Women’s Conference Bogs Down in Semantics : Rights: Conservative critics contend that the word <i> sex</i> , not <i> gender, </i> should be used in platform. But delegates want to focus on societal-- not biological--inequities.

Although most of the American political debate over the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women has centered on human rights in China, the proposed conference platform has provoked heated denunciations from conservative critics.

The Washington-based Family Research Council, for example, insists that the platform under consideration “denigrates motherhood, undermines the traditional family unit and erodes the foundations of marriage and family life.”

President Clinton, announcing last week that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend the Beijing conference Tuesday and Wednesday, defended the gathering as “true blue” to family values and charged that the criticism is driven by “an almost addictive, almost narcotic” desire to divide the American people.

The furor boils down to differences over a single word-- gender --and symbolizes the extent of the divide between the American conference delegates and the critics.

In their draft “platform for action” for the conference, U.N. bureaucrats often referred to gender . But when delegates met in preparatory sessions months ago, some conservative delegates from countries such as Honduras and Malta--which often take their lead from the Vatican--objected to its use, insisting on the substitution of sex for gender .

Feminists argue that the word sex differentiates men and women only by biological makeup; the word gender , they say, focuses on the differences between men and women that are set down by societies.

They contend that notions that “a woman’s place is in the home” or that only men are fit for military combat duty rely on gender differences created by society, not sex differences created by biology. Using the word sex instead of gender , according to the feminists, misses the point of why women have fewer rights than men in most societies.

But conservatives claim that feminists are using the word gender as a subterfuge to cover a host of activities that the right wing objects to, such as lesbianism or bisexuality.

Gary Bauer, the head of the Family Research Council, said the draft platform, by leaving the word gender open for interpretation, “fails to uphold traditional morality.” Bauer said the definition of gender as a word covering societal-assigned roles for men and women “has been used in feminist literature to mean that gender is subject to change and that there exists a spectrum of genders, perhaps even five.”

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) picked up on the criticism, accusing the conference organizers of fostering the notion “that there are actually five genders: man, woman, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual, whatever that is.”

Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and chief of the U.S. delegation, has dismissed this accusation as fanciful; no conference document talks about more than two genders.

Albright told a House subcommittee hearing recently: “My office has been besieged by calls criticizing my alleged belief that there are five sexes--which is something that [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein has not even accused me of.”

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The Vatican, which has objected to what it regards as an overuse of the word gender , is expected to be the leader of the conservative forces at the conference.

At a news briefing in late June, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, director of the Vatican press office, said the draft document contains “a Western model of female advancement which does not take into account the values of women in the majority of countries of the world.”

Besides the semantic debate over gender , reproductive health is expected to be a fiery issue.

Rebecca J. Cook of the University of Toronto Law School said some conservatives believe reproductive health is “a euphemism for contraception, sterilization and abortion.”

Feminists, she said, are also concerned about cures for infertility and child rearing, which contribute to the well-being of women.