In June 1976, a conference was held at Wellesley College in Boston, Massachusetts on the theme of Women and Development. The organization and the content of the conference were highly criticized by the third world women attending it. In the following article (excerpted from a longer paper), three of the women explain their position. They are: Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt, Fatima Mernissi from Morocco, and Mallica Vajrathon from Thailand.

Why do we feel the duty to write our experience at Wellesley?

1. We want to make sure that we shall never have to face the same situation that we faced in Wellesley. We realize that the people who organize international conferences did not learn anything from their experience in Mexico.
2. We want to explain the feelings of third world women who have to confront one of the latest developments of neo-colonialism: Maternalism.
3. Encounters between people from different cultures and Geo-political areas can be very fruitful and highly inspiring. We therefore think that improvement of the methodology of truly international conferences is possible, if people make the effort to understand each other, and take upon themselves the arduous task of critical self-analysis.
4. We want the organizers and convenors of such meetings to be more sensitive to the cultural differences of women from different parts of the world, and that can be achieved if tha-e is equal participation at all levels of decision-making. 
5. We want to destroy the myth that the mere fact of being women will unite us all and that women are not political beings; that political discussions at women's meetings mean "diverting from the women's issues".
6. We want to emphasize the fact that "explosions", "conflicts" and "disruptions" which occur in conferences, such as the one at Wellesley, are healthy; and because of them we believe that the Conference was a success. 

THE PEOPLE      

A glance at the official programme of the conference reveals that in spite of the fact that the conference was called "Women and Development" the  contingent of women from developing countries at the  levels of organizing, panel convening and paper-giving was ridiculously small.

Third world contribution was minor if you take into account that most of the organizers, paper-givers, panel conveners were either Westerners based in or outside of the States, or women from developing countries based in the U.S., often for many years.. 

It is worth mentioning that the regions of the world where change in women's condition was a priority for government for the last decades, that is the socialist countries, were hardly represented

THE TIME STRUCTURE

The under-presentation of women from developing countries in the panels could have been partially compensated by a better time structure. There was hardly any time for discussion. The panelist usually took up all the time and the discussion period was often shortened to a ridiculous span... If there had been equal time for papers and discussions, the women from developing countries, who had often to listen to westerners talking to them about their own cultures, could have had more opportunity to contribute, thus raising the level of discussion from trivial corrections to more substantial, meaningful exchanges. The insistent requests by third world women for more discussion time, and their impatience at lengthy reading of papers full of incorrect information and interpretations of their culture were interpreted by the organizers as disruptive behaviour. A series of meetings were held by the third world contingent to persuade the organizers to change the conference structure. After repeated clashes with the organizers it was clear that they expected us to sit quietly and listen respectfully to the papers, no matter what their content, and certainly not to hurry the speech makers. Evidently our contribution was irrelevant...

THE OUTCOME OF THE CONFERENCE

When third world women realized that the organizers were not willing to make any changes in the programmes to meet their demands, they decided as a last resort to give up any attempt to have a part in decision-making as far as the actual conference was concerned, and decided to concentrate on the issue of the proceedings. Hours of nightly meetings were spent in trying to have some say in the proceedings by restructuring the editorial committee, which was heavily if not totally American. To their dismay, they realized that the organizers, who were often members of the editing board as well, were not willing to give in on that issue either...

The clash between women from developing countries and organizers - which was bound to happen anyway, given the composition of the organizing committee - and the panel conveners on one hand, and the structure of time on the other, was clearly illustrated in two ways. First were the issues chosen as priority issues by the organizers, which were not considered so by the developing countries' participants. The other level was that of personal interactions.

THE PANEL TOPICS

It is very revealing that the Women's Conference in Mexico in 1975 was split into two separate groups which happened to fall along the line of developed and developing. The first group led by women from Europe and North America thought it was a pity and a failure of the women's international movement to forward political claims. According to their "feminist" ideology to talk about politics is a diversion from women's issues, and a deliberate attempt by third world women who allegedly lack "feminist" awareness, to minimize the women's question by linking it to bigger political issues. Example: talking about the effects of so-called "development" and "modernization"on the degradating economic conditions of women in developing countries in both modern and traditional sector, without linking it, to the role of the multinational corporation. The Western women put the emphasis on the conditions of oppression of women in developing countries; the causes of this oppressions became secondary.

