Women reflect on concerns

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 10

Women reflect on concerns

NZPA-AP Nairobi Under a “peace tent” set aside for meditation and reflection, women of many shades and nationalities clapped and swayed to the throb of animal-skin drums and maracas as Kenyan and Tanzanian women sang in Swahili: “Everything depends on women.” Japanese women talked on a nearby lawn about “intolerable discrimination against women ■ being carried out by stubborn and devious big business.” In a lecture theatre a young exile from East Timor spoke with tears in her eyes of Indonesia’s occupation of her homeland. “What do development benefits mean if you lack freedom of speech?” she said. Scores of people signed a petition supporting a proposed strike on October 24 to get wages for housework. The buzzing, colourful panorama at the university campus of the East African

capital was the second day of Forum ’Bs—a series of workshops and seminars preceding the July 15-26 United Nations conference that will end the agency’s Decade for Women. It has attracted 11,000 women from around 150 countries. After a long morning of seminars many women took a break to enjoy the balmy day. A group of veiled Iranians shrouded in black made a striking contrast as they walked across the lawn. At the “peace tent,” an Iranian exile sang a lullaby for children of war. She said hundreds of women had been detained and scores killed in detention in her country because they were opposed to the Gulf war with Iraq. “The slogan of our Government is ‘War, war, to victory.’ but we, the women, do not want our children to go to the slaughterhouses of war any more,” she said.