Ms. v. Macho in Mexico

Standing stiffly on the flag-draped dais in Mexico City's Olympic Gymnasium was a small platoon of male bigwigs, including United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Mexican President Luis Echeverria and various other officials. Down on the floor, masses of women draped in saris, ao-dais and other colorful garb listened more or less attentively as the men spoke. That strange beginning for a conference on women marked a meeting that is supposed to be the biggest of its kind in history--the centerpiece of the U.N.'s much-ballyhooed, much-disputed International Women's Year.

At a press conference earlier, a group of mostly female journalists fairly exploded at what they saw as the incongruity of the situation. A U.N. press officer announced that the conference president would be available for an interview after "he" was elected. "What do you mean 'he'?" the women protested. "Well, I mean person," stammered the flustered officer. "O.K., let's call it 'it.'" Sure enough, "it" turned out to be a male: Pedro Ojeda, Mexico's Attorney General.

Launching Pad. Some 1,044 U.N. delegates, most of whom were women, and 5,000 other assorted feminists and interested spectators poured into macho Mexico for what was billed by planners as "the world's largest consciousness-raising group." The consciousness-raisers present included one female Prime Minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, and about a dozen wives of national leaders, promptly dubbed "wifey-poos" by disdainful feminists. Among them: Jehan Sadat of Egypt, Nusrat Bhutto of Pakistan, Leah Rabin of Israel, and Imelda Marcos of the Philippines.

Those who made the trip found that attending the meetings was no easy matter. The official U.N. proceedings took place at the Foreign Ministry on the north side of the city. In the Medical Center five miles away was a separate U.N.-sponsored but nongovernmental "Tribune"--a more free-wheeling forum set up for representatives of organizations ranging from the National Gay Task Force of the U.S. to the Federation of Cuban Women and another group called the Aboriginal Island Women. Travel between the two sites involved a harrowing half-hour taxi trip through tangled traffic; many women complained that the conference planners had deliberately separated the meeting sites so as to keep radical feminists from upsetting the polite, official proceedings.

A major goal of the official conference is to draft a ten-year plan of action for member nations that will stress better health care and education for women and their increased participation in government. Yet global politics seemed to be the main preoccupation, at least at the outset. Mexico's President Echeverria opened the proceedings by calling for a redistribution of world wealth and political power to bring about a "new international order." The International Women's Year could not make good on its promise of peace, declared Mrs. Sadat, "while Arab lands remain occupied, while the Palestinians remain homeless." Russian Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, head of the Soviet delegation, extolled her country to reporters as "the great exception as far as opportunity for women is concerned."

The Third World women hope to use Mexico City as a launching pad for feminist movements back home. They have some strong selling points. According to U.N. statisticians, 500 million of the world's 800 million illiterates are women, and 70% of all women live in underdeveloped countries, where most of them have no voting or property rights. Understandably, the Third World participants at Mexico City showed little interest in listening to Western women discuss issues like equal pay for equal work and the need for adequate day-care centers. Sounding a grievance that Third World women hold against their Western sisters, Mrs. Marcos cautioned that feminists need not be "antimale" to be prowomen.

Western feminists have their own complaints about the U.N. extravaganza. Australian Author Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) has denounced it as "an extension of Madison Avenue feminism" set up as if the objective were to have poor women farm workers "lay down their hoes and light up a Virginia Slim." Ms. Editor Gloria Steinem arrived in Mexico City with a similar complaint. The conference, she said, "could trivialize the women's movement. The very idea of the Year of the Woman becomes clear when we consider we don't have the Year of the Man."

Little Gusto. The U.N. itself could hardly be accused of approaching the conference with gusto. Only $2 million was allotted for Mexico City, compared with well over $3 million for last year's World Population Conference in Bucharest. Conceded Helvi Sipila, 60, a Finnish lawyer who is the U.N.'s secretary-general for the International Women's Year: "There has not been much enthusiasm for the year"--which is hardly surprising since the U.N. is a predominantly male organization. Women account for only 8% of the delegates to the current General Assembly.

Sipila and other women hope that their numbers may some day be more impressive in the U.N. and elsewhere. The International Women's Year Conference, they believe, will further that aim. Still, as an Australian delegate, Elizabeth Reid, pointed out: "There are some amongst us who believe that this conference will achieve very little, others who are concerned that it will be unnecessarily politicized." At week's end both of those possibilities seemed to be altogether probable.

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