ISO: CHL
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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN


ADDRESS TO THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN BY THECHILEAN MINISTER 
OF WOMEN'S AFFAIRS JOSEFINA BILBAOBEIJING, CHINA SEPTEMBER 4-15, 1995

In the name of the government and people of Chile, I would like to 
express my gratitude to the people and government of China for the 
privilege of being in this land of culture and millenary tradition. I 
would also like to pay tribute to the United Nations and to the 
Secretary General of the Conference, Mrs. Gertrude Mongella, for the 
intense preparatory work leading to this meeting where we will share our 
experience, our viewpoints and our commitments. 

I represent a small country occupying a narrow stretch of land between 
the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic. It is South America’s 
southernmost nation, now engaged with all its strength in shaping a 
freer, more just society. We are a country that over the past five years 
has moved from a difficult period of authoritarianism toward a democracy 
built upon the effort of women and men alike and with the strong 
commitment of the government of President Eduardo Frei. 

We are also a country whose economy has grown an average of ó.3 percent 
annually during the last decade, through the combined efforts of the 
private and public sectors. Inflation and unemployment are declining, 
and the government has taken a unwavering stand for economic development 
that is fair and that embraces all segments of society. 

Lastly, we are a country whose beliefs and experiences, sufferings and 
successes lead it to seek to join the international community in 
realizing the values upon which it was founded. As the Minister of 
Women's Affairs, I want to say that Chile restates at this Conference, 
within the celebration of the United Nations 50th Anniversary, its 
commitment to the organisation’s effort of stimulating solidarity and 
building a more equitable universal order, in which millions of human 
beings can exercise their civic, political, economical, social and 
cultural rights. This Conference is part of many meetings seeking the 
improvement of quality of life and which focus on the concerns of men 
and women of the different cultures and regions, bound by a political 
and ethical mandate to promote peace and international security. 

In this context, Chile values and joins the effort of including women in 
the responsibilities and challenges that United Nations has promoted for 
decades. EQUALITY, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE provide the context for this 
great global effort to make decisive progress in eliminating 
discrimination against women. 

Chile intends to contribute to this global effort from the standpoint of 
our principles, values and our reality, within a climate of tolerance 
and respect. 

The achievement of these shared goals requires strengthened trust, the 
absence of conflict and the promotion of preventive actions which will 
stimulate disarmament and world peace. 

Specifically, we appeal to the nuclear powers to make an unequivocal 
gesture of peace, by making the most strenuous efforts to assure women a 
world free of the threat of massive destruction and in particular by 
abiding by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its 
prohibition on arms testing. 

2Ladies and Gentlemen

We are holding this Fourth World Conference two decades after the 
International Women's Year and 10 years since our countries pledged to 
implement in their respective territories the Nairobi Strategies for the 
Advancement of Women. 

In those 20 years deep changes have occurred in the condition of women 
all over the globe: Millions of women have joined the paid labor force . 
. . have taken responsibility for maintaining their families . . . have 
gained access to increasingly higher levels of education. 

Nonetheless, there still persist unacceptable, hurtful and dangerous 
inequalities. 

More than one billion people on this planet live in poverty, and the 
majority of them are women. 

This grim reality is a primary concern of my government, which has set 
as its chief aim and obligation the substantial reduction of poverty 
among Chileans and the eradication of utter destitution. 

The Chilean government hereby reaffirms its commitment to the World 
Summit for Social Development goals of reducing poverty and eliminating 
abject want, with particular attention to impoverished women and 
families. 

Because poverty is our paramount concern, we place special priority on 
education as a means to overcome economic want. This is our second 
governmental commitment. 

In spite of the progress that women have made in this area, there are in 
the world today 960 million illiterates -- two thirds of them women —
mostly in developing countries. The schooling the receive is of low 
quality, and they are not always trained to enter the work environment 
on a fair footing with men. Moreover, the education given them 
frequently perpetuates stereotypes that relegate women to a secondary 
role in a man's world. 

Chile will strive in this Conference for agreements acknowledging the 
need to promote equal educational opportunity for women, not only in 
terms of access to schooling, but in terms of its quality. We are 
convinced that major investment in the education women is a precondition 
for the equitable sustained and sustainable development which will 
enable our countries and future generations to join the community of 
more advanced nations on a basis of equality. 

The integration of women into the labour force is another central 
concern of the Chilean government. We are pledged to foster more and 
better employment opportunities for women, improving the quality of the 
jobs open to them and reducing the pay gap between men and women. 

Chile concurs with the evaluation contained in the Platform for Action 
concerning the employment of women, and in backing this evaluation we 
have the benefit of policies being implemented in our country in support 
of women workers. 

We especially want to emphasise the social and cultural value of women's 
work in the home, as well as in rural productive activities, family 
businesses and community service. We believe it would be a fundamental 
step forward if the value of work in the setting of home and family were 
properly reflected in international economic accounts. The Chilean 
government finds it unacceptable that conditions continue to exist 
causing women to bear a double and triple workload because of the 
unequal distribution of homemaking and childbearing duties. In this 
regard, while we favour greater and fairer integration of women into the 
paid labour forces we also believe it necessary to promote policies that 
encourage and enable men to fulfil family responsibilities. 

