Feminism on Ice

The Conference on Women and Democracy at the Dawn of the New Millennium — no abbreviations here — has drawn 300 intelligent, creative, and disgruntled women from the United States, Russia, the Baltic states, and the Nordic countries to the northernmost tip of civilization. The goal of the “delegates” is “effecting positive change,” and the highlight of their conference is supposed to be a keynote speech by Hillary Clinton, by acclamation the greatest crusader for women’s rights since Eleanor Roosevelt. But Hillary isn’t the only bigwig. At the baggage carousel this morning I was standing next to former Texas governor Ann Richards. I smiled and said hello. She ignored me, but my suitcase came out first.

1:00 P.M. The 300 delegates and a few sundry members of the press have taken their seats in the modest main auditorium of the City Theater, a nondescript contemporary building next to a mall. The real meat and potatoes of the conference is supposed to be a set of workshops tomorrow where the delegates will get together to strategize about such issues as gender equity in the media and the relative merits of “voluntary and enforced” change in gender roles. Today they have to listen to speeches.

One of the first speakers is the president of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who cheerfully welcomes her “sisters in the sisterhood of women.” Things seem to be going swimmingly in Latvia with the exception of a gigantic porn industry. Young women are sucked into pornography, used, and eventually spit out, hollow husks of their former selves. The culprit here, the president explains, is Western men and their insatiable appetite for porn. But all isn’t doom and gloom on the Latvian scene. Last year, the president announces, her country saw more abortions than live births.

Most of the other speakers are comparatively tame. The deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation says that issue No. 1 in Russia these days is to “integrate the gender perspective into legislation and unleash the creativity of women.” Iceland’s minister for Nordic cooperation laments that “democracy is run by man’s priorities.”

Strobe Talbott, the token man, representing the U.S. Department of State, rises to defend his brothers but thinks better of it. Freedom is all well and good, he says, but it comes at a price: “With the spread of democracy in what used to be Communist countries, there’s been a 10-18 percent drop in the number of women elected to the national legislatures of the region over the past 10 years.” “Therefore,” continues Deputy Secretary Talbott, “I’m pleased to announce today that the United States will donate” — he takes a Dr. Evil pause — “one million dollars to establish a new program to provide credits to small businesses in Russia.” Hey, big spender.

The next speaker is from the Council of Europe. She drones on for so long that Strobe and the Nordic minister begin smiling at one another and passing notes back and forth.

4:00 P.M. A break provides a moment for the delegates to get acquainted. They bustle about hugging and taking pictures as if it were the last day of summer camp. A husky Russian woman in a gold-sequined jacket is wandering through the crowd with an oversized Sony VHS camera from the late ’80s taping the spectacle.

After a few minutes the group is herded back into the auditorium, where the chairwomen from the workshops make long speeches about things like “Learning Skills for the 21st Century” and “Making the Most of Networking and Mentoring” and “Promoting Equality Through Legislation and Practice.” The first woman launches into a brief for the teaching of “herstory.” A speaker from Sweden beams that in her country, 11 of the 20 government ministers are women. “Of course, I’m very proud of that,” she says, “but it does not mean that we’ve reached equality.” The workshops all tackle different aspects of male oppression, but there’s consensus among the chairs on one point — men need to do more around the house.

Leafing through the program to avoid falling asleep I notice that the delegates’ bios all seem similar. There’s a director of the International Institute for Women’s Networking, a board member of the Swedish Women’s European Network, a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, a minister of gender equality, and a minister for gender equality affairs. In an impressive attempt to break down language barriers, a side bar runs throughout the program defining gender jargon in ten languages. My personal favorites are: “Gender contract: A set of implicit and explicit rules governing gender relations which allocate different work and value, responsibilities and obligations to men, women and maintained on three levels: cultural superstructure — the norms and values of society; institutions — family welfare, education and employment systems, etc.; and socialization processes — notably in the family” and “Horizontal segregation: The concentration of women and men into particular sectors and occupations.”

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 10:00 A.M. — The women are ready to effect positive change, but they won’t let me watch. As I file into the building a pretty girl with short blonde hair — definitely not a conference delegate — stops me. “You can’t go in there,” she says. “The working groups are for working, and the women can’t work with men around.”

It’s raining, and by the time I dash over to the press center next door I’m soaked. I feel better, though, when I find out that even the female journalists were turned away. In fact, the female press are making a real stink about missing the working groups. Someone passes out raincoats, courtesy of Iceland’s tourism department, in an effort to placate them. It works.

This is a strange press corps. The mainstream American contingent is limited to two writers from the wires. The other Americans are from publications such as the Minnesota Women’s Press and W.I.G. (Women In General). And then there are the freelances. Every feminist freelance writer in the United States, it seems, has anted up the dollars to get to Iceland. Now, unable to cover the workshops, they are sitting around on “pleather” couches talking about the 1979 U.N. Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Two are debating the upcoming Hillary-Rudy race. “All my friends in New York City work in the sex industry,” laments one, “and he’s destroyed their careers.”

A State Department aide I talk with can’t explain the lack of press interest. Since the first lady is finishing a five-day European tour with a major address at the conference, he says, “You’d think we would get more press than a couple of stringers and a bunch of little weird groups.”

