500 women from Asia, Pacific convence here

JAKARTA (JP): Around 500 women from 50 Asian and Pacific countries began yesterday a conference on women in development, ready to tackle crucial issues including discrimination and the burden poverty places on women.

State Minister for Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi opened the Second Asian and Pacific Ministerial Meeting on Women in Development calling for more gender-sensitive development policies.

She reminded the participants that economic gains in many parts of the world have not completely reached women. "Throughout the world, poverty persists with an unequal claim on women and children," she said in her opening remarks.

"It is our goal to now move towards economic self-reliance for women through greater access to economic resources and control over the necessary economic tools," she said.

In order to achieve the objectives, women must have access to higher education and the opportunity for training, she said.

She also touched on the issue of leadership, saying that there are now a greater number of women in decision-making positions than ever before in history.

Despite the progress, however, women still have a disproportionately small number of high level positions within government and international organizations. "This, through our unswerving determination, will change".

"Women are not seeking to formulate a set of rights, but rather to exercise and enjoy inalienable human rights as recognized by the international community," she said.

Mien was accompanied by Seiko Takahashi, the deputy Secretary Executive of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), under whose auspices the week- long conference is being held.

Inequities

Takahashi said that despite the gains that have been made in terms of education, health and employment in many countries in the region, inequities and the lack of progress for women continue to be evident.

"Access to economic and political decision-making remain elusive for the group," she said, pointing out that the percentage of female parliamentarians in the region has not improved between 1987 and 1993.

"In fact, there has even been a marginal decrease of one percent," she said. She attributed the discriminatory conditions to the fact that only 18 ESCAP members in the region have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

She also pointed out that uneven economic growth has forced many countries in the region to implement economic restructuring and structural adjustment policies which, while offering the potential for long term growth, have resulted in declines in income and growing unemployment.

Women as a group have been the most severely affected by the negative effects of these economic structural adjustment, she said.

"This feminization of poverty has accelerated in some parts of this region exacerbated by the growing number of female-headed and female-maintained households," she noted.

The conference, which is a prelude to the September 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, is expected to draw up a plan of action for the advancement of women in Asia and the Pacific.

It will start discussing today several studies which have been prepared by an expert group concerning the regional implementation of a number of "forward-looking strategies for the advancement of women to the year 2000" drafted in the 1985 conference in Nairobi.

Themes

Three major themes will dominate the week-long conference: women in economic development, women in social development, and women and empowerment.

The conference is also the first ESCAP meeting on women in development which involves the perspectives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). During the formal meetings, representatives of 50 NGOs from countries in the region also held their own meetings in an adjacent room.

The opening ceremony was also marked with a "peace march" by around 30 Indonesian activists.

Clad in white T-shirts and blouses and holding white orchids, the young women sang patriotic songs, and read poems expressing concern over women's plight in many parts of the world.

One of the poems was entitled "A Note for Marsinah" and written by activists from the Philippines for the slain labor activist Marsinah. "The best way to remember a person is to keep on fighting..." it said. (swe)