e rs ’ fa m i l i e s.

Badia Skalli had the good fortune to be born ata time when the world made sense, and eve-rything was linked to some kind of cause.

F i rst came the struggle for independence, then thebig push to build a new and freer country. Cold rea-lity eventually dashed these hopes, but from theoutset,there had been that dream.

Skalli was born in 1944 in El Ja d i d a , about 100kilometers south of Casablanca.At 10 she had herfirst taste of political activism.A pro-independenced e m o n s t r ation passed her house, and suddenly shewas marching in step with the protesters. T h i searned her a good hiding when she got home,butthe seed had been sown.

When Skalli enrolled at the Unive rsity of Casa-blanca in 1962 to study law, the National Union ofMoroccan Students (UNEM) was at its height andspearheading the left-wing opposition part y, t h eN ational Union of Popular Forces (UNFP).

“You just had to join in,” she remembers.“Youjust felt it so strongly.The students were the elite.”Women students were few and far betwe e n ,and only

A woman in the l i o n ’s den◗ Hinde Ta a r j i

For years, M o roccan member of parliament Badia Skalli has put her long-standing loyalty to the Socialist Party before her feminist beliefs. Now she is at the centre of a tough battle

◗ Freelance journalist based inCasablanca

In Casablanca, thousands of Islamic conservatives took to the streets on March 12,2000 to protest a proposed reform of the family legal code, which governs the status of women.



The young Skalli married, but her husband waskilled in a road accident three ye a rs lat e r. It took herseveral years to recover.

The call of politics was too compelling. W h e nthe UNFP split in 1975, she sided with the part y ’s“ d e m o c r at i c ”wing to help found the Socialist Unionof Popular Forces (USFP),which meant giving up thetempting dream of revo l u t i o n .The battle was now tobe fought within the institutional bounds defined bythe law. Skalli was one of the part y ’s few female can-d i d ates in the 1976 local elections, the first to beheld under the state of emergency.

She campaigned in a poor, p r e d o m i n a n t l yBerber-speaking area, where she found women cutoff from the world because they were illiterate anddid not understand Arabic. She had put her fingeron the plight of Moroccan wo m e n .The young can-d i d ate also found that vo t e rs had no preconceptionsabout women in politics and judged her by what shes a i d . But the party asked her not to mention the fa c tthat she was a widow—a woman without a hus-band—in her nomination papers.

S k a l l i ’s election bid fa i l e d , and she took it badlybecause the party had lost a seat . The issue ofwo m e n ’s part i c i p ation in politics sparked little

public interest. But she was leader of the USFP’swo m e n ’s organizat i o n , founded in 1975 duri n gI n t e rn ational Wo m e n ’s Ye a r. Awareness was ri s i n g,but female party activists still put wo m e n ’s issues onthe back burner.

“Next to the historic figures who had fought forindependence or spent time in pri s o n , we felt smalland tended to fade into the backgr o u n d ,” she say s.Though a key figure in the USFP, it was a long timebefore Skalli gained enough self-confidence to asserther rightful place in the party.

After another defeat at the polls, this time in ap a r l i a m e n t a ry election, she won a municipal councils e at in 1983. Two women Socialist Pa rty candi-dates were elected in the same town and the partyplanned to make Skalli the council president.Theproposal triggered an uproar. Despite being socia-lists, some “comrades” were dead-set against thei d e a . “A people who entrust their business to awoman are heading for ru i n at i o n ,” the prophetMohammed is supposed to have said.The party lea-d e rship backed down and the job went to a yo u n g e rand less qualified man. Skalli had to settle for beingthe council vice-president.

The practical experience of sharing power withmen was highly instructive. “Everything happensbehind the scenes, in the framework of a male com-plicity that shuts out women,” she says. Women’sissues rarely interest men, she notes, and because

female politicians are so few, they are “like claypots against iron ones.”

N ow that she had entered the fight for politicalpower as an equal,Skalli saw repressed machismocoming to the surface again.The USFP’s decisionto put her up as a parliamentary candidate sparkedrebellion in the ranks and she encountered her firs tsexist at t a c k s , such as “she smokes. . . s h e ’s a widow.”But she was pleased to note once more how little hergender mattered to the vo t e rs. In fa c t ,m a ny peopleb e l i e ved she was more tru s t wo rt hy than menbecause of her sex.

S k a l l i ’s political career continued to prosperand she remained a staunch party stalwa rt . S h ecampaigned for wo m e n ’s ri g h t s , but “the party stillcame firs t .” Until the 1993 parliamentary elec-tions, the USFP wanted her to be its only femalecandidate. At that point, she protested and threa-tened to withdraw if other women were not allowe dto stand.The party gave in.

Two woman entered parliament that ye a r , amilestone for Morocco—Skalli and Lat i fa BennaniSmires of the Istiqlal (Nationalist) Party. Just twowomen among 300 men.After the 1997 elections,there were still only two. But the political scenec h a n g e d . The left-wing opposition, kept out ofpower for nearly 40 years, took over the reins ofgovernment and USFP secretary-general Abder-rahmane Youssoufi became prime minister. In hisinaugural speech,Yo u s s o u fi said he wanted to pro-mote wo m e n ’s ri g h t s. The secretary of state forprotection of the family and children got to work onthe matter with the help of women’s NGOs.

Bitter attacks over proposed codeA year lat e r , a draft programme to “make wo m e n

p a rt of the development process” was presentedto the prime minister. It included a reform of themudawana, the family legal code based on sharia(Islamic law), which governs the status of women.The planned reforms include abolishing polygamy,raising the marriage age for girls from 15 to 18a n d , in eve ry case, replacing repudiation with court -a p p r oved divo r c e . “It was too good to be tru e ,”s ays Skalli. “But we believed in it.We didn’t expectsuch a fuss.”

The first attack on the project came from amember of the government itself, religious affairsminister Abdelkebir Alaoui M’d a g h ri .A broad rangeof conservat i ves led by Islamic fundamentaliststook up the cry.They put on a show of force, b i t t e r l yattacking the reform’s supporters as bad Muslimsand even atheists. Bogged down by internal divi-s i o n s , the gove rnment is playing for time. T h ereform is a burning issue,and the government hasno intention of getting burned.

The gove rn m e n t ,s ays Skalli, b e a rs an import a n tresponsibility and has clearly displayed a lack of cou-rage on the issue of women. She recognizes thatmuch is at stake, for women in particular andMoroccan society in general, and finds the situat i o ndistressing. But what can you do when you are “aclay pot”? ■

Now that she had entered the fight for political power

as an equal, Skalli saw re p ressed machismo coming

to the surface again.

It is better to be a manthan a woman becauseeven the most misera b l eof men has a wife toorder around.Isabel A l l e n d e,Chilean writer (1942-)

Badia Skalli


Nothing short of a small revolution occurr e dd u ring President Bill Clinton’s visit to India lastM a r c h . In the rural heartland of Rajasthan, a

dozen village women sat around on plush blue sofa s ,in resplendent dress, to discuss issues of democracyand power with the U. S .p r e s i d e n t . F i rst they intro-duced themselve s : all are elected representat i ves of theirvillage councils (p a n c h ayat s) . Together they run awo m e n ’s dairy cooperat i ve and have initiated seve r a lsmall credit and loan schemes for poor, l a n d l e s swomen in their communities. They had discardedthe age-old custom of hiding their veiled faces behindhome wa l l s.N ow, they explained, they had to go to thebank to draw and desposit money, and to their distri c th e a d q u a rt e rs to attend monthly meetings.

E ven as they spoke in their nat i ve tongue, t h ewomen freely used English words such as ‘ l o a n ’ ,‘ c r e d i t’ ,‘ I n t e rn e t ’ ,‘ p u b l i c ’ and ‘no confid e n c e ’ .T h e ycomplained about the lack of jobs for their educat e ds o n s , spoke about the need to open a school close byfor their adolescent daughters , and their ongoing fig h tfor drinking wat e r , better roads, seeds and fa rm i n gtools for their villages.

A lingering debateSome might like to dismiss this meeting as a cleve r

act of ‘ f e e l - g o o d ’ politics on the part of the Presidentor as a showcased stunt on the part of the Indiang ove rn m e n t .But the meeting was really about wo m e ne n t e ring politics and staying on. Along with somemillion others across the country, these women are thed a u g h t e rs of the 73rd and 74th amendments of theIndian Constitution.Passed in 1993, these two amend-ments oblige all states to reserve one third of seats inthe three-tiered system of local gove rnment (village,block and district leve l s ) — k n own as p a n c h ayati ra j—to wo m e n .Elected directly by and from among the vil-l a g e rs , the p a n c h ayat s can make decisions concern i n ga wide range of fie l d s , from agriculture to health,e m p l oyment and pri m a ry educat i o n .

In a short time, women have shown their potentialto wield power effectively at the village level and chal-lenge feudal traditions.According to some observe rs ,this is one of the reasons why the passage of theWo m e n ’s Reservations Bill, which seeks to reserve33 per cent of all seats in the national parliament ands t ate assemblies to wo m e n , has been repeat e d l yblocked in the parliament.F i rst put forward in 1996,the bill was reintroduced in 1998 but lapsed follow i n gthe gove rn m e n t ’s fall the same ye a r. It was resur-rected in December 1999 but has continued to creat eh avoc in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the par-l i a m e n t .There are only 43 women MPs in the curr e n t

Lok Sabha,out of a total figure of 543,and the majo-rity are from the elite.

Opponents of the bill,which include the Rashtri yaJa n ata Dal and the Samajwadi Pa rty (both centre-left),along with some constituents of the ruling coalition,led by the Hindu nationalist Bharat i ya Ja n ata Pa rt y( B J P ) , claim that the bill should include a sub-quotafor Other Backward Classes1 and Muslim wo m e n .Otherwise they argue,the quotas will only promote theinterests of the elite.The debate has been characteri z e dby an ugly display of male muscle and lung powe r: i none instance, the Speaker had to adjourn the House,in another,opposing law m a k e rs grabbed the bill off hisd e s k .M e a n w h i l e ,C o n gress (I) president Sonia Gandhistaged a walkout with her party members protestingagainst the delay in the bill’s passage.

