Progress on women's issues

Women, as Mao Zedong put it, hold up half of the sky. But rarely do they get much recognition or respect for it.

Thousands of women activists and delegates gathered in Beijing over the last two weeks for a UN conference to try to change that, and while their efforts are unlikely to yield any immediate dramatic changes, they produced a final declaration that represents a significant advance in their pursuit of the same rights that men have long enjoyed.

No longer were women, in the words of American feminist Betty Frieden, gathering "as victims, the way they were in previous conferences".

This time it was as authors seeking to write their own destiny.

The 10 days of debate resulted in a document that sets guidelines for changing legal, economic and educational policies that deny women opportunities and basic human rights.

And at the center of the debate was an assertion of the most elemental right -- control over their own bodies.

When the conference started on Sept. 4, many feared that religious conservatives would re-wage the battle they fought against abortion at last year's UN population conference in Cairo -- and that delegates would backtrack on the Cairo declaration that women have a right to determine when and whether to have children. But neither happened.

Surprising many participants, delegates from 189 countries, were able to reach agreement on several measures that went farther than Cairo.

They declared that women have the right to control their own sexuality and that governments should review laws punishing women who have abortions, and forthrightly condemned forced sterilizations and forced abortions.

Already Asia is home to some of the world's best known women political leaders -- Suu Kyi in Burma, Chandrika in Sri Lanka, Bhutto in Pakistan, Aquino in the Philippines -- they all owe their rise to power to their status as daughters of powerful political clans, but they are nevertheless disproving many of the prejudices and cultural myths about women that run deep in Asia.

The women's movement has a long way to go before it achieves its aims but Beijing has helped them move a little closer.

-- The Nation, Bangkok