Between Sexual Claims and Calls for Economic Justice: Political and Ideological Divisions during the World Conference of the International Women’s Year. Mexico 1975

Abstract

The World Conference of the InternationalWomen’s Year was held from June 19 to July 21975. With the participation of more than9 000 people from 133 nations. The conference,organized by the United Nations, was thefirst and largest attempt to analyze genderinequality from a global perspective. This articleanalyzes the international context in whichthe conference took place and many of the discussionsit sparked at the time: from the optimismabout the positive results that wouldresult from the global meeting to opinions thatridiculed or were indifferent to a “woman’smeeting.” In particular, the analysis focuses onthe discourse about the concept of “woman,”since this reflects the competing perspectivesthat participants expressed at the conference.Ideological constructions about what “being awoman” meant played a central role in the dailyconfrontations between women from countriesin the so-called First and Third Worlds.Women from economically developed nationswere perceived by the press and certain LatinAmerican delegates as interested solely in sexualmatters, such as lesbianism, abortion andprostitution. Conversely, the ideal of ThirdWorld women was related to social justice andeconomic equality. With this analysis, this essayseeks to contribute to the understanding of theconstruction of female identities in a globalcontext and show that these constructions areclosely related to political, economic and culturalstruggles in national and internationalcontexts.