As the debate lingers ,a number of organizations areintent on highlighting the success of women in the p a n-c h ayat s.They are also working hard to build up lea-d e rship among the most marginalized gr o u p s ,n a m e l yDalit and Tribal communities, and to gi ve women abetter understanding of their powe rs and rights atthe local leve l .The Society for Pa rt i c i p at o ry Researchin Asia (PRIA) for example, helps to groom wo m e nc a n d i d ates for elections through education and trai-ning and gi ves p a n c h ayat r e p r e s e n t at i ves the oppor-

tunity to meet with their counterp a rts from others t at e s.At another leve l , these organizations are seekingto mobilise women to vo t e , and if need be, stand upagainst election malpractices, such as giving bribes ord i s t ri buting liquor to win vo t e s.

A recent study prepared by the Multiple A c t i o nResearch Group (MARG), a Delhi-based NGO,concluded that the constitutional amendments haveindeed acted as a catalyst for gr e ater part i c i p ation bywomen in gove rn a n c e , but the legi s l ation now needsto be fin e - t u n e d : women should be gi ven more thana single term in a reserved constituency to make a reald i f f e r e n c e ,and eve ry effort should be made to prov i d e

I n d i a ’s n u rseries of politics◗ Mrinal Pa n d e

Over a million women hold the reins of power at the village level but a law to boost their presence in parliament has been deadlocked for several years

◗ News anchor for the statetelevision network Doordershan,former editor with the HindustanTimes Group, founder of the IndianWomen’s Press Corps, author ofseveral works of fiction and plays,all published in Hindi

1 . Other Backward Classes account for 52 per cent of India’sp o p u l at i o n .They belong to kinship groups that are entitled toc e rtain benefits because they are considered disadva n t a g e d ,although less so than ‘scheduled castes’ (previously referred toas untouchables) and ‘scheduled tri b e s ’ .

In a short time, women have shown their potential to wield power effectively

at the village level and challengefeudal tra d i t i o n s

Woman is born free andher rights are the sameas those of a man ( . . . )All citizens, be they menor women, being equalin the state’s eyes, m u s tbe equally eligible for allpublic offic e s, p o s i t i o n sand jobs, according totheir capacity andwithout any othercriteria than those of their virtues andt a l e n t s.Olympe de Gouges,F rench writer and re v o l u t i o n a r y( 1 7 4 8 - 1 7 9 3 )



them with literacy training.A separate study conductedin three states on the gove rn m e n t ’s behalf by theCentre for Wo m e n ’s Development Studies also high-lighted the fact that the reservations had benefit e dwomen from the Other Backward Classes.

Despite this, the barri e rs to part i c i p ation remains i z e a b l e . Rural areas are plagued by illiteracy andp ove rt y, and pat ri a r c hy remains deeply entrenched.Practices such as wife beating and dow ry deaths are stillp r e va l e n t .F u rt h e rm o r e ,as Ela Bhat t , the founder of theS e l f - E m p l oyed Wo m e n ’s A s s o c i ation (SEWA) pointso u t , rural women do not represent a unified gr o u p.C a s t e , clan and family considerations still ove rs h a d owpolitical and gender-based pri o rities for large numbersof women in rural areas. As such she say s , wo m e np a n c h ayat m e m b e rs are easily manipulat e d ,coerced andcoopted by their male counterp a rt s.A l s o, d r e s s ,e l e c-tion campaign meetings and strat e gies for women arestill often decided by male members of the fa m i l y.

Reaching a critical massFeminist economist Devki Jain feels that political

e m p owe rment through affirm at i ve action is essen-tial for women to ‘break this hard-rock of pat ri a r c hy.’There has been much debate in the country aboutwhether illiterate rural women have the skills to standfor elections and take offic e .The late Gita Mukherjee,a Communist Pa rty of India member and six-time MPfrom West Bengal, who headed the special parlia-m e n t a ry committee on the Reservations Bill, r e p e a-tedly asserted that the first step was to allow wo m e nto break into politics; their awareness would auto-m atically ri s e .The p a n c h ayati ra j i n s t i t u t i o n s , she said,are to be valued as the real nurs e ries of political lea-

d e rship for wo m e n .Pove rty and violence, she stressed,can only be fought against effectively if women forma critical mass in all decision-making bodies, from vil-lage p a n c h ayat s to the parliament.

It may seem ironic that Madhu Kishwa r ,an activistand editor of the Delhi-based feminist journal M a n u s h i,is one of the bill’s cri t i c s.She argues that party leaderswill merely flood the reserved constituencies with the“Bibi (wife) Beti (daughter) bri g a d e .” With the Fo ru mfor Democratic Reform , an umbrella organization ofwo m e n ’s gr o u p s , she has proposed an altern at i ve billt h at would make it legally binding for political part i e sto present women as one third of their total candidat e sand to gi ve proport i o n ate tickets to those from Dalit andB a c k ward Classes. H owe ve r , M u k h e r j e e ’s long timea s s o c i ate Bidya Munshi has criticized the proposal,c l a i-ming that women are likely to be relegated to seat swhere political parties are unlikely to win.

S t i l l , despite entrenched pat ri a r c hy, there areobvious signs of change,e ven if they seem anecdotal.The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, D i g v i j ayS i n g h , recently organized a meeting with women inB h o p a l .C h a i rs were laid out for the ministers and higho f ficials and mats on the floor for elected wo m e nr e p r e s e n t at i ve s. As the meeting began, R e m m e b a i , at ribal woman stood up and questioned the chiefm i n i s t e r: “ You keep talking about wo m e n ’s equalityand reservations for wo m e n .We are in politics now, t h epeople have elected us. Is there a shortage of chairs inyour city?”A hundred ye a rs ago Remmebai and herfamily would have been hung from trees for theira u d a c i t y. But the chief minister thanked her humblyfor raising the issue and the next day all of them sat onsimilar chairs. ■

Raising awareness: a panchayat gathering in the village of Haryana, in northern India.

I became a feminist asan alternative to becoming a masochist.Sally Ke m p t o n ,American journalist (1943-)


In the industrial city of Ulsan, Lim Myung-sookrepresents a rare coup in Korean society, awoman in a position of public powe r. In this tra-

ditionally male-dominated nat i o n , the 45-ye a r - o l dlocal assemblywoman is one of the success storiesof the non-profit Center for Korean Women andPolitics (CKWP).

H i s t o ri c a l l y, the public visage of Korea has been amale one,while a wo m a n ’s role has been confined lar-gely to the pri vate world of the home, a fact rein-forced by the still strongly persistent values of Confu-cianism and a male-run corp o r ate wo r l d .“Korea is notreally feminized at all,” s ays Sohn Bong-Scuk,a poli-tical scientist and the founder of the CKWP. “ T h evalue system has prohibited women from gettingi nvo l ved in politics,”s ays Sohn,pointing to the fact thatmunicipalities and the National Assembly have seenjust a handful of female representat i ve s.

Sohn established the CKWP in 1990 to helpb ridge the gap between the ideal of equal representa-tion and reality. Funded largely by foundation gr a n t s ,the center employs a staff of eight and operates on anannual budget of $180,000. For Sohn, there are threemajor obstacles to gr e ater female representat i o n :t h ep owerful male-oriented political culture, a deep-rooted old-boys network and economics.

“Korean political parties are ve ry much pri vat e ,person-centered parties with many medium-levelb o s s e s. If you want to be an important person in thep a rty you must belong to someone else in the fa m i l y

South Ko re a ’s campaign school ◗ Glenn Manarin

P rejudice and cronyism traditionally bar Ko rean women from politics but a non-pro fit tra i n i n gc e n t re offers keys to success – from fashion tips to campaign stra t e g i e s

◗ Journalist based in South Korea

tree,so it’s not easy for a woman to enter that kindof informal inner-circle,” says Sohn.

Most women also don’t have the large sums ofmoney needed to run for offic e . By law, n at i o n a lassembly candidates must have a minimum of$210,000 for their campaigns. H owe ver Sohn say ssome candidates will spend up to two million dollars.

Backing with strings attachedF u rt h e rm o r e ,c o rp o r ations have proved unwilling

to back female candidat e s.“When business or indus-t rial sectors support a candidat e , there is a kind ofs t ring at t a c h e d . In the case of a woman candidat e ,they don’t feel they’ll get anything back,” s ays Sohn.“As a minority in politics, women are ve ry cautiousand tend to be less invo l ved in any dirty bu s i n e s s.They are also usually firs t - year congr e s swomen sothey are not in positions of power yet to help them.”

Lim Myung-sook struggled to raise the $9,000minimum to run for office in her local assembly. B u twith the financial support of the CKWP and anotherlocal non-profit gr o u p, she managed to raise the mini-mum but far less than most candidat e s. H owe ve r ,more than money and the expected prejudices stoodb e t ween her and offic e : Lim was sorely lacking in poli-tical experi e n c e .In 1994, she was working as an env i-ronmental campaign activist when friends suggestedshe run in the upcoming local assembly election.W h i l ep r e p a ring her bid, she received a call from Sohn whoi nvited her to attend the center’s “Campaign School.”

Lim Myung-sook (at left) participating in a protest against a school closure.



Betty Friedan: debunking the mystique of politics◗ Judy Mann

Women account for just 13 per cent of the U. S. C o n g ress and 10 per cent of the Senate.But a pioneer of the contemporary feminist movement keeps the faith

◗ Columnist for The WashingtonPost, author of The Difference:Discovering the Hidden Ways WeSilence Girls – Finding alternativesthat can give them a voice (WarnerBooks, 1996)

Betty Friedan burst onto the American scenein 1963 with The Feminine Mystique, a bookthat transformed the way women thought of

themselves not only in the U.S. but also aroundthe world. She gave voice to the silent malaisegripping housewives as they tended chores andwondered silently, ‘Is this all?’. Friedan called itthe problem that had no name, but one societyhad to face.

Since then,Friedan,often called the mother ofthe U.S. women’s movement, has published aseries of seminal works. Her most recent book is

a memoir, Life So Far, published this spring bySimon & Schuster. I interviewed her just beforethe start of her book tour. At the beginning of theinterview, she quipped:“The trouble is when youwrite a memoir, you finish it, and now you think‘I’m dead.’”

Given the historical strength of the U.S. women’smovement, why are there still so few women inpolitics?