Chile will support at this Conference all those measures designed to 
increase the value placed on the contribution of women to national and 
world productive capacity, to safeguard their rights in the workplace, 
to promote dialogue among economic and social sectors and to stimulate 
legislative reforms in support of equality of economic opportunity. 

Ladies and gentlemen: 

The unequal access of men and women to power and decision making at all 
levels is of especial concern to Chile. Only 10 percent of the world's 
elected lawmakers are women, and women remain seriously underrepresented 
in the administrative organs of the majority of public and private 
forums and organisations. 

Similarly, although women figure decisively in the family and in the 
working world, their role is all too often unacknowledged and 
undervalued. 

We believe it is increasingly necessary to foster appropriate measures 
to invest women with access to leadership positions, through affirmative 
action. 

We are convinced that the participation’s of women in decision making 
will speed achievement of the much-desired objectives of world peace and 
development. Ws also believe that greater participation by men in the 
private side of life, in the family, in homemaking responsibilities and 
in the emotional welfare and upbringing of children will lead to 
societies that are more supportive and humane. 

Ladies and gentlemen: 

The controversy regarding women s health issues that marked the 
preparations for this Conference should not prevent us from reaching 
concrete agreements that will bring about an improvement in the health 
status of women, approached from a perspective that takes into 
consideration physical psychological and social aspects throughout the 
female life cycle—from childhood, to childbearing age, to later years. 

In this regard, the Chilean delegation will uphold the agreements 
adopted in previous conferences, in particular the Cairo Conference on 
Population and Development, and will not accept a reopening of the 
debate on the topics of reproductive health and abortion. 

Chile reiterates its rejection of abortion, considering it a subject 
that must be addressed as a serious public health problem, whose causes 
should be treated preventively through family planning policies that 
promote responsible parenthood and that enable individuals and couples 
to chose the family planning methods they find acceptable, so long as 
these methods do not contravene a higher ethical standard. 

We believe that the quality of women's lives will be improved 
substantially if we show ourselves capable of taking measures to 
guarantee their reproductive and sexual health, approached in the 
context of the total development of their lives and personal 
relationships, and not merely through counselling and care related to 
reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases. 

Finally, I want to repeat Chile's commitment to eliminating all forms of 
violence against women, one of the most virulent expressions of 
discrimination, in that it violates the exercise of their basic human 
rights and liberties. 

There is growing awareness of this issue in Latin America, which is why 
one year ago the General Assembly of the Organization of American States 
approved the Belém do Pará Convention on the Preventions Punishment and 
Elimination of Violence Against Women. This instrument, which is open to 
the ratification by countries from other regions, is a contribution of 
Latin America and the Caribbean to the articulation of universal 
standards. Chile has strict legislation that specifically penalizes 
domestic violence. We call upon all nations to subscribe to this 
Convention, which is of the highest importance. 

Ladies and Gentlemen

I want to set out for you how our participation in this Conference 
directly relates to principles underpinning our national policies abroad 
and at home on the domestic front, President Eduardo Frei's government 
has assumed a clear commitment in relation to the objectives of this 
Conference, putting into practice a policy of equality of opportunity 
for women. The chief mechanism of this policy is an Equal Opportunities 
Plan. Based upon an examination of discrimination against women, the 
Plan calls for concerted action by the different elements of government 
and summons Chileans at large to the task of bringing about the changes 
needed to deepen democracy and foster equitable development. 

In accomplishing this task, Chile has a public institution of 
ministerial status --- the National Women's Service -- whose function as 
a coordinating body for public policies enables it to monitor the 
implementation of this Plan. 

In addition, Chilean women in society at large have made major 
contributions to the country's development and to reclaiming democracy. 
They continue to lend their effort and support to the nation's 
modernization in this new stage of economic growth and social equity. 

We accept that at this Conference we are joining in a universal 
dialogue; furthermore, we recognize the coexistence of different values 
and cultures. This warrants a vigorous search for grounds for common 
agreement, without abridgement of fundamental human freedoms in the 
quest for compromise. We are willing to make such an effort and pledge 
to do so. 

I want to state once again Chile's willingness to help in achieving 
agreements needed to draw up a Platform for Action establishing new and 
broader goals in the pursuit of societies that are more supportive, 
humane and egalitarian. 

Ladies and gentlemen: 

In Chile we have understood that this Conference is an arena for debate 
on one of the crucial topics of contemporary culture, one which will be 
distinguishing hallmark of the next millennium. 

It is in that spirit, therefore that we have taken the occasion of the 
Conference as an opportunity for us to begin a national debate that puts 
the role of women among the foremost priorities in our public agenda. 

As a country, we are young, not only in history, but in the age of our 
people. We are a country struggling to reinstate democracy and to attain 
increasingly higher standards of development while at the same time 
respecting and cherishing our ethnic and cultural tradition. 

At the beginning of my speech I mentioned that this Conference has set 
forth enormous challenges, polemic and conflicts of conscience. This is 
the true value of this global pondering and the importance of the 
recommendations. We are contributing to ensuring that the difference 
between men and women will no longer be cause for discrimination, but 
abundance. 

Thank you very much.