Peking and thereabouts - The U. N. Conference and the Women's Forum 1995, 1995, n. 25

EDITORIAL, Peking and thereabouts, pp. 2-4

The problems Conference and Forum will discuss have been much worked over by women contributing to this issue: the questions they raise will not only allow us, even though we are far away, to better understand what is at stake in Peking, but also to set our current political events on a worldwide background, where millions of women enact their conflicts every day in the name of freedom.

COLOMBO Daniela, The long march, pp. 5-16

Today it has become impossible to look at the problem of development only in terms of capitals, technological inputs, global growth, and the agencies involved in activities of co-operation for development have had to modify their objectives and strategies. As Colombo underlines: "Far the first time, gender equality is seen not only as an end, but as a means to reach fundamental objectives in the direction of development". In this paper she presents the theoretical approaches and the practical programmes set up by the international women's movement, explaining how the movement's positions come to influence the documents of international institutions, and how the movement then utilises these formal resolutions as a lever for change.

VANEK Joann - BEDIAKO Grace - PERUCCI Francesca, More women than men - Gender statistics: problems and challenges, pp. 17-29

This research describes the work currently done at national and international levels in order to be able to meet the new requirements of official statistics. It also addresses key agents and their specific responsibilities in the production process. The last part describes statisticians' current challenges, as the production of statistics on gender calls for more than the disaggregation of data on the basis of sex; the required operations are much more complex, and different disciplines need to be integrated, as many examples in the essay demonstrate.

MADHOK Sujata, Operating networks, pp. 30-38

A synthetic description of the effort of women's organizations, up to international institutional seats, to create a network producing meaningful pressures and effects on the official preparatory documents opening the way to the Peking encounter.

POMERANZI Bianca M., The meaning of Beijing, pp. 39-50

The author looks at the meaning of the international meeting in Beijing's the fourth of its kind twenty years - for "those women who create the complex system of associations and groups concerned with 'global' politics (what could also be defined 'trans-national feminism')". In these twenty years not only the international situation has undergone dramatic changes; the theoretical co-ordinates and the actual practises have also changed - from Equality to Empowerment, could be a way to sum it up. In Beijing, many women, both within and without the institutions, from both the North and the South, will compare and exchange their experiences and positions, discussing how "a real possibility of change, in order to make the world a more liveable place, comes only from the acknowledgement of the meaning and importance of women's knowledge".

KUMAR-D'SOUZA Corinne, Looking through new eyes, pp. 51-63

The author denounces the fact that all that is displayed as "universal" originates in fact from liberal Enlightenment, a specific historical moment of Western culture, according to which the West is the center and model for every culture and civilization. Even the solemn United Nations Declarations on human rights accept this conceptual scheme, hindering the emergence of powerless voices and relegating women's suffering and violences committed on them to the private sphere. The latest United Nations Declaration on the right to development (1986) disregards the fact that a certain kind of development is, in fact, counter-productive for many human groups. The paradigm according to which human rights are the rights of those empowered should be abandoned, and reality should be viewed "through the eyes of the South within the South, and of the South within the North. Through the eyes of women".

MELCHIORI Paola, Issues for the 21 st century, pp. 64-76

Giving specific examples, the author argues that "in order to asses the meaning and importance of the Beijing meeting, one must look at in the context of the other N.U. Conferences, as well as of the parallel meetings on financial and trade agreements - which are just as important, though they are not always given the same attention. One must connect the conferences on 'human issues' with the activity of international financial institutions […]. It is also very important to examine the consequences of the 'perverse' link which has lately been established; i.e. that perspective which confuses and unites women's will to become ever more visible and a new awareness on the part of the institutions of their potentialities as resources for development".

TRAPANI Anna, The elusive element: artistic devices and gender difference, pp. 77-80

Anna Trapani underlines "how false the pretence of art as an universal language is; on the contrary, its symbolic structure has at its centre a subject which undeniably reflects male needs and intentions, no matter how much it presents itself as neutral".

BORRELLO Giovanna, Exchange relations, power relations, pp. 80-84

Giovanna Borrello looks at the interplay between authority and power: "authority, as well as power, has to do with a field of forces, but it articulates them differently and it does not connect them with relations of domination. Instead, it links forces to one another in exchange relations of mutual enrichment".

COMBA Letizia - SPILLARI Caterina, Not loosing track. The re-cognising and re-constructing of female genealogies in the novels of Monserrat Roig, pp. 85-99

Comba introduces Spillari. Spillari looks at three novels by the Catalan writer, choosing a specific interpretative perspective: "by writing in Catalan, Roig is able not to loose track of her female ancestors, and can recognise and acknowledge that which is perhaps the most important legacy in a female genealogy: it is the mother, or the grandmother, who teaches how to name the world". She also analyses the female characters in these novels and their relations to one another, which show how vital and fundamental the relations between/among women can be for.

MARAINI Toni, H.D.'s journey to the East, pp. 100-112

The publication of the first Italian translation (by Marina Camboni) of H.D.'s Trilogy was the occasion for this paper, where Toni Maraini reads the American's poet's work as an "experience of the East". She retraces the mystical and mysteric sources of an idea of "the East" which is at the roots of a visionary poetical representation: in the Trilogy "the characters take on the masks of past liturgies, but actually they are the transfigurations of present anxieties ".