No longer a sideshow

COPENHAGEN—There are many “titles” enjoyed by Denmark, including “the happiest place on earth.” But for purposes of the ongoing Women Deliver Conference in this city, the most relevant and apropos might be “the best place to be a woman,” doubtless a testament to the many gender-fair initiatives adopted by the Danish government.

These initiatives have taken place and have been institutionalized not just in recent years but in decades past. And apparently these initiatives have paid off. As Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told those at the conference’s opening plenary: “The fight for gender justice is not just for women, but for all. Gender opportunities create a path toward growth and prosperity. (Today) gender is no longer a sideshow. And (as a man) I am on your side, as husband, father, as a human being, and as prime minister of Denmark.”

The prime minister was preceded by Crown Princess Mary, an Australian “commoner” who married Crown Prince Frederik in 2004. She has since used her position to advocate for women and children. Women, she told the more than 5,000 participants, are “the world’s greatest untapped resource.”

This, even as she bemoaned the continuing high rate of maternal deaths—more than 300 women dying each day due to causes related to pregnancy and childbirth—90 percent of them preventable.

With the adoption by most of the world’s governments of the Sustainable Development Goals, said the princess, the world “is at a pivotal moment, getting behind a united agenda for humanity.”

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THE opening plenary then moved on to a “conversation” steered by Indian TV presenter Barkha Dutt and featuring such diverse personalities as “rock star” (she accepted the title with a mocking bow) Annie Lennox, United Nations Population Fund director Babatunde Osotimehin, former World Health Organization head Gro Harlem Brundtland, present-day WHO head Dr. Margaret Chan, Zimbabwean youth leader Yemurai Nyoni, Yemeni journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, Afghan educator Sakena Yacoobi, and Women Deliver CEO Katja Iversen.

It was a wide-ranging conversation that, said Dutt, she wanted to focus on the “personal” side of the panelists, but which also managed to train the spotlight on key issues.

Babatunde spoke of being a husband, father and grandfather, stressing that “without equality at home, there is no equality at work.” Brundtland, who was a politician in Norway before moving to the United Nations, assured that the world will eventually be reconciled with women in leadership positions, replying to a question posed to her by Dutt on why “America seems so reluctant to have a woman as president.”

Yacoobi spoke of being “tactical” in her work to bring the benefits of education to Afghan girls. To get the mullahs on her side (or at least out of her hair), she “had tea” with them, every day, for months on end, convincing them of the need to support her efforts to establish schools for girls.

Karman, the Yemeni journalist who was at  the frontlines of the “Arab Spring,” brought passion and fervor to the discussion. She declared how “justice, development and peace” now occupy a central place in her work and being.

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NYONI reaped applause when he declared that in today’s world, “there is no space for the violent man.” A youth activist in Yemen, he organizes young men like him to advocate nonviolence in their personal relationships.

“My strength is not defined by the weakness of others,” he said.

Iversen spoke movingly of her Danish grandmother, who had grown up dirt poor and had bemoaned all her life that she didn’t have the chance to get an education. To get her husband through teacher’s school, Iversen’s grandmother worked as a nurse’s aide, but by the time her husband got his diploma and started teaching, much as she wanted to get a nurse’s certificate herself, “it was no longer appropriate for a teacher’s wife to be working outside the home.”

So when Iversen graduated from college, she remembers that it was her grandmother “who cried as I went up the stage to get my diploma.”

It was her grandmother who taught Iversen about contraceptives and how they were meant to help women and couples achieve their dreams for themselves. WHO’s Chan, who began her medical career in a clinic in Hong Kong, recalled how women would furtively visit her and hurriedly request for family planning advice and services “because my husband is just outside and I don’t want him to know that I’m asking for contraceptives.”

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LENNOX looked back on the events that turned her into an HIV/AIDS activist (she is the spokesperson of UN-AIDS). It was while she performed at a concert on the invitation of Nelson Mandela, she said, and she found out about the horrible toll that the disease was taking on sub-Saharan Africa. “This was all taking place without the world noticing,” she recalled with indignation.

Asked about the T-shirt she was wearing which had “Positive” emblazoned on the front, Lennox said it was her “advocacy shirt,” to convince everyone “to go and get tested, to know your HIV status.”

As an entertainer, she commented, “I don’t know why people obsess about what you’re wearing on the red carpet when there are so many important issues that need to be discussed out there.”

And they will indeed be discussed in the next few days at the Women Deliver Conference.