It takes so much money to run for office in theU.S. Women don’t make that much money and

Lim attended a three-day session with about 40other wo m e n , five of whom were also candidat e sin other local assembly races. At the theoreticall e ve l , the women learned to see female political par-ticipation as a means to the ultimate goals of equa-lity and true democratic representat i o n .At the prac-tical leve l , they focused on speech-making skills,political and campaign strategy as well as makingvoter contact. In Korean election campaigns, i m a g eis all-import a n t . So the women were advised onfashion and hair styles, while those who used regi o-nal dialects were coached in standard Korean.Finally, participants were assigned roles as candi-d at e s , electoral offic e rs and campaign managersand a model election was held.

Different policypreferences

Lim was among three women from her sessionwho went on to electoral success. In 1995, s h ebecame the first woman to be elected to the UlsanLocal A s s e m b l y, and she was re-elected in 1998.Since then, another two women have attained offic ein Ulsan.

Last A p ri l , CKWP also had reason to celebrat e .Ac a n d i d ate who they had trained in Seoul and alsosent abroad to Germ a ny and the United States for fur-ther preparation was elected to the national assembly.In most cases though, the center focuses on the gr a s s-r o o t s ,u r ging housewives to run for local rather thann ational offic e , whose candidates tend to already bes avvy politicians.

In addition to the campaign school, the centerholds annual training sessions for women interestedin political issues. For three day s ,u n i ve rsity students,

h o u s e w i ves and established bu s i n e s swomen gat h e rto discuss a chosen theme,such as sexual harassmentor affirm at i ve action.After seminars and discussion onthe topic, they are assigned roles, such as minister oflabour or minister of foreign affa i rs , and they aredivided into two camps: pro-feminist and anti-femi-n i s t .They then hold a mock congress to hone theird e b ating skills and get a taste for politics.“I like to gi vethem motivation from a young age to be a leader in thef u t u r e ,” s ays Sohn.

Another major activity is research on politicalgender issues like female voting and gove rning pat-t e rn s. Perhaps most import a n t l y, the CKWP hasfound that “ women have different policy preferencesthan men,” s ays Sohn. “They are more concern e dabout minori t i e s , the margi n a l , the aged and children.”For example, in the blue-collar city of Ulsan, a s s e m-b l y woman Lim has concentrated on fa c t o ry pollutionand recy c l i n g, social we l fare issues, the rights andneeds of the disabled, and wo m e n ’s ri g h t s.

Despite the progr e s s ,Korea is still far from the daywhen politicians like Lim will comprise a healthy chunkof the political base. In the previous national assem-bly there were 11 women among 299 representat i ve s.Recent elections in A p ril placed a record 16 wo m e ninto office (11 of whom were elected through affir-m at i ve action legi s l ation implemented in 1995 aftere x t e n s i ve lobbying by CKWP and other gr o u p s ) .P r o-gress indeed, but in its 273-seat national assembly,Korean society is still represented overwhelmingly bym e n . Sohn says the slow rate of change has been dis-c o u r a ging but feels the CKWP has contri buted to ani m p o rtant shift in thinking.“The political conscious-ness has been raised,” s ays Sohn.“ N ow even men canaccept the wo r d s ,women and politics.” ■

As a woman, I have noc o u n t r y.As a woman, I want noc o u n t r y.As a woman,my country is the whole world.Vi rginia Wo o l f,British writer (1882-1941)


à temps qu’il faut, dansl’intérêt de l’humanité toutentière, réserver sur laTerre des zones oùl’expansion de l’hommecède le pas à laconservation des autresespèces.Julian Huxley,biologiste britannique, p re m i e rd i recteur général de l’UN E S C O

( 1 8 8 7 - 1 9 7 5 )

Networking on the Web

A number of organizations in the U.S. are gearing up for the 2000 election. Many have

experience in supporting women candidates and training campaign staff, others are focu-

sing on informing women and encouraging them to vote. Here are some of the players.

Emily’s List (www.emilyslist.org) is a major source of early funding for pro-choice,

Democratic women.

The Women’s Campaign Fund (www.wcfonline.org),the National Women’s Political

Caucus (www.nwpc.org) and the National Organization for Women (www.now.org) all

provide support to pro-choice, feminist candidates.

The Wish List (www.thewishlist.org) supports pro-choice Republican women candidates.

Village.com, one of the largest Internet sites geared to women, offers on-line registra-

tion,interviews with candidates and chat rooms to exchange information with them.

The White House Project (www.thewhitehouseproject.org) is working to change the

political climate so that women can be elected to the presidency and other key positions.

League of Women Voters (www.leagueofwomenvoters.org) runs voter registration

campaigns to encourage women to vote.

Lifetime Television (www.lifetimetv.com), has formed a partnership with the National

Council of Women’s Organizations, (made up of 110 national women’s groups), for a biparti-

san campaign to educate women about issues that affect them and to underscore the impor-

tance of their vote. ■

they don’t have as easy access to it as men do. Iwouldn’t mind running for the Senate but I cer-tainly would not want to have to raise the money.

In addition to the issue of money, women alsoh ave the main responsibility for [raising their] kids.T h at takes some ye a rs off most wo m e n ’s career life.

How has your work facilitated women’s entry intopolitics?

The things I wrote helped women breakthrough certain barriers in their own psyche—theway they looked upon themselves and their possi-bilities. The feminine mystique, that miasma ofinfluences, would keep women modest, shy, silentand invisible. I told them to shout—don’t whis-per. I organized women to break through thefeminine mystique, to run for office, to get wea-pons against sex discrimination enforced.

You’ve worked hard for equal rights and affirmativeaction. How effective do you think they’ve beenand how could they be strengthened?

Women today in the U.S. are getting the samenumber of professional degrees as men.The dis-c r e p a n cy lies in the childbearing ye a rs andwomen never catch up.We are the only industria-lized nation without a national programme ofchildcare. It’s outrageous.

Tu rning to equal pay for equal wo r k , the pri n-ciple is right but there are a lot of ways of sideliningi t .Too many women are segr e g ated in jobs that maybe even more valuable than jobs men do, bu tbecause women do them they are paid less. So webegan to say equal pay for work of equal va l u e .W hyshould janitors get more than a schoolteacher? Orwhere would doctors be without nurs e s ?

Do you think women’s issues like economic equalityand reproductive rights are considered marginaland difficult to construct a campaign on?

These issues affect 52 per cent of the popula-t i o n . Women in this country have far more powe rthan they are using.They vote in higher proport i o nthan men do. The real question is why aren’t weusing our power to make the issues that are impor-tant to us a higher pri o rity and get more wo m e nelected to offic e . These issues are not as margi n a las they might once have been considered. I doubta nybody running for office in any metropolitanarea would dare to have as their slogan, “ Wo m e nGo Back Home.” Although you never know whatwould happen if there were an economic dow n-t u rn .

What more could the women’s movement do tosupport female candidates?

It will be interesting to see what happens withH i l l a ry (Rodham Clinton) in New Yo r k . Will therebe a big upsurge of support for her from wo m e ncrossing party lines? One thing didn’t really pleasem e : when Hillary became visibly vulnerable to herMonica [Lewinsky] problems, her ratings wentup. It was as if women couldn’t identify with her

superi o ri t y. They were more able to identify withher when it became clear that eve rything wa s n ’teasy than when she was so in control. I want to seewomen really identifying with their own empowe r-ment and getting out of the ‘ v i c t i m ’ s t at e .

What are some strategies that would facilitatewomen’s entry into politics?

There are more and more women mayors—women who are going through the ranks on theirway up. It used to be the only women you saw inCongress were widows sitting in their husbands’seats. That’s not the way it is anymore. Maybe forme or for you the progress isn’t fast enough butit’s fair and it will get better as more women studypolitical science and head student governments incolleges and go to law schools. Up to now, law hasbeen the way into politics. More than 40 per centof law students are women. So in another genera-tion, the talent pool will be nearly equal.

Any parting thoughts you’d like to share withreaders?

Women are not defined any longer as mothersor housewives. To the degree I’ve had a hand inmaking that happen, I feel very pleased and veryproud. I’m impatient for the next step. Nowwomen make up only 12 per cent of government.What would it be like if they were 50 per cent? Ithink politics would be different. Some researchdone a few years ago found that by adding twowomen to a state legislature the agenda changes.And not just in the direction of women’s rights,but in all directions having to do with life—chil-dren, sickness, old people, health,quality of life—and not just highways. ■



The long march of women towards an equalshare of political,social and religious power isfar from over,whatever the country or system

of government.

France has just passed a parity law to break dow nthe resistance that has stymied the advancement ofwomen in politics for the past half-century. F r o mn ow on, political parties must run an equal numberof women and men candidates in local elections and,more broadly, in elections based on the proport i o n a ls y s t e m , although the law is flawed with regard tol e gi s l at i ve contests. In any eve n t , of course resort i n gto legi s l ation is an admission of those part i e s ’r e s o u n-ding failure to meet wo m e n ’s expectat i o n s , e ve nthough they are shared by the public at large. In thebelief that a seat for a woman means one less seat fora man, F r a n c e ’s highly conservat i ve political leader-ship does all it can to stop progress in its tracks.

I call these fa i n t - h e a rted advances a “ p i e c e-meal”policy. Things look different and machismois less fierce, but at the end of the day there are stillnot enough women to make their voices heard. Weknow from the Scandinavian experience that theyneed to hold at least a third of the seats in parlia-ment to form a critical mass.

Women look at politics in their own way. M u c hless attracted to the exhilarating feeling that powercan bring, they view it mainly as a way to changet h i n g s. As mayor of a town with 25,000 inhabi-t a n t s , I tend to consider parks more important thanparking lots. Housing lay-out can set off lively dis-cussions about how to design kitchens, which forme are friendly places that should open up ontoliving rooms. I have noticed that male politicianstend to talk much while we women are much betterat organizing our time.

I am tempted to say that women and men havedifferent attitudes about how to organize space andtime. Our participation leads to the emergence of acertain, unknown reality which escapes the focus ofpolitical action because it remains hidden in a corn e r.It is there, but it cannot be seen. For example, is itn o rmal for a wo m a n ’s career to be penalised by afunction—motherhood—that only she can fulfill?

The landscape of women’s rights is one of starkcontrasts. In Western countries, the march towardsequality has achieved uneven results. In others, it isfraught with alarming setbacks,the cruelest examplebeing Afghanistan,where women are deprived of themost basic ri g h t s. The women of Kosovo whom Imet recently still lack access to health programmes ata time when mother and child mortality rates therehave reached alarmingly high levels.