When third world women tried to attract attention to the role of the multinational corporations, they were accused of being nonfeminist, and imitating the "male" in his political games, and "splitting the spirit of sisterhood in the women's movement". A logical outcome of the depolitization of the women's issue is the minimization of the politics of economics, trade, and money. The Mexico pattern was reproduced in the Wellesley Conference, although it assumed a substantially different aspect: 

One of the painful surprises of third world participants was the absence of papers on American women, be they black, white or brown. One of the topics on which the third world women expected information was how the development process directed by the multinational corporations' priorities affected American women of different classes and races, and the mechanisms which make American women powerless in the system. This absence made us third-world women realize that we were invited to attend a conference where mostly American scholars were interpreting for us our conditions, our culture, our religion and our experiences. The fact that the time for discussion was eaten up by the verbose panelists (who tried to make up for their length by speeding up their diction, making it for us a heroic attempt to understand the English at all) joined with the absence of papers on American women to restore for us the hardly-healed colonial experience where the detached outside define your world for you. To feel like a fish in a glass bowl is very uncomfortable, especially if you are women coming from far away, expecting a rare chance to shed oppression and passivity and engage in a meaningful egalitarian dialogue.

The absence of analysis of the American women's situations, as these relate to development, show another shortcoming of the Conference: the lack of a re-questioning of the narrow classical concept of development, often equated with material and technological growth, divorced from human growth. This issue, which should have been the main focus of a conference which labeled itself, "Women and Development", became a marginal issue dealt with in subsidiary discussions.

Money and economics are vital issues to be studied and discussed by women in any attempt to create a new international economic and social order, of which women's issues are an important component.

The lack in the Wellseley Conference panels of in-depth analysis of economics and money, international trade and multinational corporations, on one hand,and of such critically important factors as health within countries on the other, illustrates how American women academicians design their international encounters. Moreover, no panel was devoted to the important question of credit and women's access to money and banking, which is the key to power.

Information on the latest decisions of multinational corporations' activities in and outside of the U.S. and how they affect the lives of women in and outside of the U.S., could have been a valuable contribution of American Women to the international conference, because that kind of data is hard if not impossible to get in third world countries. We are the last ones to know what has been done to us. 

The power issue which was the main cause of the clash between third world participants and organizers became very clear at personal interaction levels. Oblivious of the power issue, the organizers became adamant defenders of the Conference "law and order" they had designed, and failed to take into account third world women's protests, which they labeled as "disruption"

PATRONIZING AND MATERNALISTIC ATTITUDES

The organizers and panel convenors did not understand why third-world women felt humiliated and manipulated, because they did not participate in the organizing and the design of the panel. The organizers thought that this was very irrelevant. They acted just like the men who organized meetings involving women's issues, without getting the women involved at planning and policy decision-making. 

The organizers did not understand at all why the third-world women were uncomfortable from the first panels by their powerlessness to contribute in any meaningful way to the rigidly structured Conference. The well-meaning American organizers and panel convenors had and probably still have no idea how maternalistic and condescending they sounded, in both words and attitudes, when they read the papers or talked to the participants, telling them how to behave, how not to interrupt when paper deliverers were reading false data about developing countries For the American organizers, power was not the issue because they had it, and thought it normal for us not to participate.

THE SUCCESSFUL INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT 

The Wellesley Conference on Women and Development was a historical, and would probably become a trend-setting, event in women's attempt to transcend national, ideological and political boundaries. It was an attempt to escape male imposed division and create a powerful international movement. This conference was successful precisely because it was a painful clash between well-meaning American women academicians who believed themselves to be ahead of American men, and freed from colonial and imperialist limitations on one hand, and on the other hand, overly optimistic third-world women who had believed that the impossible dialogue between developed/developing people could be restored by women, between women, and for women. The fact that until now these international gatherings have failed to be really international in the full sense of the word, does not mean that the potential is not there. On the contrary, the fascinating thing about women now is that they are throughout the world, the only group who feels the strong urgent need to create international solidarity, and this need could materialize if changes are brought about in the structure and nature of women's encounters. 

Encounters Organized Internationally

For a conference to be genuinely international, women from developing and developed countries have to be involved on an equal basis in the organizing of the conference from its very beginning, starting from fund raising, topic choice, designation of panel conveners, panel convening etc. This will lead us to inquire about who should be invited. We will define some characteristics of participants which seems to us relevant.

Much insightful research and studies have been done by people in developing countries often in their native languages without being published. The reason is that publishing is still one of the most safeguarded monopolies of developed countries. Ironically enough, those who publish are not necessarily those who are the more creative and innovative in their thinking but those who have access to Western-based publishing networks. Therefore, the criteria for the participation of third world women ought to be creativity and not publication. If a woman has done research and produced papers, no matter in what language, she should be entitled to come to these meetings. This criteria will also necessitate the translation facilities at or before the conference, which will help transcend the language obstacles, and which should be funded as a priority item.

By breaking down the language barrier, it will maximize the contributions of all the participants, mainly of those who do not speak western languages, creating thus real internationalization of knowledge about women's issues.

Interpersonal communication between the participants ought to be considered as an important component. Free time and flexible scheduling ought to be a characteristic of these meetings.

National conferences locally organized where participants from outside would have status as full fledged participants or observers, could also be valuable.