Denise and Bindu are just two girls who went to China.
For many of us there are moments that have tremendous impact on our lives. Often we don't realize the extent until long after. Travelling half-way across the world to Beijing, China, in late August 1995, to participate in the largest UN conference and gathering of women in history, was such a moment. The Fourth World Conference on Women challenged our own perceptions and engaged us in a two-year process creating Challenge the Assumptions!, a book on young women's issues.
We have always been strong proponents of youth empowerment and were dismayed by the lack of access young people had to resources and support, both at this monumental conference and before it. When the plane landed and we arrived in Beijing, we could hardly believe it. Getting there was such a struggle.... We had decided a year in advance that we wanted to take the skills we've acquired by working at a national level in Canada, and transport them and the issues of young women, into the United Nations platform. We discovered quickly that the United Nations system was not set up to integrate easily the participation of youth. Our newly created organization, Canadian Youth-Speak International, was not long-standing enough to qualify for non-governmental status at the UN. We needed five years worth of financial statements; this would have required us to have been working at a national level when we were fourteen. Many established women's groups and government departments didn't see the need for young women to go; their attitude was 'we'll send women and they'll bring back their notes for you.' We could not be content with that. Young women needed to represent themselves in such a relevant process.
When Gertrude Mongella, then Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Women, urged young women to participate in Beijing at a youth conference we attended in February 1995, we tracked her down and challenged her about the unfriendliness of the UN process to youth participation. We explained the roadblocks and our desire to go so we could contribute and learn, and then return home with a relevant project for young women. We talked until she became impressed, passed us to her assistant, and together helped break down the process to enable us to receive successful accreditation into the official UN portion of the conference. With the accreditation, came a rush of visa applications, plane ticket and hotel bookings, and funding proposals. On August 28, with the financial support of The Students Commission, Hong Kong Bank of Canada, and Women Entrepreneurs of Canada, we set out for the adventure of a lifetime.
The Beijing conference was the fourth in a twenty-year series of conferences created to change the reality of women's lives around the world. Beijing's purpose was to focus on action and implementation of the issues discussed at previous conferences. Thirty-thousand women from around the world met at the non-governmental forum in Hauirou, running parallel to the government conference, to teach and empower one another. They worked together to coordinate their input into the UN conference, focusing on 13 critical areas of concern, including women's human rights, the girl-child, women's political and economic participation, environment and women's health.
As young women, we went to Beijing to amplify the visions and voices of Canadian youth in the government conference. Yet, the Beijing process ended up teaching us that we still had much to learn about the complexity of the issues facing women around the world, the various processes set up to tackle issues, and the privileges and responsibilities we had with respect to these processes.
The three weeks in Beijing were exhausting, with work, new experiences, learning and incredible women. It was a mixture of absorbing new information, understanding the process, and fighting for access. We became acutely of aware what a privilege it was to be there, but also of the long way youth still had to go before our participation would be recognized as meaningful and important. We helped create a youth caucus to coordinate the efforts of all of the accredited youth present and to develop a united front in the adult-dominated environment. Despite the difficulties, we are proud that we were able to build bridges between the official conference, and the 4000 youth at the youth tent in Hauirou. By taking the Youth Declaration, and working to include the overall youth vision at the government conference, youth had an impact. We were among the six Canadian youth to have access to the UN conference; only 63 countries of the 187 member states brought youth on their official delegations. Yet, on the last day, young people were able to speak at the final plenary and deliver the youth vision.
It frustrates us to know that when the adult world gathers to discuss sustainable communities and global well-being, young women's issues are left off the agenda and young women themselves are excluded from the process. Yet, the status of young women is vital to the attainment of all goals. Through our work, we know that locally, many young women feel that they are denied similar skills and opportunities as young men. They lack the confidence to speak out or take action; they lack the tools to negotiate healthy relationships and make informed choices.... At the same time, there are young women who are informed, articulate, active and accomplished; young women who know their rights, who are aware of their world and who are making a difference in their local and global communities.
Through Challenge the Assumptions! we have developed a tool to connect both groups of young women, and all those in between. Leaving Beijing we challenged ourselves to devise an innovative and effective way of reaching young women and awakening in them the need to explore, to learn and to empower themselves. We wanted to create a tool to challenge surface-level thinking and the blind acceptance prescribed by our society. We wanted to confront the assumptions that shape lives, set boundaries and limit our opportunities.
While balancing full-time university, other projects in our jobs, and the craziness of being young women, we started delivering workshops across Ontario, Canada, to solicit the opinions and priorities of young women. We learned to film video, create CD-ROMs, and manage more than 120 diverse young women expressing their views, telling their stories, and confronting themselves, us, and each other. In this guide, you will find the stories of 32 young women from across Canada and around the world. They discuss issues of identity, relationships, opportunities, obstacles, activism and global perspectives.
We never expected so much resistance, so much ignorance, so much need to explain or justify, so much enthusiasm, and so much learning.... We are constantly asked why we are doing this. This is about Beijing and beyond. It is also about creating this opportunity because we can: because despite the challenges in our lives, we still manage to have privilege, access, and opportunities (whether we fought for them, or whether they were tacitly granted by our society). We can draw from our experiences; we can access resources to work with other young women around the world. This guide is not intended to answer all of your questions. This is about challenging ourselves, getting others to do the same, and together challenging everything else out there.
Welcome to the process.
Denise Campbell & Bindu Dhaliwal
Project CoordinatorsOur thanks to Status of Women Canada for its support. For further information email at: tgmag@tgmag.ca
tgmag@tgmag.ca
© 2001 - The Students Commission / TG Magazine