Major United Nations conferences from MexicoCity to Beijing have helped women emerge from theshadows.They need laws to defend their rights,andinstitutions to gi ve those laws teeth. L aws may ben e c e s s a ry sometimes, but they are not enough. T h e ymust be accompanied by a social movement led bywomen.Nothing can ever be taken for granted when

wo m e n ’s rights are concern e d , and eve ry victory femi-nists win is a fragile one because feminism,though itfits the textbook definition of a movement for socialchange,is not yet recognised as a political fact.

Everything depends on women’s will when theirrights are won: the right to education, work, controltheir bodies, m ove about freely, own propert y, and soo n .And the women who have come the furthest mustnot forget to stretch their hands out to those who havebeen left by the way s i d e . In A l g e ri a , women have suc-ceeded in pushing back all forms of fundamentalism.

Women can indeed breathe new life into politicsand make it more accessible,more human and non-violent as soon as they realise the power that comesfrom working together. ■◗ Former French minister of women’s affairs, mayor

of Lisieux, a deputy in the French parliament and chair of the Council of Europe’s committee on equal opportunity for menand women

Closing ra n k sEvery victory feminists win is a fragile one, says former cabinet minister Yvette Roudy.◗ To defend their rights, women have to be at the helm of a strong social movement

Women can indeed b reathe new life into politics and make it more accessible,m o re human and non-violent

as soon as they realise the power that comes fro m

working together.

E T H I C S


but wherever they went, presented them-selves as craftspeople, artists and traders.They were independent workers,commit-ted to being masters of their own time,intent on making an earning from odd,on-the-spot jobs and with enough skills tomeet the requests and needs of a disper-sed clientele.

Many Europeans no doubt frownedupon the Gypsies’ working habits: howthey sought out jobs each day, their trustin luck, their spontaneous way of approa-ching strangers and their persistence. Itset them apart from farming communitieswho worked for the long term, in tunewith the changing seasons. Despite thisand the inevitable friction between peoplefrom different backgrounds, nomads andfarmers needed each other. The nomadsprovided tools, baskets, veterinary care, music ortemporary manpower to the farmers, whog ave them food and other goods inexchange.

For a long time, the Roma managedto make a living in this way, mainly as iti-nerants but also by staying in one placewhen there were opport u n i t i e s. T h e r ewere plenty of such cases in the OttomanEmpire and in central Europe, where theRoma served in the armies of invaders.They were also active in the Iberi a npeninsula, where they took over from theMoors and Jews expelled towards the endof the 15th century, at the time of theReconquista, until they too were forcedout.

These few examples go to show thatGypsies were not excluded because of adeep-rooted failure to adjust to local economic conditions, as it is too oftensuggested. Rather, it seems clear thatgovernments and officials—first in wes-tern Europe,especially Spain, and then incentral and eastern Europe—have, overthe centuries, gone to great lengths toportray the Roma as a foreign and anti-social people without a culture of theirown.

■The figures are shocking. B e t ween 60and 80 per cent of Hungary ’s wo r k i n g -age Roma are estimated to be unem-

p l oye d . More than 60 per cent of Romania’sGypsies are said to live below the pove rt yline and 80 per cent have no formal quali-fic at i o n s. In Bulgari a , the same percentageof Gypsies living in cities are jobless.T h efigures are believed to be much higher inthe countryside.

In some villages of southern and eas-tern Slovakia, all Roma of adult age aredestitute. In Britain, an estimated 10 to20 per cent of the “travellers,” as they arecalled, live in absolute poverty. In someFrench cities, between 70 and 80 per centof the Gypsy population are on welfarepayments paid out to the most destitute.

Their housing conditions are appal-ling, while their bill of health is anothercause for concern: most Roma have a lifeexpectancy of under 50.

Valued skills and masters of their own time

A glaring gap separates Europe’speoples from the continent’s largestminority. Why, despite repeated attemptsto assimilate or exclude the Gypsies overthe past 600 years, have they remainedcut off from other peoples and for themost part, pushed to the fringes of socie-ty? After all, not every group of peoplewho came to live in Europe has been sys-tematically ostracised. The Hungarianswere a nomadic people of Asian originbut they managed to become a nation.And there are others.

Probably not all the Roma—who firstcame from India—were nomads whenthey arrived in the Byzantine Empire inthe 12th or 13th century. But as far as wecan tell from various writings, they hadtalents that enabled them to participate inthe economies of the regions they cros-sed. They had no ambitions to conquer,

G Y PSIES: TRA PPED ONT HE FRINGES OF EUROPE◗ Alain Reyniers

Across Europe, Gypsies live in dire poverty and are frequently the target of violence and racism. But some governments are finally taking notice of the continent’s largest minority

◗ Ethnologist, lecturer at the Catholic University ofLouvain and editor of the magazine Études Tsiganes.

A Gypsy camp in Trent, in northern Italy.

E T H I C S


The contrived image of the Gypsies asan idle, roaming and dangerous peoplewas one of the devices—along with vio-lence, coercion and ideology—that wasused to help forge the national identity ofpeoples belonging to specific territorieswith well-guarded borders. In the 19thc e n t u ry, when these peoples rose upagainst foreign ru l e rs , the nat i o n a l i s tstruggle was always on behalf of a singlemajority people, whose sturdy peasantvalues were often played up, to the detri-ment of all other elements in society,including the Roma.

The influence of this past on forging acommon identity as an excluded people

cannot be underestimated. The nomadsof the A u s t r o - H u n g a rian Empire, f o rexample, settled in the 18th century as“new peasants,” but were not given anyland. It contributed to a culture of mis-trust and resistance towards gadjes (non-Gypsies).

Even though the Gypsies had been thelong-time economic and cultural partnersof European peoples, they were alwayskept out of political decision-making,though it can be questioned whether theywere interested in becoming involved atthis level. At best they were regarded asjuniors to be dominated, at worst trouble-makers to be pushed aside. Some closed

off from the world and scratched a livingon the edge of gadjo society, while otherstook another path, making contact withnon-Gypsies as best they could.

In the process,some collective traits ofthe Roma—wariness of the outside world,the tendency to mix with one’s own and afatalistic attitude towards events—beca-me accentuated and encouraged theirseparation from other peoples.

Mutual distrustChildren were understandably taught

to be weary of the gadjes. Their educationwas geared at following in their parent’sfootsteps and focused on the practical,

E T H I C S


with their environment serving as thestarting point for learning.

The tendency to exclude Gypsiesgrew steadily throughout the 20th centu-ry. Police in we s t e rn Europe crackeddown on them with increasing harshness.These days, Gypsies are confined to alimited number of parking plots and cam-ping grounds that are often ill-equippedfor the needs of travelling families.

The gr owth of market forces andchanges in consumer tastes, along withn e we r , more sophisticated productionm e t h o d s , h ave helped to dri ve someGypsy communities deeper into poverty.Their trading practices are restricted by

laws against selling door-to-door, againststreet activities and against recuperatingobjects from dumps. Such legi s l at i o ntakes absolutely no account of their skills,nor of the stakes at hand for Roma in thisdomain. If they had no access to socialassistance or credit (although the publicimage of Roma is hardly conducive to res-pect),many would find themselves in des-perate situations.

Targets of violence in eastern Europe

Under communism in central andeastern Europe, Roma were first seen as asocial aberration, a relic of the “bour-

geois” world that would eventually disap-pear. The Gypsies were shipped en masseto work in menial jobs on collective farmsand in state enterprises. The lack of poli-tical attention to the Roma’s culture—their ancestral language, their educationgeared to sharing and their economicflexibility stressing income from oddjobs—and the crying indifference to thexenophobia that developed towards them,did not facilitate the assimilation of youngGypsies into the socialist societies.

The collapse of communism in eas-tern Europe brought great suffering andviolence to the Roma, whose neighbou-rhoods have been repeatedly attacked byskinheads and others. In Bosnia and morerecently in Kosovo, Gypsy communitieswere even destroye d . U n e m p l oy m e n tamong them has further increased.

In a sense, this new marginalisation,which has produced emigration move-ments towards a utopian El Dorado(namely western Europe), is simply ano-ther consequence of the political andnationalist attitudes that have harmed theGypsies time and time again in the past.Gypsies often have little lifeline outsidetheir communities, which are refused anyterritorial rights by the host societies.They are often prevented from settling ina region that seems more hospitablebecause they are ill-equipped to cope withthe demands of today’s economy and lacka decent level of education.

Recognizingnational minorities

The Roma have nonetheless made afew significant strides in recent years.Several international bodies and manyNGOs have taken up their cause and havepushed programmes to foster their inte-gration—both economically and socially.Governments are finally recognizing themas national minorities or are taking mea-sures to encourage their development inthe longer term.

Not all Roma have had their spiritbroken by centuries of being shunned.Some have adapted, occasionally by assi-milating but more often by highlightingtheir traditional know-how and showing awillingness to become involved in the hostsociety.

The future of the Roma probably doesnot depend on a single solution. Giventhe problems and obstacles they face, it ismore than ever linked to a collectivedetermination to build a humane anddemocratic society where individuals andgroups can blossom and flourish. ■

A ROMA GHETTO IN FLORENCE◗ Nicola Solimano and Tiziana Mori

Florence, a cosmopolitan city where the world’sgreatest art and architecture attest to a blen-

ding of cultures, has for ten years been debatingthe fate of some 200 Roma families—approximately1,000 people—living within its boundaries. Likeother major Italian cities where Roma have spon-taneously settled, Tuscany’s capital has opted forthe solution of “nomad campgrounds”: in essence,reserves where newcomers are herded together.

Most of the Roma in Florence are from Mace-donia and Kosovo. They came during the past fif-teen years, driven from their homes by the econo-mic crisis and wars that have racked the region,where they had almost completely given up theirwandering ways and settled down in certain neigh-bourhoods of large cities.

At first, the Roma of Florence and the surroun-ding area constantly moved around in small familygroups, driven from one place to the next by pro-testing neighbours or by real estate projects laun-ched in new, expanding suburbs. In the early 90s,the municipality decided to concentrate them intwo “nomad campgrounds”. One is on the site of aformer rubbish dump located in a flood-prone areanear the river Arno. The other is a strip of land wed-ged between the railroad tracks and the highway.These unusable spaces were of interest to no one.In Florence and elsewhere, the areas chosen for“nomad campgrounds” revealed a widespread atti-tude: Gypsies must be kept apart from the genera lpopulation, and the general population would dobest to keep their distance from them.