12:00 P.M. The rain hasn’t stopped, and all of Hillary’s photo-ops for the day have been canceled, so she is going to moderate a roundtable discussion after lunch. Milling around looking for something to eat that isn’t salmon mousse, I bump into Gov. Richards again and decide to try a different approach. I tell her that her “poor George/silver foot” speech was a formative moment in my political life. Her back straightens, a smile of feline delight curls across her mouth, and she looks right into my eyes. “The line really connected didn’t it?” she beams. She proceeds to tell me how well the line connected and how, before it connected, her advisers didn’t want her to say it, and how sometimes you just have to let it all hang out, and, by the way, that really was a great line, wasn’t it? I ask her which workshop she’s in, and it turns out her group is the one on women running for public office. How’s it going, I ask? “Great,” she says, losing interest in the exchange, “except the problem is, none of the women in my group want to run for public office.”

1:00 P.M. The roundtable is supposed to broaden the delegates’ perspectives by raising the plight of women in parts of the world not represented at the conference. It begins with a 10-minute video collage of feminist testimonials against a soundtrack of African drumming. When the video ends, Hillary is introduced as a “tireless fighter for women’s rights and democracy.” She walks on stage in a smart black suit with a natty yellow scarf and gets a staggering ovation. The other participants are impressive in their own way. Rasha Al-Sabah, a professor at Kuwait University, says that she would like her government to allow women to run for political office. Vera Stemkovskaya of Belarus expresses her hope that the disappearances in her country will end soon. For her part, moderator Clinton urges more Web sites for women.

7:30 P.M. Women may be more virtuous than men, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like to disco. The attendees and flaks and press and staff have all gotten together for dinner. In fact, everyone is here except the first lady, who, I am told by a State Department aide, is back in her hotel room polishing tomorrow’s big speech. The guys from State are pretty mellow until a devastatingly beautiful Swedish reporter makes the rounds. Her hair is long, curly, blonde, lustrous. She looks like a Pantene ad as she glides through the ranks touching arms and smiling in concentrated bursts. Suddenly every guy is trying to say something, anything, to keep her from moving on.

After dessert is served, a fog machine whirs, three disco balls begin spinning, and five young men rise up out of a trap door in the dance floor. Accompanied by an eight-piece band, they embark on an hour long ABBA-Bee Gees medley. I can’t believe Hillary is missing this.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 10:00 A.M. — The early results are in and it looks like every one of the workshops was a success! One group has decided that the world “needs more women in politics; women are 50 percent of the populace, so they should have 50 percent of elected positions.” An argument offered for this conclusion is that the more equal men and women are, “the better the sex life is for women.” Another group has come up with the notion that women should make a feature film about women’s rights. Get Jodie Foster on line one.

One group announces that “Some of the ideas that emerged cannot be put into concrete projects — yet.” The participants, however, have come up with some pretty nifty non-concrete maxims, such as, “In the politics of the new millennium, to win is not to gain,” and what is needed is “a new politics where victory is replaced by inclusiveness.” Another chair announces, “We have proved that working together is victory, and we are ready for action!”

At least three of the groups have decided that women need to embrace the Internet (Hillary was right!), and while many of them favor not only mentoring, but also networking, there is general agreement about the media. An American, Jill Merrick, of Merrick Communications, points out the need to change the traditional media to get “more serious coverage of women.” As Jill sees it, until a “new girls network” replaces the you-know-what, the media’s “traditional male outlook” will prevent events like the conference from getting the attention they deserve.

Hillary thinks these are all fine ideas. She lauds the “commitment to honest dialogue” and the “courage” it took these women to attend. “Women’s rights are human rights,” she says thoughtfully. “And human rights are women’s rights.”

It turns out though, that Hillary is largely responsible for keeping the conference out of the news. She canceled the press plane for the trip, and her office campaigned to discourage the networks from coming. This isn’t particularly surprising, since her hallmark has always been the ability to think left and live right. Whatever. The girls love her anyway. Conference adjourned.

1:15 P.M. Well, not really. After the formal adjournment, it’s off to another luncheon hosted by Radisson SAS Hotels. With all of the wine and haddock and picture taking, the delegates are still obviously networking and building self-esteem. Unfortunately, the buzz is that some of them — a lot of them, actually — aren’t particularly pleased with the results. A delegate complains, “This one Norwegian woman was like ‘We’ve got to be inclusive of men, we must be inclusive of men.’ And I was like, ‘Oh come on!'”

Another delegate, Dianne Post of the American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative, sums up the mood saying, “A lot of potential was wasted.” As she sees it, the problem is, was, and always will be men.

“It’s enough of women changing, now men have to change,” she hisses. “Sixty-seven percent of all women have been battered by their boyfriends or husbands. You want to avoid being raped and killed? Don’t go with men, be a lesbian.” Why, I ask, do women ever get married? “I don’t know either! I’ve never been married, I wouldn’t get married.” In fact, she continues, “I think we should abolish marriage and replace it with legal contracts.”

Dianne thinks the conference missed a real opportunity to learn from the Nordic peoples, whose political parties have gender quotas. There is, she explains, hard social science proving that without quotas women can’t behave like real women. “There’s a critical percentage around the world of about 30 percent of women before they can have their own voice. Otherwise they just got there by playing the boys’ rules.”

It’s enough to make a girl wistful for the days of sit-ins and bra-burnings. “Now we’re not marching,” Post says sadly, “but I wish we were.” Someday, maybe. The follow-up conference has already been planned.

Jonathan V. Last is a reporter for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.