ABSTRACT
The Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing between 4 and 15 September 1995. As in several other recent United Nations Conferences, along-side an official event, an NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) forum was organized. 1 On this occasion, feminists from the West/North met colleagues from the East/South to exchange accounts of their experiences. In some quarters, the Beijing Conference has been hailed as marking a new North–South alliance as well as exemplifying the sort of global/transnational forum in which a transformative feminist politics may be discussed. However, since such a ‘united sisterhood’ is less evident concretely, one can also examine the Beijing event to discover the difficulties and limits of a transformative politics. Indeed, from its re-emergence in the 1970s, feminism has shown few signs of unity. Feminist scholars still disagree strongly about the nature of (the) ‘female subject(s)’ and activists continue to debate strategic issues. In both respects, the scope of the discussion has been widened as the hegemony of familiar Western disputes (such as those among liberal, socialist, radical, and cultural feminisms) has been challenged by black, third-world, ethnic-minority, and post-colonial feminisms, each with their own strategic dimensions.