The city’s government considered these camp-grounds a tempora ry solution. In fact, they were thefirst in a series of other “tempora ry solutions” andhave never been called into question. All the classicearmarks of ghetto pathology have appeared there;the risk of fire is especially high. On several occa-

◗ Members of the Michelucci Foundation, Florence

sions, children have died in blazes when theirparents were unable to rescue them. Sanitary faci-lities are collective. Each is used by several families,with obvious consequences on health, mainte-nance costs and relations between families.

The deterioration of facilities, living conditionsand social relations was inevitable. Scourges suchas drug abuse, partly due to contact with disad-vantaged members of the local community, haveled to increased control by the authorities. Thecampgrounds are closed spaces; their entra n c e sare under surveillance; the comings and goings ofRoma and non-Roma alike are recorded. All thefeatures making up a ghetto are in place.

In the past few years, Roma organizations andvolunteers supported by a few rare but well-know nintellectuals, such as the writer Antonio Tabucchi,have pressured the municipality into finding alter-native solutions. Under a regional law based on aMichelucci Foundation project, the authorities havebuilt a small sub-division of six housing units assi-gned to Roma from Macedonia. The project wasso successful that some 30 other families havebeen re-accommodated in city - owned units. Theseexperiments show that, when they are taken out ofthe degrading living conditions and exclusion inwhich they had been living for years, Roma familiesseize the opportunity to integrate themselvessocially and economically.

H owever, the building of the sub-division metwith fierce criticism in Florence, exploited by right-wing parties, which dissuaded the municipality fromundertaking similar projects. Not enough familieshave been relocated to permanently close the“nomad campgrounds”, where Roma refugees fle e i n gthe war in Kosovo have arrived in the meantime.

Florence continues presenting the face of a cityof art and culture to the world, while at the sametime it is incapable of striking a dialogue with asmall minority from a different background. ■

S I G N S O F T H E T I M E S


■The wo r l d ’s biggest museum liesunder the sea. Over the centuriesh u n d r e d s , perhaps thousands of

ships—nobody has even a remote ideahow many—have sunk in storms or theheat of battle, bringing Roman amphorae,gold bars, cannons and crates of Chineseporcelain with them.

Maritime trade began booming in thesixteenth century : the ships of the DutchEast India Company made 8,000 round-t rip voyages to China in a 200-year peri o d .But until the mid-twentieth century, therewas no way reach this underwater museum,and the world’s oceans were like a giganticsafe containing civilisation’s treasures.

Two of the oldest ships found recentlycame to a grim end just over 2,700 ye a rsa g o, when they were probably on their wayfrom Tyre to the Pharaohs’ Egypt ladenwith wine-filled amphorae. A m e ri c a nu n d e r water archaeologists Robert Ballard,who discovered the wreck of the Ti t a n i c,and Lawrence Stager, of Harva r dU n i ve rs i t y, found the two Phoenician ve s-s e l s , each less than 20 metres long, off theIsraeli coast in June 1999.

They had been asked to locate anIsraeli submarine, the Dakar, which sankin 1969, taking its 69 crew membersd own with it. Two small underwat e rrobots, Jason and Medea, descended to300 and 900 metres to film and inspectthe Phoenician vessels, which led to the

discovery that they were still in an excel-lent state of preservation.

The deeper the water the less oxygen,so wrecks there are much better preservedthan those closer to the surface, accordingto Ballard. “The great depths, the absen-ce of sunlight and the great pressuresseem to preserve history far more than wethought,” he says. A 3,300-year-old shipwas found off Turkey in more shallowwaters, and two more Phoenician vessels,dating from the seventh century BC, werelocated near Murcia, Spain, but all werein much worse condition.

The discovery of the two wrecks offthe coast of southern Israel came as a sur-prise because historians were unawaret h at the Phoenicians conducted trade◗ Journalist with the French daily newspaper Libération

DI V ING F OR DOL LA RS◗ Vincent Noce

New technology means shipwrecks swallowed up by the deepest waters can now be reached.But who owns the precious finds? Some countries allow a free-for-all of plundering

Underwater treasures: exploring the wreck of a 16th-century galleon that sank off the Philippine coast.



the divers realized they had been excava-ting two wrecks that had sunk one on topof the other.

At that time, no laws or official bodiesr e g u l ated underwater archaeologi c a lexploration in France or anywhere else.In1966 President Charles de Gaulle’sminister of culture, André Malraux, setup an underwater archaeological explora-tion division and made it compulsory todeclare finds in French territorial waters.

In 1989, two years after a similar lawhad been passed in the United States,France adopted legi s l ation that gave the state sole ownership rights to all sun-ken treasures found in its terri t o ri a lwaters. Until then, it had been possible toshare them. As a result, the number ofdeclarations plummeted from about 250a year to under 50. Seven years later, theg ove rnment tried to counter the drop by announcing rewards of up to200,000 French francs (approx i m at e l y$30,000) for discovering such treasures,depending on its scientific value. Butthose rewards are rarely paid: explorersrisk breaking the law since a singleamphora can fetch up to 10,000 Frenchfrancs ($1,500) on the market.

U n aware amateur dive rs thinkamphorae do not “talk.”That is a big mis-take, because they do. They can tell us

along that route. A wine decanter (sho-wing that wine was decanted in thosedays), stone anchors, food crockery and acenser were found among Ty rr h e n i a namphorae typical of the period, whichallowed researchers to roughly determinethe date the ships went down as well aswhere they sailed from.

“More important discoveries shouldcome in the near future that could signifi-cantly alter our understanding of ancientmaritime trade,” predicts Ballard. Thediscovery off Sicily of Roman ships datingfrom between 100 BC and 400 AD hasalready confirmed a long-disputed theoryaccording to which the Romans werequite capable of sailing in deep water along way from the coast.

A questionof ownership

Yet until only half a century ago, whenthe autonomous deep-sea diving suit wasinvented, it was still impossible to goanywhere near deep-sea wrecks. In 1952Jacques Cousteau led the first underwaterarchaeological expedition off Marseilles,which was a very busy Mediterraneanport in Roman times. His team broughtup Greek and Roman amphorae, whichpuzzled specialists at first because theywere at least a century apart in age.Then

when the wreck occurred, the nationalityof the crew and how the cargo was ship-ped. And the discovery of amphorae iswhat usually indicates that an ancientwreck is nearby, concealed in the sand.

For the 14 centuries between 700 BCand 700 AD, these large jars were used tot r a n s p o rt wine, o i l , pickled products,spices, tea and other goods. After that,hundreds of years went by before vesselsonce again began carrying items—can-nons and porcelain this time—that futurearchaeologists and treasure-hunters coulduse as clues to detect the locations ofshipwrecks. The years in between are ablank, either because wrecks disintegratedor remain invisible, or because maritimetrade collapsed.

Site leasingto private investors

For example, a barn a c l e - e n c ru s t e dcannon tipped archaeologists off to thepresence of a wrecked French fleet offVe n e z u e l a ’s Las Aves islands. King Louis XIV had dispatched the warships todrive the Dutch out of the Caribbean.Commanded by Count Jean d’Estrées,the French looted Tobago before headingto Curaçao, where they would have defea-ted the Dutch had not half the 13 war-ships and 17 privateers sunk in a storm onMay 11, 1678. Five hundred of the 5,000crewmen were drowned and 1,000 diedof starvation or disease after being stran-ded on desert islands.The disaster put anend to France’s dream of ruling unchal-lenged in the Caribbean, which quicklybecame a haven for pirates.

Though they no longer fly the skulland crossbones, p i r ates are still theretoday. About 15 years ago, a Venezuelan,Charles Brewer-Carias, and an American,Barry Clifford, one of the world’s best-k n own shipwreck hunters , found theFrench flagship Le Terrible, which had 70cannon and a crew of 500, amid otherwrecks at the site.

Clifford says he was shocked by thelease of the site to a private investor. “TheVenezuelan people will someday lookback in horror at what is being permittedto happen to Las Ave s ,” he say s.Venezuela, which does not have a publicarchaeological body that could explorethe site,gave a construction company cal-led Mespa exclusive permission to exca-vate and sell whatever they could find.“We had an archaeologist on board theresearch ve s s e l ,” s ays the firm , w h i c hadmits it wants to make a profit by settingup a discovery “industry”.

“In every single case where countries

Drawing up an inventory of Ming dynasty porcelain found in a 16th-century shipwreck.



have issued permits for treasure hunting,they have always ended up the losers,”says Florida archaeologist John de Bry.“Piracy is alive and well.” Mespa thinks itcan find Count d’Estrées’ and his officers’p e rsonal va l u a b l e s , but archaeologi s t sdoubt a war fleet would have been car-rying much “treasure.” However, theyfear the historical and archaeologi c a lvalue of items will be lost, as well as thewreck’s position.

The wrecks also cast light on howships were designed and built in the daysFrench minister Colbert was creating aroyal navy and an entire industry aroundit. Recording the exact position of thevarious items on the sea’s floor beforebringing them up to the surface is anextremely delicat e , costly and time-consuming task. All underwater explora-tion is very expensive and comes withoutany guarantee of success.

Since profit is the treasure-hunters’only motive, and every day of explorationcosts a small fortune, they are in a hurryto bring up whatever can be sold, even ifit means destroying everything in theirway. Some even use explosives to reachwhat they want.

They have no interest in items thatcannot be sold but which may be of ines-timable value to historians, such as a pot-tery shard bearing an inscription that mayprovide clues about a ship’s route, a pieceof shoe that can tell much about how thes a i l o rs dressed or a skeleton show i n gwounds or nutritional deficiencies. Thehull of the Maurithuis, which sank offGuinea on its way back from China in1609, was still lined with nearly 20,000plates of almost pure zinc, showing thatChinese metallurgists were very far aheadof their European counterparts.

The problem of granting explorationpermits is much greater in Portugal’sAzores island chain, which has one of theworld’s biggest concentrations of wrecks

because it was a necessary stopover forships crossing the A t l a n t i c. Po rt u g a l ’smuseum of archaeology has listed 850sunken Spanish and Po rtuguese shipsthere, many loaded with gold.

Eighty-eight of them lie in the Bay ofHangra de Heroismo, where the Britishtreasure-hunter John Grittan showed upin 1972, eventually spending two monthsin jail and being banned from exploring.Nearly a quarter of a century later hereturned—after the law changed to allowprivate firms to explore—as manager ofArqueonauticas, chaired by Rear AdmiralIsaias Gomes Texeira, one of the firstcompanies to obtain an exploration andexcavation permit.

