Urging her audience to "not forget that differences do not mean division," English Professor Priscilla Sears said last night that she is committed to the creation of a Foreign Study Program within the Women's Studies Program.
Sears made her statements at a discussion of her experiences at this summer's United Nations Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China. History Professor Marysa Navarro and Amy Westpfahl '96 also attended the U.N. Conference and shared their experiences last night.
Sears did not elaborate at the meeting on her plans for the Women's Studies FSP.
The U.N. conference, titled "The World as Seen Through Women's Eyes," and a forum of Non-Government Organizations in south Beijing, were both held from late August to early September.
Speaking to an audience of approximately 30 people in Carpenter Hall, Navarro said the participants at these two meetings wrote a document that will soon change the lives of women everywhere.
She said the document dealt with issues of human rights, violence against women, health and inheritance rights.
The three women each described their individual experiences at the conferences. Each woman said the meetings were informative, educational, productive and especially inspirational.
All of the forum participants attended workshops on subjects including spirituality, feminism, women's studies in America and a platform for action, Navarro said. All the women were ready to talk and help the delegation in making strides toward a better future for women.
Navarro said the NGO forum involved women from all over the world and from all walks of life.
The forum was a "mainstreaming of women and feminism issues and internationalizing them," Navarro said.
In her remarks, Sears alluded to comments made by reporters in Beijing. One reporter said the conference was a mixture of high, middle and low-class women who had nothing in common.
Sears said the women "have rape in common, discrimination in the workplace in common, oppression in common" and these similarities bind all of them together.
Westpfahl, who worked as an intern for the Global Alliance for Women's Health this summer, made the journey to China as a replacement for a delegate.
Westpfahl said although her main task at the conference was to promote the work of her organization and to distribute pamphlets, she gained much more from the experience.
She said she felt surrounded by the positive power of women all working together for a common cause.
Although she was physically exhausted, she said she felt "imbued with the energy that radiates from the forum."
More than 30,000 women attended the U.N. conference, which made it the largest U.N. forum in history.
