By Yvonne Condes
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Having local activists in China to participate in the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women is very important, said Janice Monk of the UA Women's Studies Department.
"I think it helps women to see that their issues are important globally," said Monk, executive director of the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, a part of the Women's Studies Department.
Monk, with a grant from the Amazon Foundation, helped send three Tucson women to the Non-Governmental Organization Forum on Women, the largest gathering of women in history.
They are: Judith McDaniel, an author, poet and research assistant; Herminia Cubillo, a community health advocate who works with the Mexican American community; and Lucinda Nunez, of the Tohono O'Odham nation, who works with Native American youth. The three are in Huairou, China, and will report to the Southwest Institute Ÿ and all Tucsonans Ÿ what happens there.
The forum originally was scheduled for Beijing, alongside the U.N. conference, but was forced to move to Huairou. It began Wednesday and will end Friday, and has workshops, activities, exhibits and cultural events.
There have been reports of harassment and surveillance by the Chinese government, and bus transportation from Beijing to Huairou went from several times a day to once a day. Delegates demanded that security be relaxed and that more transportation be provided.
The U.N. conference, which started yesterday, looks at the social, economic and political needs of women and what can be improved. First Lady Hillary Clinton is leading the U.S. delegation.
Monk said she hopes the U.N. conference will help to get women's issues such as health care, freedom from domestic violence, education and women rights on the public agenda to help "improve the quality of women's lives."