One of the most famous treasure-hun-ters, Florida-based Bob Marx, joined theundertaking, lured by a deal giving himhalf of whatever was discovered at a depthof up to 50 metres and 70 per cent ofwhat was found further down. “This lawhas sacrificed our history to money,” saysFrancisco Alves of the national archaeolo-gy museum. Meanwhile, the Spanish arefrantically poring over legal documents tosee if they have a right to save galleonsthat are their own heritage.

FINDERS KEEPERS A ND MIL I TARY EXCEP T IONS

P atrick O’Keefe, an Australian lawyer and cul-

tural heritage specialist, says the discovery of

the Titanic was a turning point. Exploration teams

now have the technology to go anywhere and to

e x cavate at once-unthinkable depths. “Interna-

tional regulations are urgently needed because no

wreck is safe anymore,” he says.

But the international community is lagging far

behind the technology. Some countries have more or

less successfully established rules on underw a t e r

a r c h a e o l o gy within their territorial waters (usually 12

miles, or 22 km., from their coasts). However, few are

developing the resources to ca r ry out their ow n

undersea explorations. In international waters, any-

thing goes. Individuals are entitled to keep what they

find, and every ship that is “saved” belongs to who-

mever discovered it, in keeping with the maritime tra-

dition of “salvage on the high seas.”

But UNESCO’s Lyndel Prott says, “the wrecks

aren’t saved when they’re found by a treasure-

hunter. On the contrary, they’re the ones who

endanger them.” The 1982 Convention on the

Law of the Sea barely touched on the issue of

underwater treasure.

UNESCO has drawn up a planned convention

that would ban all commercial use of underwater

wrecks. Unfortunately, the world’s major mariti-

me and technological powers—the United States,

Britain, France and Japan—want to keep their

hands free and look askance at any attempt to

take away their freedom of action.

Their navies cite the tradition that warships

forever belong to the country that launched them

to keep others from touching their wrecks, even

when they are four centuries old. The United

States used this argument to win its right to the

wreck of the Alabama, a Confederate privateer

sunk by the Union navy off the French port of

Cherbourg towards the end of the American Civil

War. And what about a Spanish galleon wrecked

in the Portuguese Azores? When is a wreck dee-

med to have been abandoned by its country or

its owner?

Two meetings of specialists—a third has been

set for July 2000—have so far failed to sort out the

mess, or to obtain a firm political commitment

from the international community to lay down

the law in Davy Jones’s locker. ■

Sometimes treasure-hunters hit thej a c k p o t . One of them, the impetuousMichael Hatcher, netted about $15 mil-lion from the piecemeal sale of Chineseporcelain he found in the wreck of theDutch ship Geldermalsen, which sank inthe China Sea in 1752. Christie’s, theworld’s biggest auction house, sold thepieces off for a while but then quietlystopped, probably because of the contro-versy and legal problems raised.

H atcher claims he found the wreck ini n t e rn ational wat e rs , but researchers say itwas lying within Indonesia’s terri t o rial limits.Ja k a rta opened an inve s t i g at i o n , and one ofthe inve s t i g at o rs drowned in a diving acci-dent at the site, adding to the detective nove laspect of the case. E ventually the Indone-sians dropped the enquiry, but ru m o u rs tiedt h at move to the corruption of the Suhart ofamily then ruling the country.

“All this money going around justmakes matters worse because it is recy-cled to pay for new explorations,” saysLyndel Prott,a legal expert on world heri-tage matters with UNESCO. “Countriesallow the kind of pillage of their underwa-ter treasures that they would never tolera-te on land.” ■

Since profit is the treasure-hunters’ only motive, and every day of explora t i o ncosts a small fortune, they arein a hurry to bring upwhatever can be sold, even if it means destroyinge v e rything in their way.

C O N N E X I O N S


The court threw out the case. Yet thesystem’s technical shortcomings, inclu-ding the inability to prove a voter’s identi-ty and to ensure the secrecy of the ballot,were deemed unimport a n t . N e a r l y86,000 Democrats cast ballots, 40,000 ofthem through the Internet. Three-quar-ters of the e-voters were between 18 and35, an age group that is usually less inter-ested in voting than their elders. Onlyslightly over 12,000 people bothered toturn out for the previous such primaryfour years earlier.

Was the experiment conclusive? Alocal paper, the Tucson Citizen, said manyvoters were drawn more by the method’s

novelty than by the candidates. Moregenerally, Stephen Hess, of the BrookingsInstitute, thinks that “procedural ques-tions are not what prevents people fromvoting.” But Santini believes that e-votingis “an amazing opportunity for ourexhausted democratic system.”

The American firm Election.com hasannounced it will provide such voting ser-vices for next November’s U.S. presiden-tial election. And Steve Case, of the hugeInternet service provider (ISP) AmericaOnline (AOL), thinks experiments likethe one in Arizona are further proof thatthe Internet is “transforming the waypeople interact with their local and natio-nal governments.”

Political parties, new citizens’ move-ments and public authorities are increa-singly quick to grasp that fact, at least inc o u n t ries we a l t hy enough to have

widespread Internet access. Until everyo-ne has interactive digital television, theNet seems to be the quickest, cheapestand only truly interactive way for citizensto exchange information and opinionsbetween themselves as well as with theirelected representatives.

Most political parties now have theirown websites to present their platforms.Numerous public services use them toexplain their structure, operations andaims and to answer people’s questions bye-mail. And many municipalities provideinformation and consult citizens by e-mail before taking any major decision.

A chanceto voice views

New citizens groups that believe in adifferent kind of globalisation also makeintensive use of the Internet. In SouthKorea,where nearly half the population ison line, 600 community organizationsrecently posted a “black list” on the Webof 90 parliamentary candidates withmurky pasts, including some who hadbeen convicted of corruption. Fifty-eightof them were defeated in the subsequentelection, some by virtual unknowns.

Askwith suggests going one step fur-ther. He sharply criticised the way a typi-cal British Royal Commission set up tostudy a controversial issue operated. Inpractice, only the views of the panel’smembers and the “experts” who appea-red before it carried any weight, he said.The citizens who attended the hearingwere few and unrepresentative.They were“mostly the retired and unemploye d ,since the ill-publicised event took placeon a Thursday afternoon.” They did notreally understand the issue at hand andwere asked to speak only at the end of thehearing, and even then only briefly andfor appearance’s sake.

■A “dumb rage of impotence” is howRichard A s k w i t h , a senior editori a lwriter for the British newspaper The

Independent on Sunday d e s c ribed his fee-lings in a recent art i c l e . “ E ve rything ourgovernment does it does in my name, yetwhat say have I ever had? One vote in fiveye a rs , for a choice of scarcely distingui-shable bands of disingenuous careeri s t s.What kind of choice is that?”

Askwith is implacable:“Parliamentaryd e m o c r a cy, i nvented in the days of theh o rse and cart and perfected during thesteam age,” has had its day. “ I t ’s timeg ove rnments found a new way to let thepeople decide.”1

The solution? The Internet.“ E - d e m o c r a cy will wake politics up,” s ay s

French MP André Santini,m ayor of the Pa ri ss u burb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, which he hasmade into a model Internet-connected tow n .“I’m sure it can cure people’s disaffectionwith politics, just as the Internet economy isb e ating unemploy m e n t .”2

The Arizonaexperiment

The clearest sign of this political apa-thy is low voter turnout, to the point that“these days universal suffrage is now onlyuniversal in name,” says Santini.The firstI n t e rnet voting experiment was theDemocratic Party primary election in theU.S. state of Arizona that took place fromMarch 7 to 11, 2000. Opponents of e-voting went to court, arguing that it dis-criminated against poor people withoutInternet access (the “digital divide”).

IN T ERNET TO THE RESCUE OF DEMOCRACY ?◗ René Lefort

Advocates of e-democracy profess that the Internet is the only way to bridge the gap between disaffected citizens and politicians. “Nonsense” say others

◗ Director of the UNESCO Courier

1. The Independent, September 4, 1999.2.The French daily Libération, April 21,2000.

E-voting is “an amazingo p p o r t u n i ty for our exhaustedd e m o c ratic system.”

C O N N E X I O N S


In contrast, he says, stand the poten-tial advantages of the Internet, which isalready used by campaigners who, thoughscattered across the world, are all on-lineat the same time, sometimes several hun-dred of them for days on end, delvingdeeply into an issue and expressing infor-med and considered opinions. T h e s egroups are known as amphinets. It allcosts very little compared with a face-to-face meeting of all the participants.

Askwith asks, why not use this methodand open it up to ordinary citizens chosenat random? Their views, r e p r e s e n t i n gpublic opinion, would reach the “repre-sentatives of the people,” who would nolonger just vaguely hear them but be for-ced to take their views seriously.

Other e-democracy advocates go evenf u rt h e r. R ather than settling for using elec-tronic means merely to improve the flawe drepresentativeness of elected officials, whynot do without them altogether? MarcStrassman, executive director of the Cam-paign for Digital Democracy,3 suggests anelectronic system good enough to eliminat e

any possibility of fraud.Voters would use itto voice their views on every possible andimaginable issue, from whether a countryshould undertake a military operation todeciding on the content of a proposed law.

The system would be advanced enoughto immediately and electronically analysethe full range of opinions. Strassman says itwould correct the “large and gr owing imba-lance in political influence between com-mon people and the professional politicalclass and its clients who increasingly domi-nate the initiative process.”

The time has gone when parliamentarydecisions were taken after “ c o n s u l t i n gdozens of people whose opinions and viewsare highly privileged at the expense of mil-lions who are disadvantaged by thisc o n c e n t r ation of powe r ,” Strassman say s.We should switch to “direct electronicd e m o c r a cy ” where “millions of e-mail vo t e sd e t e rmine the direction of the republic.” I ns h o rt , he argues, “the Net becomes sop owe r f u l , so ubiquitous and so easy to use”that it can “let us govern ourselves.”

Santini thinks this will be the key to “ashift from an occasional democracy to acontinuous one.” It would be akin to revi-

New ways: casting votes via the Internet during the Democratic Party’s primary in Arizona in March 2000.

ving the agora in ancient A t h e n s , the cradleof democracy where the city’s 20,000 citi-zens who were entitled to met and debat e d .The Net would make such a forum per-m a n e n t , instantaneous and, when eve ryp e rson on the planet is on line, wo r l d w i d e .

