The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Footage of United Nations-sponsored "Decade for Women" meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, 1985: MSs women delegates meeting, singing. Flags flying at United Nations building; U.N. building. Host Susan Stamberg introduces a retrospective on ten years since that U.N. declaration, what has been gained for women in the world. Titles "The Women's Decade: Beyond Beginnings".
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Opening Conference United Nations Decade for Women, held in Mexico City, 1975: UN Assistant Secretary General Helvi Sipila opening the meeting, calling it an historic international meeting of women, saying the power of united women will be phenomenal (UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim seated next to her); TLSs crowd. Betty Friedan outside auditorium, saying that feminism will be "dynamite" in other parts of the world as a positive force for change.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
MCU of an unidentified Bolivian woman saying (subtitled) she's not sure what the "Women's Decade" means, that it doesn't affect the lives of peasant women. CU unidentified British feminist saying the UN recognized women were mobilizing to make changes in their societies but the U.N. is just following, the average British woman would have no idea that the U.N. had declared a "Decade For Women".
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Graphic of a world map shows the equalitarian goals of the Decade in marriage rights, economic activity, and political influence.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Feminist Germaine Greer saying that this kind of ceremonial gesture won't mean anything until women have real power to set an agenda and put plans into action; the U.N. is following trends in supporting international feminism, calls the "Decade for Women" "bullshit".
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Footage of 1975 conference in Mexico City, UN women's assembly; VO of Ms. Greer describing the bizarre spectacle of male-dominated delegations making token speeches to pander to feminist agenda.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
MCU feminist Germaine Greer.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Montage of poor women working in different Third World settings: an African wetland; rural Andean grassland; city street in India; African village market; Nepal. VO says for most poor women, life went on exactly as before regardless of U.N. pronouncements, chiefly due to poverty. Bourgeois women in U.S., Japan, and Great Britain. VO says despite differences between rich & poor nations, in all societies the poorest people are women. High angle MS woman vacuuming staircase in a hotel.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Graphic shows the uneven distribution of property, wages, and influence between the sexes worldwide, notably that women own less than 1% of property and do more than 2/3 of the work in the world.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
A cartoon shows an alarm clock ringing, wife getting out of bed to cook, care for children and do housework while husband lounges in bed before going to "work", sits at the breakfast table, refuses to change a diaper, and pounds on the table demanding his meal.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Graphic shows the ratio of paid to unpaid labor that women perform, and the greater amount of working time spent by women due to imbalances in unpaid labor.