9 - Difference
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
Beijing and beyond
The Fourth UN World Conference on Women was held in Asia in the fall of 1995. Over 40,000 women assembled, filled with excitement and enthusiasm: ‘Empowerment for women moving forward to the twenty first century’. I was really overwhelmed by the power of Asian women, especially women at the grassroots level. Compared with the International Women's Year World Conference, held in Mexico City twenty years earlier, at which Asian women held a rather low profile, at the Beijing Conference, the first worldwide women's conference held in Asia, women spoke out and acted so powerfully.
The woman reflecting on the twenty years of international women's conferences was Matsui Yayori, former editorial staff member of the prestigious Asahi newspaper and a founder of the Asian Women's Association. Matsui had participated in all of the United Nations conferences: Mexico in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985, and Beijing in 1995. As we have seen, other women from Japan had also participated in these conferences, which had provided opportunities for reflection on Japan's place in Asia and on the gendered dimensions of international relations in the region.
From the 1970s to the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, members of women's groups reflected on their place in the Asian region.
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- Information
- Feminism in Modern JapanCitizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality, pp. 202 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003