Over-relianceon technology

“Nonsense,” says Frenchman JacquesA t t a l i , the founder of Planetfin a n c e ,4 an elec-tronic microcredit netwo r k . F i rs t , the agorawould not be a democratic ideal: nobody hasthought of reviving it where that would bep o s s i b l e , such as a village of a few hundredi n h a b i t a n t s. W hy? Because the representa-t i ve system would remain indispensable.

There is no doubt the system is incrisis, says Patrick Viveret, who writes forthe French magazine Transversales ScienceCulture. He notes a tendency in represen-tative systems towards delegating authori-ty that could go as far as confiscating italtogether. So citizen participation wouldbe absolutely vital to genuiner e p r e s e n t at i o n , and the Net wo u l d

3. www.digitaldemocracy.org 4. www.planetfinance.org

C O N N E X I O N S


read nor write? Of course we must teachthem how, which is a long-term underta-king. We can also make use of technology.N owa d ay s , vo i c e - a c t i vated computers andBraille gi ve blind people access to theI n t e rn e t . I t ’s easy to imagine similar devicesfor illiterate people. The energy situation isjust as bad. Fe wer than 10 per cent ofMalians have access to electricity or tele-phones. What can be done? In the shortt e rm we must settle for equipment thatruns on batteries,for example.

Which medium encourages the broadestpossible participation in the democraticprocess in Mali today?

T h e r e ’s no question it’s radio, w h i c hovercomes the dual problems of illiteracyand communication in the va rious nat i o n a l

l a n g u a g e s.Transistor radios are small, c h e a pand battery-powered. What the transistorradio is today, the mobile phone will bet o m o rr ow. Soon the Internet will be acces-sible by mobile phone, and I’m sure that willhelp us take a big leap forward.

Mobile phones with Internet access will betremendously expensive.

True, but radios were also very expen-s i ve when they first appeared. It mightseem illusory to picture the spread of mobilephones in A f ri c a , but technology is deve l o-ping ve ry quickly, which brings prices dow njust as fa s t . Political determ i n ation andthe commitment of companies will be cru-cial to the future of such technology inAfrica.

If the Internet was widespread in Mali today,how would it affect democracy?

It would encourage more citizens totake part in the democratic process. Itwould probably be more effective thanradio in helping them to learn things andto voice their opinions. At election time,computerised voting would solve majorproblems, such as the participation ofMalians living abroad (20-25 per cent ofthe population) and of villagers who mustsometimes travel 20-30 kilometers toreach the nearing polling station. But,technical problems aside, Malians are notexactly flocking to the voting booth. Theyseem to have lost faith in the country’spolitical leaders, and we mustn’t rely onthe Internet to make up for their lack ofmotivation. ■

Interview by Jasmina Sopova, UNESCO Courier journalist

■Do democra cy and the Internet go together i nAfrica?They don’t, because the Internet has

only just started appearing on the continent.To become a tool of democracy, the Intern e tmust become democratic itself! The Webhas penetrated every country in the world,but only two per cent of the globe’s popu-lation have access to it. In most Africancountries, the Internet is used only by anelite living mostly in big cities. To make itmore widespread, we need support from thewealthy countries.

What do you expect from them?That they help us develop an infra-

structure as cheaply as possible whiletaking local conditions into account.We’re not asking for hand-outs. If theydecide to invest, they have everything togain, especially in economies of scale.Ninety-eight per cent of the wo r l d ’spopulation is not on line yet—that’s bil-lions of people. However poor they are,they represent an incredible market. Thecountries of the South will gain too,because new technology helps to spreadinformation, which is a tremendous assetin promoting the growth of democracy.

Then there’s the issue of solidari t y. R i c hcountries invest a lot to foster democracyaround the wo r l d . If the Internet is a meansof helping to achieve that end, we ’d be baf-fled if they didn’t help us overcome theobstacles in our way.

What are those obstacles?The first major stumbling block is illi-

t e r a cy, which concerns about half of Mali’spopulation. What’s the point of giving allcitizens Internet access if they can neither

A FRICA: CELL PHONES F OR CI T IZ ENSHIPIbrahima N’Diaye, the mayor of Mali’s capital Bamako, is banking on the Internet to boostdemocracy in Africa via specially-outfitted cell phones

p r ovide “substantial opport u n i t i e s ” i nthat regard.

But making e-democracy a “global alter-n at i ve ” would mean giving too much powe rto the “ t e c h n i c i s m ” which is taking over them o d e rn economy, the idea that “ p r o b l e m scan be solved by technology, i n d e p e n d e n t l yof the playe rs invo l ve d ,” wa rns V i ve r e t .D e m o c r a cy requires “ c o l l e c t i ve intelli-

g e n c e ” , which is much more than merely thesum of different opinions, as they are ins-tantly served up by opinion polls today andwill be by the Internet tomorr ow (the“ d e m o c r a cy of opinions”).There needs tobe “time for careful refle c t i o n ,n u rtured byopinions and counter-opinions bri n gi n gtogether mediat o rs who say what they thinkin the public arena,” he say s.

Also needed, says Attali, is the “timefor political initiat i ves to prove theirworth.” That might entail a period ofunpopularity before they eventually gainwidespread support. The alternative, hesays, is an “Internet world” that wouldlead to “excessively reversible and contra-dictory decisions”, and consequently to a“dictatorship of the here and now.” ■

I N T E R V I E W


Do you think research to decode the humangenome should be placed in the publicdomain?

We cannot patent basic knowledge ofthe sequence.What we possess in our ownorganisms, biologically speaking, cannotbe patented even by law. But applicationsderived from knowledge of our genes canbe. The U.S. company Celera Genomicsseems to be leading the race to decode theentire human genome sequence.According to press reports, the firm hasalready decoded the entire sequence—some 50 million “bits” of DNA—thoughthey still have to fit the pieces together,rather like a jigsaw puzzle. On the otherside is the public consortium, made up ofteams from a number of countries wor-king through their national public healthi n s t i t u t e s , which are proceeding moreslowly and hope to finish the sequencingin two years’ time. But they are progres-sing in a more orderly fashion. So thatwhen they do finish the sequences, theywill know exactly where each part goes.Atfirst the private company tried to patentthe sequences, and there were manypublic fig u r e s , including some ve ryrenowned scientists such as the presidentsof the American Academy of Science andof the British Royal Society, who opposedthe “patentability” of gene sequences. BillClinton and Tony Blair also protested.The company seems to have backed downand will make its results public. However,what can be patented are the possibleuses of those sequences in methods tocure specific illnesses.

Are we witnessing the excessivecommercialisation of science?

Pa rt l y, ye s. There might be excessivec o m m e r c i a l i s ation if the proper limits arenot imposed.There is an interesting case inconnection with cloning: scientists from aresearch institute at the Unive rsity ofWisconsin succeeded in 1998 in deri v i n g

M A RG A RI TA SA LAS :K NO W L EDGE TO DISPEL FE A RMargarita Salas, a Spanish pioneer in molecular biology, dismisses alarmist reactions to recentscientific advances and stays thoroughly optimistic on all fronts

and culturing human embryonic stem cells—cells that are the parent cells of all tissuesin the body.The achievement has profoundi m p l i c ations for transplant medicine. O n l yp ri vate firms currently fund this wo r k ,because in the United States there is a lawbanning the public funding of researchbased on human embryo s. It is ve ry dange-rous to let this sort of work remain solely inp ri vate hands. These firms will be able top atent their findings and make people forkout presumably large sums of money whenthey have to undergo transplant operat i o n s.If the funding came from public sources,this monopoly wo u l d n ’t exist.

But are governments investing enough in basicresearch?

I t ’s impossible to make generalisat i o n s.The percentage of gross domestic producte a rmarked for research in places like theUnited States or in some of the most deve-loped European countries hove rs aroundt wo to 2.5 per cent, sometimes even more.Spain has one of the lowest levels of resear-ch funding in Europe, standing at 0.9 perc e n t , one point below the European Union

ave r a g e , so there’s a long way for us to go.The interesting thing about pri vate fun-ding is that it comes not just from bu s i-n e s s e s , but also from foundations and eve nfrom individuals. In the United Stat e s , f o re x a m p l e , people who contri bute to resear-ch funding are entitled to deduct it fromtheir taxe s , which is not the case in coun-t ries like Spain. I t ’s vital to promote fis c a lpolicies that encourage people to fundr e s e a r c h .

What are the potential risks of privatelyfunded research?It’s dangerous if the results are witheldand patented in such a way that licensesare required to use the data.

Scientific research is a highly competitive field.Is there room for cooperation?

In the first place, scientists do notwork alone. This is no longer the era ofRamón y Cajal.1 Whether or not theyshare affinities, scientists must work in

1. Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Spanish neurologist(1852-1934). Nobel prize for physiology andmedicine in 1906.

A life’s vocation: Margarita Salas in her lab at Madrid’s Universidad Autónoma.

I N T E R V I E W


teams for the simple reason that it’simpossible for an isolated individual tog ather enough knowledge to have aninternational impact. In the EuropeanUnion, for instance, we are seeing increa-sing cooperation, because support andfunding are granted to teams formed bygroups from different countries. But inthe private sector, groups working at thecutting edge of science strive to get therebefore their competitors because of thehuge economic stakes involved.

Are scientists doing anything to narrow the research gap between North and South?

Researchers from the South take partin some collaborative projects and attendmajor intern ational congr e s s e s , but ingeneral this cooperation has more to dowith institutional reasons than with anypolitical will to narrow the gap.

Why does cloning frighten people?Because they think of human cloning

and that scientists will run amok with it.That’s ridiculous. First, the technologywe have at the moment falls far short ofenabling us to produce cloned humans,though it’s clear that it will improve until

that becomes possible. But then, what isthe point of making individuals who areall alike? Over 20 years ago, when theissue of in vitro fertilisation arose, peoplesaid it was horrific, that it wasn’t natural.They wondered what sort of childrenwould be born from this technology.Would they turn out like monsters? Allsorts of things were said. The first girlborn via this technique is now 23 or 24years old. She’s perfectly normal and invitro fertilisation has solved many fertilityproblems. So has it been good or bad forhumanity?

So do you defend cloning?Once again, we have to make a few dis-

t i n c t i o n s. I think human cloning to produ-ce individual human beings is repellent,and in some countries there are law sagainst it. But we can envisage cloning afew stem cells to produce useful organ tis-sues towards therapeutic ends, or animalcloning for the same purpose or to maked ru g s. For example, a gi ven gene can beimplanted in a sheep. These genetically-m o d i fied animals can then be cloned toproduce large quantities of factor IX, w h i c his necessary for blood coagulation and isused in the treatment of haemophilia.

Should limits be placed on scientific researchto prevent abuse?

Scientists themselves have demandedthat their discoveries not be used againsthumanity. Furthermore, bioethics com-mittees involving scientists have spread allover the world in the past ten years andare working with the same aims.The mainpurpose of cloning is to obtain useful tis-sues which can, for example, mitigate theproblem of the body rejecting organtransplants. There was a proposal to keepcells from the umbilical cords of new-borns so that in the future stem cellscould be obtained in order to make tis-sues. That way, if someone needed anorgan transplant, his or her own cellswould be readily available, and doctorswould be able to culture new tissue fromthem. That would circumvent the pro-blem of rejection and therefore be a verypositive step forward.

Another scientific advance which has sparkedan uproar is genetically modified organisms.What is your opinion?

Those fears are entirely based on a lack ofk n ow l e d g e . N ature changes slowly all thetime so that it can adapt. In the laborat o ry,those changes are simply accelerat e d .

Green deputies protesting against cloning at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

I N T E R V I E W

crops to arid soil. Though from theUnited States, he lived for a long time inMexico, and is totally in favour of geneti-cally modified plants. He thinks themovement against them is ridiculous inlight of all his work to enable plants togrow in dry soil.

You seem to have perfect trust in the intrinsicgoodness of scientists.

Science in general is moving in theright direction, towards helping humani-

ty, not perverting it. New cloning and tis-sue transplant technology is developed forthe good of human beings. There is noreason to be afraid, on the contrary.

What can scientists do to put that messageacross?

I believe there are more scientistsinterested in humanism than the otherway around,because humanists think thatscience is too difficult to understand.Thatis exactly why the Instituto de España,

A LIFE FOR SCIENCE

Since 19 01, when the Swedish Academy setup Nobel prizes for achievements in various

s c i e n t i fic disciplines, only 11 women, comparedwith 435 men, have received one of the awards.But with the help of programmes to supportwomen’s involvement in scientific researchsponsored by UNES CO and the EuropeanCommission, the careers and commitment ofs e v e ral female pioneers have proved that scien-ce is no longer an all-male domain. MargaritaSalas has faith that “in the not too distant futu-re women will achieve a rate of participation inthe professional world and in society highenough for them to believe that they matter atall levels and in every situation. And not beca u-se there are quotas: I’m totally against quotasfor women. It’s up to us to conquer the spacethat we deserve.” She has done just that bydevoting herself entirely to her profession: “Ilike other things too, like music or art… I go toconcerts and exhibitions, but research is thepurpose of my life,” she says.

Born in Canero in Spain’s Asturias in 1938,

Salas was 16 when the “yearning for discove-ry” took her to Madrid to study chemistry. At19 she met Severo Ochoa, who won the NobelPrize for Medicine the following year. Ochoaencouraged her to write a doctoral thesis inMadrid and, later, to work with him in his NewYork laboratory. Today, this molecular biolo-gist’s résumé is 24 pages long and includes—besides two honoris causa degrees and over200 studies and articles in scientific journals—UNESCO’s Carlos J. Finley prize (1991) and theJaime I research prize (1994), among others.Since 1995, she has headed the Instituto deEspaña. On January 10, 2000, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura presented her inParis with the UNESCO-L’Oréal prize for the bestEuropean scientist of 1999, an honour forwhich 34 candidates were competing. Fourother scientists, one for each continent, wereawarded the same prize. ■

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Fa rm e rs have traditionally modified plantsthrough genetic crossbreeding which gene-r ates seeds that can gr ow in ari d , saline orother soils. This was possible after a lot oftime and wo r k , and nobody thought it wa sw r o n g,e ven though it came down to geneti-cally modifying the seeds.A skin graft is alsoa genetic modific at i o n ,though people are notafraid of it. And genetically modified plantsare no different. Among the 50,000 or100,000 genes that a plant contains,only oneor two different ones are added to make themresistant to insects, to a viru s ,or to saline soil.This is done through ve ry simple experi m e n t st h at can last days or we e k s.W hy are peopleafraid? Because they don’t know what ’s invo l-ve d . On the other hand, e ve ry geneticallym o d i fied plant has been tested before it is puton the market. I do think that food whichcomes from genetically modified plantsshould be properly labelled so the consumercan decide. But eating products that comefrom genetically modified plants does notentail any sort of ri s k : I myself would have noobjections to eating them.

What is the exact motive behind creatinggenetically modified organisms?

Genetically modified plants can havenothing but benefits for the human spe-cies.The other day I read about a kind ofgenetically modified rice which producesa 35 per cent greater crop yield. Theimportance for countries suffering fromfamines is obvious. It’s true that thoseseeds are patented, but over time thepatents will fall into the public domainand the seeds will be cheaper. Not longago we received a visit from NormanBorlaug, an agronomist who won the1970 Nobel Prize for his work in adapting

http://www.forwomeninscience.com

I N T E R V I E W

It’s a virus which infects the Bacilluss u b t i l i s, a non-pathogenic bacteri u mwhich is widely used in biotechnology.When the virus infects this bacterium itdestroys it, but causes no damage to otherorganisms. Phi-29 is simple and easy tohandle; it has only 20 genes, in compari-son to the 100,000 which the humangenome contains. N e ve rt h e l e s s , t h econtrol mechanism of this virus is prettysophisticated, which makes it somethingof a model system. As a result, what weare studying in the virus can be extrapola-ted to other virus systems in more com-plex animals and organisms. The proteinthat we have studied in this virus alsoexists in a similar form in other viruseswhich are not innocuous, or “bad” shallwe say, because they cause diseases likepoliomyelitis, hepatitis B or hepatitis C.

What professional achievement are you mostproud of?

A c t u a l l y, there are two. One is ve ry per-s o n a l . When I was working in the Seve r oOchoa laborat o ry, I found two previouslyu n k n own proteins necessary to start syn-thesising proteins. It was a ve ry import a n tbreakthrough and ve ry satisfying for me,especially since I was just starting out andworking alone. My second major achieve-ment was in Spain. I was part of a team thatd i s c overed another protein which is closelylinked to the nucleic acid of the virus onwhich we are wo r k i n g .We proved that it wa sn e c e s s a ry for the replication of viral DNA.

And your greatest disappointment?A scientist cannot expect success

e ve ry day. There are disappointments

throughout a scientist’s life. There aretimes when experiments don’t work, orwhen you get stuck in a dead-end andhave to change direction, but they areminor setbacks and never too serious. Idon’t think I’ve ever had a major disap-pointment. Besides, I’m an optimist.

Would you say that there is a feminine and amasculine way of conducting research?

In over 20 years of teaching I’ve hadmale and female doctoral and post-docto-ral students,and I don’t think there is anysingle feature that really sets them apart.Having said that, women have perhapsbeen less aggressive and more patient,while men have tried to be the first tocome up with results. Nowadays, womenare beginning to acquire a level of educa-tion that is making them bolder about notalways staying one step behind men andalways being more patient than they are.Apart from that nuance, I don’t see anydifferences.

What would you say to a female student whowants to dedicate her life to scientificresearch?

My advice would be the same for awoman or a man, which is that if they real-ly enjoy scientific research, they mustu n d e rstand that they will have to dedicat et h e m s e l ves 100 per cent to it.There are nohalf measures.You either gi ve your life to it,or you don’t . If you are really prepared tod e vote all your time to research, then goa h e a d . And then I tell them it’s for life. ■

Interview by Lucía Iglesias Kuntz, UNESCO Courier journalist

which I head and which includes the eightn ational academies, o f f e rs a series ofconferences that give scientists the chan-ce to discuss and popularise phy s i c s ,mathematics and genetics in a rigorousbut simple way, using language the publiccan understand. We must work towardspopularising science more widely. Thatmeans extra effort by scientists, but itought to be a duty.

What do you think the most important areasof research will be in this century?

I think one of the most important is theb r a i n . It is the essential key yet to be disco-ve r e d : w hy we think, w hy we speak, w h atthe molecular mechanisms are behind ourthought processes. M a ny people are wo r-king in that area. B e s i d e s , as John Maddox ,who was editor of N at u r e magazine form a ny ye a rs has said, the human being’sintellectual capacity is so gr e at that at somepoint in the future there will be nothing leftto discove r.

Will that lead to boredom?We l l , neither you nor I will be around to

see it. Take the example we just discussedc o n c e rning sequencing the human genome,which is known as “the beginning of thee n d .” I t ’s one thing to have the sequenceand quite another to know what it is wo rt hand to understand the function of each oneof our 100,000 genes. By current estimat e s ,t h at will take another 100 ye a rs , so I don’tthink we’ll have time to get bored.

You’ve spent the last 30 years working withthe phagocytic cell Phi-29. Could you explainwhat this is?

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WorldEducationreport

2000

World Data on EducationA Guide to the Structure of NationalEducation Systems

Edited by Massimo Amadio

| An overview of all the actions,treaties and programmes that have taken place over the past half-century in favour ofeducation throughout the world.

| An analysis of the progressthat has actually been made.

| Concise descriptionof 144 educationsystems with statisticaldata on primaryeducation.

The right to education for all

m a n y v o i c e s o n e w o r l d

P u b l i s h e din 27

l a n g u a g e s

In the next issue:

Fo c u s :

Youth culture s :the global tracks of music■ The voice of a genera t i o n : h i p - h o p■ A Maori warrior goes against the flo w■ South A f r i c a : l i b e ration musicians meet

young kwaito upstarts■ A l g e r i a : passing the crown from rai to ra p■ Techno appeal: the return of the mass dance

m o v e m e n t■ Raving in the A u s t ralian bush:

ecologists and party-goers unite■ M o ral panic in GoaFe a t u res include■ Through the lens of the Dogon■ Trade in endangered species: the debate

over banning■ Teenage pregnancy: what education can change■ The embargo on Ira q : a right or a crime?■ Taj Mahal and Lima: heritage before business■ Vital connections: the South goes mobile■ Interview with A r g e n t i n a ’s Quino,

father of the Mafalda comic strip

The UNESCO Courier is available on the Internet:

www.unesco.org/courier